Tariffs to the left and tariffs to the right

Right now it's very difficult and confusing to work out exactly what Donald Trump's plan is. The basic goal is relatively simple. To make tariffs on imported goods so high that US businesses and industry will all be forced to buy American to survive which would encourage manufacturers to expand and employ more people to meet the huge new demand. Thus, in Trump's dream plan, the United States of America, already one of the richest countries in the world, will become even wealthier. Never mind other countries, especially the poor ones. But there are a lot ifs and buts here. What if US companies just stick with their foreign customers and pay the extra for the time being in the hope that the tariffs will go away. At the moment, the whole world is up in arms, condemning Trump's tariff war and if there is a mighty backlash against his policy, there could be a massive disruption in trade which will affect American businesses as much as anyone else's. Countries such as China, in fact especially China, as well as the European Union, are going to retaliate with their own tariffs on American goods. It's a vicious circle with no end.

Israel goes back to full war against Hamas

Exploiting what the Israeli government sees as growing antipathy towards Hamas among Palestinians in Gaza, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) are to launch a large-scale expansion of its military operations to seize and occupy more territory. It’s the biggest gamble taken by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, since the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was agreed on January 17. Outlining the military plan, Israel’ Katz, the defence minister, announced that large areas of the Strip would be seized, with Rafah and Khan Yunis in the south appearing to be the principal targets. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had made their way back to their homes in southern Gaza after the ceasefire deal was announced are now being ordered to leave in a mass evacuation. They have been told to move to the town of Al-Mawasi, located along the coast, an area about nine miles long and less than a mile wide which had previously been designated as a humanitarian zone. The strategy behind the expanded military ground operation became clear when the defence minister directly called on all Gazans to join with Israel in ending Hamas rule in the enclave. “I call on the residents of Gaza to act now to eliminate Hamas and return the kidnapped,” Katz said in his statement. The aim, he said, was to clear the area of militants and their infrastructure. “This is the only way to end the war,” he said. The new territory targeted would be incorporated into what Katz called “security zones”. Netanyahu and his war cabinet have been encouraged by the recent protests by hundreds of Palestinians against Hamas in northern Gaza. However, there remain 59 hostages out of the 250 kidnapped by Hamas on 7 October, 2023. Of those, only 24 are believed to be alive. Netanyahu who has been under persistent pressure by the families of the hostages to negotiate their release, is gambling that the massive expansion of the war will end the hostage crisis and bring them home. The Hostage Familes’ Forum which represents the relatives of those being held by Hamas, said families were “horrified to wake up this morning” to hear the defence minister’s statement of expanded ground operations. The Israeli government was obligated, the forum said, to free all the hostages and “to pursue every possible channel to advance a deal for their release”. After the failure of an agreement between Israel and Hamas to move to phase two of the ceasefire framework, Israel returned to bombing Hamas targets and ordered ground troops back into Gaza. about two weeks ago. A stretch of land, known as the Netzarim Corridor, separating north from south, from which the IDF had withdrawn in February, was seized back. It was the first sign of Israel’s renewed determination to focus on military action rather than peaceful negotiation to force Hamas to stop fighting and release the remaining hostages. Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the breakdown in the ceasefire talks held in Qatar. Under the ceasefire agreement signed on 19 January with the US, Qatar and Egypt acting as mediators, a three-phase proposal was drawn up. The first phase, leading to the release of 33 hostages in exchange for 1,900 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel was completed on 1 March. The second phase should have included the release of all remaining hostages and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. When the talks broke down, Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy, suggested an extended phase one arrangement under which more hostages would be freed., but without any further commitment to ending the war. That so-called “bridging proposal” faltered. Hamas blames Israel for the breakdown in the ceasefire talks. Israel’s response has been to call on the IDF’s 36th Division to launch a major operation against Hamas and to return to mass evacuation of Gazans.

America's secret war in Ukraine

The US-led “save-Ukraine” military coalition was always more than just a production line of arms deliveries to the Kyiv government. Much of what has been going on over the last three years has been secret: a covert collaboration between Ukraine and the West involving commanders at the highest level, and special forces out of uniform. How much of the clandestine activities that began almost as soon as Russia invaded Ukraine was suspected by Moscow is unknown. But the full range of the extraordinary partnership between Ukraine and the West has now been revealed after a year-long investigation by Adam Entous, a reporter on The New York Times. While the sheer detail of the covert meetings and level of high-powered cooperation provides an insight for the first time into the extent of the military relationship developed between Kyiv and the US, there is an inevitable sense of impending gloom that all this intense partnership-building is going to be thrown away because of the determination of President Trump to end the war with a deal that can only favour Moscow and undermine Ukraine’s security future. The manner in which the 20-year campaign in Afghanistan was negotiated away by the first Trump administration in a deal which favoured the Taliban, and disastrously implemented when President Joe Biden came to power, should have provided a sufficient lesson for avoiding similar humiliations. But the momentum for a deal to end the war in Ukraine, however unrealistic it might seem today, is already having an effect on US/Ukrainian military collaboration. Some elements of the partnership are being wound down. The revelations in The New York Times demonstrate how intimately the US has been involved in operational strategy, targeting policy and command decision-making. The Pentagon would always insist that operational and targeting decisions were a matter for the Kyiv government. But the US, and Britain, were as close to being fellow orchestrators of the battles with Russian forces as could be without actually having boots on the ground. Two months after Vladimir Putin’s invasion force crossed the border into Ukraine on 24 February, 2022, a convoy of unmarked cars drove the 400 miles from Kyiv to the Polish border. Protected by British special forces troops in civilian clothes, the convoy contained two Ukrainian generals. They were driven to Rzeszow-Jasionka airport, flown by C-130 Hercules transport aircraft to Wiesbaden in Germany, home of US Army Europe and Africa., and ushered into the office of Lieutenant-General Christopher Donahue, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps and a former leader of the US Delta Force special forces unit. Donahue, according to the report, proposed a special partnership, and so began what would become a remarkable cooperative relationship to defend Ukraine from the Russian invasion force and to stop Putin from fulfilling his dream of overpowering and neutralising a country whose sovereignty and independence he never acknowledged or recognised. Wiesbaden was the heart of the effort by the western coalition to feed Kyiv with the weapons they needed. After the meeting with Donahue, plans began to supply American M777 artillery batteries and 155mm shells to Kyiv to help Ukraine take the war to the Russian frontlines. Over three years, the Pentagon delivered $66.5 billion of weaponry, including 10,000 Javelin anti-armour missiles, 3,000 Stinger anti-aircraft systems and 76 tanks, all masterminded through Wiesbaden. A Polish general was appointed Donahue’s deputy and a British general was put in charge of the logistics hub. The operation was called Task Force Dragon. The key Ukrainian in this warfighting partnership was General Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi. “My mission [in Wiesbaden] was to find out: who is this General Donahue? What is his authority? How much can he do for us?” he told The New York Times. Later he sent a message back to Kyiv which said: “A lot of countries wanted to support Ukraine. But somebody needed to be the coordinator, to organise everything, to solve the current problems and figure out what we need in the future. We have found our partner.” Wiesbaden was the mission command centre and the place where the Americans provided such a comprehensive intelligence-based picture of the battlefield and the potential targets within it that one European official was quoted in the report as saying: “They [the Americans] are part of the kill chain now.” A team of 20 Ukrainian intelligence officers, planners and communicators arrived in Wiesbaden and every morning they would sit down with the Americans “to survey Russian weapons systems and ground forces and determine the ripest, highest-value targets”. However, if Ukraine wanted to attack targets inside Russia, they were told they would have to use their own intelligence. In mid-2022, using American intelligence and targeting information, the Ukrainians launched rockets at the headquarters of Russia’s feared battle groups of the 58th Combined Arms Army in Kherson, killing generals and staff officers. When the huge Russian army unit moved to another location, the US tracked them and the Ukrainians hit them again. It wasn’t always a smooth partnership. Sometimes, the Ukrainian commanders resented the advice they were being given and went their own way. Increasingly, they also became frustrated by the reluctance of the Biden administration to provide all the weapons they were demanding in the early stages of the war, especially the longer-range rockets, such as the ATACMS systems with a range of 190 miles. Gradually, the Biden administration got bolder and less fearful that Putin might turn to tactical nuclear weapons if he judged the US coalition was crossing a dangerous red line in supporting Kyiv. ATACMS weren’t delivered until October, 2023 but were barred from being used to hit targets inside Russia until nearly a year later. However, while this debate was being argued in the public domain, Washington was secretly approving covert missions to help the Ukrainian military. “Time and again, the Biden administration authorised clandestine operations it had previously prohibited. American military advisers were dispatched to Kyiv and later allowed to travel closer to the fighting. Military and CIA officers in Wiesbaden helped plan and support a campaign of Ukrainian strikes in Russian-annexed Crimea,” the paper’s report said.

Putin says he is happy to talk to Trump

Vladimir Putin doesn't want Donald Trump to be pissed off with him. If Joe Biden had been pissed off with him he wouldn't have bothered get out of bed. But with Trump it's different. This is because Putin realises it's better to keep on the friendly side with Trump to stop shimhim going ahead with his threat to impose massively tough tariffs on Russia, including heavy penalties on any country that buys Russian oil and gas. This really could harm Russia's economny and screw over Putin's plan to carry on fighting Ukraine. Whatever Putin says about agreeing a ceasefire or whatever, what he really wants to do is continue bombing Ukraine until there is nothing left to bomb. A bit like what the Israelis are doing to Gaza, except, of course, Gaza is tiny and Ukraine is huge. But if Trump is genuinely angry with him, then Putin will be in a tricky position. So he has let it be known through his Kremlin spokesman that he would be happy to get a call from Trump. They haven't spoken for a bit. This is the first sign of Putin backing down, or at least taking a softer line. He wants Trump to carry on with his deal-making even if he really doesn't want any sort of deal with Zelensky. What he needs is for the negotiations in Saudi Arabia to carry on because it then looks as if Moscow is playing ball, even if it's all a scam. So, expect a call between Trump and Putin in the next few weeks so that a smiling Putin can tell the world that Trump is not pissed off with him after all but is his jolly good friend.

Trump gets angry with Putin

It just shows how the great instant end-of-war-in-Ukraine promise from Donald Trump is slowly going to pot. Now he says he is very angry that Putin has dared to cast aspersions on the leadership role of Volodymyr Zelensky as the bona fide president of Ukraine. Putin has said there can be no ceasefire deal or eventual peace settlement if the signature on the Ukrainian side comes from Zelensky. Putin wants a temporary new leader in place who he feels will have more legitimacy, ie more pro-Moscow, and he even puts it out there that a United Nationa transition government could be acceptable. Trump sees that as another delaying tactic by Putin because it would all take too much time to bring in a new government. Trump, no friend of Zelensky, wants Zelensky in charge in Kyiv because he thinks he can force through a deal while the formker stand-up comedian is the president. Somehow, I doubt Putin will worry too much about "pissing off" Trump. It's all part of the game which he is currently winning hands down.

JD Vance gets the chills in Greenland

Apparently no one told the US vice president that it's pretty cold in Greenland. He arrived for his unofficial, unwanted visit with his wife, the Second Lady, and confessed he couldn't believe how freezing it was. A basic bit of pre-flight homework would have given him a few facts that might have includedd the average temperature in Greenland. It's in the Arctic by the way, Mr Vice President, and that means it's literally below freezing every day of the year. The highest tenmperature could be about 5.6 degrees Centigrade if you arrive on a good day. About 80 per cent of Greenland is covered in ice. I don't think Vance was aware of this and maybe he will go back to Washington and warn Trump that he's wasting his time and taxpayers' money if he wants to grab Greenland. I doubt he will be making a return trip. So, perhaps the unwelcome visit by Vance and his wife might after all have been the best thing for the islanders who, thank you very much Washington, would like to say under the venerable ownership of Denmark.

If Trump gives Putin what he wants he will demand more

The way things are going so far in the negotiations wqith Moscow, Vladimir Putin is going to get what he wants. But the fact is that if you give someone like Putin what he wants he will demand more and more. Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy for Ukraine, has said he thinks Putin is a smart guy and he's right. This is why it's even more important to pile the pressure on the Russian president and use as much leverage as possible to force him to back down and to call off the war. But there is no incentive for Putin to back down an inch because he knows that Trump is prepared to give him anything provided he brings the deaths and destruction to an end. Putin knows Trump is desperate to fulfill his promise which was to end the war in 24 hours. That has patently failed. So, Putin's tactic is to accept or to pretend to accept little bits here and there but not giving a centimetre of movement on his key demands. Trump is so consumed by the thought of having Ukraine's rare minerals, gas and oil, that he seems prepared to concede to all or most of Putin's demands in order to sign up the business deal and leave the Europeans to work out the peacekeeping responsibilities. My fear is that if there is ever a ceasefire and the Europeans really do send peacekeeping troops into Ukraine there will come a moment when Europe and Russia will be at war with each other. Not necessarily on a grand scale but on the battlefield frontlines in Ukraine. Soldiers from both sides will die. Moscow is never gpoing to back down.