WorldWatch
Europe
One of “the most consequential trade agreements of the first half of this century” is going into effect, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced February 27. Despite large-scale protests by farmers; despite opposition from the European Union’s second-largest economy, France; despite members of European Parliament demanding judicial review; and despite the fact that courts have not yet judged it to be legal, the European Union’s massive trade deal with mercosur will be provisionally implemented before summer.
mercosur is the Latin American trade bloc that consists of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, encompassing almost 300 million people with a combined gross domestic product exceeding $2 trillion. After 25 years of negotiation, the agreement was finally signed on January 17, largely in response to combative and erratic trade policies by the United States. A slim majority in the European Parliament declined to ratify the agreement and attempted to delay its implementation by sending it to the European Court of Justice. But Germany found a way to push it through regardless. For more on its importance, see “Germany Unites the World Against America.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz delivered the opening speech of the Munich Security Conference on February 13, taking the opportunity to reinterpret the lessons of the past. His speech had one clear theme: Germany has learned the lessons from World War ii, while the United States under Donald Trump is asserting that “might makes right” and is threatening to become a new Nazi regime. According to Merz, the guarantor of the global order should be Germany, which must form new alliances with the autocrats and build a European military power, with nuclear weapons, that is ready to defend itself without the U.S.
Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio praised his European hosts in a speech that contrasted from Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the same event last year. Rubio emphasized the deep historical, cultural and strategic ties the U.S. shares with Europe, calling America a “child of Europe” and urging a revitalized friendship. The speech received a standing ovation.
Speeches throughout the conference emphasized Europe’s need to build defense capabilities and strategic independence from nato. Conference head Wolfgang Ischinger stressed the need to “ramp up defense production and to create a more cohesive and globally competitive European defense market.” Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, titled her address “Europeans Assemble! Reclaiming Agency in a Rougher World.” She said Europe needs to create new alliances and trade deals and boost its military: “We are getting there, dusting off our capes, pulling on our boots, revving up our engines.” We are witnessing a monumental shift in the postwar world order. The Bible prophesies that the current trans-Atlantic relationship will shatter, and the consequences will be grave.
Germany can no longer protect citizens from its own spy agency, the federal commissioner for data protection and freedom of information stated on March 5. Her comment came after a court rejected her request to inspect the espionage activities of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, the bnd. In January, a draft law was leaked that would enable the bnd to monitor all Internet traffic going through Germany, effectively allowing it to spy on German citizens and their contacts. The law would also give the bnd the legal authority to hack foreign networks. The creator of Germany’s postwar spy network and founding president of the bnd was Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, who was, like many other German agency leaders, a former Nazi. Many early bnd agents had been part of the Gestapo. Now that the bnd is officially authorized to spy on its citizens, what will it do to German society, not to mention foreign allies and adversaries?
Middle East
In February and March, Ethiopia amassed troops near its internal border with the Tigray region. Many suspect the Ethiopian government is planning an imminent offensive to extinguish the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, an ethnic Tigray militia. This could lead to the fulfillment of a Bible prophecy about Ethiopia—and Iran.
The Front governed Ethiopia until 2018 and resents the current Ethiopian government for excluding it from the current government. A devastating civil war between 2020 and 2022 killed an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people, the deadliest conflict so far this century. The root causes of the conflict remain unresolved.
Daniel 11:40-41 describe two power blocs, “the king of the south” and “the king of the north,” battling for control of the Middle East “at the time of the end.” For decades, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has said Iran will lead this king of the south. Biblical and secular history reveal the king of the north is a united European bloc, as Herbert W. Armstrong identified decades ago. Verses 42-43 show the king of the north will also war against Egypt, Libya and Ethiopia, implying these countries are allied with Iran.
Ethiopia today is a Christian-majority country fighting radical Islamist groups at its borders, such as Iranian proxy al-Shabaab. But Bible prophecy indicates a massive shift is coming to Ethiopian politics. Renewed unrest with the Tigray, not to mention the war with Iran and its many imminent side effects, could lead to this shift.
Spain terminated the position of ambassador to Israel on March 11 until further notice, six months after recalling its ambassador as a condemnation of the Israeli government and leaving the Spanish Embassy in Israel to a chargé d’affaires. In 2024, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez explained diplomatic actions against Israel by saying that his country “doesn’t have nuclear bombs, nor aircraft carriers or large oil reserves. We alone can’t stop the Israeli offensive,” implying that, if it could, Spain would use such measures to prevent Israel from attacking Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
Catholic Spain infamously converted, expelled or killed virtually all Spanish Jews, and Judaism was illegal in the country until 1968. The boldness of this nation against Israel is part of a surge in Jew-hatred rising worldwide and reveals the falseness of those who say they don’t hate Jews, only the Israeli government, as they hold the Jewish nation to a standard like no other in the world.
Asia
The Uyghur people of northwestern China continue to be “systematically strangled” by the Chinese government, even as the world’s attention has shifted away, Uyghur diplomat Salih Hudayar told the Trumpet in an interview published February 17. The Uyghurs are a predominantly Muslim people who seek independence for their homeland in northwestern China. But the Chinese Communist Party uses brutality to keep the region in its grip and force the Uyghurs into submission. Millions of Uyghurs have been held in detention centers where they suffer indoctrination, beatings, sterilizations, starvation, forced labor, sexual violence, torture and death.
In January 2021, the U.S. State Department formally designated China’s actions against the Uyghurs as “genocide,” and media and human rights groups sounded the alarm about their plight. But five years later, the world’s attention has all but disappeared, with only 0.03 percent of English-language news coverage about the Uyghurs, six times less than in the months following the genocide designation. Huyadar said this is because governments have “chosen to deprioritize this issue in light of their geopolitical and economic interests,” because “other global crises have crowded the international agenda” and because China has “mounted an intensive propaganda and disinformation campaign designed to confuse audiences.”
As a result, the world is no longer opposing or even watching China’s atrocities in Xinjiang. But that doesn’t mean the violence has ended. To learn how the Uyghurs’ suffering foreshadows what is coming for the whole world, read Trumpet publisher Gerald Flurry’s “The Climax of Man’s Rule Over Man.”
Russia’s war on Ukraine entered its fifth year on February 24, passing a grim milestone for Europe’s largest and deadliest war since World War II. Russian President Vladimir Putin believed this “special military operation” would be swift and decisive, a lightning strike that would seize Kyiv, collapse the Ukrainian command structure, topple its leadership, and force a political settlement before the world could react, requiring little more warfare than his quick seizure of Crimea from Ukraine eight years before. But four years later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is still in Kyiv, Ukrainian forces continue to relentlessly contest every kilometer of the battlefield, and the will of the people has hardened like iron. What began as a lightning assault has slowed into a brutal war of endurance. Many in the West insist that Russia cannot sustain the strain much longer and that Putin himself may even be swept aside. But based on biblical prophecy, Mr. Flurry has a different forecast: Putin is only getting started.
Pakistan began attacking Afghanistan in late February in what it called “open war” against the Taliban. Pakistan alleged that the Afghan Taliban had been sponsoring the Pakistani Taliban in terrorist attacks against Pakistan’s military. Pakistan responded with cross-border and aerial attacks against Kabul, Bagram Airbase and other important targets. The fact that this major conflict is being crowded out of the headlines by other conflicts confirms Jesus Christ’s prophecy in Matthew 24:6-7 about the proliferation of “wars and rumours of wars.”
Anglo-America
On February 20 the U.S. Supreme Court struck down emergency tariffs President Donald Trump had instituted under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, opening the door to billions in refunds for affected businesses and consumers and invalidating the president’s preferred way of pressuring foreign nations. The president responded by enacting new tariffs under another law, the Trade Act, which have legal force for 150 days and can be extended by Congress.
The tariffs are intended to reduce America’s trade deficit and revive U.S. manufacturing, yet they are also alienating allies. On February 17, Canada confirmed that it is attempting to connect the European Union to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. This 2018 trade agreement includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United Kingdom and Vietnam and has been correctly described as an anti-Trump, anti-U.S. trade bloc. Using Canada to connect it to the massive European economy would create a trade zone of 1.5 billion people who produce a third of the globe’s gross domestic product.
Prophecies in Deuteronomy 28, Isaiah 23 and Ezekiel 27 indicate Europe will establish economic alliances with Asian and Latin American nations to economically besiege North America.
President Trump may be unwittingly helping Communist Cuba join this European trade bloc by aggressively pushing for regime change there. On March 3, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel called for an “urgent” transformation of his country’s Communist economic model after the Trump administration said it would continue to block Venezuelan oil sales to the Cuban government, but would allow sales to Cuban private businesses. Trump’s heavy economic pressure may indeed succeed in bringing a new generation of business-minded Roman Catholics to power in Cuba, yet as Gerald Flurry has warned, they will likely align with a revived European empire against the U.S.
Severe violence broke out in Mexico after U.S. agencies and military provided the Mexican military with the intelligence it needed to kill Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. After Oseguera Cervantes’s death on February 24, members of his cartel launched attacks in many towns spread across the 20 Mexican states where the cartel is active, blocking roads with spikes and nails, setting vehicles ablaze, and targeting banks, businesses and pharmacies to hurt Mexican society.
Drug cartels control up to 40 percent of Mexican territory, employ around 185,000 active members, engage in advanced and extensive criminal activity, and use savage mafia-style threats and violence. This means the only way to peaceably take down the drug cartels is for American citizens to stop demanding and spending billions on illicit drugs.
