Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Understanding the Russian-American Ukraine Peace Negotiations

By

On February 19, 2025

Comments

Let’s take a look at this in more detail. First, a summary of Secretary of State Rubio’s

  • Ending the conflict in Ukraine will require “difficult and intense diplomacy” over a long period of time.
  • Ending the conflict in Ukraine will require concessions from all sides and is only possible with their consent, the conditions must be “acceptable”
  • Trump wants to end the conflict in Ukraine fairly and not allow it to resume “in 2-3 years”
  • The EU must be at the negotiating table at some point, as it imposed sanctions against Russia
  • The future of the negotiation process on Ukraine will be determined by the willingness of the parties to “keep their promises”, this will be shown in the coming weeks
  • Ending the conflict in Ukraine will open the way for Russia and the US to cooperate in economics and geopolitics
  • There have been no significant US-Russia contacts for almost three years, the meeting in Riyadh laid the foundation for future interaction
  • Work to restore the activities of Russian and US diplomatic missions could be quite quick
  • Restoring the normal operation of the US and Russian diplomatic missions is the “next stage” of the negotiation process between the two countries, since the US considers it impossible to negotiate with Russia on Ukraine without the normal operation of diplomatic missions

This is all remarkably sensible, actually, and the idea that the two great powers with most nuclear weapons did not have regular diplomatic contacts was always dangerous and stupid.

As discussed here before, the American intention is to make Europe provide peacekeepers and pay for reconstruction, and America hopes to force Ukraine to sign over a large amount of mineral rights, though Zelensky has, quite rightly, so far refused to do so.

Meanwhile, there’s this piece of wishful thinking:

The United States is trying to “break up” Russia’s alliances with Iran, China, and North Korea. This was announced by Keith Kellogg, the US President’s special representative for Ukraine, during a conference in Munich, CNN reports.

Some commenters think that this is what America and Russia want, an end to the above alliances and:

What Putin wants: – No NATO membership (non-negotiable) – 4 oblasts in Ukraine and Crimea, including territories not currently occupied by Russia

What Trump wants: – Break ties with China (non-negotiable) – Join US sanctions on China

I’m reasonably certain ending the alliance with China and joining US sanctions on China is a non-starter, and if that’s non-negotiable, then there isn’t going to be a deal. China, North Korea and Iran all helped Russia when Russia desperately needed help. It is no exaggeration to say that if China had not supported Russia’s economy, the anti-Russia sanctions would have worked, and Iran and North Korea provided weapons and munitions the Russians desperately needed while they were ramping up domestic production.

At the same time as America is trying to cut this deal, Trump is turning on long term allies: threatening them with sanctions and in the case of Greenland/Denmark even saying he refuses to rule out using military force. America’s record of keeping agreements is abysmal.

Over the decades of observing Putin, I’d say that he values reliability more than almost anything else. The Iranians, North Koreans and Chinese are reliable. America is not.

In negotiations there’s a concept known as BATNA: your Best Alternative To A Negotiated Agreement.

Russia’s is simple enough: it’s winning the war. Unless America is literally willing to go to war with Russia, there’s nothing they can do to stop Russia from winning and then imposing a peace after a Ukrainian unconditional surrender.

What’s America going to do, impose more sanctions? The Russia economy has done better under Western sanctions than it did before the sanction regime? Send more military aid? Cupboards are damn near bare. The only real threat it has is to hit deeper into Russia, and that’s a real threat, but since such weapons are aimed and fired by Western specialists, that risks war with Russia.

What can America offer as an ally that China can’t? Only a removal of sanctions. That would be valuable mostly if it meant repair of NordStream and renewal of gas to Europe, but America wants to keep Europe as a captive customer for U.S. LNG (which is twice as expensive).

It’s hard for me to see why Russia would agree to get rid of reliable allies and turn on China in exchange for an agreement from America which Putin has to regard as unreliable. Sure, he’d like a negotiated peace and an end to the war, but Ukraine’s army looks close to collapse and when that happens, Russia will suddenly start taking huge swathes of Ukraine. And “no NATO” is entirely achievable in an unconditional surrender.

Plus Europe’s politics are changing. Parties which oppose hostility to Russia are coming on strong, and Europe is furious at Trump’s actions and the words of his proxies. Right now Europe is still full-on in support of Ukraine, and in its anti-Russian stance, but time is likely to break that unity of hatred.

It’s not that Trump is wrong to want to break up the Russia-China axis. Pushing Russia into China’s camp was one of the greatest unforced errors of post-Cold War diplomacy: one I’ve written about in the past. With Russia in China’s camp, anti-China sanctions cannot work, because Russia is a land-based supplier of the food and minerals and fuel which cannot be interdicted.

But the ship sailed. You can’t undo almost 50 years of anti-Russia policy overnight, because the last fifty years have proved to Russia that America can’t be trusted to keep agreements and, overall, China is far more reliable.

If Russia cooperates against China and America did manage to take out China, who do you think would be next? Who does Putin think would be next?

So if joining anti-China sanctions really is non-negotiable, then these talks will fail. My guess is that it isn’t actually required, and that Trump really wants this war over one way or the other. But if it is, the war will continue.

Meanwhile, restoring proper diplomacy between Russia and America is a good thing. We’ll see what comes of it.

 

You get what you pay for. This blog is free to read, but not to produce. If you enjoy the content, donate or subscribe.

 

Understanding Canadians Reaction To Trump’s Threats

By

On February 18, 2025

Comments

Most Americans don’t understand why Canadians are so angry about Trump’s actions and his talks of annexation.

I think hockey illustrates it well. Back in 2014 the American anthem singer’s mic failed at a hockey game. Canadians finished the song:

Just recently, fans at a Montreal game booed the anthem.

Here’s the thing: ordinary Canadians thought that America was Canada’s friend. They really believed this.

Thus, hearing Trump’s threats and seeing how many Americans back them and how they deride and insult Canada, they feel betrayed.

The opposition to joining the US is in super-majority territory: over 80%. Canadians like being Canadian and think our society and form of government is better than America’s. They know Americans think the opposite, but it never occurred to most of them that America would try and force Canada to give up its sovereignty, or economically attack America.

Of course this is foolishness. America has never had friends, and never will. It’s an antagonistic nation of bullies, with a record of invading and bullying other nations. But ordinary Canadians, like ordinary people everywhere, don’t really think such issues through. Americans are a lot like Canadians and Canadians consume a ton of American media and tended to identify with America.

Personally I’ve always been worried that America would turn on Canada, and since the 90s I’ve pushed for Canadian policy to recognize that. So, if we can avoid an invasion, I’m somewhat pleased that Trump has torn off the mask and shown the barbarian beneath. Even if the political elite is still in denial, it pushes us towards understanding the world more realistically. There is only one country that can credibly threaten Canada, and it’s been that way for as long as Canada has existed. Hell, since before Canada was formed.

Oh, and Americans, America doesn’t protect us from anybody but America. For Canada, NATO is and always has been nothing but an American protection racket. A proper Canadian military wouldn’t be an expeditionary force designed to help American overseas wars: it would be naval and air, with a lot of icebreakers and an army primarily trained for insurgency and to defend against the only country in the world which has ever been a threat to us.

But I agree. Canada should spend a lot more on its military. We just shouldn’t spend it on US tech, as Canadians have begun to recognize:

The United States controls many of the key systems onboard Canada’s new warships, allowing the Americans to hold this country hostage over future upgrades or even the provision of spare parts, defence industry officials warn.Taxpayers are spending as much as $80 billion on a new fleet of Canadian Surface Combatants to be constructed at Irving Shipbuilding.

The heart of each of the warships is the command management system, which controls weapons, radars and other intelligence-gathering equipment.

Originally that high-tech system was supposed to be Canadian-made and under the full control of the Canadian government.

But that was switched out for made-in-the-U.S. technology called Aegis, allowing the Americans full control and oversight over the supply of parts, modifications or future upgrades, industry officials confirm.

“This is what happens when you exclude Canadian companies: You find yourself potentially being held hostage,” explained Alan Williams, the former procurement chief at the Department of National Defence. “We don’t control the (combat management) system; the Americans do. Who knows what they are going to demand from us?”

Other Canadian defence industry officials acknowledged the same concerns. They asked not to be named as they did not want to jeopardize ongoing contracts with the federal government.

You don’t make your military dependent on the good will of the country that is the primary threat.

You get what you pay for. This blog is free to read, but not to produce. If you enjoy the content, donate or subscribe.

Europe & Ukraine Aren’t At the Peace Table, That Mean They’re On It

By

On February 17, 2025

Comments

Russia and America are going to have a peace summit about the Ukraine war without Ukraine or any European country. This is slightly less ridiculous than the previous peace summit which didn’t include Russia since Russia can fight on without anyone but China’s support, while if the US decides to stop supporting Ukraine, it’s cooked.

Well, sort of. Ukraine is cooked any way you look at it. It was always going to lose the war, and that hasn’t changed.

What’s amusing about the what’s being floated is that Europe is supposed to send the peacekeepers and pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine and the US is supposed to… well, maybe get some of Ukraine’s wealth, though Zelensky has quite rightly refused to sign that deal.

Interestingly Zelensky had, at first, expressed willingness, but when he got to the White House, it turned out that he was being offered nothing in return. It seems the Trumpian right feels that Ukraine has been taking advantage of America and owes it.

So, the US, which was the primary actor behind the Maidan coup and Ukraine’s actions since then which contributed to the war, who was almost certainly responsible for cutting Europe/Germany off from Nord Stream gas through sabotage, wants the Euros to foot the entire bill for ending the war.

Any European leader willing to chew down on this has less than zero self-respect.

And the sheer chutzpah of saying that Ukraine has taken advantage of America reminds me of the guy V.P Cheney shot apologizing to him. None of this would have happened if the US hadn’t pushed for it every step of the way, and the US and UK were responsible for Ukraine not taking an early, far better peace deal.

The issue, of course, is that neither Europe nor Ukraine can sustain the war without American support. It’s lost, but the Euros could veto the deal if they could keep the war going alone and drag it out enough that it was worth Putin dealing with them.

There is another way, of course. Europe could offer Putin an end to sanctions and repair of NordStream. They could ask China to be the peace guarantor, which makes sense because China is, actually, the only country Russia has no choice but to listen to. They could cut a deal with China at the same time.

Then they could leave NATO and build their own militaries up. Kick out 90% of all American diplomats and all remaining post-USAID NGOs at the same time, to help avoid the inevitable coup attempts.

All this requires is either a modicum of self-respect or a scintilla of self-interest. When Europe’s power has disintegrated to the point where they don’t even have a seat at the table on how a war being fought on their soil should be ended, it’s either a wake-up call, or the end of Europe’s significance.

More realistically the best hope is that multiple European governments fall and are replaced by those who have enough pride or self-interest to strop grovelling.

Europe has no prospect of being what it once was. But it could be a regional great power. It’s that, or returning to what it was for much of history, a meaningless Eurasian peninsula full of barbarians.

 

You get what you pay for. This blog is free to read, but not to produce. If you enjoy the content, donate or subscribe.

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 16, 2025

By

On February 16, 2025

Comments

By Tony Wikrent

 

Strategic Political Economy

Why Resistance Alone Will Fail 

Les Leopold, February 14, 2025

 

Musk’s political economy

[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 02-10-2025]

 

[X-Twitter, Feb 9, 2025]

If he found actual fraud like he claims, where is the law enforcement? Where are the investigators, lawsuits, charges? Isn’t it a little odd that they claim to have found trillions of dollars worth of fraud but nobody is being charged and even the “crime scene” is not taken over by the feds to avoid tampering with the evidence? Unfortunately this seems like a political power play where no crimes have been found but they make enough noise that the public will accept the destruction of the government infrastructure, assuming it’s all rotten.

 

Speed Up the Breakdown: The future of the government depends on how far the DOGE dynamo spins. 

Quinn Slobodian, February 15, 2025 [The New York Review]

For the last month, the US opinion-making class has stared agog as Elon Musk and his minions have stormed the engine room of the federal government…. Buffaloed onlookers have groped for precedent….

None of the analogies are very persuasive. This is because we are witnessing something new: the convergence of three strains of politics that have never simultaneously been this proximate to power. Those projects come from different but related places: the Wall Street–Silicon Valley nexus of distressed debt and startup culture; anti–New Deal conservative think tanks; and the extremely online world of anarchocapitalism and right-wing accelerationism. Within the new administration, each strain is striving to realize its desired outcome. The first wants a sleek state that narrowly seeks to maximize returns on investment; the second a shackled state unable to promote social justice; and the third, most dramatically, a shattered state that cedes governing authority to competing projects of decentralized private rule. We are watching how well they can collaborate to reinforce one another. The future condition of the government—and by extension the country—depends on how far the dynamo spins….

Musk’s hirelings by these lights are less latter-day squadristi than radicalized management consultants. Instead of brickbats and lugers, they wield red pens to mark layoffs and offload inventory. We can take Musk at his word when he said in 2021 that the government is a corporation, but a special one that has a monopoly on violence and cannot go bankrupt. If, as he has claimed, private actors are better at allocating resources than public ones, it stands to reason that a state should be shorn of redundant staff and services….

The second way to understand the DOGEstorm is not through Musk but rather through the more systematic approach of Russell Vought at the Office of Management and Budget and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau…. Vought has said that America is in the “late stages of a complete Marxist takeover” that needs to be reversed aggressively by putting government employees “in trauma,” treating them as “villains,” and sending “power away from Washington and back to America’s families, faith communities, local governments, and states.” Trans rights are a particular trigger: Vought has denounced the “transgender sewage that’s being pumped into our schools and institutions.”….

The third program that underpins the present moment is often described as a project of right-wing accelerationism. That term is usually associated with Curtis Yarvin…. Right-wing accelerationists imagine existing sovereignty shattering into what Yarvin, writing under the pen name Mencius Moldbug, calls a “patchwork” of private entities, ideally governed by what one might call technomonarchies. Existing autocratic polities like Dubai serve as rough prototypes for how nations could be dismantled into “a global spiderweb of tens, even hundreds, of thousands of sovereign and independent mini-countries, each governed by its own joint-stock corporation without regard to the residents’ opinions.”….

…For sympathetic observers, however, the goings-on in Washington are inspiring the same exhilaration that the anarchocapitalist economist Murray Rothbard felt when he watched the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It was, he said, “a particularly wonderful thing to see unfolding before our very eyes, the death of a state.”

Monopoly Round-Up: On Ending the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Matt Stoller [BIGBIG, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 02-10-2025]

Last week, Elon Musk and the new Trump Office of Management and Budget chief Russ Vought stopped all work at the commission, including enforcement of rules, litigation, as well as supervision and examination activity. They are planning to shutter the headquarters and presumably will be laying off most of the staff. By shuttering the CFPB, Trump is not just going back to a pre-financial crisis status quo, but to something actually weaker than that. There is essentially no longer any Federal enforcement of consumer protection rules for financial products….

We can now expect rampant fraud and cheating in banking and fintech, not just a scam here or there, but regular losses of life savings by people who followed the rules, illegal foreclosures, random seizures of the working capital of small businesses, abuse by debt collectors, and routine deception by even respected financial firms.

Elon Musk’s stated goal with X is to create an ‘everything app,’ which you would use to communicate, engage with social media, pay for things, hail cabs, shop, and so forth. All the big tech monopolists want to be the ‘everything app.’ The CFPB was proposing to treat these companies with payment systems as, well, payment systems, and subject them to the same supervisory treatment that banks have. Now that’s out the window, so big tech firms have a competitive advantage over banks….

[D]estroying the bureau strikes me as a long term strategic error for the banking sector and big tech. The banks were already losing to Silicon Valley, and now they are at a regulatory disadvantage to boot. More fundamentally, this shutdown breaks a basic deal. I worked in the House during the great financial crisis, and the arrangement was that the banks would accept some mild oversight via the CFPB, and in return they would get a multi-trillion dollar bailout and make excessive profits. I didn’t like that deal and encouraged the member I worked for to vote against it, but it was forced on liberals by Barack Obama. (This deal was an intra-Democratic Party arrangement; conservative Republicans were in thrall to the banks and wanted nothing but foreclosures and bailouts. And they still do.)

It was an egregiously terrible choice, one that liberals couldn’t acknowledge because then they’d have to admit a whole lot of uncomfortable truths, notably that Wall Street is a malevolent force, that Obama was a malevolent leader, and that the Dodd-Frank reform bill passed in the wake of the crisis, rather than ending bailouts, was a joke. But now they will be faced with the bracing truth, that there is no good faith negotiations with dominant firms demanding coercive governing power. Either Silicon Valley bankers rule America, or the public does. But there’s no middle ground.

 

Capture of U.S. Critical Infrastructure by Neoreactionaries (pdf)

anonymous [Naked Capitalism, February-5-2025]

…This memo outlines four alarming developments that transcend partisanship.  I. II. III. IV.

  1. Musk-aligned operatives have seized control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), purging career civil servants and installing loyalists with ties to Musk’s private ventures.
  2. DOGE has deployed unvetted hires—many under 25 years old—who now wield de facto control over sensitive government functions without security clearances. These individuals, drawn from Musk’s orbit and Silicon Valley’s neo-reactionary (NRx) network, operate without legal oversight or accountability.
  3. DOGE has gained read-write access over Treasury pipes and federal payment systems, granting Musk direct influence over the financial infrastructure of the U.S. government. This unprecedented control over money flows creates a national security risk and a personal power lever for Musk.
  4. The congressionally mandated divestment of TikTok has been delayed, with reported Chinese interest in Musk as a buyer. If successful, Musk would control not just X (formerly Twitter) but also the largest platform shaping youth political discourse—further concentrating his influence over public opinion.

Rather than operating as an ally of the Trump administration, Musk has hijacked its ambitions for his own purposes. His rapid takeover of federal infrastructure mirrors the broader ambitions of the neoreactionary (NRx) movement—a small group of Silicon Valley elites who reject democracy and seek to install a “CEO Monarch” to rule by technological and financial dominance. This network includes Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Balaji Srinivasan, David Sacks, and Curtis Yarvin, among others. Once considered fringe, purveyors of this ideology have now been embedded into the core of government operations….

 

How Trump’s Firings “Paralyze” the NLRB

[Mother Jones, February 14, 2025]

The shake-up is particularly alarming because—by leaving only two members on the five-member Board—the Trump administration has eliminated a quorum, effectively preventing the NLRB from ruling on cases at the federal level.

Read More

Open Thread

By

On February 15, 2025

Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated posts.

In The New Cold War, One Side Will Be Weaker and Less Prosperous

By

On February 13, 2025

Comments

This is the sort of thing the US used to be able to do, and Britain back in its day:

China has built over 30,000 basic-level smart factories as part of a nationwide push to accelerate industrial digitalization and intelligent upgrading, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

The initiative, under the smart factory gradient cultivation action, has also seen the creation of 1,200 advanced-level and 230 excellence-level smart factories…

…The 230 excellence-level factories, distributed across all 31 provincial regions in China and covering over 80 percent of manufacturing sectors, have carried out nearly 2,000 advanced scenarios, including smart warehousing, AI-powered quality inspections, and digital research and development, said MIIT.

On average, these factories are 28.4 percent shorter in product development cycles, 22.3 percent higher in production efficiency, 50.2 percent lower in defect rates and 20.4 percent lower in carbon emissions, said the ministry.

Meanwhile, in South and Central America (a similar map could be done for Africa and chunks of Asia):

So, here’s the thing. Under the threat of Trump’s tariffs, Canada and the EU have been offering America to get tougher on China. “China’s the real enemy!” they scream.

Problem is, in the new Cold War, China’s going to be the stronger and more prosperous side. Russia, and most of Asia, Africa and South America are going to align with it. It will soon be in the “US after WWII” position of having more industry than everyone else combined, and it’s already leading in 80% of technological fields. It won’t be long before that’s 90% and I wouldn’t be surprised if in 15 years it’s damn near 100%.

Choosing to align with America is choosing to align with a declining Empire. It’s like laying your bet on Britain in 1918.

I don’t think this is a done deal for all of Europe. The old order is dying, new parties are challenging the old center-right and center-left parties and while the current leadership are lapdogs, the future leadership in many countries will not be. All China has to do is offer to not de-industrialize Europe, or all European countries have to do is cut a deal along those lines.

The sooner one makes the deal, the sooner one defects to the winning side, the better the deal will be.

It is my judgment that it won’t be long before the two best countries to live in are China and Russia. They are rising, and rising fast and the West is in decline. America’s strategy of cannibalizing its allies industries is stupid, because its allies industries are old legacy industries which are mostly already surpassed by China, and those that aren’t, like Pharma, soon will be.

There’s no reason to be loyal to America. Trump’s made it clear that the United States has no loyalty to anyone else, and it’s offering a really shitty deal. Russia doesn’t want to conquer Europe. They conquered half of it once before and it didn’t work out, they just want security.

This won’t happen this year, that’s clear, but smart nations will make the switch as soon as possible. I suspect the EU is likely to break up, so some European countries will change sides, and some won’t. But if it is done as a group of nations, even if not the whole bunch, the deal will be better.

The Cold War is already in its late early stages. I was writing about it as early as 2017, and it’s gathering steam. This is the new world. Choose your side, but for most countries, choose you must and wise statesmen choose the winning side.

 

This blog runs on donations and subscriptions from readers. It’s free, but not free to produce. If you value it, please give.

 

Trump’s Actions Are Opportunities

By

On February 12, 2025

Comments

And lo, there was much gnashing of teeth and rending of hair.

Trump’s human garbage, of course. A bully, probably a rapist, suffering from some sort of mental disability, incoherent and mean.

And those are his good points.

Trump’s destroying the remains of America’s empire. He’s probably accelerating America’s decline, though there’s a possibility he might slow certain aspects of it, if others (like the EU) let him.

But most of what Trump is doing is creating opportunity. Let’s take the cuts to science funding: they’re going to leave a lot of scientists out of work.

That means there are a lot of scientists that other countries could easily, trivially even, scoop up. If they have the sense of a gnat, which most of them don’t. University and research cuts have been the rage in many countries (UK, I’m looking at you) because of delusional austerity policies, but central banks like the ECB can print hundreds of billions, even trillions of dollars, it would be simple enough to print a few hundred million to set up a bunch of research positions.

Anyone who wants to can do this: Europe, Canada, Australia, various Asian countries. Scientists want to science, and if you offer them a credible opportunity to do so, they’ll emigrate to your country and work for you. Same thing with engineers, great philosophers, etc, etc…

So as Trump lays waste, glean the corn which lies in his wake.

Likewise Trump’s attack on his allies opens up possibilities which were not politically viable before. Leaving NATO, for example. Putting on your own tariffs, which is illegal, basically, but since Trump has just broken about every trade treaty the US is signatory to, why not? Give subsidies, also usually illegal, but who cares? Ignore trade rulings against you which favor the US, why not, they don’t obey those rulings. Run full fledged industrial policy, because while it’s still technically illegal, it’s now politically viable.

Stretch a little. Instead of, as some European symps are suggesting, offering Trump more anti-China policies, go to China and cut a deal with them instead: tariff America and cut a trade deal with China which allows you to build some industry, or gets your branch plants and so on.

Stretch a lot. Tell Russia you want the gas to FLOW and offer to help rebuild the pipelines. Send out your navy to patrol and make sure there are more accidents. This is your chance to save Europe’s remaining industry from being slurped down by America.

Trump has changed the world. He’s done, doing and will do things that were unthinkable to previous Presidents. But that frees you, he’s broken the Western consensus, and done so in a way which makes it clear he doesn’t care what harm he does to America’s allies/vassals/satraps.

So break free! The real chains are in  your minds, politicians. You’ve spent generations doing thing one way, but now you don’t have to. Break the chains of your mind, and then break the chains of your nations.

Freedom awaits, along with the responsibility which comes from it. Fail to accept freedom and responsibility and America and Trump will decide what your country becomes.

If that’s what you want, if you want to avoid responsibility, be assured you’ll get what you deserve.

This blog runs on donations and subscriptions from readers. It’s free, but not free to produce. If you value it, please give.

Gaza Ceasefire Deal In Danger Of Collapse

By

On February 11, 2025

Comments

So, Hamas decided to not release any further hostages until Israel meets its end of the phase I deal.

The response from Trump?

“If all (not only those agreed in the ceasefire deal to be released in multiple phases) prisoners are not freed by noon Saturday, the ceasefire will be revoked, and hell will be unleashed on Hamas.”

Trump has also made clear his plan to take over Gaza:

“I will owe Gaza and, as far as us rebuilding it, we may give it to other states in the Middle East to build parts of it. We are determined to own it, to take it. We’re going to make it a very good place for future development. The Palestinians will have no right of return to Gaza under my plan to take it over.”

And he has told both Jordan and Egypt that if they refuse to take the Palestinians, he will cut off all aid to their countries, crashing their economies.

Hamas has really only two choices: agree to ethnic cleansing in hopes of avoiding further genocide, or withhold the hostages to maintain some level of leverage, since the hostages are clearly important to Trump, if not Israel. Trump, of course, though cunning and a bully, is and always has been rather dull and undisciplined. As a bully, he can sometimes be backed down by those willing and able to stand up to him.

Israel hasn’t met its side of the deal. Until it does, Hamas can’t meet its side of the deal or it will, like Hezbollah has, lose all effective leverage.

I find it hard to predict Trump. I expect even Trump finds it hard to predict Trump. We’ll see what happens going forward, but a return to the genocide seems more than possible.

Trump proved that the President can control Israel if he wants to, and that he can end the genocide essentially at will, but all the people whispering in his year are Zionists, with no one to speak for Palestinians who is close to him.

That doesn’t bode well.

This blog runs on donations and subscriptions from readers. It’s free, but not free to produce. If you value it, please give.

 

Page 1 of 450

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén