World roundup: May 27 2025
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Sudan, Russia, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
May 27, 1644: A Qing army under the Shunzhi Emperor’s regent, Dorgon, along with a Ming Dynasty army under general Wu Sangui, defeats the forces of the Shun Dynasty under Emperor Li Zicheng at the Battle of Shanhai Pass. During the collapse of the Ming Dynasty, the Manchurian Qing began to threaten China’s northern borders, while rebels under Li attacked the Ming from within the empire. Wu commanded one of the gates through the Great Wall, and faced with threats from either side he opted to allow the Qing through the gate to deal with Li. Wu initially seems to have meant for the Qing to help him restore the Ming Dynasty once the rebels were dispatched, but instead Dorgon continued on to Beijing, toppled the Ming, and claimed the Mandate of Heaven for the Shunzhi Emperor.
May 27, 1942: In “Operation Anthropoid,” two Czechoslovakian soldiers successfully assassinate the head of the Reich Main Security Office and the Nazi governor of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich, in Prague. The soldiers and their fellow conspirators had been trained and advised by operatives from Britain’s Special Operations Executive. They initially believed the attack had failed, but Heydrich later succumbed either to his wounds or to an infection that was brought on by his wounds. By some estimates the Nazis killed roughly 5000 people during the investigation/collective punishment campaign that ensued.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
The Trump administration on Friday lifted a number of Syrian sanctions designations and issued a wide-ranging waiver to the 2019 “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act,” following up on Donald Trump’s promise earlier this month to provide the Syrian government with sanctions relief. The issuance of the waiver highlights the fact that Trump overreached when he made that promise, inasmuch as sanctions legislation like the Caesar act can only be fully lifted by Congress. He’s doing his best, I suppose.
Meanwhile, the Syrian government seems to be making progress on a couple of the conditions for sanctions relief—it is reportedly engaged in “direct” negotiations with its Israeli counterpart with a focus on “calming tensions and preventing conflict,” and it’s reportedly come to some sort of agreement with the Syrian Democratic Forces group to remove Syrian nationals from the SDF’s al-Hol prison camp. The latter is particularly significant. The SDF is holding some 37,000 people in that camp, mostly family members of Islamic State fighters. Al-Hol is badly overcrowded and under-managed, and given that a large portion of its inhabitants are Syrian, moving them elsewhere could significantly improve conditions there.
LEBANON
The Lebanese government and the Palestine Liberation Organization declared on Friday that they will “launch a process for the handover of weapons” held by factions inside Palestinian refugee camps, “accompanied by practical steps to improve the economic and social rights of Palestinian refugees.” The announcement came on the heels of PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas’s visit to Lebanon, where he discussed the issue of disarming those factions with Lebanese leaders. It’s unclear when this process is supposed to begin or how it’s expected to work, apart from a general sense that Lebanese officials will enter the camps and demand the weapons. If the factions refuse to cooperate—Hamas being the big concern here—then according to Al-Monitor’s Beatrice Farhat unspecified “Arab and regional parties…will assist Lebanon” in pressuring the holdouts to disarm.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
There are several items of note:
Fans of the Biden administration’s management of the genocide in Gaza are undoubtedly enjoying the Trump administration’s adoption of the same basic framework. We got another sample of that over the past couple of days, when the Trump administration proposed a new ceasefire deal that Hamas accepted and the Israeli government rejected, at which point the Trump administration blamed Hamas for wrecking the deal. You can read the terms of the proposal at Drop Site, though at this point I’m not sure it matters. More interesting is the wide divergence between what Hamas apparently thought was in the proposal and what the Trump administration later claimed. You can argue that anything Hamas claims should be treated skeptically, but shouldn’t that same principle apply to anything that comes out of the Trump administration?
The “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” began distributing aid on Monday, despite the resignation of its executive director the previous day. Jake Wood, a former US Marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said that he’d quit when it became “clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.” The GHF plan appears largely to be modeled on a previous Israeli proposal that distributes aid from a small number of fixed facilities in southern Gaza to designated and biometrically screened individuals. The bottlenecking of aid in this way is designed to force civilian displacement and the biometric aspect raises the fear that aid distribution could be politicized or even weaponized against specific Palestinians.
It’s unclear how many people have actually gotten any aid from the GHF over the past couple of days but what we do know is that the distribution has so far been a chaotic mess. The Israeli military (IDF) fired “warning shots” at a crowd of civilians at one understaffed distribution point on Tuesday after GHF workers became overwhelmed by the number of aid-seekers. There have also been reports of looting, which as it happens is the thing that this whole scheme is ostensibly supposed to prevent.
There is still a concerted effort in a particular media circle to manufacture the impression that the latest atrocities in Gaza have put Israel on the verge of international pariah-hood. Barak Ravid at Axios claims that “Israel’s isolation is moving beyond mere rhetoric,” which in a legal setting would be what they call “assuming facts not in evidence.” He cites the UK government’s decision to suspend (which by definition is a temporary thing) trade talks with Israel and the possibility that the French government might move at some point to recognize a Palestinian state. Huge, if true. The European Union may be close to partially suspending its association agreement with Israel, which could actually have some bite depending on what parts of the agreement are impacted. But that very much remains to be seen and at any rate the earliest it could happen appears to be the June 23 EU foreign ministers’ conference. This all seems pretty small potatoes, given that the underlying issue is the systematic starvation and attempted ethnic cleansing of some 2 million people.
The AP published a new report on the IDF’s use of Palestinian human shields on Saturday, and while I wouldn’t call it shocking (nothing the IDF does at this point could be considered “shocking”) it is revealing. It describes as “systematic” and “ubiquitous” the IDF’s use of civilians “to check for explosives or militants” in Gaza, a tactic that Israeli officials insist is forbidden but that Israeli soldiers insist is tolerated and even at times ordered by their officers.
IRAQ
Amwaj reported on Saturday that “a complex prisoner exchange between Iraq, Iran and Israel is said to be nearing implementation.” The most prominent participant from a Western perspective is presumably Princeton University researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov, who was taken captive by the Kataʾib Hezbollah militia in Iraq back in 2023. In exchange for her release the Israeli government would free several Lebanese captives (most/all connected to Hezbollah) and the Iraqi government would release an Iranian national held “over accusations of involvement in attacks against US targets.”
IRAN
Donald Trump characterized Friday’s US-Iranian nuclear talks as “very, very good” in comments to reporters on Sunday, citing their “real progress, serious progress.” As far as I can tell nobody seems to know what he was talking about. He even said that “we could have some good news on the Iran front…over the next two days.” It’s now been two days and so far nothing, though maybe that will have changed by the time you read this. Or not. On Friday, Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi said that the negotiations had made “some but not conclusive progress,” which seems a bit less effusive but perhaps more realistic, and certainly makes it sound like a breakthrough is more than a couple of days away.
In the meantime, Israel’s Channel 12 outlet reported that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a “heated phone call” last week as Trump insisted that Netanyahu refrain from a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. You can probably file that in the “signifying nothing” folder right next to all of the European angst outlined above.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
Unspecified gunmen killed a police officer guarding a polio vaccination team in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province on Tuesday. There’s no indication as to responsibility. The Pakistani Taliban regularly attacks vaccination operations, but given the location it may also be that Baluch separatists availed themselves of an opportunity to kill a police officer.
BANGLADESH
Bangladeshi Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus was reportedly on the brink of resigning last week before aides talked him down. According to The Diplomat, Yunus became frustrated by squabbling between the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the National Citizen Party as well as perceived interference in civilian politics by the Bangladeshi military. In particular, military boss Waker-Uz-Zaman apparently suggested at a meeting of senior officers earlier this month that Yunus’s interim administration should hold new elections by December and criticized the potential creation of a “humanitarian corridor” through Bangladesh to support Myanmar’s Rohingya population, an idea Yunus is considering. Yunus has pledged to hold elections by June 2026 but hasn’t done much beyond that to advance the process, which may be causing some consternation among the parties and the military.
NORTH KOREA
World Politics Review’s Theresa Lou argues that, if he’s really hoping to restart negotiations with North Korea, Donald Trump must understand that the circumstances surrounding that process will be much different than they were during his first term:
Just over a year ago, the multinational body established to provide credible, independent analysis and reporting on the implementation of United Nations Security Council sanctions on North Korea was disbanded. Known officially as the UNSC 1718 Sanctions Committee Panel of Experts, the body’s mandate expired in April 2024, after Russia vetoed its renewal the previous month. Since then, the international community’s ability to monitor and constrain one of the world’s most dangerous nuclear threats has been severely limited.
At a moment when the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is reportedly evaluating opportunities to restart dialogue with North Korea, the panel’s demise is a stark reminder of how much the strategic environment has shifted since Trump’s diplomatic engagements with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his first administration.
Back then, international pressure on Pyongyang was arguably at its peak and provided crucial leverage for Trump’s leader-level diplomacy. Today’s world looks much different. The Security Council is paralyzed by geopolitical gridlock. Russia has joined China in actively shielding Pyongyang from international condemnation and sanctions pressure. And North Korea has grown more financially and militarily capable at a time when U.S. alliances are strained.
As the Trump administration revisits its North Korea policy, it must reckon with a strategic environment that looks far different than it did in 2018 and 2019, when Trump met Kim in two high-profile summits. Failure to do so could leave the U.S. with even fewer tools to manage an increasingly dangerous North Korean threat.
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AFRICA
SUDAN
Sudan is experiencing a “spike” in cholera cases, with the country’s military government reporting on Tuesday 2700 new infections and 172 deaths in just the past seven days. By comparison, last Tuesday it reported 2300 cases and 51 deaths over the previous three weeks. The Sudanese doctors’ union is challenging even the latest dire figures, claiming that “hundreds” of people have died of the illness in just the Khartoum area. Electricity and other utilities are down across Khartoum state as a result of recent fighting between the Sudanese military and Rapid Support Forces militants. That has impacted water treatment systems and seems to be driving much of this crisis. Hospitals in the area are poorly supplied and already overwhelmed as it is so they’ve been struggling to treat all of these new patients.
NIGER
Islamic State has claimed responsibility for an attack on a military outpost in western Niger’s Tahoua region on Sunday in which it says its fighters killed “about 40” soldiers. There’s been no official comment from the Nigerien government but sources who spoke to AFP have confirmed that the attack took place and that “there were deaths” (with no indication as to how many) among the military forces.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
A new report from Amnesty International accuses the M23 militant group, which has seized much of the eastern DRC, of carrying out multiple atrocities against civilians “including torture, killings and enforced disappearances” that “violate international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes.” Researchers spoke with 18 people who say they were held captive by the rebels and can speak to the treatment they and others received while in custody.
Elsewhere, the Congolese Senate voted last week to strip former President Joseph Kabila of legal immunity, alleging that he’s committed treason by supporting M23. Now it seems Kabila has returned to the country after years in self-imposed exile, and he’s decided to make his return in…Goma, the largest city that’s come under M23 control. He’s apparently been warmly welcomed by the rebels, which isn’t going to do much to shake those treason allegations. It’s not entirely clear why Kabila is back or how much support he really gave to M23 prior to his resurfacing. He and current President Félix Tshisekedi conspired (allegedly) to throw the 2018 presidential election to Tshisekedi but they’ve had a bitter falling out since then.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
The Trump-Putin relationship pendulum has apparently swung back toward hostility over the past few days, as Donald Trump took to social media on Tuesday to warn that “if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD,” while suggesting that Vladimir Putin is “playing with fire!” Two days earlier Trump posted his opinion that “something has happened” to Putin and that “he has gone absolutely CRAZY!” following an extensive Russian bombardment of Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities over the weekend—including what the Ukrainian military claimed was the largest Russian air assault of the entire war from Saturday night into Sunday.
After disavowing the possibility as recently as a week ago, Trump over the weekend indicated that he might announce new sanctions against Russia in a matter of days. It’s clear that whatever plan Trump thought he had to end this war when he took office has devolved to the point where he’s just reacting from moment to moment, which explains why he keeps wildly lurching from pro-Ukraine to pro-Russia positions. His inconsistency is now itself becoming an obstacle to a resolution.
UKRAINE
Meanwhile, the governor of Ukraine’s Sumy oblast, Oleh Hryhorov, reported on Tuesday that Russian forces had seized four border villages in that province, part of a “buffer zone” that Moscow wants to create to prevent another Ukrainian invasion of neighboring Kursk oblast. This report comes after the Russians claimed over the weekend that they’d seized one village in Sumy and two more in Donestk oblast. The Russian advance has been painfully slow and probably quite costly of late, but it hasn’t stopped. On a more positive note, the Russians and Ukrainians completed their latest prisoner exchange on Sunday, having swapped 1000 POWs each over the previous three days. The success of the swap was tempered by the weekend Russian bombardment and by an AP report finding that some 200 Ukrainian POWs have died in Russian custody since 2022. There is considerable reason to believe that most died due to mistreatment, including torture and/or starvation.
The New York Times reports that satellite imagery shows the Russians attempting, probably inadvisably, to restart Ukraine’s largest nuclear plant:
The facility, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, was seized by Russia early in the war in a move widely condemned by the international community. Its proximity to frontline fighting has raised fears of a potential nuclear disaster, and experts have warned against any attempt to restart the plant under current conditions.
The Greenpeace report, which was shared with The New York Times, includes satellite images showing that, since early February, Russia has been building more than 50 miles of electricity lines and pylons between the occupied Ukrainian cities of Mariupol and Berdyansk, along the coast of the Azov Sea. The satellite images were verified by The Times.
Based on the location and direction of the work, Greenpeace said the project aimed to link the new power lines to a large substation near Mariupol that was connected to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, about 140 miles farther west.
AMERICAS
VENEZUELA
Venezuelan voters—a few of them, at least—headed to the polls for parliamentary and regional elections on Sunday. There was no suspense in the outcome inasmuch as the opposition boycotted, and so government-backed candidates seem to have more or less swept the field. The main element of interest here is that the election included offices in Essequibo, a region that as far as the rest of the world is concerned belongs to Guyana, not Venezuela. There is no indication that those votes were anything more than symbolic declarations of the Venezuelan government’s claim on that region, primarily targeted at nationalist voters in Venezuela proper. It’s not entirely clear how the Essequibo votes actually took place, even after the election. Nevertheless, they raised concerns in Guyana and elsewhere that Caracas might be advancing plans for some sort of annexation attempt.
UNITED STATES
Finally, the Trump administration is suspending the process of issuing student visas while it implements a program of “expanded social media vetting” for applicants. So if you desperately want to study in the United States you are advised to fill your social media feeds with praise for Donald Trump and absolutely nothing that might be taken as criticism of him, the US government, or the state of Israel. But I guess my question at this point would be why anybody is still interested in studying in the United States, or in coming to the US at all except out of sheer desperation—though in that case, as in someone seeking asylum, their chances of entry are virtually nil unless they happen to be a white South African.
In fact it sounds like interest in coming to the United States is waning, as travelers decide it’s not worth the risk of being detained on suspicion of foreignness. Travel and Tour World reported over the weekend that “European airlines are freezing their transatlantic growth and pulling back from major U.S. cities like New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and Chicago as they redirect flights to Canada, Mexico, Brazil and [the] Caribbean, where bookings are rising and demand is outpacing the American market.” So I guess the Trump administration is getting what it wants, though in the process it seems to be taking a sledgehammer to a couple of the real load-bearing pillars of American empire—the influx of highly educated foreigners and tourism—and I’m not sure that’s what it intends to be doing.
Speaking of those load-bearing pillars, at TomDispatch Alfred McCoy discusses another one that Trump has already demolished:
In President Donald Trump’s transactional diplomacy, only the hard power of mineral deals, gifted airplanes, or military might matters. And yet, as we learned in the Cold War years, it’s much easier to exercise world leadership with willing followers won over by the form of diplomacy scholars have dubbed “soft power.” As the progenitor of the concept, Harvard Professor Joseph Nye, put it: “Seduction is always more effective than coercion. And many of our values, such as democracy, human rights, and individual opportunity, are deeply seductive.” He first coined the term in 1990, just as the Cold War was ending, writing that “when one country gets other countries to want what it wants,” that “might be called co-optive or soft power, in contrast with the hard or command power of ordering others to do what it wants.” In his influential 2004 book, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, Nye argued that, in our world, raw military power had been superseded by soft-power instruments like reliable information, skilled diplomacy, and economic aid.
Actually, soft power is seldom soft. Indeed, Spanish steel might have conquered the New World in the sixteenth century, but its long rule over that vast region was facilitated by the appeal of a shared Christian religion. When Britain’s global turn came in the nineteenth century, its naval dominion over the world’s oceans was softened by an enticing cultural ethos of commerce, language, literature, and even sports. And as the American century dawned after World War II, its daunting troika of nuclear-armed bombers, missiles, and submarines would be leavened by the soft-power appeal of its democratic values, its promise of scientific progress, and its humanitarian aid that started in Europe with the Marshall Plan in 1948.
Even in these uncertain times, one thing seems clear enough: Donald Trump’s sharp cuts to this country’s humanitarian aid will ensure that its soft power crumbles, doing lasting damage to its international standing.