The Houthis get battered but always fight on

For months now there has been a separate war going on between the Houthi rebel forces in southern Yemen and a coalition of Israel, the US, Britain and other European partners. The Houthis fire a lot of rockets and drones and missiles towards Israel and towards commercial shipping in the Red Sea and within minutes the retaliation comes from the skies. Today, the last day of 2024, it was the turn of the Americans to bomb Houthi targets in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, and elsewhere. A month or so back, the Pentagon sent B-52s - the big beasts of the US Air Force - to batter Houthi targets in Yemen. The Israelis are retaliating on a regular basis. You might ask, what is left of the Houthi military infrastructure? Hasn't it all been destroyed by now? But no, it doesn't seem to take long before the Houthis launch a bunch of new missiles and drones. This war is never ending. As soon as the Houthis started seizing territory from the official government of Yemen, a Saudi-led coalition of Arab nations started bombing like crazy. But they achieved nothing exceot kill thousands of civilians, and in the end, gave up. Now it's left to Israel, the US and dear old Britain etc to take over the bombing role.It's one of those weird wars where no one wins or loses. The Houthis nmust have lost hundreds if not thousands of their fighters and a huge proportion of their rocket bases, air-defence sites and weapons stores. And yet they keep going, armed and rearmed by Iran. As a country, Yemen is a total mess, with hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced, many of them suffering from starvation or malnutrition, while the bombs keep falling. Someone should sort this out and let the people of Yemen lead a life devoid of terror and the threat of death. It's time the Houthis were stoppeed, once and for all.

The wars in Gaza and Ukraine end. Then what?

Is anyone thinking of what happens after the wars in Gaza and Ukraine end? And I should include Lebanon here too. Because in each case, the amount of destruction has been massive. Gaza has been obliterated, cities and towns and infrastructure in Ukraine have been mashed by bombs anbd missiles, and Beirut has destroyed buildings all over the city. Who is going to pay for the wholesale reconstruction? Who is going to look after the millions of people who have been displaced? Who is going to give these war-suffereing people their lives back? Is there a master plan? If there is, I haven't heard about it. Ending wars is one thing but returning a country devastated by conflict to normality is quite another thing. It will take decades of investment. Is the international community readying itself to provide the funds on a huge scale? Right now, I don't think so which is scary and desperate for Gaza, Ukraine and Lebanon. Syria, too, of course, has been massively damaged by more than a decade of war. Where is all the money going to come from to rebuild all these countries? There are so many questions and no answers.

A quarter century of Vladimir Putin

Putin is approaching 25 years in power. Few leaders can claim that. Stalin reigned supreme for 30 years but I suspect Putin will catch up with him. He dominates Russia. Russia is Putin. For a former lieutenant-colonel in the KGB he has hung onto the apparatus of autocratic power with relative ease. No one has succeeded in challenging him. Most opposition figures who got anywhere near embarrassing him have died, and not from old age. His special military operation in Ukraine was supposed to be over after a few months. Yet, after nearly three years of death and destruction, the people of Russia haven't risen up in rebellion. They appear to believe him when he says he is fighting for the integrity and independence of the Russian motherland. Whether they love him or not is impossible to tell but they seem to accept that Putin is going to be their leader for the foreseeable future. He is untouchable, an arch manipulator and one of the most recognisable figures on the world stage, even though there is an international warrant for his arrest on war crimes and he can't fly to most countries in the world. Now he is probably going to face his biggest challenge - Donald Trump in the White House. It's going to be a fascinating confrontation. But don't expect Putin to lose. He has 25 years of experience at the survival game.

Amidst the chaos in the world there are some positive signs for 2025

The single biggest political change for the US in 2025 will be the arrival for the second time of Donald Trump as president. However, the whole world is approaching major changes, with the increasingly threatening global climate, challenges to the world economy and expanding conflicts. President-elect Trump has indicated he remains sceptical about the dangers of climate-change, and he is likely to be unenthusiastic about switching all energy sources from fossil fuels to renewable sources, such as wind and solar. This might suggest that he will stick to his campaign pledge to “drill, drill, drill”, allowing oil and gas companies to expand their fossil fuel investments. If he does, then this will have a dramatic effect on the next international climate conference which is due to take place in Brazil in November. However, a change in political leadership in the White House is not going to reverse decisions which have already been made by multiple businesses and industry. For example, the car industry is investing in electric vehicles, and solar and wind power companies are setting up across the country. This is long-term investment which will keep going even if the 47th president backs coal, oil and gas. There are many signs around the world of major developments underway to meet the growing threat from climate change. The future, in terms of the changing world climate, is not all bleak. There are positive signs that the world, or at least some parts of the world, are getting to grips with the potential dangers of global warmth. But it’s slow progress which is why individual government leaders have to play an important role in bringing in new legislation to mee the climate risks. Trump might even be persuaded of the arguments that fossil fuels cannot be the answer for the world’s energy needs in the future. The two other major issues for 2025, the economy and conflicts, could also be less challenging than many are predicting. In the US, the economy is showing very positive growth signs and next year there is every likelihood that it will continue to improve, bringing more people into jobs which could help cut down the cost of living. Unlike Europe where economies are stagnating, the US which has the largest economy in the world, looks set to have a prosperous 2025. Whether the arrival of the new president next month will mean a world with fewer conflicts remains to be seen. However there has to be hope that the war in Ukraine can be brought to an end with some form of settlement that won’t only benefit Russia. Trump has asked his special envoy for the war in Ukraine, Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg, to devise a formula which will end the war and bring stability to Ukraine after nearly three years of conflict. Although there is no reduction in Russian missile attacks against Ukraine, it may well be Trump’s personal relationship with President Putin which will be the decisive factor in persuading the Russian leader to stop the war and reach an agreement with President Zelensky of Ukraine. As for the Middle East, it’s in Trump’s interest to play a role in bringing the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza to a close. When Trump was president, he signed the Abraham Accords in 2020 which normalised relations between Israel and several Arab nations: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. It was a significant diplomatic achievement. But there is an even bigger potential prize, the normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. But this will never happen while the war in Gaza continues. If Trump could help towards bringing a settlement in Gaza, then a wider agreement could then be reached which could have positive repercussions throughout the Middle East. That would be a coup for the new president. So 2025 could be a good year for tackling climate change, for improving the economy and for ending the terrible wars which raised threat levels for the whole planet in 2024.

Every bombing of Ukraine by Russia is inhumane!

War is never nice. It's never friendly and it's certainly never humane. So it's always a little puzzling when a particular attack by one side or the other is noted particularly for its brutality and inhumanity. Putin's forces launched a blistering attack on Kyiv on Christmas Day which knocked out power for the families trying to enjoy a brief Christmas respite. Zelensky condemned the attack as inhumane, and soon after, Sir Keir Starmer, always ready to slip in a word to include his role as prime minister into the international arena, also condemned the Christmas Day attack as inhumane. Of course it was inhumane, every attack by Russia on Ukraine since February 24 2022 has been a sign of Moscow's inhumanity to the Ukrainian people. OK, people with knowledge of history, will know that on Christmas Day in 1914, during the First World War, the guns stopped firing, and British and German troops climbed out of their trenches to play football with a helmet. But that was never going to happen in Ukraine. Christmas Day for Putin was just another day of war. So, inhumanity? Yes, of course. But that's what war when a dictator is involved is about. It didn't really need either Zelensky or Starmer to tell us.

Cutting taxes, increasing taxes, nothing works in UK

We here in the UK have had two people with bright ideas for the country's economy and both have failed. First we had Liz Truss who as the briefest of prime ministers, instructed her chancellor to announce a staggering tax-cutting Budget which sent the stock market into a whirl going downwards to rock bottom; and now we have Rachel Reeves, new Labour chancellor who announced the opposite, raising taxes, especially for employers and the same thing has happened, a threatened recess and a bewildered stock market. Both ladies wanted growth in the economy and both got it wrong. The forecast for the Rachel Reeves economny is so bad that we are promised zero growth. ZERO GROWTH! This is either economic incompetence or just pure naivety. How is it possible that the head of the Treasury can believe that raising the tax burden on businesses - by increasing the national insurance contribution for employees - will persuade companies to go on a big recruiting drive and expand investment? Of course, higher taxes has meant that businesses have retracted, have stopped recruiting and stopped investment. Which means, among things, that tens of thousands of highly talented and qualified young people, bursting with expectation after graduating from university, cannot find jobs. Disaster all round. And there is no sign of any improvement in the wind. In fact, there is already talk of more taxes to come. Can we please have someone in charge who actually knows what he or she is doing?

Pentagon in turmoil

The Pentagon, one of the big spenders in the US government, is shell-shocked. It’s facing the most comprehensive overhaul in its history and under the leadership of a Fox News TV presenter. President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Pete Hegseth, a 44-year-old military veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, has given notice to the two and a half million military and civilian staff that radical changes are coming. Pentagon staff have been warned that their jobs are vulnerable., and insider sources reveal there is a growing atmosphere of fear and intimidation. Certain branches of the huge defence department complex are being targeted for cuts, and lists are being drawn up by the Trump transition team for the purging of three-star and four-star military officers who are considered inadequate for the command posts. Civilian staff are also being targeted. “A lot of career civil servants are getting telephone calls from the Trump team telling them their time in the job is going to be limited. But these are the people who keep everything going while the political appointees settle in,” an insider source said. “People are being identified for cuts and the whole atmosphere is intimidating. It’s causing a real morale slump, everyone is worrying about their jobs, their mortgages and their livelihoods,” the source said. “These are devoted civil servants who want to serve their nation but their jobs now seem to depend on their demonstrating loyalty to the incoming president and not to the constitution as it should be,” the insider said. Branches of the Pentagon being earmarked for cuts or closure, according to the source, include the section supporting the Ukraine contact group, the coalition of US-led nations which has been masterminding the flow of weapons to the Kyiv government. The announcement by Trump that he had chosen Hegseth as his defence secretary was greeted with astonishment. “Choosing someone who has never managed an organisation more complex than an infantry platoon[as a captain in the National Guard] is certainly a novel choice. But hey, he’s double Ivy Leagued [Princeton University and Harvard] and certainly meets Trump’s demand for men in his orbit to be from central casting,” one Pentagon source said. “But does any of that qualify him to manage the world’s largest, most complex bureaucracy? Absolutely not,” the source said. With a budget of $842 billion there will be rich pickings for Trump and his defence secretary. If Hegseth’s appointment is confirmed by the Senate, he is also expected to axe perceived “woke” policies. Included in the potential list of “woke” policies are: women in combat roles, travel payments for female military staff seeking reproductive treatment (abortions, terminations) who need to go across state lines to find clinics prepared to carry them out; and the presence of transgenders in the forces. One question being asked inside the Pentagon is whether Trump will try to remove General Charles Q Brown, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff who is an African-American, and Admiral Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations, the first woman to hold this position. “General Brown raised concerns [when he was Pacific Air Forces commander]. about the killing by a white police officer of George Floyd (an African American] in 2020.Will this be considered woke and be held against him?” a defence source asked. `Key to the Trump doctrine will be loyalty to him as commander-in-chief. In his first term as president, he once reportedly questioned why he couldn’t have generals like Adolf Hitler, claiming they were obedient, according to Bob Woodward in his latest book, War. This followed his challenging experience dealing with General Jim Mattis, his first defence secretary, and General John Kelly, his chief of staff. Will Trump expect obedience from the military chiefs if he orders active troops to take part in deporting illegal immigrants? “I expect civil-military relations to be a major source of tension as the Trump administration comes into office,” Eric Edelman, a former top defence policy official at the Pentagon, said. “It may be as early as the first week when he tries to tap DoD [department of defence] assets to help with mass deportations which will bring into its wake a number of legal issues,” he said. “Moreover, there is a move afoot to pluck out general officers [as reported in the Wall Street Journal] which will raise enormous concerns about the politicisation of the military. All in all, a very alarming prospect,” Edelman said. As a signal of the likely conflict of interest between loyalty to the president and loyalty to the constitution, Lloyd Austin, the outgoing defence secretary, reminded everyone in the military in a letter of their obligation to defend the constitution. “As it always has, the US military will stand ready to carry out the policy choices of its next commander-in-chief and to obey all lawful orders from its civilian chain of command,” Austin wrote. Underlining his message, Austin’s press secretary, Major-General Pat Ryder said:”The department will continue to stand apart from the political arena.” “A service member’s oath of allegiance is to the constitution and the constitution alone,” said Andrew Krepinevich, a former US Army officer and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. “An officer who believes he or she cannot execute a legal policy order to the best of their ability should resign,” he said. ends