Dr. J. Scott Younger,
International Chancellor of the President University in Indonesia, Honorary Senior Research Fellow of the Glasgow University and member of IFIMES Advisory Board
Into the fifth month of Trump’s residency in the White House or as somebody referred to the President on the TV news channel as the big orange fellow. Before he took up office Trump promised to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine within 24 hours, adding that they would never have started had he been in office. Here we are still with both wars showing no end in sight.
The Gaza war started on the 7th October 2023 with Hamas in charge of the Palestine enclave of Gaza which was largely cut off by the Israelis by a fence. The Israelis controlled supplies of energy and water. Hot-headed Hamas thugs took it into their heads to break out of the enclave and wreak havoc on the Israeli side. They went far too far raping and killing 1200 innocent people, some of which were sympathetic to their plight, and taking 300 more hostage, when they realised that they had raised a ‘hornet’s nest’ and had world opinion against them. Israel, armed and dangerous, with the world behind them, hit back with force.
Here we are 19 months later and the situation is getting worse. Israel depends on the US for arms, which has been unfailingly given, even though there have been uncomfortable moments where Israel appeared to go too far in its treatment of the Palestinians. Trump’s taking over of the presidency in January, pleased Netanyahu and restimulated the Israeli outlook. He visited Trump at his Florida base and in the joint press conference he was somewhat surprised but delighted by what Trump said.
In short, Trump said that if Israel managed to secure all of Gaza which, incidentally, they had no legal right to do, and also managed to move all the Palestinians out to a secure location – he was sure that neighbouring countries would be sure to oblige! – he would help to rebuild Gaza and build a pristine tourist location in the southern strip of Gaza, the Riviera of the Middle East.
The far right of the Israeli cabinet was delighted and presumed that the US had given the green light for Israel to take over Gaza. Accordingly, the IDF have re-surged and moved into Gaza in a big way, all the while continuing night-time bombing causing the Palestinians utter misery and a steady stream of deaths. The mantra that the IDF gives out that they were after HAMAS operatives has worn thin and no one believes the Israelis any more. The talk of genocide is heard more often.
Recently, 2 ½ weeks ago, Trump paid a flying visit to the nearby oil states, starting with Saudi Arabia, ostensibly as part of a peace initiative. However, he avoided going to see the Israelis and flew back to Florida, his agenda apparently achieved, along with a surprise present of a US$400m airliner from the Qataris. Meanwhile, the IDF continues its aggressive push to meet the ‘unsaid’ objective of taking over Gaza. There are several viewpoints on this. Perhaps Trump had realised, from his round of the Arab oil countries that the IDF were being too aggressive in their handling of Gazans and didn’t want to be labelled as the architect of the ethnic cleansing that was going on. To cut to today, the US is fronting a new humanitarian food grouping to assist with the well overdue needed food aid for Gaza. The remit of this group has not been well thought through, however, to such an extent that the leader resigned before it participated and the first attempts were a shambles. The Israelis say that they have been withholding the food to prevent HAMAS from stealing it. A convenient but highly questionable excuse. No foreign journalists are allowed into Gaza which suggests that the Israelis don’t want the world to know what they are doing but Gazan ‘stringers’ are happy to be employed and the story is getting out anyway.
As the strife enters the next and possibly its final stages there are a number of different scenarios that can evolve, none of which will please all parties. I am constantly reminded of the early efforts of Lords Balfour and Rothschild and the century of disputes which have followed. What will the next century bring? Most people want peace but it is left to a handful of extremists to hold sway. Man’s perpetual dilemma! There is another peace initiative on the table involving a ceasefire but HAMAS wishes the agreement, which involves the return of the hostages, alive and dead, to bring an end to hostilities. But Netanyahu has turned this down because he cannot allow this to happen or else he would go to jail on fraud charges, never mind the charges he would face at the International Courts of Justice.
Meanwhile the Ukraine war continues into its fourth year, Trump taking over the US lead from Biden, which worried the western alliance because of Trump’s avowed friendship with Vladimir Putin. From early days it was clear that Trump had not done his homework, accusing Zelenskyy of starting the war with Russia, whereas it was clearly Russia that had started it. Vice-Pres Vance shortly after told the EU they had no credit towards fighting wars, all had been left to the US. Someone else who has not read recent history!
Worrying signs for the NATO Alliance is that the current White House incumbents are ignorant of why there is an alliance and its importance for America and not just Europe. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have had two lengthy telephone conversations, which were reputed to be friendly, and which were supposed to start bringing the war to an end. Suffice to say that Putin understands Trump well and his openness to flattery. He acknowledges the American insistence on a 30 day ceasefire as a first stage to bring the war to an end and arrange a long-term peal deal, to which the Ukrainian President has agreed.
However, Putin has placed a number of difficult pre-conditions and is stalling, meanwhile stepping up his war aims with even more advances into Ukraine and heavier drone attacks through the night. There would appear to be a stand-off while the next US move is awaited; they have said that they would eput further sanctions on Russia, but that is unlikely to stop Putin’s war aims, which is to gather as much territory from Ukraine as possible before the war ends and insist on holding on to it at the peace agreement – if that is ever reached satisfactorily, because Ukraine will try to get all or as much as possible of their territory back. How will it all end?
Meantime, Europe, worrying about the future, between the US withdrawing from NATO and Russian re-assertion have had to really think about what it had to do for the security of Europe. The US had a point when evaluating the cost of NATO over the years and the disproportionate amount which they had to pay compared with the European contribution. European countries, France and Germany to the fore, and Britain, have taken up the matter seriously and Europe is meeting to discuss security and defence requirements for now and going forward, and considering the situation if and when the US does withdraw from NATO. In the Far East, the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, very recently said that the US now considered China as a bigger threat to US interests in the future and that they would have to pay more attention to the Pacific, although Australia and UK also have a tri-party agreement with the US, signed just in August 2024, the AUKUS agreement with regard to naval nuclear propulsion although there is attention being paid to upgrading naval capabilities more generally. Taiwan, dependent on US assistance, remains under threat from China, which considers it as part of their territory.
The Shanghai Cooperative Organisation (SCO), idea of China, which started up in 1996, held its annual meeting fairly recently in Shanghai although it previously went round different capital cities of members. Initially, it was formed by 5 members, namely China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan but now comprises many Eurasian countries, with 42% of the world population and 65% of the land area. Belarus joined in the past few months. It is affiliated with several such blocs of countries, including UN’s ESCAP and ASEAN, and is an observer at the UN General Assembly. ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, recently held its regular get-together in Malaysia, and agreed to work more closely together particularly as China is looking for other markets apart from the US to counter Trump’s tariff wars.
The SCO along with the BRICS bloc of countries, headed up by Russia, founded in June 2009, covers many countries across the world, the BRICS being more widespread, including Brazil and S. Africa from the south. In a real sense, each of these blocs offers a real challenge to the US in the longer run, they will in due time take a larger share of the world economy. Perhaps the point to be taken away from this is that a good number of countries become aware of the world beyond their usual sphere of influence.
Yes, the world is unpredictable.
*https://www.ifimes.org/en/researches/unpredictable-world/5525
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