• Will Trump Reshape the World?
  • Gaza Cease-Fire Still Holds
  • Ukraine War: Trump’s Manipulations
  • German Federal Elections: Rise of the Far-Right?

By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

Trump & the World

An electoral mandate in hand, President J. Trump re-entered the most important office in the world on January 20 and promptly made a slew of dramatic policy changes.

Through executive action:

  • Renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” in official parlance,
  • Effectively closed the southern border to Mexico to immigrants and asylum seekers,
  • Pulled the US out of the Paris Climate Accord and
  • The World Health Organization (WHO),
  • Declared that there are only two genders,
  • Sought to abolish birthright citizenship, and
  • Designated Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

Trump “is at the apex of his political power right now,” as extremely pro-Trump commentator Scott Jennings remarked during Trump’s inauguration festivities.

For those who foresee disruption in global affairs – The Economist has predicted Trump will “upend 80 years of American foreign policy” – signs point as ever to big changes.

Some analysts are optimistic about that.

From Eastern Europe to the Middle East, the world is ripe for transformation, Kaush Arha of the Free & Open Indo-Pacific Forum and the Atlantic Council argues in an op-ed for The National Interest.

“With his signature traits – tactical bravado, unpredictability, and a penchant for deal-making – Trump holds a royal flush of opportunities to reshape global dynamics, potentially leaving a legacy comparable to Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan,” Arha proposes.

Others are more neutral. Writing for Compact, New College professor Adam Rowe suggests Trump’s territorial expansionism “represents a revival of the blunt national exuberance behind the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny” an expression of popular will.

Among other commentators, the dominant moods are uncertainty and worry.

“Trump is unpredictable,” writes Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf. “Maybe, he will deliver a just peace in Ukraine and the Middle East. Maybe, he will put most of the threats and promises in the Oval Office waste paper basket, bask in his status and leave his country and the world in good shape. Substantial damage to the western alliance, world trade, the global environment, and US and globe institutions seems more likely.”

The left-leaning French daily Le Monde writes in an editorial:  order set up by the US at the end of the Second World War will survive” Trump’s second term.

And yet, in a Foreign Affairs essay, Center foe a New American Security CEO Richard Fontaine predicts not much will change.

“Across administrations…foreign policy is something like an iceberg,” Fontaine writes.

“The visible portion is gleaming and jagged and draws much of the attention. Yet it also has a bigger and under-examined foundation, one that tends to remain mostly unchanged…

“A weakened, frightened Iran may well try to negotiate with the new team, and Trump, like [former President Barack] Obama, might pursue a deal…

“The new administration might pick up where [former President Joe] Biden left on Israel-Saudi normalization efforts and could continue some support to Ukraine.

“Trump will likely seek, like Obama and Biden, to prioritize the Indo-Pacific in U.S. foreign policy and will face challenges, as did they, in doing so…

“Although it is bent on reversing Biden’s approach, the incoming team may itself be surprised to find out how much the two administrations share.”

A Waiting Game in Gaza

As the long-awaited Gaza ceasefire deal took effect on Sunday – with hostilities paused, hostages returned, and Palestinians prisoners released – bittersweet relief set in for many, Sheren Falah Saab writes for the left-leaning Israeli daily Haaretz.

“People want to celebrate the end of the war, and young people are dancing in the middle of the street,” one Gazan man told her. Others expressed concern for the territory’s future.

Throughout the war, many Gazans have maintained a desire to return to their homes, Maha Hussaini writes for Middle East Eye:

“Complying with Israeli evacuation orders never felt like a safe option. For Palestinians across Gaza, the reality has always been that they could be targeted at any moment. Two days before the ceasefire was announced, as Palestinians held their breath, a donkey-drawn cart driver passed by me in one of Deir al-Barah’s most crowded neighbourhoods. ‘To Shujaiya, Rimal, Tal al-Hawa! He called out, naming Gaza City neighbourhoods from which we were forcibly displaced more than a year ago. He shouted as if he was about to take people there, a common behavior that has emerged among the displaced in Gaza over the past year.”

Still, it is far from certain that the truce will hold – especially as time progresses and negotiations are undertaken for its subsequent phases.

Neville Teller notes in The Jerusalem Post: “The three-phase agreement…, there are only aspirations.is clear on phase one,” which will last six weeks.

“it is less so regarding phase two, involving a second exchange of hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and the withdrawal of the [ Israel Defence Forces/IDF].

“As for phase three, which requires establishing a system of governance for Gaza and the start of its reconstruction, there are only aspirations.”

The Guardian’s Observer column hopes – as do many – that the pause in fighting can lead to a broad shift toward peace: “As this fragile process gets under way, the parties to the conflict should use the pause for much-needed refection.

“Hamas and its supporters must recognize that the 7 October atrocities produced even greater, counter-productive violence against other defenceless civilians – in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

“Israelis and their leaders mustb recognize that the disproportionate, illegal use of force has trashed the country’s reputation, brought accusations of war crimes and genocide, and raised the issue of Palestinian statehood to the top of the global agenda. Both sides must accept the obvious: violence does not work.”

Will the Gaza Truce Last?

Haviv Rettig Gur, a senior analyst at The Times of Israel, told Fareed Zakaria he thinks the war in Gaza is likely to resume, even after the return of some hostages.

The territory’s infrastructure is largely destroyed, but as CNN’s Mostafa Salem notes, Hamas lives on. Then US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that after 15 months of war, “We access that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost.”

Ukraine War: How Much Pressure Is Russia Under?

Trump has issued an ultimatum to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine, posting to his Truth Social platform that Russia should “settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries.”

Although Western sanctions have not coerced Moscow to stop its aggression against Ukraine, some analysts list removal of sanctions among Moscow’s incentives for agreeing to end the war.

Recent focus, in fact, has turned to Russia’s economy, as various observers have noted that government spending is high, and labour is short – which has raised questions about Russia’s ability to keep financing its war effort (CNN/Fareed’s Global Briefing, Jan. 23).

“Sanctions inflicted significant damage and reduced the Kremlin’s room for policy maneuver,” Theodor Bunzel and Elina Ribakova wrote for Foreign Affairs in December, “and now Russia’s economy is dangerously distorted as the cost of the conflict pile up. The labour supply is shrinking as hundreds of thousands of Russian men are killed or injured on the battlefield.”

In a recent Washington Quarterly essay, Noel Foster wrote that labour shortage is Russia’s biggest economic problem.

Noting Gazprom’s loss of the European natural-gas market, Foreign Policy’s Agathe Demarais wrote in October 2024: “Without fresh inflows of cash, even the largest of savings only last for a while. Russia could soon struggle to preserve costly social stability at home while waging its expensive war against Ukraine.”

 Some new analysis points in a different direction.

Having previously noted Russia’s economic difficulties at the Carnegie Endowment’s Russian-politics blog Politika, Alexandra Prokopenko writes in a new Foreign Affairs essay that such struggles may not hinder Russia’s war effort in the near term.

“For at least the next year, the Kremlin should be able to keep its overheating economy from exploding into a full-blown crisis.” Prokopenko writes. “Putin will likely still have the resources to sustain his brutal campaign in Ukraine – and perhaps the incentive to wait out the West.”

At the UK defence think tank RUSI, Richard Connolly offers similar analysis:

“Russia’s economy has confounded expectations throughout the war and, despite suffering several complications, remains well-placed to support the Kremlin’s ambitions in Ukraine and beyond …

“Crucially, the absence of a large pool of latent labour need not constrain growth so long as labour productivity continues to rise…

“Russia’s low-productivity economy means that there are plenty of easy wins available for firms prepared to undertake simple organizational changes or investment in new machinery…

“Importantly, many of the features of true war economies – such as price controls, the centralized allocation of resources, and widespread nationalization of private sector assets – have yet to appear in Russia.”

Germany’s Far-Right Election Campaign & Protests

Protests have taken place in parts of Germany as the far-right Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) election campaign kicked off.

Thousands of Germans took to the streets in several cities to protest the rise of far-right extremism and the growing popularity of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party.

At Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate people blew whistles and sang anti-Nazi songs, and in the western city of Cologne, protesters carried banners denouncing AfD.

The protests also came as the AfD opened its election campaign in the central city of Halle (in the former East Germany).

AfD in buoyant mood with second place in polls

The far-right AfD is in second place at 20 % percent according to the latest poll tracker, while the centre-right bloc of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), currently leads competitors with 31 % percent.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) currently stands in third place at 15 % percent, just ahead of the Greens with 14 % percent.

Elon Musk joins AfD campaign launch

The world’s richest man, US billionaire and close adviser to President Donald Trump, Elon Musk again backed the AfD, as he appeared via video-link at the campaign launch ahead of the address of the party’s lead candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel.

“I’m very excited for the AfD. I Think you are really the best hope for Germany,” Musk – who has been accused of blatantly meddling in German (and European) politics – said and added that it was OK to “take pride” in being German [Trump himself is of German origin on his father’s side, but the majority of Germans do not consider him to be great or representative of German values].

At Trump’s inauguration on Monday, the 20th January, Musk attracted negative attention with a gesture reminiscent of the Hitler salute [which is anathema in modern Germany and strictly against the law].

Weidel conveyed her best wishes for the US, now under the Trump administration and slavishly adapted Trump’s slogan and said: ‘Make Germany great again’. [Unfortunately, if the AfD even comes to share power with the CDU/CSU at the federal level, Germany will be kaputt].

Immigrant voters could determine the German election

In Germany, political parties have less than a month to convince voters to support their platform in February’s federal election.

There’s one electoral group in particular that might offer lagging parties an opportunity to make up lost ground: people with an immigration background.

An estimated 7.1 million eligible voters, or one in eight German voters, have an immigration background – meaning they, or at least one of their parents, migrated to Germany (DW/Deutsche Welle; Oliver Pieper, Jan. 26).

And among all the groups examined, the party with the highest potential is the centre-left Social Democrats said sociologist Friederike Roemer.

The writer can be reached at: [email protected]