World roundup: January 28 2025
Stories from Israel-Palestine, China, Colombia, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
January 28, 1077: Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV’s humiliating journey to the Castle of Canossa to beg forgiveness from Pope Gregory VII ends when the pope agrees to grant him an audience. Henry’s penitence was a highlight of the “Investiture Controversy,” during which the emperor and the pope got crosswise over the issue of which of them should have final say over the appointment of bishops in imperial cities. It wouldn’t be resolved until the Concordat of Worms in 1122, which affirmed the Church’s right to choose its own officials but allowed imperial authorities to have some influence on the process.
January 28, 1846: A British East India Company army under Sir Harry Smith defeats a somewhat larger Sikh force at the Battle of Aliwal. The Sikhs lost somewhere around 2000 men, many in a disorganized retreat after the British captured the village of Aliwal and were able to attack the Sikh line from two directions. The victory is seen as crucial to the British victory in the 1845-1846 First Anglo-Sikh War, because it eliminated a Sikh threat to the EIC’s supply lines and allowed its main army to undertake the decisive offensive that brought the conflict to an end.
INTERNATIONAL
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its “Doomsday Clock” one second forward, to 89 seconds before midnight, on Tuesday. That’s the closest it’s ever been to the point where…well, you know. Conflict, “artificial intelligence,” and climate change risk all factored into this decision. I have to be honest, I know this kind of thing gets a lot of attention but I’ve never really understood the point. I suppose the Doomsday Clock is helpful as a shorthand recognition of how bad the Vibes are at any given time, but it’s not much more than that and I think people can tell that the Vibes are bad right now with or without the clock’s help.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
The Turkish military says it killed 15 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)-affiliated militants on Tuesday—13 in Syria and two in Iraq. That means it is continuing to pressure the Syrian YPG militia, which Turkish officials regard as synonymous with the PKK, even as it continues to negotiate the incorporation of its Syrian Democratic Forces organization into the new Syrian government’s security apparatus. The SDF, by the by, is claiming that the Turkish military has killed at least 12 civilians in northern Syria over the past two days, including six in one drone strike on Tuesday.
Elsewhere, in a stunning and wholly unpredictable turn of events Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday that the Israeli military (IDF) will continue to occupy the southern Syrian territory it’s recently seized “indefinitely.” This includes the summit of Mount Hermon, the highest point in the region and thus a strategically desirable bit of real estate. After the fall of the former Syrian government last month the IDF took control of the entirety of the buffer zone established between Israel and Syria in a 1974 United Nations agreement, and some additional territory beyond that, citing a need to protect the portion of Syria’s Golan region that Israel seized in 1967 and now purports to have annexed. Israeli officials have been calling these latest advances “temporary,” which I guess is still true in an abstract sense.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The IDF killed at least two people, including a five year old child, in two attacks in and around central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp on Tuesday. According to Israeli officials, soldiers “fired to repel suspicious vehicles” that had strayed outside of areas where Palestinians are permitted to travel under the terms of Gaza’s ongoing truce.
Responsible Statecraft’s Annelle Sheline warns that the damage wrought by Donald Trump’s big plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza could spread across the Middle East:
President Trump told reporters on Air Force One this weekend that he wants Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab countries to take refugees from Gaza in order to “just clean out that whole thing.” Any forced repatriation of Palestinians would constitute the war crime of ethnic cleansing, although international law has not historically governed Israel or the United States’ treatment of Palestinians.
Yet if Trump were to greenlight such a plan, the result would be extreme destabilization of neighboring states, which would contradict Trump’s stated goal of bringing peace to the Middle East.
As I wrote in a recent brief for the Quincy Institute, Jordan in particular would face a level of upheaval that could bring down King Abdullah II and the Hashemite monarchy that has long worked with the U.S. and Israel. If Trump were to facilitate the displacement of Palestinians into Jordan, Washington could lose an ally and gain an enemy, or at best a government with no interest in working with Tel Aviv or Washington.
YEMEN
An as-yet unidentified Hong Kong-flagged cargo vessel was left adrift in the Red Sea on Tuesday after an “explosion” of some sort forced the crew to abandon ship. All crew members have been rescued but conditions aboard the vessel were described as “dangerous” by a “maritime industry official” who spoke to the AP. Given that the explosion took place when the ship was a couple hundred kilometers off of Yemen’s Red Sea coast it seems reasonable to consider whether this was another Houthi attack on a commercial vessel. But there’s not yet any evidence of an attack. Moreover the Houthis have not yet commented, and they did pledge to turn down the intensity of their Red Sea operations as long as the truce remains in place in Gaza.
IRAN
Is Donald Trump interested in negotiating another nuclear deal with Iran? He’s certainly trying to convey that impression both in word and action, as Laura Rozen reported in her Diplomatic newsletter last week:
What is one to make of President Trump’s decision, in his first days back in office this week, to revoke the U.S. government-provided security details for three former top advisors, alleged to be facing threats from Iran for actions the Trump administration took in his first term?
And is Trump’s targeting of hawkish former Iran aides based on personal animus or perceived disloyalty? Or does it reflect something more about his desire to pursue a diplomatic resolution with Iran?
Trump on Wednesday said he hoped that his administration could reach a deal with Iran that would avoid the prospect of potential military action by Israel or others.
“Iran, hopefully, will make a deal,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday. “And if they don’t make a deal, I guess that’s okay too.”
“Hopefully that could be worked out without having to worry about it,” he said. “It would be really nice if that could be worked out without having to go that further step.”
Trump’s decision to strip the security details from John Bolton, Brian Hook, and Mike Pompeo—his own former national security adviser, Iran envoy, and secretary of state respectively—was a particularly Trumpian (unsubtle and performative) gesture. Ryan Grim at Drop Site speculated that this was part of a “war” between Iran “hawks” and Iran “doves” within the Trump administration—a war that the “hawks” currently appear to be losing.
There’s certainly an opening for negotiations under the current Iranian government led by relatively moderate President Masoud Pezeshkian, though as Responsible Statecraft’s Eldar Mamedov points out it will take a tremendous amount of diplomatic effort to get to a deal. Iran’s nuclear program is considerably advanced from where it was when Trump wrecked the previous nuclear deal in 2018, and to the extent that recent events have weakened Tehran’s regional defense network they may also be pushing Iranian decision makers in the direction of finally weaponizing that program to achieve some degree of strategic parity with Israel.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
Unspecified militants attacked a security outpost in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province overnight, sparking a clash that left at least two soldiers and five of the attackers dead. While the attackers may have been Baluch separatists, Pakistani authorities described them as “khawarij,” which is a term they usually reserve for jihadists and in particular for the Pakistani Taliban.
CHINA
According to Reuters, satellite imagery appears to show that China is building a facility to conduct “fusion research” in the city of Mianyang. The structure includes four “arms” that will hold lasers surrounding a central bay, where those lasers would be fired at hydrogen isotopes in order to fuse them together. It looks similar to the US National Ignition Facility, which is located in California and in 2022 produced the first fusion reaction that generated more energy than it used. The Chinese facility is substantially larger than the NIF. Laser fusion experiments can be directed toward the goal of developing a working fusion reactor, but also can have military utility by allowing countries to simulate aspects of a nuclear blast without conducting a full-blown test that would violate the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.
AFRICA
SUDAN
The United Nations International Organization for Migration says that a series of attacks by the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group on villages around the besieged city of Al-Fashir have displaced “an estimated 3,960 households” over the past three days. Al-Fashir is the only city in the Darfur region that remains outside RSF control, and last week the group ordered all remaining government-aligned forces there to leave the city ASAP. There’s been an intensification of RSF activity around the city since that order was issued.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
M23 rebels reportedly captured Goma’s airport on Tuesday, a bit over a day after their forces entered and claimed the city. The situation inside Goma remains difficult to ascertain, and while the rebels do seem to have it generally in hand there are still reports of fighting suggesting that Congolese security forces and/or pro-government irregulars are still putting up some degree of resistance. Apart from the combat the UN says its personnel are cataloging reports of rape and looting by the militants across the city and that there are “many dead bodies in the streets”—that’s as close as anyone can get to a casualty estimate under the circumstances. AFP has tallied more than 100 killed and 1000 wounded from hospital records but it’s unclear how many casualties have actually made it to a hospital to be counted. The seizure of the airport cuts off one avenue of egress and potentially a vital lifeline for bringing humanitarian aid into Goma once the fighting has more or less subsided.
Protesters in Kinshasa attacked several embassies on Tuesday, including those of M23’s patron, Rwanda, as well as Belgium, France, and the US. They blame Rwanda for enabling (and allegedly participating in) M23’s offensive and the European states for allowing it to happen. The US government has reportedly ordered the evacuation of nonessential embassy personnel and later in the day advised all US citizens to leave the country.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested on Tuesday that his government is unable to hold peace talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky because of the latter’s “illegitimacy” following his cancellation of last year’s presidential election. Putin did allow for the possibility that “a legal way” could be found to hold talks, perhaps involving the chair of the Ukrainian parliament (who is first in the line of succession), but lamented that there seems to be no “desire” on the Ukrainian government’s part to go that route. While Putin’s abiding respect for Ukrainian rule of law is admirable, I guess, I’m not sure it’s his main objection to negotiating. Call it a hunch on my part.
Meanwhile, Axios reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration has sent “around 90 Patriot air defense interceptors” to Ukraine from Israel, where they’d been in storage. This transfer has apparently been discussed for several months, since the Israeli military took its Patriot systems offline back in April, but had been held up by the Israeli government over concerns about how Putin might react. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally agreed to the transfer in September, after Zelensky withheld permission for Israeli nationals to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (d. 1810) in the Ukrainian city of Uman. Presumably he’ll be granting that permission now. Zelensky has been steadily beating the drum for additional air defense systems and ammunition for quite some time now. In addition to the interceptors, several Patriot components are also heading from Israel to Ukraine, but they’re first bound for the US to be “refurbished.”
SERBIA
Serbian Prime Minister Miloš Vučević resigned on Tuesday in hopes of appeasing the protesters who have been rallying against his government since November. Student-led demonstrations began after a concrete train station canopy collapsed in the city of Novi Sad on November 1, killing 15 people and raising public anger over suspicions that corruption fueled the construction of a shoddy canopy and thus led to the collapse. The movement has grown since then to such an extent that it poses a genuine threat to President Aleksandar Vučić, though Vučević has been a particular target both because he signed the deal to reconstruct the train station in question when he was mayor of Novi Sad back in 2022 and because he’s taken a hard line toward the protesters. Demonstrators held a 24 hour blockade at a major intersection in Belgrade on Monday that may have led directly to Vučević’s resignation.
AMERICAS
COLOMBIA
Two deportation flights from the US arrived in Colombia on Tuesday and, contrary to what seems to be the general media sentiment, it looks like Colombian President Gustavo Petro got what he said he wanted out of his back-and-forth with Donald Trump over the weekend. When he rejected the flights on Sunday Petro objected not to the deportations themselves but to the way US authorities were treating the deportees—shackling them and bundling them onto military transport jets. As we noted yesterday, the resolution to this spat involved Petro’s government sending its own aircraft to the US to bring the deportees to Colombia, ensuring that they would be transported under the “dignified conditions” that Petro and his government had been demanding.
Now, having to send your own planes to pick up deportees in another country is not exactly “dignified” in a geopolitical sense, so I don’t know that it’s right to say that Petro was the clear winner in this exchange, but neither do I think all the talk of him “backing down” or “doing an about face” is the right interpretation. And the repercussions of Trump’s decision to make his deportations as humiliating as possible could be serious. Foreign Policy’s Oliver Stuenkel argues that Trump’s approach is likely to push Latin American countries away from the US and toward other partners, potentially including China:
In the medium and long term, however, Trump’s heavy-handed approach will likely reduce U.S. influence in Latin America. After all, every leader in the region, even those who generally back the United States, will look at Trump’s strategy vis-à-vis Panama, Colombia, and Mexico and understand the risks of being overly dependent on Washington. As FP’s Stephen M. Walt pointed out last month, “overt bullying makes people angry and resentful. The typical reaction is to balance against U.S. pressure.” It may also produce a rally-round-the-flag effect, allowing leaders to stand up to the United States for political gain at home.
Most Latin American governments will thus try to diversify their partnerships, turning to other major powers—especially China but also Russia and Europe—to strengthen their bargaining positions. The more threatening Trump seems to Latin American governments, the more they will try to move closer to other major powers.
UNITED STATES
The Trump Experience hit a couple of speed bumps on Tuesday. To wit, the US Senate stymied a bill to sanction the International Criminal Court over the arrest warrants it issued in November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. And a federal judge froze the Trump administration’s attempt to suspend all US government aid programs until at least next Monday. I’m not sure either of these obstacles will be permanent—the aid suspension may well be allowed to go through in the end and if the administration wants to sanction the ICC it will probably find the legal authority to do so. But it’s something.
Finally, I’m not sure if the order halting the suspension of federal aid programs applies to foreign aid as well as domestic programs, but I think it’s worth noting again the havoc that the foreign aid suspension is having:
The sense of crisis among aid groups worldwide is surging, as American officials tell groups they must obey an almost universal stop-work order issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio after Mr. Trump’s directive.
The officials say the groups must freeze nearly all programs that have received any of the $70 billion of annual aid budget approved by Congress through bipartisan negotiations. They include programs that provide medicine, shelter and clean water in dire conditions and often make the difference between life and death.
Uncertain of whether they can pay salaries or get any future funding, groups around the world said they are starting to lay off employees or furlough them. In the United States alone, tens of thousands of employees, many of whom live in the Washington area and rely on contract work with U.S. agencies, could lose their jobs. Some have already been laid off.
Leaders of aid groups say they have never seen such an expansive and damaging directive, even during periods of aid reassessment by earlier administrations. Many of them are scrambling to contact lawmakers and other U.S. officials to get urgent messages to Mr. Rubio. They said some programs will be hard to restart after a temporary shutdown, and many could disappear.
I should note that the US State Department issued new guidance on the aid freeze late Tuesday that appears to create additional exemptions for clearly humanitarian projects alongside the exemptions already carved out for military aid to Israel and Egypt (and, apparently, Ukraine). But who knows whether those exemptions will really protect humanitarian programs or just serve as window dressing to what seems like an unnecessary, and unnecessarily cruel, action.
Kung Hei Fat Choi! Please keep up your excellent work in the Year of the Snake. (And thanks for the voice overs.)