Episodes

  • Xi, Putin, and Modi will showcase their unity at the SCO summit in Tianjin

    Xi, Putin, and Modi will showcase their unity at the SCO summit in Tianjin
    Aug 27 2025
    The upcoming summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tianjin, China, from August 31 to September 1, 2025, will be the organisation’s largest gathering of heads of state to date. It comes at a time when the existing liberal international order is rapidly disintegrating — but rather than offering a concrete new order, the SCO demonstrates the persistent difficulties that anti-liberal powers, such as China and Russia, have in agreeing and implementing a credible alternative.Founded in Shanghai in 2001 with just six members — Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan — the SCO has grown rapidly over the past decade. India and Pakistan joined in 2017, Iran in 2023, and Belarus in 2024. Beyond these now ten member states, the SCO also has two observers — Afghanistan and Mongolia — and 14 dialogue partners, including Turkey, Egypt, Armenia and Azerbaijan, several of the Gulf states, and a number of other Asian states. If measured by the population of its core member states, it is the world’s largest regional security organisation.Size clearly matters, but in the case of the SCO it creates problems instead of contributing to their resolution. The organisation did little in response to escalating tensions between India and Pakistan in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Kashmir that brought the two long-standing rivals to the brink of nuclear confrontation. It took US mediation to de-escalate the violence.The SCO’s subsequent failure to condemn cross-border terrorism explicitly in a joint statement of the meeting of defence ministers at the end of June led to India refusing to sign it.When Israel attacked Iran, the SCO issued a strongly-worded condemnation of the attacks. But India distanced itself officially from the SCO statement.These and other simmering tensions, such as between India and China over a new dam project in Tibet, are likely going to be papered over at the SCO summit in Tianjin. China’s president, Xi Jinping, will be keen to demonstrate Chinese leadership of a large coalition of like-minded countries who oppose the hitherto US-led liberal international order.The theme of this year’s summit — “Upholding the Shanghai Spirit: SCO on the Move” — sounds more like an aspirational plea to member states, observers, and dialogue partners rather than a concrete plan for action. The so-called Shanghai spirit — a hazy mixture of standard Chinese talking points about mutual respect, peaceful co-existence and win-win cooperation — is little more than empty rhetoric. It is also very fragile. Two member states — India and Pakistan — have recently gone to war with each other. Armenia and Azerbaijan have been involved in several full-scale violent confrontations since they became dialogue partners almost a decade ago. And if they have now embraced the Shanghai spirit, they did so, ironically, in Washington and after both their relations with Russia significantly soured.Nor does the SCO have much of a track record of constructive involvement in internal conflicts in its member states and dialogue partners, such as Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar. This is even more obvious in the case of Afghanistan where Russia’s recent official recognition of the Taliban government poses yet another challenge to the SCO. China has cautiously welcomed Russia’s recognition but not followed suit, while several Central Asian member states of the SCO already have a wide range of economic ties with Afghanistan. But Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf states remain deeply ambivalent about the Taliban regime.It is also worth noting that the SCO’s very selective commitment to the Shanghai spirit does not extend to relations between the organisation and non-member states. That much is evident from the SCO’s lack of condemnation of the Russian aggression against Ukraine. Previous summits in 2022, 2023 and 2024 produced lengthy declarations of intent — but little follow-through. It is, therefore, difficult to see where the SCO will move.The marked difference to these previous summits is, of course, Donald Trump’s return to the White House. On the one hand, Trump has demonstrated the near-irrelevance of the SCO as a security player compared to the indispensability of the United States when it comes to managing crises, such as those between India and Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Cambodia and Thailand.On the other hand, Trump’s weaponisation of trade has created a new dynamic within the SCO that might see the organisation’s most powerful countries — China, Russia and India — align more closely against the United States. Sanctions against Russia, however unlikely they may be to be fully implemented by Trump, are still on the table. Heavy tariffs have now been imposed on India for continuing to buy Russian oil. And the US trade war with China is only paused but not settled.For their own sake, and even more so for the sake of their actual and potential ...
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    7 mins
  • Transatlantic unity at the White House disguises lack of progress towards just peace for Ukraine

    Transatlantic unity at the White House disguises lack of progress towards just peace for Ukraine
    Aug 19 2025
    At a high-stakes meeting in the White House on August 18, the US president, Donald Trump, and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, hammered out the broad contours of a potential peace agreement with Russia. Their encounter was in marked contrast to their last joint press conference in Washington back in February which ended with Zelensky’s humiliation by Trump and his vice president, J.D. Vance.The outcomes of the American and Ukrainian presidential get-together, and the subsequent, expanded meeting with leaders of the European coalition of the willing, was also a much more professional affair than Trump’s summit with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on August 15. What’s more, the results of the meetings in the White House, while not perfect, are a much better response to the reality in which Ukrainians have lived for the past more than three-and-a-half years than what transpired during and after the brief press conference in Alaska.This relatively positive outcome was not a foregone conclusion. Over the weekend, Trump put out a statement on his Truth Social platform that “President Zelenskyy of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately” — provided that he would accept Ukraine’s loss of Crimea to Russia and forego his country’s future Nato membership. This, and similar ideas of land swaps between Russia and Ukraine, were roundly rejected by Zelensky. Importantly, Kyiv’s position was fully backed by Ukraine’s European allies, with leaders of the coalition of the willing issuing a joint statement on August 16 to the effect that any territorial concessions were Ukraine’s to make or refuse.On Nato membership, the statement was more equivocal. European leaders asserted that Russia should not be allowed to have a veto on Ukraine’s choices. But with Nato membership often used as a shorthand for credible security guarantees for Ukraine as part of any future peace agreement, the reiteration of the commitment that the coalition of the willing as “ready to play an active role” opened up a pathway to Trump offering “Article 5-like protections” for Ukraine against future Russian aggression and promising “a lot of help when it comes to security”. A possibly emerging deal – some territorial concessions by Ukraine in exchange for peace and joint US and European security guarantees – became more certain during the televised meeting between Trump and his visitors before their closed-door discussions. In different ways, each of the European guests acknowledged the progress that Trump had made towards a settlement and they all emphasised the importance of a joint approach to Russia to make sure that any agreement would bring a just and lasting peace.As an indication that his guests were unwilling to simply accept whatever deal he had brought back with him from his meeting with Putin in Alaska, the US president then interrupted the discussions in the White House to call the Russian president. By then, signals from Russia were far from promising, with Moscow rejecting any Nato troop deployments to Ukraine and singling out Britain as allegedly seeking to undermine the US-Russia peace effort.When the meeting concluded and the different leaders offered their interpretations of what had been agreed two things became clear. First, the Ukrainian side had not folded under pressure from the US, and European leaders, while going out of their way to flatter Trump, held their ground as well. Importantly, Trump had not walked away from the process either but appeared to want to remain engaged.Second, Russia had not given any ground. According to remarks by Putin’s foreign policy advisor, Yuri Ushakov, posted on the Kremlin’s official website, Russia would consider “the possibility of raising the level of representatives of the Ukrainian and Russian parties”. This statement falls short of, but does not rule out, the possibility of the Zelensky-Putin summit, which Trump announced as a major success after the discussions in the White House yesterday.Such a meeting was seen as the next logical step towards peace by all the participants of the White House meeting and would be followed, according to Trump, by what he called “a Trilat” of the Ukrainian, Russian and American presidents. The lack of clear confirmation by Russia that such meetings would indeed happen raises more doubts about the Kremlin’s sincerity.But the fact that a peace process – if it can be called that – remains somewhat intact is a far cry from an actual peace agreement. Little if anything was said in the aftermath of the White House meeting on territorial issues. Pressure on Russia only came up briefly in comments by European leaders, whose ambitions to become formally involved in actual peace negotiations remain a pipe dream for the time being. And despite the initial optimism about security guarantees, no firm commitments were made, with Zelensky only noting “the important signal...
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    7 mins
  • Trump caves to Putin yet again at Alaska summit

    Trump caves to Putin yet again at Alaska summit
    Aug 16 2025
    The only certainty after a three-hour meeting between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska on August 15 is that there is no ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine.This is bad news for Ukraine, which has been under assault for three-and-a-half years.By contrast, it is a clear victory for Russia, and a personal triumph for Mr Putin. Not only can he now continue his air and ground campaigns against Ukraine, but he has also been able — again — to avoid Mr Trump’s threats of “very severe consequences” in the absence of a Russian agreement to a ceasefire.Add to that the prestige of an invitation to the United States and the warm personal welcome he received from Mr Trump, and it is obvious that Mr Putin is very much in control of events on and off the battlefield.The outcome of the highly anticipated meeting does not reflect well on the American president. If anyone had any faith left in his deal-making prowess, it would have been severely diminished – if not completely evaporated – after Friday's events. Despite Mr Trump’s apparent commitment to get tough on Russia if there was no ceasefire, he appears to have caved in yet again to Mr Putin.Both presidents were eager to portray their encounter as productive and successful, but from their brief statements to the press afterwards, it was clear that significant differences between them remained.While Mr Putin emphasised progress in rebuilding relations with the United States, Mr Trump was clear that “some headway” had been made but that there was “no deal” yet. Both presidents teased the possibility of a follow-up meeting — possibly in Moscow — but nothing concrete to this effect was agreed.Where does this leave Ukraine and its European allies? The good news is that no deal was made over their heads or — as far as is known — behind their backs.Mr Trump noted that “significant” differences remained on the path to a ceasefire. This is likely a reference to the gap between what Russia and Ukraine are willing to accept in a future settlement, with Moscow’s demands for Kyiv to recognise occupied territories as Russian the most serious stumbling block.In his subsequent interview with Fox News, Mr Trump advised the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to “make a deal” because “Russia is a very big country, and they are not”.Whether this is merely Mr Trump parroting a well-worn Russian speaking point — that Moscow will ultimately prevail over Kyiv in a war of attrition — or whether it is his genuinely held belief is almost immaterial. But it signals that Mr Trump is yet again pivoting away from supporting Ukraine in its quest for a just peace.For now, the American president has not completely abandoned his efforts to bring peace to Ukraine. But he has put the onus on Mr Zelenskyy without offering any of the reassurances that were given to him and other European leaders only days ago. Mr Zelenskyy reportedly had a lengthy conversation with Mr Trump after the Alaska meeting, and will meet his American counterpart in the White House on Monday.Mr Trump’s deal-making is very much premised on the idea of “winner takes all”. Unfortunately for him, and above all for Ukraine, he has left Alaska empty-handed and Mr Putin with a big smile on his face.An earlier version of this analysis was published by Channel News Asia on August 16, 2025.We hope you'll share Navigating the Vortex with anyone you think might find it of interest. Also, you can listen to our podcast editions via the website and on all major podcast platforms, including:Apple PodcastsSpotifyAmazon/AudibleThis Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Navigating the Vortex at www.navigatingthevortex.com/subscribe
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    5 mins
  • Low expectations, high anxieties

    Low expectations, high anxieties
    Aug 14 2025
    What happens when a convicted felon and a man under indictment for alleged war crimes get together?This sounds like the opening line of a great joke, but sadly, describes what will most likely be the defining meeting of the second term of Donald Trump as US president. As with any meetings involving the current incumbent of the White House, expectations are low and anxieties are high in the run-up to the US-Russia summit in Alaska on August 15.The White House, and Trump himself, have played down expectations of an imminent breakthrough towards peace in Ukraine, claiming that this would be “a feel-out meeting” to determine whether a ceasefire is possible. In typical hyperbole, the US president added that he was confident that it would probably only take him two minutes to know whether a deal is possible. His subsequent threat that “there will be very severe consequences” if Putin does not agree to stop the fighting appears somewhat hollow now given that the reward for Putin ignoring Trump’s last deadline was an invitation to the US.While framed almost solely as a meeting about the Russian war against Ukraine, it would be naive to assume that this is all that is on Trump’s agenda. There are two possible deals Trump could try to make: a deal with Putin on a ceasefire for Ukraine and a deal resetting relations between Russia and the US. Trump is interested in both, and he does not see them as mutually exclusive or mutually constitutive.Trump has long talked about a ceasefire, and is probably genuinely keen for the fighting to stop. The US president likely also sees an instrumental value in a ceasefire agreement in his quest for the Nobel Peace Prize.There have been serious and justified misgivings in Ukraine and among Kyiv’s European allies that the meeting between Putin and Trump is just that — a bilateral get-together by the two presidents without any Ukrainian or European participation. This has prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity within Europe and across the Atlantic. As part of this, Ukrainian red lines have been clearly set out and fully backed by European leaders. Neither will accept full legal recognition of the kinds of land swaps that both Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, have suggested. Security guarantees and Russian reparations for the damage done to Ukraine in three-and-a-half years of war are likely other stumbling blocs.If there is a deal on a ceasefire, this will probably take the form of a broad and ambiguous framework that all sides would subsequently interpret differently. Part of such a framework would likely be a timeline and conditions for a Trump-Putin-Zelensky summit, most likely again without European participation. This would be another gift for the Russian president, and potentially put Zelensky into a position where both Trump and Putin would pressure him to accept an unfavourable deal or lose all US support.By contrast, a US-Russia reset would be a more straightforward business deal — primarily with US economic interests in mind, but with significant geopolitical implications. There are few signs that Trump has given up on his agenda to “un-unite” Russia and China as he put it in an interview with Tucker Carlson during his presidential campaign last year. But, importantly, this is less about new American alliances and more about Trump’s ideas of re-ordering the world into American, Russian and Chinese spheres of influence — something that is easier done for the White House after a reset with the Kremlin and when Moscow and Beijing are no longer the strategic partners they claim to be right now.As an outcome of the Alaska summit, such a reset of US-Russia relations is also most likely to materialise as a framework that simply identifies areas for future deals between the two sides. Any process to implement such a bilateral agreement between Moscow and Washington could begin immediately and run in parallel to any Ukraine negotiations. This, too, would be a big bonus for Moscow: with the Kremlin hoping that the further along things move on the US-Russia reset track, the more likely Trump will back Putin in negotiations with Ukraine.Putin is clearly more interested in improving bilateral relations with the US than he is in a ceasefire. He has, for now, skilfully avoided Trump’s threats of sanctions while his forces have achieved what looks like an important breakthrough on the battlefield. This is not necessarily a game changer in the war overall, but it certainly strengthens Putin’s hand ahead of his meeting with Trump.His troops’ battlefield success also decreases the urgency with which the Russian president is likely to approach negotiations — in the absence of Trump following through on his recent ultimatum threats, and with Ukraine and its European allies shut out of their meeting, Putin has every incentive, and opportunity, to play for more time and to push his current advantage on the battlefield as much as ...
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    7 mins
  • Has Trump finally realised he needs economic and military muscle to force Putin to agree a peace deal?

    Has Trump finally realised he needs economic and military muscle to force Putin to agree a peace deal?
    Aug 7 2025
    With only two days to go before the expiry of his latest ultimatum to end the Russian aggression against Ukraine, US president Donald Trump dispatched his envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow for the fifth time on August 6. After three hours of talks in the Kremlin with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Trump announced that “Great progress was made!” This, according to US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, includes a Russian ceasefire proposal that Witkoff was bringing back from his meeting with Putin. At a subsequent press conference, Trump indicated that he could soon meet in person with Putin and Zelensky.However, there was no indication of an imminent breakthrough. In a phone call with Zelensky and European leaders, Trump appeared optimistic that a diplomatic solution was possible but would take time to achieve. Rubio also expressed some caution and noted that “a lot has to happen before” a Trump-Putin-Zelensky summit as there were “still many impediments to overcome”.For once, Trump appears to realise that he will only make progress on ending the war if he keeps the pressure up on Putin. Shortly after the meeting between Putin and Witkoff concluded, Trump issued an executive order explicitly stating that “the actions and policies of the Government of the Russian Federation continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”This is hardly surprising, given that Trump’s frustration with Putin has steadily built up since the end of April. However, unusually, Trump has publicly and specifically endorsed an earlier executive order, issued by his predecessor, Joe Biden, just days after the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in March 2022.Increasingly seeing Putin as the main obstacle to peace in Ukraine, Trump initially imposed a 50-day deadline for his Russian counterpart to agree to a ceasefire, which he subsequently shortened to ten days. Under the terms of the ultimatum, failure by Russia to comply would lead to severe economic disruption for Moscow’s war economy.If activated, sanctions threatened by Trump are likely to target Russia’s so-called shadow fleet of oil tankers that the Kremlin uses to sell oil at prices above the G7-imposed price cap of currently US$60 per barrel of seaborne crude oil and other petroleum products.The US president is also considering the imposition of 100% tariffs on imports from countries still buying Russian oil. This would particularly affect China and India, who remain Russia’s largest costumers. If Beijing and New Delhi were to decrease their imports from Russia, this would deprive the Russian war economy of a much-needed revenue source. But this is a big ‘if’. There are serious doubts that China can easily be pushed to wean itself off Russian oil supplies, and India has indicated that it will not bow to pressure from the White House. While trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing are still ongoing, those with India have broken down for the time being.But as a likely indication of Trump’s determination to get serious on increasing pressure on the Kremlin and its perceived allies, the US president has now, as part of his executive order, imposed an additional 25% tariff rate on Indian imports to the United States. This will be on top of the existing 25% rate and come into effect within three weeks.China and India might continue to resist US pressure in public. However, given the billions of dollars of trade at stake for them, they might try to use their influence with Putin to sway him towards at least some concessions that may lead to a ceasefire — however temporary or partial it might be. This might give Trump and Putin both a face-saving way out, albeit not one that would move the dial substantially closer to an actual peace agreement in the war against Ukraine.There is also the question how Russia would respond — and concessions do not appear to be foremost on Putin’s mind.Expect more nuclear sabre rattling of the kind that has become the trademark of Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and now one of the Kremlin’s main social media attack dogs. In public, such threats were mostly ignored in the past. But in another sign of his patience wearing thin, Trump responded to Medvedev’s latest threat by announcing on his Truth Social platform that he had ordered “two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.”Neither the Kremlin nor the White House are likely to go down the path of military, let alone nuclear escalation. But, like Washington, Moscow, too, has economic levers to pull. The most potent of these would be for Russia to disrupt the Caspian oil pipeline consortium, which facilitates the majority of Kazakh oil exports to western markets through Russia. There is precedent for this. A Russian court halted flows back in ...
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    8 mins
  • Will Trump’s latest ultimatum be another empty threat for Putin to ignore?

    Will Trump’s latest ultimatum be another empty threat for Putin to ignore?
    Aug 4 2025
    Against a backdrop of threats Donald Trump made but never followed through and demands ignored by Vladimir Putin without consequences, the United States president issued yet another ultimatum to his Russian counterpart on July 14: Make progress toward a ceasefire within 50 days or prepare for serious economic disruption.It was already a major shift in Mr Trump’s approach to the war in Ukraine, before he dramatically cut his deadline. His ultimatum will now expire on August 8, instead of September 2.This is not the first time that Mr Trump has tried his economic brand of statecraft on Mr Putin, though he constantly oscillated between pressure on Ukraine and on Russia. On January 22, just two days after his return to the White House for a second term, he demanded on Truth Social that Russia “STOP this ridiculous war” or face trade sanctions.By May, Mr Trump suspected he was being strung along and gave Mr Putin two weeks to respond to his calls for a ceasefire. Vague as this appeared at the time, it was the first time that Mr Trump imposed a concrete timeline.The Russian president did not blink. On the contrary, Russia intensified both its air and ground campaigns against Ukraine.The Russian reaction to the original 50-day ultimatum indicated no particular concern in the Kremlin. Widespread criticism that this simply gave Russia another seven weeks to pound Ukraine was swiftly borne out, including in the capture of Chasiv Yar, a town in eastern Ukraine that Russia had besieged for more than a year.On August 1, Mr Putin signalled that there would be no change to his stance, as Mr Trump’s shortened deadline loomed.If it were only the threat of sanctions by Washington, Moscow might be right to shrug off the ultimatum as another unenforceable threat and unlikely to have a major impact on Russia’s remarkably resilient war economy.But the stakes are now more complex and go beyond another customary Russian warning of impending nuclear Armageddon, even though the US president has ordered two nuclear submarines to be repositioned to “the appropriate regions” following a very public social media fight with former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now the deputy chairman of Russia’s national security council.Mr Trump has threatened to impose what he called 100 per cent “secondary tariffs” — which is not a technical term but has come to mean tariffs on US imports from countries which trade with Russia.India and China are the two largest remaining buyers of Russian oil. India’s Aug 1 tariff rate has been announced at 25 per cent, with an unspecified “penalty” for its trade ties with Russia and would affect billions of dollars of exports to the United States.New Delhi and Beijing may not immediately stop trading with Moscow, but they may exert pressure on Mr Putin to at least show progress on a ceasefire. Russia’s dependence on China, in particular, and in turn China’s high trade volumes with the US are a key vulnerability for Mr Putin that Mr Trump finally appears willing to exploit.Moreover, Mr Putin’s obstinance has now provoked Mr Trump’s ire, making him look the weaker party who can be repeatedly ignored. The threat of sanctions is now only one of the Russian president’s worries.More significantly, beyond ultimatums issued and ignored, Mr Trump has also re-committed the United States to militarily supporting the Ukrainian war effort.Making more “top of the line” weapons available to European NATO allies will deliver much needed air defences and offensive weapons to Kyiv.More European investment in its own defence-industrial base and in cooperation and joint ventures with Ukrainian partners will further strengthen Kyiv’s military capabilities.And two US senate committees have now advanced bills worth billions of dollars of additional support to Ukraine, while a bipartisan bill on sanctions against Russia is also ready to proceed to a full vote once Senators return from their summer recess. None of this will be a game-changer overnight but it will prevent Ukrainian defences and morale from being further eroded by Russia’s slow-grinding advances.After months of mixed signals, it now appears that Mr Trump may have decisively pivoted towards Ukraine. This is possibly due to a mix of frustration with Mr Putin and much improved relations with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, from whom Trump also secured a deal on critical minerals.Given the American president’s notorious unpredictability, how long this will last is everybody’s guess.If Mr Trump finally follows through on his threats to impose steep costs on Russia, at the very least, he will have massively increased Ukraine’s long-term chances of survival as a sovereign country.Count on Mr Putin to continue his defiance: He still thinks he can win the war and, with high if almost certainly over-stated approval ratings, faces little domestic pressure to stop.But a ceasefire is now more likely before the end ...
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    6 mins
  • Why Donald Trump has stopped some wars but is failing with Ukraine and Gaza

    Why Donald Trump has stopped some wars but is failing with Ukraine and Gaza
    Aug 1 2025
    On July 28, in yet another twist in his unpredictable decision making, US president Donald Trump dramatically shortened his original 50-day ultimatum to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to call a ceasefire in Ukraine to a mere ten days. This is an unmistakable sign of Trump’s frustration with the Russian leader who he now appears to view as the main obstacle to a ceasefire in the war against Ukraine.Progress has been similarly limited in another of Trump’s flagship foreign policy projects: ending the war in Gaza. As a humanitarian catastrophe is engulfing the territory, Trump and some of his MAGA base have increasingly challenged Israeli narratives denying that after almost two years of war many Gazans now face a real risk of starvation.Yet not all of Trump’s efforts to stop violence in conflicts elsewhere in the world have been similarly futile. The Trump administration brokered a ceasefire deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which the two countries’ foreign ministers signed in Washington on June 27. The US president also claimed to be behind the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May after the two sides had engaged in several days of fierce combat after a terror attack in a tourist spot in Indian-administered Kashmir in which 26 people were killed by a Pakistan-backed rebel group. And drawing a clear parallel between this conflict and the border clashes between Cambodia and Thailand in July, Trump announced that he had pushed both of these two countries’ leaders to negotiate a ceasefire.All of these ceasefires, so far, have held. By contrast, the ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, to which Trump arguably contributed even before he returned to the White House as 47th president of the United States in January 2025, broke down in March and fighting has escalated ever since. A short-lived ceasefire in Ukraine in April was barely worth its name given its countless violations.Three factors can explain Trump’s mixed record of peace-making to date. First, the US president is more likely to succeed in stopping the fighting where he has leverage and is willing to use it to force foreign leaders to bend to his will. For example, Trump was very clear that there would be no trade negotiations with Thailand or Cambodia “until such time as the fighting STOPS”.The crucial difference, so far, with the situation in the war against Ukraine is that Trump has, and has used, similar leverage only with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. This led to a US-Ukraine agreement on a 30-day ceasefire proposal just two weeks after the now-notorious row between Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office.The mere threat of sanctions against Russia, by contrast, has done little to persuade Putin to accept whatever deal Trump might offer him. Threats from the White House — which were never implemented — did not work in January or May, and the Kremlin’s initial reactions to Trump’s latest ultimatum do not indicate any change in the Russian attitude.A second factor that may explain why Trump has had peace-making success in some cases but not others is the level of complexity of US interests involved. When it comes to US relations with Russia and Israel, there is a lot at stake for Trump. The US president still appears keen to strike a grand bargain with Russia and China under which Washington, Beijing and Moscow would agree to recognise, and not interfere in, their respective spheres of influence. This could explain his hesitation so far to follow through on his threats to Putin. Similarly, US interests in the Middle East — be it concerning Iran’s nuclear programme or relations with America’s Gulf allies — have put strains on the alliance with Israel. Trump also needs to weigh carefully the impact of any move against, or in support of, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his domestic support base.In the deal Trump brokered between Rwanda and the DRC, the issues at stake were much simpler: access for US investors to the mineral riches of the eastern DRC. After Trump acknowledged just days into his second term that the conflict was a “very serious problem”, Congo’s president, Felix Tshisekedi, offered the US a deal on the minerals in exchange for pushing Rwanda to a deal to end the invasion and stop supporting proxy forces in the DRC.This leads to the third factor that has enabled Trump’s peace-making success so far: simpler solutions are easier to achieve. Thailand and Cambodia and India and Pakistan can go back to the status quo ante before their recent fighting started. That does not resolve any of the underlying issues in their conflicts but returns their relations to some form of non-violent stability. It is ultimately also in the interests of the conflict parties to stop the fighting. They have had a chance to make their violent statements and reinforce what they will, and will not, tolerate from the other side. The ...
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    7 mins
  • Putin and Zelensky play for time

    Putin and Zelensky play for time
    Jul 24 2025
    Another round of direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine took place in Istanbul on July 23. This was the third meeting between the two sides since face-to-face meetings resumed in May.The previous two rounds yielded very few concrete results, apart from agreements on prisoner exchanges and the return of the bodies of soldiers killed in action. They did, however, demonstrate two things. First, both sides remain very far apart on what they would consider acceptable terms for a ceasefire, let alone a peace agreement. And, second, neither side is prepared to walk away from the negotiations, fearing to incur the wrath of Donald Trump, the US president.Consequently, expectations for the third round were very low, and the negotiators did not disappoint in delivering almost nothing after their shortest meeting yet, which lasted just forty minutes. They agreed on another exchange of prisoners and on setting up three working groups on political, military, and humanitarian issues to engage online rather than in face-to-face meetings. A fourth round of negotiations has not been ruled out, but it is unlikely to involve the two countries’ presidents, given that their negotiating positions still offer little hope of a deal ready to be signed at a leaders’ summit. As if further evidence was needed that these talks are mostly performative exercises devoid of any sincere effort to bring the fighting to an end, within hours of the meeting in Istanbul ending, Russia and Ukraine launched fresh air attacks against each other’s Black Sea shores.While all this appears to mirror the patterns of the previous two rounds of talks, this third round, however, took place in a different context than the earlier two meetings. On July 14, Trump set a deadline of fifty days for the fighting to stop. If this deadline passes without a ceasefire agreement, he will consider imposing hefty secondary sanctions on Russia’s remaining trade partners, in an effort to starve Moscow’s war economy of crucial foreign income. To date, the Kremlin has been able to sell heavily discounted oil and gas to willing buyers like India and China, both of whom are also critical to sustaining Russia’s war effort by supplying explosives and engines for Russia’s drone fleet.The first ten days of this 50-day ultimatum have now passed. While the talks in Istanbul might be seen as a sign that Kyiv and Moscow are taking Trump seriously, the lack of tangible results suggests otherwise. There is no indication that either Russia or Ukraine have moved from their maximalist demands. Russia keeps insisting on the recognition of its illegal occupation in Ukraine, on future limits to Ukraine’s military strength, and on a permanent blocking of the country’s accession to Nato. Ukraine meanwhile asks for its territorial integrity to be restored and its sovereignty, including its ability to determine its alliance arrangements, to be respected.Nor do developments on and around the battlefields in Ukraine offer any signs that Moscow or Kyiv are ready even for a ceasefire. Russia keeps making incremental gains along the 1000 km of frontlines in Ukraine. And the Kremlin keeps pounding Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kyiv, with nightly air attacks at unprecedented scales of hundreds of drones and missiles that have repeatedly overwhelmed Ukraine’s already stretched air defence systems.Yet, Ukraine has been buoyed by the promise of more US arms deliveries — paid for by other Nato allies — and the continuing commitments by its international partners to support the country, including at the recent Nato summit in The Hague and the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome. Add to that Trump’s apparent pivot away from Putin and his recently more constructive relationship with Zelensky, and it becomes clear why Kyiv, like Moscow, thinks that time is on its side.Both may be proven wrong. Zelensky’s latest efforts to consolidate his power — a large-scale cabinet reshuffle and a decree to curb the independence of two of Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies — have caused alarm among EU officials in Brussels. More importantly, they have also triggered rare public protests against the government in Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities, including Dnipro, Lviv, and Odesa. The protests may not get enough traction to pose a real danger to the government, but they indicate that support for Zelensky is not unconditional, something that the Ukrainian president appeared to acknowledge when he announced plans to submit an additional bill to parliament protecting the independence of the embattled anti-corruption agencies. And crucially, what is widely seen as a power grab by the president’s inner circle also has the potential of undermining public morale at a critical time in the war.All of this also feeds into a Russian narrative of Zelensky as an illegitimate leader of his country who Russia cannot negotiate with. But it would be a mistake to assume that Russia...
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    7 mins