• The Future of the War in Ukraine
  • The Fall of the Assad Regime in Syria: Repercussions
  • South Korean President Yoon Impeached

By Shashi P.B.B.Malla

End Game in Ukraine?

There is speculation that the war in Ukraine may end next year.

Both Ukraine and Russia are running out of troops and struggling to call up more young men for the front lines.

This stark reality means that 2025 could be a year of negotiations (NYT/The New York Times/The Morning/Julian Barnes, Dec. 13).

NYT writes that Donald Trump’s victory will hasten those peace talks. During the campaign, Trump claimed that he would end the war in Ukraine. They’ve also reclaimed some Russian territory that Ukraine captured this paste even before his inauguration on January 20, 2025. That was typical Trump bombast and exaggeration. However, he does want negotiations to start soon.

That’s bad news for Ukraine. Russian forces are advancing in the east. They’ve also reclaimed some of the Russian territory in the region Kursk that Ukraine captured this past summer. Ukraine still has weapons, but its troops are spread thin. Western intelligence agencies think it will run out of soldiers soon.

NYT’s Julian Barnes looks at four questions that will shape the conflict next year – and how Trump’s victory affects them.

  1. Can Ukraine keep on fighting?

Ukrainian officials insist they are ready to keep on fighting. But US Republicans are loath to approve more aid for Ukraine, and Kyiv knows that without substantial more aid combat must come to an end.

Does Europe have the political will, and the defence industrial might, to replace the United States?

At a NATO summit before the election, allies devised a plan to Trump-proof logistical support for Ukraine.

Biden administration officials, however, doubt that Europe can step up.

The economic strength of the dollar allows Washington to run huge budget deficits to pay for defence. That’s something Europe cannot do.

Once American support for Ukraine disappears, it will be hard for Europe to muster the munitions or the funding at a level that can keep Ukraine in the fight.

  • What happens to the territory Russia has seized?

Without more weapons and soldiers, Ukraine may not recover the land it has lost to Russia.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, knows this: He acknowledged recently that diplomacy, not the current “hot war”, will be how Ukraine recovers its territory.

In a podcast interview during the presidential campaign, vice-presidential candidate JD Vance proposed freezing the conflict and letting Russia keep what it took by force.

Russian president Vladimir Putin, does not seem intent on capturing vastly more territory right now, but he has shown no sign that he is willing to withdraw from the parts of Ukraine he currently controls.

Ukraine’s one bargaining chip is Kursk, the Russian region that Kyiv’s forces partially occupied in August.

The Biden administration is trying to put Ukraine in the best bargaining position.

The White House is pushing as many weapons to Ukraine as it can. It also gave Ukraine permission [long overdue] to fire American-made long-range missiles into Russia in hopes it could hold on to Kursk. If it does, maybe Russia will hand back some Ukrainian territory in a swap. But Kyiv is unlikely to recover most of the land it has lost.

  • What guarantees can Ukraine get from the US & Europe?

For Ukraine, victory or defeat is not really about a particular parcel of terrain. It’s about the agreements it might secure with Europe and America – for its long-term security and its economic integration with the West.

The most ironclad guarantee, NATO membership, is off the table. Trump won’t offer it. A Republican-led Senate with many Trump loyalists won’t approve it.

Vice-president-elect JD Vance has proposed neutrality for Ukraine, a key Putin demand.

Trump has not detailed his position here. It’s unlikely that he would back Ukraine militarily in the case of a future Russian attack.

But Trump may want to be seen as extracting a concession from Putin. He may look beyond Ukraine for such a win – something unrelated to the war.

Perhaps he could prod Putin to allow Ukraine some economic integration with Europe – even membership in the European Union (EU).

Putin wouldn’t like that, but it would be a better alternative for him than Ukraine’s entry into NATO.

  • Could Putin take Kyiv – Later?

Here is where the fears of Zelensky and Trump may align, according to NYT’s Julian Barnes.

Ukrainians have long said that if they make a deal to end the war now, Putin would simply rest his army, restock and come back for the rest of Ukraine later – a repetition of what he attempted in 2014 and 2022!

Trump has repeatedly criticized President Biden’s catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal – although he himself laid the groundwork for it. Biden’s supreme strategic mistake was to follow up on that groundwork regardless of any preparation and plan for the future. He was only hell bent on ending another American endless war – regradless of the consequences.

Barnes speculates that Trump likely doesn’t want a similar legacy: a Russian takeover of Kyiv that lets Democrats say that he lost Ukraine. However, this does not factor in Trump’s true relationship with Putin.

Republican defenders of Ukraine, a dying breed, argue that Trump never likes to look weak and won’t settle for a deal that gives Putin a free hand.

But it’s hard to envision that Putin would make a promise to stay away that Kyiv could really count on.

After all, past promises by Russia to respect Ukrainian sovereignty were worthless.

Thus, protecting Kyiv will be the most difficult, and most important, part of the future Trump negotiations.

In an interview with TIME magazine [in which he was declared ‘the Person of the Year’], Trump declined to say whether he’d spoken to Putin since the election and criticized the Biden administration for letting Ukraine fire long range US-made weapons into Russia.  

Syria & the Rise of Turkey in the Middle East/West Asia/East Africa

According to observers and experts of the region Middle East/West Asia, the president of Turkey is having one of the best times of his life.

In a very short span of time, Erdogan has succeeded in:

  • Helped kick out a rival autocrat from the neighbouring state of Syria
  • Restored Turkey’s influence over what was long part of its Ottoman Empire, and
  • Reasserted Turkey’s role as a major player by brokering peace in Africa.

(International Intrigue Newsletter/IIN, Dec. 13).

Syria

Bilateral ties were never easy, but like almost everyone in the region and beyond appalled by Bashar al-Assad’s gassing and barrel-bombing his own people during the civil war, Erdogan cut-off ties.

His intelligence agents already knew many opposition players operating just over his 900 km border with Syria, so Erdogan built on those ties as emerging groups seized Syria’s border crossings.

One ended up being the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which led the march on Damascus.

While Turkey denies any direct role in Assad’s ousting (and still lists HTS as terrorists), it wouldn’t and couldn’t have happened without Erdogan’s blessing.

In fact, he eventually stopped pretending and just openly encouraged it on, sending his own intelligence chief on a personal tour around Damascus with none other than the HTS leader himself – Golani (IIN).

Thus, Erdogan now has direct access and influence in Damascus. The question is what he’ll do with it.

One main priority will be help repatriating the three million Syrian refugees in Turkey.

Another one will be for the HTS to ignore Turkish attacks on Kurdish groups, some with ties to the PKK  (listed as a terrorist group in Turkey, the U.S. and elsewhere. Plus he wants buffer zone along the Turkish-Syrian border.

But this puts Erdogan on a collision course with his NATO ally the U.S., which still has 900 active troops in Syria helping those same Kurdish groups contain ISIS (including tens of thousands of detained ISIS members guarded by the Kurds).

The point is that Erdogan doesn’t want an ISIS resurgence either.

So, how can this dilemma be resolved?

That will partly depend on Trump, who has already – prematurely – announced his preference to stay out of the Syrian imbroglio (a stance Erdogan will encourage).

But there are influential voices in Washington who back an autonomous Kurdish region, or at least oppose the notion of the U.S. again abandoning its Kurdish allies.

2. Somalia and Ethiopia

While all this was playing out, Erdogan also managed to leave his mark in another conflict region.

Last Thursday, he suddenly stepped up before the international media hand in hand with Somali leader Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and his Ethiopian counterpart Abiy Ahmed to announce that he had just brokered a truce between the two feuding neighbours in the Horn of Africa.

Part of the issue flared up in January when Ethiopia – the world’s most populous landlocked nation – inked a deal with neighbouring Somaliland, a self-ruling coastal strip Somalia claims as part of its own sovereign territory.

The deal would have granted Ethiopia a base on the Gulf of Aden in return for potentially recognizing Somaliland as an independent country.

This, of course, antagonized Somalia.

There are no major new details in this truce, but all three leaders now say they are figuring out a way for Ethiopia to get sea access without undermining Somalia’s territorial integrity (IIN).

This will probably be at Somalia’s Arabian Sea coast, although the route through Somaliland would be more proximate.

The broader message here is that where traditional Western powers have shown a lack of interest or ability in imposing a solution in a newly emerging crisis situation, Turkey has demonstrated initiative and will.

This new development also underlines Turkey’s emergence as one of the most intriguing resurgent players in the reality of a multipolar world – whether the two superpowers US and China like it or not.

Erdogan may have alienated two major players in the region – Iran and Russia – by helping to boot them out of Syria, despite years of talks.

But according to International Intrigue, he is well placed to handle whatever comes next because of two pertinent reasons:

  • Erdogan has got the world’s third-largest diplomatic network after years of quiet but rapid growth. “That eventually pays a dividend, whether you want to topple a dictator or broker a truce” (IIN).
  • Moreover, he has a clear and assertive vision of Turkey’s place on the world stage.

At the same time, his diplomats are similarly motivated and sure of the political cover from on high. Thus, his diplomats push it hard wherever they are.

In contrast, diplomats from Western powers and rising Asian powers do not have the necessary drive and initiative, because their own home governments are still debating what vision to even pursue (as in the US, EU, China, Russia, India, Iran, Indonesia).

South Korea’s Parliament Votes to Impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol

South Korea’s parliament last Saturday impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol over his stunning and short-lived martial law decree, a move that ended days of political paralysis but set up an intense debate over Yoon’s fate, as jubilant crowds roared to celebrate another defiant moment in the country’s resilient democracy (AP/Associated Press/ Hyung-Jin Kim & Kim Tong-Hyung, Dec. 14).

The National Assembly passed the motion 204-85.

Yoon’s presidential powers and duties were subsequently suspended and Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, the country’s No. 2 official, took over presidential powers later Saturday.

The Constitutional Court has up to 180 days to determine whether to dismiss Yoon as president or restore his powers.

If he’s thrown out of office, a national election to choose his successor must be held within 60 days.

It was the second National Assembly vote on Yoon’s impeachment after the ruling People Power Party (PPP) lawmakers boycotted the first floor vote.

Subsequently, some PPP lawmakers said they would vote for Yoon’s impeachment as public protests intensified and his approval rating plummeted.

National Assembly Speaker Woo Won Shik said Yoon’s impeachment was an outcome driven by “the people’s ardent desire for democracy, courage and dedication.”

Han, the acting leader, ordered the military to bolster its security posture to prevent North Korea from launching provocations by miscalculation.

Han asked the foreign minister to inform other countries that South Korea’s major external policies remain unchanged.

And he told the finance minister to minimize potential negative impacts on the economy by the political turmoil.

South Korea’s executive power is concentrated with the president, but the prime minister leads the country if the president is incapacitated.

Han is a seasoned official and has previously held a string of top government posts such as trade minister and finance minister. He also served as a prime minister from 2007-2008.

South Korea’s opposition leader has offered to work with the government to ease the political tumult as officials sought to reassure allies and markets.

The Liberal Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung, whose party holds a majority in the National Assembly urged the Constitutional Court to rule swiftly on Yoon’s impeachment and proposed a special council for policy cooperation between the government and parliament.

Yoon’s powers have been suspended until the Constitutional Court decides to remove him from office or reinstate him.

If Yoon is dismissed, a national election to choose his successor must be held within 60 days (AP/Dec. 15).

As a mark of support, US President Joe Biden has expressed his appreciation for the resiliency of democracy in South Korea and reaffirmed ‘the ironclad commitment’ of the United States for the joint stance regarding security challenges in East Asia including North Korea’s nuclear programme [With Trump, this will be a big question mark!].

The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com