World roundup: February 5 2025

Stories from Israel-Palestine, South Africa, Ukraine, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

February 5, 1810: A French army begins the two and a half year Siege of Cádiz, which had by this point in the Peninsular War become the capital of the rump government resisting Napoleon’s occupation of Spain. The defenders managed to hold out until the Duke of Wellington led a British-Portuguese-Spanish army to victory at the Battle of Salamanca in July 1812. Suddenly facing the possibility that his besieging army could be cut off and surrounded, French general Jean-de-Dieu Soult lifted the siege and retreated. The Peninsular War continued until Wellington and the armies of the Sixth Coalition defeated and ousted Napoleon in 1814.

February 5, 1862: Alexandru Ioan Cuza, prince of both Moldavia and Wallachia, becomes Domnitor (Principe Domnitor, “prince regnant”) of the new united nation of Romania. Cuza had de facto joined the two principalities three years earlier, when he came to rule both of them in personal union, but this marks the point at which the name “Romania” was applied to both lands in concert. Both Moldavia and Wallachia were still nominally part of the Ottoman Empire at this time and Romania would not emerge as an independent kingdom until the 1877-1878 Russo-Ottoman War. Cuza was long gone by then, having been ousted in a coup in 1866 and replaced with Carol I of the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen dynasty.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

NBC News reported Wednesday morning that the Pentagon is “developing plans” for a full withdrawal from Syria. Apparently Donald Trump has expressed an interest in that idea, which you may recall he broached during his first term. So the military is drawing up 30-, 60-, and 90-day withdrawal options. A US pullout would leave the Syrian Democratic Forces group more or less at the mercy of the Turkish military and its militant proxies, though despite the Pentagon’s contingency planning the SDF says it has no indication that any shift in the US posture in Syria is imminent. The more responsible option might be to hold off on a withdrawal until after the SDF and the Syrian government have a chance to negotiate a long-term arrangement—and, maybe, until whatever is happening with respect to Turkey’s conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has time to manifest.