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What Greenlanders might want from a deal with Trump
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: a Quick Take to kick off your week.
Let's talk about Greenland. First time I ever encountered it was when I was playing Risk in school, and it was this big island between North America and Europe that connected you with Iceland. But it was part of North America, at least on the Risk map, and that's how you got your five armies if you owned the whole thing. So you always threw a couple up there, a lot of big, big territory. And now we're visiting, and Donald Trump Jr. taking Air Trump One last week and landing in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland. Landed for a few hours, did some social media stuff, and then got back to Mar-a-Lago, where he's probably more comfortable. What's happening? Why do the Americans say that they are going to buy it, incoming President Trump, and what does it mean for American alliances and the future of the global order and all of that?
Well, first, let's recognize that as much as it sounds crazy, Trump is not the first president to offer to buy Greenland. He's actually the third. The first was Andrew Johnson. His Secretary of State, William Seward, who was down for Alaska, also offered 5.5 million to buy Greenland. This was back in 1868. The timing is interesting, of course. There's no historic claim on Greenland. The US troops did briefly occupy it in World War II for defensive purposes, but it's not as if the United States has any reason to believe that this should be American. It's not like, say, what the Russians say about Crimea.
And the Greenlandic government, which is itself, it represents all of 55,000 people, despite the size, is led by a separatist political party. They want independence. Independence is popular in Greenland. They've had a few polls, and people generally say that they'd like to be Greenlanders and not part of Denmark. And they are clearly leveraging all of this spotlight from Trump to advance having an independence referendum during parliamentary elections coming up real soon, like in April. And frankly, given that Denmark is a tiny country and spends about $500 million a year on Greenland, that if the Americans came over the top and said, "Well, we'd make you an ally. We'd put troops on the ground and we'd pay you more, not taking it over, Greenland would be an independent state." I think it would be much more likely that Greenland would actually vote for independence. And then, Trump would say, "We've got a new ally, and we've got everything we wanted. And we have these basing rights for the Arctic," and all of that.
It's pretty significant in terms of talking about the Nordics. Denmark has had Greenland as part of its territory since 1830. And Greenland is autonomous, they have their own parliament, which means they are right now in charge of their own domestic affairs, but not foreign or security affairs. So in that regard, also much like Crimea under Ukraine. But they have moved more towards an independence movement over the past decades. In part, self-determination is what people generally are aiming for around the world, with better understanding of others, post-colonial, being able to achieve it for themselves. Also, because there's a difficult history with Denmark. A lot of forced integration, taking Greenlanders from their homes, from their families, to put them in Danish schools and make them more Danish. Even forced birth control to reduce the Greenland explosion of population. Those things are not happening now, but that is a history that was exploitative and makes a lot of Greenlanders feel about the Danes the way that a lot of Native Americans feel about the United States. So, it's understandable why there would be an independence movement.
Now, the Danes, in addition to all the European leaders, are squashing any idea that Greenland is for sale, but that is very different from Greenland might well go independent. And there's no question that Greenland is important, particularly in terms of national security. Russia has put billions of dollars into Arctic infrastructure, including its Northern Fleet, and they're the only country in the world that's really actively trying to seize the Arctic's economic and strategic potential. That's going to become much more important as the ice cap melts, with transit routes, with exploitation of resources. The United States did have some troops on the ground, a meaningful number, in Greenland, something like 10,000. It's now down to 200. They've reduced that. They could certainly expand it with a new relationship with an independent Greenland.
Of course, they could also expand it with a new relationship with Denmark, of which Greenland is a part, Trump not all that interested in that because it doesn't make spectacular headlines, and also because he likes real estate. Let's face it, you look at him personally, and he loves putting his names on pieces of property that are iconic and that have a large visual footprint in the minds of people. And historically, he almost lost his economic empire a few times by holding on to iconic real estate for too long. So is that a factor in how Trump thinks about Greenland? You'd have to imagine it plays a role. So I think we are going to be talking about this actually a lot more over the coming months, and it's going to have a lot more to do with what 55,000 Greenlanders decide to vote for. And then how the Americans negotiate with them.
New Year's Day terror attacks highlight America's divisions
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take for you, a happy New Year, I wish that I could say that 2025 was getting off to a smoother start, clearly not the case, certainly not in my country.
Two terrorist attacks in the early hours of the first day of the year, in New Orleans, back where I went to school, Tulane University. 14 dead, dozens injured in a terrorist attack right on Bourbon Street, as all the revelers were celebrating. And then, hours later, Las Vegas, the Trump International Hotel, a Cybertruck carrying fireworks and gas canisters, essentially a bomb, a driver killed himself before blowing up his truck. Nobody else killed, lots of injuries, could have been a lot worse. Everyone's talking about potential connections, they use the same app to rent the vehicles, they're both US citizens, one's a veteran, one's active, one was active in the US Forces, both served in Afghanistan, were even on the same base.
No evidence at all that they knew each other, and certainly no evidence that the attacks were in any way coordinated. In fact, if you look at some of the posts and other things made by the New Orleans bomber, out of Texas, was thinking about attacking friends and family before he was worried about the media receptivity on that. Far more likely both of these were lone wolf attacks. But there are some important things to point out, like if you're angry and disillusioned with the US, its system, its leaders, its values or lack thereof, and you want to attack the excesses of it, decadence of the United States in your view, and you want to have great symbolism, January 1 gets you there, Bourbon Street in New Orleans, and Las Vegas are pretty much ground zero, so in that regard, not a coincidence at all.
A couple of lone wolves with the same sort of animus, in terms of why they would take their grievances out in the most public way, going after Trump and Elon, ditto, and of course, we've already seen a bunch of this in the most disastrous potential ways with the attempted assassinations against now President-elect Trump, one of which was this close, and almost happened, could easily have happened, and we'd be having very different conversations if that were the case right now. I'm thinking a lot about the symbolism, a lot about the impact, because the coverage in the media and on social media about these terrorist attacks is so overwhelmingly about trying to figure out who's to blame, which team, who's responsible? Is this on the right or on the left? Were these people outraged with Trump or were they Trump supporters? Were they white nationalists? Were they Americans? Were they not Americans? Were they Muslim extremists? All of that.
When, of course, the most important thing to focus on are the victims. The most important thing to focus on is the outrage that these attacks are occurring, and that innocent citizens, civilians are getting killed, are getting injured, that their families are suffering, that the impact on the communities, and that we're not apparently able to prevent them. That is the focus that we should have, and it couldn't be more different in that regard from 911, where the response was to rally around the flag. The response was to rally around the president, who had over 90% approval ratings in the weeks after those attacks, wasn't particularly popular beforehand. And what changed between those days, well, what changed was that the average American felt very patriotic and felt that all Americans were ultimately on the same side, on the same team.
And that is not where we are right now. Right now, the average American feels that the primary enemies are inside the country, supporting their political enemies, whoever they happen to be. And we are seeing this especially on social media, we're seeing this with so much disinformation, we're also seeing it, frankly, with President-elect Trump, who was immediately talking about, well, this was a threat from outside the country, and it's because we're not defending the border, and it's Biden, and he's the biggest disaster, and he's not protecting, as opposed to Biden is the American president, Trump is about to be the American president, they're both the leaders that deserve to be listened to, and need to be rallied behind in a time of crisis. Very far from that, you can't imagine a US really getting over 50% approval right now, with a good percentage of the remaining 50% thinking that that president is a core part of the problem.
And that means, number one, that these attacks are likely to do more to drive Americans apart than to bring them together. Secondly, that there's going to be much more politicization that comes on the back of these attacks, and talking about how certain parts of the US public is not patriotic. So, for example, when the first New Orleans attacks occurred, in New York City, there were some significant demonstrations, obviously completely unrelated, that were pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the US. A lot of response to that was these people need to be surveilled, they're calling for intifada, they are a part of the problem. When, in reality, they're American citizens expressing freedom of speech, just like Trump supporters or American citizens expressing freedom of speech, and they're all the same Americans. But a lot of Americans don't feel that way. And that, I think, is being maximized, it's being, the algorithms are driving more of that hate, more of that anger, more of that anxiety.
And the media coverage, which is so divided, is also driving that, depending on what and who you're watching and focusing on ensuring that the views that you bring into this are only going to be strengthened, and the enemy's views are going to be disparaged. That's where we are, that's how we're responding to tragedies, two tragedies, as we kick off 2025. I'd like to believe that these are solvable, addressable problems, and that we can create more of a community, create more of a civil society in the United States, but in the near term, the trend is not in that direction, the trend is indeed very far in the other direction.
And that's something that I think we're going to be paying attention to and talking about for some time to come. So, I hope that you and your families had a restful and peaceful and Happy New Year, but we've got a lot of work to do, and we'll do our best to honestly and without fear or favor, continue to analyze that for you, and talk about it, and focus over the course of the year. And that's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
MAGA, the American Dream and immigration
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take in this holiday season on the back of the biggest fight in the United States that we have seen among Trump supporters since his election win.
Started off when Vivek Ramaswamy, the billionaire, the co-director of this new Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE as they're calling it, writing that we have to bring in lots of high-talent immigrants, complaining that American culture isn't getting it right for the people that they need to hire in order to make the United States win and more competitive. We hear it all the time. You need to staple a green card to every STEM PhD that's being awarded to non-Americans in the US so they can stay. You need to keep those students here. You need to bring in far more talented legal immigrants in larger numbers to address the talent gap in the United States, and if Americans want to win, that's what you need to do.
The average American has heard this before, and they've heard it for a long time. To be clear, it is not like the US economy isn't winning right now. You look at the stock market, you look at corporate profits, you look at Elon Musk, the dude is worth nearly half a trillion dollars, and that's with a very strong dollar. Look at how the United States' economy has performed since the pandemic, while Europe, and Japan, and South Korea, and Canada, and others just are not, and they're not innovating, and they don't have the big companies. I've heard this about other issues. I've heard about tariffs. I've heard about even free trade. You hear it about investments and capital flows around the world and need to make things work more effectively for the big money in the United States. And working-class and middle-class Americans know that when elites in the US say that the US is going to win, that it doesn't mean 'em. The United States, for so many Americans, is a country of second-class healthcare, and second-class education, and second-class opportunities. And if the American dream doesn't work for the average American citizen, then you're telling them we should be bringing in really much more talented Indians? Good luck with that argument for them.
And those of you that know me, know that that's not my personal perspective. I grew up in the projects with a mother though that did absolutely everything for her kids. And I had opportunities. We had opportunities. I feel very lucky to have been born in America, not better than anyone else, not having any more intrinsic worth, just super, super fortunate. So the American Dream absolutely worked for me. Capitalism in the US and the ability to be an entrepreneur absolutely worked for me. But most of the kids that grew up in my neighborhood don't feel that way today, along with far too many working and middle-class Americans.
And if the United States felt like the land of opportunity instead of a two-tier system where you buy your way into privilege, and you buy your way into opportunity, and then you make sure you do that for your kids, and the best indicator of how well an American is going to do is how fortunate your parents are compared to other advanced industrial democracies, rich democracies around the world, well, that is not a country that's going to say, "Yeah, we need to do more to help the wealthiest win." Because the wealthiest have already figured out how to win for themselves, and there are lobbying dollars, and their access to the best that the world has to offer for them in the United States. If the average American felt that way and felt that applied to them, then Trump wouldn't be president today. You wouldn't have "America First" resonating for so many people that want to undermine globalism because globalism wasn't about the globe and it wasn't about all Americans. It was about just getting it done for that small, small group of people with access to capital.
This is the failure of globalism, and this is why the United States doesn't want to take the lead on global security, or global trade, or even global democracy anymore. You have to be a leader at home before you can effectively lead anybody, nevermind everybody else. This is what we're facing come January 20th. I think it's a useful fight to see play out publicly because there's a very big difference between those that have access to decision-making, power and authority in the United States and those that turned out and actually voted, the masses that voted against the establishment. And to the extent that they continue to be hard done by and every expectation for the last 40 years in the US is that that will be the case, whether it's a Democrat or Republican running the country, this situation is only going to get more toxic.
That's it for me. I wish everyone Happy holidays. Hope you had a merry Christmas. Looking forward to the new Year. I'll talk to you all real soon.
What Trump's Panama Canal threats reveal about today's geopolitics
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your Merry Christmas week. Maybe it'll be a little bit quieter, but it doesn't feel that way these days.
I wanted to talk a little bit about the statements from President-elect Trump about the territories that he seems to have some interest in. Over the last day, we've had statements that the US should take the Panama Canal, and some memes being posted by Trump and the vice president-elect. And he said that it used to belong to the United States, the Panama Canal, and President Jimmy Carter foolishly gave it away. And now he wants it back. And is it because he's angry that the Panamanian government is claiming that he owes lots of taxes for Trump properties? Maybe. Certainly, the governments don't like each other. The Panamanian president came out and said sovereignty and independence of his country are not negotiable, not surprisingly.
And then, Trump with another statement, and it's not the first time, saying that ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity. In his first administration, he wanted to try to buy it. Denmark said no. Now he's saying, "Look, national security reasons for the United States, absolute necessity, that's like pretty much 100%, right? So, got to take Greenland over." And the Greenland prime minister has said it's very much not for sale.
So, look, what are we talking about here? Well, first, national security reasons are of course defined by the United States as the most powerful country. That is a different type of US exceptionalism. Historically, US exceptionalism was more about the idea that the Americans actually had right on their side, and so their values were somehow different and better than those of other countries.
Now, it's more about we want it. It's for our national security. It has nothing to do with values, but we can get away with it because we are stronger. Now, lots of countries do this. Russia they have made that argument about Crimea, which used to belong to the Soviet Union under the leadership in Moscow and the Russian Federation first among equals. And then was given to the Ukrainians by Khrushchev, which I remember Elon Musk referred to as "Khrushchev's mistake," which seemed the kind of thing he wouldn't come up with and would've heard from the Kremlin. Now they want it, and they want it because it was historically theirs, and they shouldn't have given it back. And so, it doesn't matter if the Ukrainians have sovereignty, and the locals wanted to be a part of Russia anyway, which is true in the case of Crimea. Not in the case of the Southeast Ukrainian territories that the Russians presently occupy.
But of course, it's against international law. Having said that, against international law, when you're the more powerful country, doesn't seem to matter very much in today's international environment. Certainly not as much as it used to. That's why Ukraine is going to get partitioned, and Ukraine is going to have to accept a loss of territory de facto in order to maintain security guarantees going forward. We see this in terms of China and the "nine-dash line" in the South China Sea, which clearly is ridiculous, if anyone that looks at a map recognizes that China should have no claim on all of this territory and the resources inside that territory. But China's more powerful than all these other countries, like Indonesia, and the Philippines, and so they can get away with a lot more.
Israel in the West Bank, and more territory that they're taking, and more territory just in the last couple of weeks that they say is temporary. But for how long? Who knows. Near the Golan Heights, strategically important for them, national security reasons, so it's ours, right? That is where we are heading.
And does Trump mean it? Probably not. He didn't mean it last time with Greenland. It's just a negotiating stance, and he exaggerates a fair amount. And he's looking to both say things that amuse him and put other countries on the back foot. Just like he did with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Canada who is facing a much harder domestic political time because Trump is making him look like an idiot on the international stage, and Trump and the US are a lot more powerful than Trudeau in Canada.
But it does matter if the United States doesn't support international law. It does matter if the US is not interested in upholding its existing trade deals, its existing collective security agreements. And unlike in 2016, when Trump won for the first time, this time around there's more legitimacy to it in the United States. And what I mean by that is, Trump won, and he won the popular vote. And he almost got 50% of all of the voters in the United States. And it's not like Americans don't know what Trump did, don't know what he's accused of, don't know his role around January 6th, don't know what he's intending to do going forward. They're fully aware of this, and they voted for him anyway. Or maybe I should say they voted for him in part because of that.
So, you don't get to blame the Russians, which was farcical back in 2016, but no one's even trying to make that argument now. Trump won, and Trump won on an agenda that he is now very much moving forward with. And that is going to be a big issue for other countries because they are a lot less powerful than the United States. Elon Musk, similar challenge here, acting in many ways as the most powerful person in the US government after Trump. Certainly the most unfettered, and when he comes out publicly and says that Germany's in trouble if it's not for the alternatives for Deutschland, the AFD, it's not close to a majority of support in Germany, but the German government's in trouble. And he will push for more support for a Euro-skeptic group. Very far on the right in the German political spectrum, and the German government is going to be scared.
How much do you want to go after Elon and push him back when you know that he has the full support of the American president? Do you really want to fight with him? And the answer is a lot less than you would've been willing to fight with him before Trump won. So, I think all of this is really creating a much more transactional law of the jungle global space, where both the United States, and China, and a number of other countries are increasingly playing by a very similar lack of rule book if you will. And we're becoming more a world of winners and losers, as opposed to a world of leaders that bring people together, and that is a problem. We've experienced that in the past, but we haven't experienced it when the challenges are so obviously larger, the national challenges.
So, clearly global challenges when it comes to climate, or it comes to AI, when it comes to the proliferation of dangerous weapons. So, clearly a much more dangerous environment is the consequence of all of that, and that's how I think I respond to what I see from Trump. Not that it's so different from what we're seeing from other countries, but precisely because it's so similar, and because those are countries that the Americans historically are like, "No, no, no, we don't play by that." And that's increasingly where we are. So, anyway, a lot that we'll be looking towards in 2025, and a very, very volatile geopolitical environment. Merry Christmas to everyone. Hope you have a happy New Year, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
What's next for South Korea after President Yoon's impeachment?
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. The South Korean President, Yoon Suk Yeol has been impeached. Second time the charm, the first time his own party didn't go ahead with it because they wanted to give him the opportunity to resign, himself. He chose not to, shredding what little was remaining of his own personal and political legacy, and now he's out. The party itself basically freed the members of the party to vote their conscience, and many of them did, and that's it. He's now a former president. There's a caretaker government coming in with the prime minister in charge. South Korea's in disarray. They don't have a president. They don't have a minister of interior. They don't have a minister of defense. They don't have a minister of justice. Everything's not occupied and going to have to be, "acting," for a matter of months.
First, you've got to get the constitutional court to rule on this, and that will happen. But there are three absentees that need to be appointed there. Hopefully that all gets done within a matter of weeks, a couple of months, and then after that, when it's upheld the impeachment, then you'll have new elections in a couple of months.
So, I mean, first the bad news. The bad news is that this was a disgrace. It was an active subversion of the South Korean constitution or attempt thereof, and their checks and balances on their president and his approval ratings as he's forced out in the single digits, we're talking Peru president levels almost, at this point. It comes at a bad time. The Japanese have a weak government in coalition, and the United States has a new president coming in with much stronger consolidated power. So if you're South Korea and you need to formulate a response to dealing with America First demands, to spend more money on American troops on the ground, demands to do more, to redress what's seen as a trade imbalance by the incoming President-elect. All of that is really hard to do when you don't have an effective government. That's the bad news.
The good news is that the system worked the way it was supposed to, and both the military, and the judiciary, and the constitutional court, and the parliament, everyone is acting to contain behavior that is off the rails by a sitting executive. And that shows that South Korean democracy is very much functional and representative of its people, much like nearly all of the advanced industrial democracies. The US is the country that is the outlier here. South Korea, not so surprising.
Another piece of bad news is that it's almost certain that the winner, the incoming winner of the next presidential election will be the Democratic Party of Korea, which got the majority in parliament in the last parliamentary elections. And their leader, Lee Jae-myung is frankly not much more popular than outgoing Yoon. It's going to be, he's had his own scandals, electoral scandals that could potentially bring him down depending on how the court, the Supreme Court rules, assuming that that doesn't happen. If it did, it would cause massive instability and lots of people out on the streets demonstrating and the rest. But if that didn't happen, then he's going to be the leader of South Korea and he'll be again, a very weak leader. It'll also be a very weak leader leading the country in a very different direction. This is a party that will actively support the Sunshine policy with North Korea, very different than outgoing former President Yoon. Would support closer ties with their leading trade partner, China. Would question the rapprochement with Japan and would also question a stronger relationship with their defense partner and ally, the United States. So a lot of uncertainty going forward with South Korea.
One other really interesting thing about this whole saga is the role that AI played. Yoon, a deeply unpopular kind of anti-social figure. Very brusque, not an obvious retail politician, but on the campaign trail, developed an AI essentially deep fake Yoon that was training on a lot of his speeches, but better looking and more engaging and more social, and was used extensively on the campaign trail, both to talk about his policies, to engage with individual voters, to hurl insults at the opposition, and even to engage socially. And this was, I mean, AI Yoon was a lot more popular than actual Yoon, and a big piece of why it was that he ended up being elected president. Unfortunately, AI Yoon was not the president that the South Koreans got. They got actual Yoon who turned out to be possibly even less capable than AI Yoon, and we are all very happy to see the back of him.
So that's pretty much the end of this crazy little few-week saga in South Korean politics. We now bring you back to our regularly scheduled program.
Ian Bremmer on Assad's fall
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
A Quick Take over the weekend. Yet again, because there is entirely too much blowing up around the world. Here, I want to focus on Syria where just a few hours ago Bashar Assad, the dictator, forced out, overthrown by a large number of militarily strong opposition forces led by the radical Islamist group HTS.
A lot to talk about here. This whole thing lasted less than two weeks, and initially the Russians and the Iranians provided military support for Assad, but his complete inability of his army to fight and offer resistance, and the distraction that the Russians have, they're stretched-thin from their fighting in Ukraine, from the Iranians providing support to resistance forces that are doing very badly against Israel, particularly Hezbollah and Lebanon, meant there wasn't all that much capacity, or even that much political will, to provide support. And so, Assad has been overthrown.
By itself that's good news, in the sense that this has been an incredibly repressive regime fighting initially a war against their own people. The pro-democracy movement that came out of the Arab Spring and has led to over 500,000 Syrians dead over the last decade, over 200,000 of them civilians, and some 6 million refugees, both fleeing into neighboring Arab states but also into Europe, into Turkey, and of course in Germany, which is part of the reason that Merkel ended up leaving her terms in ignominy. That is the initial background.
And there has been a lot of support for various opposition groups in Syria, from Turkey, most notably from the UAE, from Saudi Arabia, and from the United States, while the Assad government was being supported principally by the Russians in terms of air support, some intelligence, some cyber capabilities, and from the Iranians on the ground, particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. And that was largely enough through the majority of this war. The rebel groups by 2018 had retreated into the northwest, this Idlib region. And by that point, the rebels that were left were mostly led by ISIS, and that meant a common enemy on the part of the United States.
And Turkey had turned from Assad to the proximate Syrian part of the war on terror. And if that had failed, it had the potential to turn Syria and neighboring Iraq into a terrorist state. ISIS lost that battle. Assad consolidated most of Syria under his regime. And then about four years ago, Turkey and Russia brokered a ceasefire in Idlib, which was at that point under opposition control.
That brings us to today, and to HTS, which stands for Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham. It's a former Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria that has since formally cut their ties with the terrorists, but they're still called a terrorist organization, labeled one by the United States and its allies in NATO. And they are the de facto leader of the armed opposition and led the now ouster of Assad. Now, they've become kind of Hezbollah-like in the sense that they're providing a lot of Syrian citizens with government services. They've managed to coordinate rebels and eliminate infighting underneath that, and they've also promised to protect Syrian Christians and Muslim Alawites and have gotten the tacit support of the Turkish Erdoğan government, who basically gave them at least a blinking yellow if not a green light to go ahead and launch this war against Assad two weeks ago.
Now, having said all of that, the likelihood that they're going to run as a secular government, Syria, seems unlikely to me. This is, we're going from Assad to what is probably going to be a radical Islamist government that'll be repressive and that'll be deeply challenging. And so I don't think that is in any way, at least at this point, something that we can call a transition that's good news or that we shouldn't feel anxiety about. But what is clear is that the Iranians and Russians have lost. So the axis of resistance is not looking like much of an axis and it's not putting up very much resistance. The Russians, Putin has said nothing about this. He's not made a public statement, and that's not surprising. Frequently when he is surprised and he faces sudden embarrassing losses, he doesn't say anything about it to his people. And if you look at Russian state media, they've been talking about France, and South Korea, and Trump, and all those things, but almost no coverage of Syria, where the Russians have lost an ally and they've lost a military base that's important to them in Tartus and they've not been able to put up much of a fight.
Now, the good news there is that if you're Putin, you should be more cognizant of the fact that there are major costs of continuing to fight an incredibly bloody war in Ukraine where you're making some gains, territorially, but you're losing huge numbers of Russian citizens. And so if Trump is coming in and says he wants to cut a deal, Putin should be more incented to do that. There's also good news on the Iranian front in the sense that Syria falling means that they no longer have a corridor to provide military support for Hezbollah. And that means that the two-month ceasefire, which has been announced by the Israelis and by the Lebanese government, is more likely to hold.
Now, if you put those two things together, kind of interesting. Looks more likely that Trump gets inaugurated, and he is indeed able to announce that the temporary ceasefire becomes a permanent end of the war between Israel and Hezbollah, and that he's able to negotiate a ceasefire between the Russians and Ukrainians that does not give up the store to Putin. The former is an easier bet than the latter, but both of them certainly look more likely on the back of Assad being ousted.
The bad news? More challenges, more humanitarian degradation for the Syrian people on the ground. Could easily see another million refugees on the back of the fighting that we've had, depending on what happens with governance going forward. There are very few hospitals that are presently functioning. There is very limited humanitarian aid on the ground, that's necessary in very short order. And it's hard to say that fighting isn't going to break out amongst the various factions that have held together in fighting a common enemy, if that's going to lead to coherent governance going forward, it depends so much on what happens when HTS becomes not the leader of a rebel group but suddenly is responsible for governance on the ground in Syria. And your guess is as good as anyone as to what is going to happen there.
So, that is the best I can tell where we are right now. It's a fascinating issue and a temporary expansion of the war in the Middle East, but hopefully one that we can see bringing a little bit of stability to some other conflicts that are happening in the region and more broadly. That's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
- Podcast: Syria, The Rise and Fallout of the House of Assad with Sam Dagher ›
- Syrian rebels reignite war, make advances in Aleppo ›
- Once frozen out, Bashar Assad is back in ›
- Do strikes on Syria signal a bolder Netanyahu? ›
- The Graphic Truth: How a decade of war has crushed Syria ›
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Why South Korea's president declared martial law
President Yoon had said that the reason for this is that the opposition is supporting North Korea and that there are North Korean forces that have been infiltrating the South Korean opposition. It is true that this opposition, this is by the way the ruling party in parliament, supports the "Sunshine Policy" and Yoon's government is hard line on North Kore. But there's no evidence of any North Korean infiltration or involvement. What there is evidence of is that President Yoon is incredibly unpopular. Lots of corruption scandals around his family, around his government, approval ratings in the 20s, which is pretty much the lowest you'll see of any advanced industrial democracy today. Though there are a number of countries that are trying to give him a hard run for it.
The opposition party, the ruling party in parliament, has been pushing really hard to make his life miserable. They have investigated his wife. They've tried to impeach a number of cabinet officials. They're refusing to pass the budget and apparently he just couldn't take it anymore. I'll tell you, nobody expected it. Aside from the military leaders that he coordinated with, senior government officials were shocked by the move. Our parliamentarians were shocked by the move. This isn't like January 8th in Brazil where it was clear that Bolsonaro was going to do everything he could try to overturn the elections. Just as it was clear January 6th in the United States that Trump was going to do everything he could to overturn election.
This is a very different situation. This was a very sudden move. It is perfectly legal to declare martial law, but you have to actually pre-notify the National Assembly, which he did not do, so it wasn't done legally. You also need 151 lawmakers to approve martial law within 72 hours. That isn't going to happen. The next thing that's very likely to occur are lots of demonstrations and it's very hard to imagine that the military would violently break them up. This isn't Pakistan. And we also saw an emergency session that they got a majority for of National Assembly lawmakers that all 190 voted to end this. So I think what's going to happen is President Yoon is going to wake up tomorrow with a really bad hangover, certainly a political one, maybe others too, and going to realize that he did something incredibly stupid, overreached, and has destroyed any remaining legacy that he might have had.
South Korea's going to remain a democracy. This coup will be very short-lived. I'd be surprised if outside of South Korea we're talking much about it in coming weeks. But it is important. It's important because South Korea is an ally of the United States. It now has a robust relationship with Japan. In fact, the tripartite agreement brokered by Biden at Camp David was arguably his greatest foreign policy success. The equivalent of the Abraham Accords by the Trump administration. And the right-wing Yoon is particularly aligned with Japan and the Japan's LDP Party as well as with the Americans and certainly would be with incoming President-elect Trump. So in that regard, the US is going to have a hard time being overtly critical. They won't want to because, as unhinged as he is, he is a strong ally.
And an incoming administration, if he's now assumingly going to be impeached and probably end up in prison, is not going to be as aligned with the United States or Japan going forward would also lead to a softer policy towards North Korea. So I do think it matters geopolitically long-term, but the coup itself is not something that is going to be sticking around. So I think we still have a democracy in South Korea. We'll watch this unfold and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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Putin's strategy in Ukraine ahead of Trump's return
Putin has been warning them not to do that. They decided they were going to, the Russian response has been to formally change their nuclear doctrine so that they would be considered to be in a state of war legally against any country that allowed Ukraine to use their missiles against Russia. In other words, essentially, Russia is claiming that they're now at war with France, with the UK, with the United States. And also, the Russians used a medium range missile hypersonic nuclear capable directly against the Ukrainian target in Dnipro.
In other words, what we're seeing from Putin is, "I'm showing you what you're doing is moving towards World War III, and that's how I'm responding." Does that mean that Putin is actually escalating towards direct war with NATO allies? The answer to that is no. He wasn't doing that when he was losing the battle in Ukraine in the early months. He's certainly not doing it now that he's winning.
And he is winning. He has more troops on the front lines, including those from North Korea, those from Yemen, those that he's getting from other countries. Also, he's taking more territory on the ground in Ukraine at a faster pace now, more significant amounts of territory in Southeast Ukraine than at any point since the opening months of the war. Plus Trump is President-elect. Trump has said, "I want to end this war." And he is coming in just in a couple of months.
So what Putin is doing is not threatening World War III. He's instead showing off just how bad this Biden policy is, this existing NATO policy is. He's making it easier for Trump to pivot away and say, "I'm the peacemaker. We were heading towards World War III, this horrible escalation. I'm the guy that got the great deal done and look how brilliant I am." Putin is facilitating that.
Now, of course, to make that happen Trump still has to give Putin something that he wants. He has to give an outcome that is acceptable to Putin. And Putin's made clear, at least thus far, that he's not going to give up any territory that he has. That he's not prepared to accept that Ukraine would be able to join NATO. He's also said that Ukraine can't continue to have a functional armed forces which is something that would be completely unacceptable to Ukraine.
The devil's going to be in the details here. There clearly is an opportunity for Trump to end the war. He's promised he's going to end the war, and I think he can. I think he can create a ceasefire. The Ukrainian leadership has already made clear that they are supportive of ending the war, but they're not just going to listen. There has to be a back and forth conversation with the Americans. Seeing what it is that Trump is prepared to put forward, and whether or not the Russians are capable of accepting it, are willing to accept it. Even though it will look like a win for Russia compared to where they would've been under Biden, under Harris, or at any other point in the last couple of years.
Still, if you are Putin, there is an open question. You're taking land right now. The Ukrainians don't have the people to continue to put up a strong defense. Why wouldn't you delay this out for another three, another six months? Take more land. Try to get all the territory that you have formally annexed over the course of the war. Why not settle the war on your terms? A lot easier to do if you're winning than losing. And the question there will be to what extent Trump is willing to cause material punishment to Putin if he doesn't say yes.
And that's an open question. Trump historically has been willing to take easy wins that don't necessarily play well over the long term. Look at Afghanistan. He wanted to get the Americans out. He cut a deal with the Taliban. It was a deal that was clearly very advantageous from a military and from a governance perspective for the Taliban than it was for the United States. He cut that despite the fact that the allies were not supportive or coordinating. That undermined the US deeply. Biden then continued with that plan. And it was one of the biggest losses that the US has experienced over the last four years.
Now, that of course, was a loss that ultimately fell on Biden. This would be a loss that would ultimately fall on Trump. And so does he want to risk that? That's a very interesting question. And of course, you also have to look at Trump's staff because he can make a phone call with Zelensky and with Putin, but ultimately, it is the secretary of state, the national security advisor and others that are going to have to work out the details of that agreement. And those people, at least thus far, are not people that are oriented towards giving away the store to Putin. They're people-oriented towards mistrust of Putin, towards a hard line against the Russians, towards support of Ukraine.
I am thinking here that number one, there's a reasonably high chance that Trump can get the win that he wants, but number two, this isn't likely to be a walk in the park for the Russian president. The Europeans need to play here as well. And what will be important, there's been a few formulated conversations thus far between President-elect Trump and some of the European leaders.
They haven't gone very far, but they've also not blown up the bilateral relationships. Their ability to work with Trump advisors on Trump, and on a greater coordination of what an ultimate solution or settlement of the Russian-Ukraine war would be, will make a dramatic difference as to what extent this is sustainable. To what extent this leads to not only Ukraine that can continue to defend itself and the territory that it is left with, but also can integrate into Europe, can be politically successful as a democracy over time. And that NATO will stay strong and stay together and stay aligned with the United States because they don't have another choice. There is no autonomous European military capacity. It's either NATO sticks together or it fragments.
Those are all things that we're going to watch very carefully over the course of the next couple months. But for now, an escalatory period. And it's all performative and it's all oriented towards what happens when Trump becomes president. That's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.