Yesterday, President Trump and President Putin had their second call, to further the cease-fire negotiations over Ukraine. They’re dickering. The New York Times ran the story under the grudging headline, “Putin Agrees to Limited Cease-Fire on Ukraine Energy Targets.”
The bottom line was that Russia agreed to a limited cease-fire, assuming Ukraine agrees. For thirty days, Russia will stop systematically bombing Ukraine’s energy system, and Ukraine must halt its much less effective drone attacks on Russian power plants, which are so useless some proxy war commenters have described them as “pinpricks” and “mosquito bites.”
It was progress, which even the Times was forced to agree. The two leaders agreed to continue negotiating a permanent peace. President Trump seemed pleased with the 2-hour talk:
The two presidents also agreed on a small list of less significant but incremental concessions including, for example, prisoner swaps.
The green sweatshirt was excluded from the discussion. Some analysts pointed out that his conspicuous absence underscored the real conflict to be resolved is the one between the U.S. and Russia, with admittedly eager Ukraine serving as an American proxy. But what I found most interesting in the readouts of the calls was that both Putin’s and Trump’s included a reference to discussion over resolving the conflict in the Middle East.
Maybe the week’s most underreported story was the latest outbreak of war all over the Middle East region. The least interesting part was the announcement of a fulsome and long-overdue attack against Yemen. Foreign Policy ran the story yesterday below the headline, “Trump Dramatically Escalates Military Strikes on Yemen’s Houthis.”
The hot takes were, as usual, off base. Social media rushed to argue that President Trump is no peacemaker! He’s starting a brand new war! Nonsense. The Houthis —a militarized government that runs half of Yemen— have been waging a missile and economic war against the United States and Israel for two years, with the feckless and timid Biden Administration apparently unable or unwilling to tackle the problem.
Just over two years ago, the Yemeni militants exploded onto the global stage due to their missile and drone attacks against commercial shipping and U.S. warships in a narrow, Red Sea chokepoint called the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, shown above. Not only did the attacks humiliate the U.S., which kept losing, but since the strait is used for ten percent of the world’s shipping transit, they also spiked worldwide costs and prices.
I have long argued in C&C that these Yemenese attacks are part and parcel to the Proxy War in Ukraine. Russia repeatedly warned Biden that, if the U.S. kept arming Ukraine, Russia would start arming the U.S.’s problematic regional adversaries. I cannot prove the Russians began supplying more advanced arms to the Houthis, but the timing and circumstantial evidence fit.
The Middle East is burning. Three days ago, the delicate cease-fire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas collapsed after Hamas broke its agreement and refused to release any more hostages. And, as we’ve seen, the pro-Russian Syrian government fell, and Syria is now a failed state now suffering horrible internal chaos.
By my count, Israel —supported by the U.S.— is currently and openly fighting Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthi militants in Yemen, and ambiguous armies in Syria. And a new open conflict is once again brewing between Israel and Iran.
It’s an absolute mess.
So it was no wonder that Trump and Putin’s call included discussions over the Middle East. My simplified reading is that, when the Ukraine proxy war ends and America stops arming Russia’s enemy, then Russia will stop helping the U.S.’s (and Israel’s) enemies, and the Middle East situation can be resolved next.
Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz famously quipped that war is the continuation of politics by other means. America’s recent attacks on the Houthis were not unprovoked aggression against defenseless militants (pure nonsense), and not only were they (regrettably) necessary, but they were almost certainly one of Trump’s opening moves in brokering a permanent peace in the Middle East.
Who knows. But I suggest the concept of a bigger picture. Trump appears to be working on a truly global resolution, not just between Russia and Ukraine, but among all major conflicts that Biden’s neocons allowed to spiral out of control.
So it was unsurprising that yesterday Trump also met with leaders from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), who the President described “have long been partners in the work to bring peace and security to the Middle East and the World”:
The breathtaking scope of Trump’s worldwide peace plan is right there, for anyone to see, except that corporate media is bumbling along like Mr. Magoo at an eye exam.
Key point: IF Ukraine agrees.
This AM I read that Zelensky considers this to be a “red line crossed.”
Question is, does Zelenskyy have any cards to play to back up his words?
Everything in the real world points to Ukraine giving up Russian-majority territory to Russia.