Today: How can Russia still be Europe’s biggest natural-gas supplier? Nicholas Kumleben on the Continent’s bad bet on a decades-long economic relationship with the Kremlin.

+ An exhibition showcasing MI5 spy artifacts opens at the National Archives in London. & Jonathan Sumption on why Britain, “a byword for political stability for three centuries,” become so politically volatile.

But first …

• Taiwan says Chinese aircraft had flown 76 sorties near the island.
• Chinese defense officials say Wednesday’s exercises focused on China’s abilities to control and seal off seas and skies around Taiwan.
• They also say their military conducted live-fire drills in the East China Sea—farther from Taiwan—to practice hitting ports and energy infrastructure.
• China’s leaders say the exercises are a response to a speech in mid-March by Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te, when he called China a “foreign hostile force” and announced 17 measures to combat Chinese spying and sabotage in Taiwan.

What’s this all about?

• China’s President Xi Jinping has instructed the country’s military to be ready to retake Taiwan by force before 2027. Beijing maintains, meanwhile, that Taiwan is an indivisible part of China.
• In recent weeks, China undertook maneuvers with three new barges. Each vessel carries a long bridge that can link up with the other boats, forming a lengthy pathway that could be used for troops and military vehicles to move from offshore ships to a beach.
• The U.S. has pushed back against China’s exercises. On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of State said it was committed to Taiwan, “in the face of China’s intimidation tactics and destabilizing behavior. … Once again, China’s aggressive military activities and rhetoric toward Taiwan only serve to exacerbate tensions and put the region’s security and the world’s prosperity at risk.”
• U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in Japan last week that “America is committed to sustaining robust, ready, and credible deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, including across the Taiwan Strait.”
• An internal memo in the U.S. Defense Department last week said U.S. forces needed to focus on deterring China from trying to seize Taiwan.

China’s maneuvers look like they might be aimed as much at Washington as at Taipei. Since U.S. President Donald Trump took office, both China and Taiwan have tried to win Trump’s support for their positions. Beijing is trying to make Lai look like a dangerous troublemaker in the region; Lai, meanwhile, has promised to raise Taiwan’s military spending to more than 3 percent of GDP this year. Trump has publicly questioned the strategic value of Taiwan to the U.S. and accused the country of stealing American intellectual property—and his lack of support for Ukraine has caused a lot of public anxiety in Taipei.

• Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Tonight, we have shifted gears in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Defense Forces are seizing territory, hitting the terrorists, and destroying infrastructure.”
• He also said Israel would take control of a corridor between the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah, in the southern part of Gaza. Israel already controls a corridor running through the middle of the strip, and buffer zones enclaves along its borders with Egypt and Israel.
• During the night, Israeli airstrikes hit Khan Younis and Rafah. Gazan authorities say the strikes killed 21 people.
• During the day, an Israeli airstrike hit Jabaliya. UN officials say the strike hit a health clinic housing 160 displaced families, killing 19 people. Israel says it hit a militant command-and-control center, though it was aware that the center was in the same building as the clinic.

Where’s this going?

• It could make agreeing to a new ceasefire much more difficult. Israel and Hamas agreed to one in on January 19, but Israel resumed its airstrikes on March 18.
• Netanyahu also laid out his demands for postwar Gaza. They include disarming Hamas, full Israeli security control over Gaza, and the “voluntary migration” of Gazans.
• Neighboring Arab countries such as Egypt and Jordan have rejected proposals that they take on Gazan migrants.
• Hamas, meanwhile, is demanding full Israeli withdrawal in exchange for the release of all Israeli hostages.

While Israel’s moves seem to point to it taking control over strategic parts of Gaza, it remains a question whether they’re intended to improve Israel’s negotiating position with Hamas or to help it hold on to the territory long-term—and potentially force its former residents to relocate.

• Judge Susan Crawford, a liberal, won the race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, defeating her conservative opponent by about 10 points—giving liberals a 4-3 advantage on the court.
• In the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump carried the state by around 1 percent. On Tuesday, every county in Wisconsin moved in favor of the Democrats, compared with last year’s vote.
• Crawford won in spite of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a senior White House official, investing about US$25 million to defeat her.
• In one Florida congressional district, Republican Randy Fine won by 14 points—though Trump had carried the district by 33 points last November.
• In another Florida race for the House of Representatives, the Republican Jimmy Patronis won by 17 points—though Trump had carried that district by 32 points. The Democratic candidate even flipped a county that had not been won by a Democrat since 1960.

What’s happening here?

• Money is a major factor. The contest in Wisconsin was the most expensive judicial race in U.S. history, with more than $100 million spent during the campaign.
• Fine, running in a deeply Republican district, was outspent by his Democratic opponent.
• Democrats focused their campaign on Wisconsin on two issues: Musk, and preserving the right to abortion. The state’s Democratic Party ran TV ads and purchased billboards around Wisconsin criticizing Musk’s enormous spending on the race.

It’s possible to read the results in two ways that might overlap: One, Trump and the Republican Party are losing popularity. Two, Democrats have an advantage in non-presidential elections because the voters who turn out for them tend to have higher levels of formal education—a demographic group that’s disproportionately Democratic.

Moscow rules

Days after the invasion, Germany’s then-chancellor, Olaf Scholz, called the moment a Zeitenwende—a historic turning point—and pledged that his country would transform its economic and security policies to fit the new reality. Political and business leaders across the Continent echoed Scholz’s thinking, breaking off commerce with Moscow and advocating for stronger militaries. The EU soon imposed unprecedented economic sanctions on Moscow, and many member states significantly increased their defense spending.

But today, more than three years later, Europe still can’t get by without Russian natural gas. The Continent has dramatically reduced its total energy imports from Russia, but the EU still bought a record amount of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from it last year—and it’s on a pace to break that record again.

Last year, the EU sent almost €22 billion to Moscow for oil and gas. Since the beginning of the war, EU countries have sent more money to Russia for energy imports than they’ve sent to Ukraine in all military, financial, and humanitarian aid.

Why?

Nicholas Kumleben is the energy director at the consulting firm Greenmantle, where he leads research on energy, commodities, and climate change. Kumleben says Europe’s basic problem is that it relies on natural gas for a lot of its most important energy needs—and there just aren’t enough other suppliers on the global market right now. But the bigger problem is that the Continent spent generations building a dependent relationship with a hostile adversary—a strategy Kumleben calls Europe’s “biggest policy mistake since World War II.” The world’s other gas producers never had an incentive to develop their LNG exports, because European countries were busy building overland and undersea pipelines to bring in gas from Russia. Meanwhile, they could never stand up to Moscow’s many aggressions in recent decades—including Russia’s initial occupation of parts of Ukraine in 2014—on account of their dependence on Russian energy.

Now, the U.S. has plans to export enough LNG within the next few years that the Continent could stop buying gas from Russia—raising the question, Kumleben says, of what it might mean for Europe to replace dependence on Moscow with dependence on Washington …

• A London exhibition opening at Britain’s National Archives showcases MI5 spy artifacts including a 110-year-old lemon used for invisible ink, spy cameras, microdots, and items from the Cambridge Five. The display runs from April 5 to September 28: “A generation ago, this stuff was totally secret. We weren’t even allowed to know that MI5 existed.”

• “We love magazines” is the rallying call of magCulture. In-store in London and online everywhere, they celebrate the magazine—contemporary and historical—a medium we consider as important as it’s ever been. magCulture is the exclusive retailer for Altered States outside the U.S.A.

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