How much pain can Chinese steelworkers take? (Credit: Kevin Frayer/Getty)
Donald Trump boasted that world leaders were “kissing my ass” as they scrambled to negotiate tariff deals with the United States. At a fundraising dinner this week in Washington, the President taunted his purported sycophants: “Please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything, sir.” It’s not obvious who exactly he was referring to, but at least one country was having none of it. China’s riposte to Washington’s declaration of a trade war was: bring it on.
On Wednesday, Trump put a 90-day pause on tariffs above 10%. There was one major exception: China, with whom the president has started a perilous game of chicken. After his administration imposed a further 34% surcharge to the earlier set of tariffs it had slapped on China, the Chinese leadership reciprocated, applying the same 34% right back. Even as he paused tariffs for the rest of the world, Trump announced he would put China’s tariff up to 125%.
The markets rallied in response to the 90-day pause. But in the four days that followed Liberation Day, Americans saw more than $6 trillion of their wealth evaporate in the stock market, and they’re still sitting on losses. Their interest rates spiked as investors dumped US Treasuries they no longer regarded as safe, and the purchasing power of their dollars fell as foreigners pulled up stakes and retreated back home. If this is the outcome of the so-called Thucydides Trap, the idea that a declining empire ends up at war with a rising one, the early betting by investors seems to be against an American victory. Trump, reluctantly, may have been forced to confront that reality.
Not that anyone stands to gain from a trade war. If the initial, aggressive global tariff programme is resumed, the whole world economy will suffer, with estimates of the cumulative reduction in global economic growth in coming years having rising above 2%. In the short term, smaller economies that depend heavily on trade with the US — Mexico, Canada, Vietnam, and let’s not forget poor little Lesotho — would be hit the hardest, but everyone will come off worse. As the old African proverb has it, when two elephants fight, only the grass suffers.
But once the dust has settled, it may well be that the winner, in relative terms, is China. The country may bounce back harder than its rival because Trump appears to have succumbed to the fatal flaw of many an empire in decline: hubris. He has over-estimated his strength and under-estimated his foe’s.
In this cavalier frame of mind, Trump launched his trade war with no clear strategy, probably assuming everyone would quickly surrender. His end-game is little more than a vaguely operationalised goal of stopping the world from ripping off or plundering the States, however one measures that. This has left America ill-prepared for a possibly drawn-out trade conflict with China, in which it could be at a disadvantage. By opening up a couple of hundred trade-war fronts at once, Trump endangered just over a tenth of the American economy. And in doing so, he has made enemies everywhere. China, by contrast, has focused its new trade barriers only on the United States, which accounts for about 2.5% of its GDP — or closer to 4%, if one includes “connector” countries like Vietnam.
In other words, having declared it will “fight to the end if the US side is bent on going down the wrong path”, Beijing is prepared to take the hit, no doubt secure in the knowledge that it is taking a far smaller economic risk than the United States.
China’s deftness results from what is, in contrast to the US, a clear strategy. Its aim is to maintain an open world trading order that has served it well, and use this as a market to develop the high-value export industries it believes will define the future, like renewable energy, EVs, robotics and artificial intelligence. It will happily exploit the United States’ newly fraught relations with other countries: positioning itself as the new guarantor of the world trading order the US has renounced, China is securing growing markets in the developing world while managing relations with Europe.
In addition, China enjoys an advantage over the US in political and economic firepower. That might seem a strange thing to say, given that the US economy is bigger than China’s, with a much higher per capita income, and is much less exposed to trade with China than China is to the US. But that simple arithmetic is misleading. The question is not just how much punishment each country can apply, but how much pain it can absorb.
Whereas the Chinese leadership can justify its action to its people by saying it didn’t pick this war, it seems unlikely the average American whose cost of living shoots up will celebrate simply because he or she hears someone in China has it worse. Politically, the US administration has not prepared the nation for anything more than a brief skirmish, with Trump bragging that trade wars are easy to win. The President came to office on a pledge to bring down inflation and boost the economy — now, financial meltdown has driven a precipitous drop in his approval rating.
Nor does insisting that this is short-term pain for long-term gain help Trump’s cause much. It may keep his base on board for now, but swing voters have been abandoning Republicans, as recent special elections have shown. The longer this conflict drags out, the worse that will get. Peter Navarro said this week that the stock market is now bottoming and the Dow Jones Industrial Average will soon go to 50,000, but if instead it keeps plummeting, or if inflation spins out of control, the administration’s soft treatment by Right-wing cheerleaders may soon wear out. One study estimated that a wider tariff war would knock nearly 2% off America’s economic growth and raise prices by as much as 7%. Unlike the Chinese leadership, the US faces mid-term elections next year, and if the price of eggs keeps on rising, Trump could lose his foot soldiers.
Meanwhile, China has a lot of what can be called economic strategic depth. The basic tension in the US/China trade relationship is that the US has been living beyond its means, whereas China has been living well beneath them, repressing wages to keep export prices competitive. Faced with the loss of external markets, the Chinese leadership is now re-orienting the economy towards domestic consumption to pick up the slack, which will lessen the impact of the trade war on ordinary citizens. It thereby has a lot of capacity to absorb lost American sales.
Unlike the US, China has kept a lot of its powder dry. It could, for instance, still restrict exports of critical minerals to the US or target US multinationals with operations in China. And with its very high domestic savings rate, Beijing has a lot of fiscal space to cushion the blow of a prolonged war. The US, in contrast, depends for its deficit-financing on creditors who, to judge from the plunge in US bond prices this week, are already losing patience with Trump.
Taking all that into account, Beijing’s defiant and resolute tone shouldn’t surprise us. Before Trump’s announcement of the 125% tariff, it responded to Trump’s previous upping of the ante by again reciprocating, leaving US exports to China facing an 84% tariff. Whereas the US leadership is at war with itself, with Elon Musk openly calling Navarro, the suspected architect of the tariff schedule, a “moron”, “dumber than a sack of bricks”, and “Peter Retarrdo”, and with various members of the administration publicly telling audiences they’re not responsible for the policy, the Chinese leadership remains unified.
That’s to be expected, given the country’s authoritarian model, but what’s more noteworthy is the relative unity, so far, across China’s corporate elite as well. Unlike in the United States, where CEOs and fund managers have been screaming for a change in direction, China’s major companies are telling their clients they should be able to manage the challenge. Whereas US grocery bills are expected to leap, Chinese food producers are saying they should be able to keep price increases limited. The confidence index among chief economists remains positive, the government is bolstering stock prices and improving liquidity in the banking system, and the rapidly-rising new energy sector expects to be largely immune from the impact of the America salvo. This isn’t surprising, given since so much of China’s export market for this sector’s products lies in the developing world. While Tesla’s share price has fallen by half, its Chinese rival BYD’s is up 20% this year.
No doubt there is an element of bravado in the tough talk from China. But all the signs are that the country is up for this fight. It remains to be seen whether Trump’s 90-day suspension is a ceasefire or a surrender. But either way, it doesn’t look like an early show of strength.
John Rapley is an author and academic who divides his time between London, Johannesburg and Ottawa. His books include Why Empires Fall: Rome, America and the Future of the West (with Peter Heather, Penguin, 2023) and Twilight of the Money Gods: Economics as a Religion (Simon & Schuster, 2017).
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SubscribeOh look, we seem to have found the one person who actually likes Netanyahu. Wonder what he thinks of those ongoing corruption trials?
What a childish remark! I didn’t read the article as particularly favouring Netanyahu, but in any case whether or not he is “corrupt” as absolutely nothing to do with his ability as a war leader.
I once argued with someone who described the British Empire was “totally corrupt”. The British Empire may have had many failings but deep corruption at least after the East India Company period was not one of them! But of course my interlocutor had absolutely no understanding what corruption is – to him just a generally bad thing. I would have thought a child could understand that somebody could be bad at one thing but good at another!
I don’t see any reference here to the longer term. Something like 25,000 young Gazans turn 18 each year (and that’s just the men).
The infrastructure of Gaza is largely destroyed, leaving even less opportunity than before.
Ideally, in Zionist thinking, they would all simply be wished away and the ‘settlers’ would roll in.
Given that’s not going to happen, what’s the plan?
Unhinged. A war? Really? Dropping drone shits on women and children and donkeys is a war? Unbelievable. No mention of the thousands upon thousands of innocent children obliterated. For what? Yes, Oct 7 happened. Awful. And what happened before ? The wanton murder of innocents in the annual lawn mo. The ongoing land Thieving in the West Bank? They should just submit? Israel don’t submit. The narcissism is next level. How many fighters do you think Hamas have now recruited?
Do you cry possibly for the Ukrainians?. And if not, why not? Your comments are an utterly ridiculous emotional spasm. The IDF goes to more lengths than most military forces to avoid civilian deaths. Hamas aggressive military infrastructure – that it shouldn’t have built in the first place – was deliberately embedded amongst the civilian population – which in itself is a war crime. Civilians inevitably dying wars – and they die in greater numbers when they have such a cynical evil leadership.
As for the West Bank, both settlers and Palestinians have been killed, but of course the anti-israeli lobby is extremely selective in their outrage. Of course the idea of Hamas launched the 7th of October attack in response to this low level violence is ludicrous as well; the main purpose was probably to just write derail further Israeli Arab rapprochement.
Here is some history: if Jordan hadn’t decided to attack Israel in 1967, all of that land would still be part of Jordan where the Palestinians were citizens. (Of course now we’ll get some childish and irrelevant crying that that wasn’t the fault of the Palestinians – though I pretty much guess that they did support the attempted obliteration of Israel in 1967!). Sometimes you have to deal with the consequences of your own actions and more unfairly the consequences of the foolish actions of your own political leaders and those of neighboring countries. The Palestinians of certainly been appallingly represented by their leadership and cynically used by other Arab States. But that’s not fundamentally Israel’s fault.
Following on from Trumps victory in Nov , it’s not clear to me why Netanyahu hasnt already attacked Iran’s nuclear assets . Surely the only thing preventing him was Biden? (or whomever was acting as Bidens brain)
If the rumoured terms are correct, this is a VERY BAD DEAL for Israel and the world.
1) It releases thousands of Hamas murderers
2) Leaves Hamas hope of regrouping
3)Gives no guarantee of getting all the remaining hostages alive
4) Allows Hamas a net gain for its 7 Oct 2023 atrocity (they don’t care about Gazans)
5) Makes Israel’s war indecisive
6) Makes a mockery of the 850 or so Israeli soldiers who gave their lives for what should have been a decisive “never again” victory, while minimising collateral Gazan casualties to an unprecedented degree for urban warfare.
7) Not just the 850 Soldiers lives squandered, but the original 1,200 citizens and murdered hostages and Gazans killed and displaced.
8) This is the kind of “deal” that was repeated several times since 2005, and led to ever more war and finally 7 Oct 2023 and this present war.
In Arabic, “Salam” has the root meaning of “submission”. Naively, “salam” is translated as “peace”, but you do not understand the Arabs of the Middle-East, if you do not understand that their idea of “Peace” is when one side submits.
The Middle East only ever has peace when one side of a conflict proves itself decisively stronger than its rivals. If Trump wants to take “credit” he is being as misled by his [State Department?] advisors as he was by Pfizer over the mRNA Covid “vaccine”.
Use this as an opportunity to expose the bogus advisors. Reject the “deal”.
Yeah, Biden was so miserly with helping Israel. What a tight wad! I wonder if Iran might hit Israel’s nuclear assets?
It seems very likely that the smart money is on the ceasefire breaking down and The destruction of Hamas will proceed as is desperately needed.
It is distasteful that Israel has to do a deal with Hamas – but overall this has been a great success for Israel. Gaza is literally rubble – a fit punishment of the Gazans for their on Gaza. Support for Palestinians in the west in my opinion is waning due to the awful behaviour of their supporters in the West. If Trump puts tough sanctions back on Iran it is quite likely the regime will collapse all on its own. The murder of three Supreme Court Judges shows which way things are blowing there.
Well, let’s just say, Lord, judge evil! Whoever does evil, whoever lies, whoever is unjust, whoever hates their neighbor, whoever murders his neighbor deserves hell. I think we can all agree on that.
“Trade strategic territory for hostages”. It’s not Israel’s territory though, is it?
Apparently International Law and human rights are very unpopular among Unherd readers.. you must therefore celebrate your ‘dislikes’.. well said!
A total military defeat of Hamas might ring hollow in any event. What will rise up to take its place in the wasteland that has been left behind may, sadly, be even more chilling.
What could be more chilling than a genocide? or are you just wondering if a terrorist attack might be coming to a shopping mall or concert near you?
I agree with Blinken that it is dangerous for Israel not to say it will put a 2 state solution on the table if the palestinians want peace with Israel. Palestinians need to see they are getting somewhere with the palestinian authority’s approach over the Hamas approach.
The PLO is as popular in Palestine as a bacon sandwich at a Jewish wedding.. Hamas are the winners of the conflict.. and any solution will have to involve Hamas.. such a solution will never be agreed to and so will have to be imposed by the UN when America throws Israel under the bus.. or pulls it under the bus after it ends up there first..
What is irritating me now is twofold. That I cannot reply. Further it irritates me that some people go behind the moniker of ‘Unherd Reader’. Just change your usernames please.
I agree
I don’t understand why the much mentioned “2 state” solution is a good idea? Surely a 3 state solution makes more sense.
A self-ruling Gaza, and a self-ruling West-Bank or whatever is left of it. West Pakistan and East Pakistan (Bangladesh) didn’t work, with India forever between the two. So why should West Palestine (Gaza) and East Palestine (West Bank) work, with Israel forever between the two?
Finance Minister Smotrich has announced that if Israel’s not back at war in Gaza next month he’s leaving the Cabinet. Probably enough to bring Bibi’s Government down.
Good riddance, maybe his bubonic plage will get him in the meantime? We can hope.. also Netanyahu’s stage 3 prostate cancer might consume what is left of his rotten soul and see him off to the same just reward.. the deepest recesses of Hell
They should worry more about what’s coming in the next 10 or 15 years. All those kids who happened to be in schools where Hamas hides weapons, all those kids who saw bombs rip apart their neighbours, friends, parents, … What will those people become once they grow up? I tell you, even if Israel disappears today, those kids will still go after every Jew in the world.
The future doesn’t look so good for the Jewish state, unless somehow they get rid of basically everyone who hates them, I mean like wipe them off the face of the earth.
The Arabs have been ‘going for Israel’ since it was created and still haven’t beaten them once. I highly doubt another generation of poorly trained, disorganised people in a non-state are suddenly going to win a war.
Nope.. the other way round! Read some history..
Enough have already joined Hamas to make up for all the Hamas fighters killed or wounded, and more besides.. the new recruits will be far more vengeful that the old guard.. I can tell you, if it was me having seen my innocent family blown to pieces, tortured, starved and raped there wouldn’t be an Zionist safe anywhere in the world! Maybe you’d just take it on the chin and say, ah well, these things happen, don’t they, would you?
The headline is actually outrageous. This war is properly called “Iran’s war against the world”.
What utter rubbish.. please take a moment to list all the wars waged by Iran in the last 35 years and then list the dozens started by the US and its puppermaster Israel..
While you’re at it, list all the Wars instigated by every Muslim state vs those started by non Muslim states.. the Statistics don’t lie.. but you do!
Since there’s no inter-commenter dialog happening in these comments, I assume everyone is disabled from commenting on other posts – ?
Temporarily, I’m sure.
After the “Horrors” of Oct 7th (now largely discredited by even ISRAELI news outlets!) vs a mere “war” between Israel and Hamas, I stopped reading.. we have enough lies, distortions and propaganda from legacy media thank you.. so, yes, thank you for you opening phraseology.. it saved me the bother of reading any more of your garbage..
You cannot possibly believe the rubbish you spout. Have you seen what happened, spoke to the people who witnessed the massacre, seen the bullet holes in childrens bedrooms, watched the videos of what Hamas did in those Kibbutzim? Oh yeah freedom fighters alright. Heard the rockets which come daily almost for years? There’s pain and injustice on both sides over decades, but this hatred and bias just makes it worse and is no solution.
I’m fully familiar with all the available facts (many of which I learned from ISRAELI news sources and victims of Oct 7th). I am equally familiar with the never ending NAKBA massacres and ethnic cleansing dating from 1948 and contuinuing unrelentingly to this day.. Israeli atrocities outnumber Hamas atrocities 100 to 1.. reasld some history, look at the statistics.. read the JEWISH / ISRAELI accounts..
I refer you to Haaretz and Gideon Levi, and Ilan Papé, and Avi Shlaim, ad Gabor Maté, and Noam Chomsky, Norman Finklestein, Max Blumenthal l, Jeffrey Sachs, etc etc.
EVERY ONE is Jewish.. no need to consider any Muslim, any Christian, any Palestinian accounts..
If you weren’t so incurably indoctrinated, lied to, propagandised and brain dead you’d see very clearly how utterly wrong you are on this – I’m assuming you’re a human being with at least some modicum of decency.. if not then of course I’m wasting my time trying to educate you.. and by the way, much of what allegedly happened on Oct 7th has been completely debunked by the SAME JEWISH press and spokesmenas downright lies and gross exaggeration.
There is zero possibility of a two state system, the opposing parties are and always will be intent on destroying the other. This has been so since Britain forcibly took land from the Arabs to form the state of Israel.
The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.. a simple, easy and blindingly obvious solution would involve two DEMILITARISED states with 100% UN armed peacekeepers and a UN police force. This is not a novel solution.. the UN have been doing this for years.. and yes, it would have to be imposed upon, not agreed to by, Israel and Palestine but that wouldn’t new either, would it?
Extremely discouraging comments for the most part to a deeply biased article painting the Gazans in a way the Nazis spoke of the gypsies and the Jews. The author’s bias and refusal to acknowledge certain truths about the conduct of the war on the IDF’s part is shameful. I did not expect to see such a perniciously partisan and factually incorrect article on Unheard. But then if one indoctrinates one’s population from kindergarten to worship the IDF, what hope of a just peace is there?
I agree with your critique of the article’s bias. Basically, Zionists came to take all of Palestine from the Palestinians and make a majority Jewish state with a mission of being ethnically Jewish. It is really quite obvious that this is the ultimate cause of suffering over the Jewish/Palestinian issues.
But we are stuck with the suffering and injustice. It is probably too late to get Jewish refugees to come to the USA instead of colonizing Palestine, and a two-state solution is impractical given the unpopularity of the Zionist project among non-Jewish populations in Israel/Palestine and elsewhere. Moreover, if outside actors quit arming and supplying Israel and resistance organizations, the bordering states cannot be trusted.
I am happy for the released hostages and their families. I expect the agreement to fall apart at stage 2 and then Israel will resume some fighting.
Hamas and its supporters in Gazan do not value their lives the way some of us value ours. Gazan deaths equal rage against Israel and sympathy for Hamas, as is quite evident when looking at protests against Israel, Zionists and Jews at so-called elite American universities.
Hamas’ aim was to stay alive. It achieved that aim. Gaza is a mess, and I am not sure who is going to pay to fix it up, and how soon tunnel construction and weapons manufacturing resumes. Death toll? In the tens of thousands, but who can trust the Hamas controlled health ministry there?
We’ve learned that hospitals and schools are ideal Hamas headquarters. Hamas plays by Hamas rules. These buildings will likely be used again by Hamas and targeted again by Israel.
I am glad that the IDF and the soldiers get a break. More battles are on the horizon.
IDF warcriminals need to be executed for their heinous crimes, every last one of them.. lowlife, disgusting murderers.. what kind of a creature thinks these demonic killers deserve anything other than a slow, agonising death?
Yes, Hamas will return to Gaza, but it must be fought and defeated politically, cannot be eliminated with ONLY military means. Of course, Israel must be keeping an eye and beef security and readiness for focused military intervention, but not to renew full war. Israel also needs to control its own extremists. Netanyahu has exceeded his expiration date, Israel needs a fresh start. Palestinians too.
Israel doesn’t need a fresh start, it needs a past its sell buy end! The whole rotten, sick, evil regime snd all its supporters need to imprisoned..
Israel, with the backing of the USA and all the Western Powers, should have done their best to obliterate all Iranian nuclear facilities. Iranian regimes are in this for the long term and won’t rest until they have developed nuclear weapons.
We have ignored this growing threat for decades and it would have been a big step for world peace if Israel had done what ‘The West’ has failed to do.
There has always been a perceptual, emotional, and often unstated element to victory and defeat in warfare. Any war that doesn’t end with the utter destruction of one side or the other is open for interpretation by the people over time and by subsequent history. Further, it matters whether a war is won or lost in the minds of the participants. In ancient times of course, there usually wasn’t much room for debate. A conqueror usually invaded and destroyed the loser in any conflict, or the defenders repelled the invaders. There were few international conflicts that ended indecisively, though there are a few examples (the first two Punic Wars come to mind). There were probably a lot more minor conflicts that aren’t well known except to historians or are entirely forgotten because they weren’t decisive and had few long term implications. History tends to record the most important stuff, especially in eras where few written records survive. Conquests are important. Minor border skirmishes are not. Now though, with mass media and instant communications dominating so much public attention, the results of conflicts of any size can be known and endlessly discussed by the people. People can discuss and debate among themselves and in the media about which way a conflict will go and argue about the results afterwards. Much to the consternation of democratic leaders, the people can weigh in on the conflict, often in real time, and the narrative can shift decisively based on public opinion rather than battlefield outcomes. As media and public awareness advanced, it was probably inevitable that the perceptions of warfare would veer increasingly farther away from the actual military results. Anything short of the complete and total victory of one side leaves some room for politicians and commentators to spin one way or the other.
Consider the case of the world wars. In both, Germany was decisively defeated on the battlefield. In the first, however, the German military high command chose to take advantage of the overall war weariness of the allies and surrender in order to spare Germany the inevitable invasion and accompanying destruction and to hopefully secure a better peace treaty. This backfired in more ways than one. First, the Treaty of Versailles ended up being little better than what Germany would have gotten in an unconditional surrender. Further, the German people never understood how they could have lost the war and why such a punitive treaty was accepted when the war ended with German troops still occupying parts of France. This gap between perception and reality played a major part in the rise of Nazism, which ultimately led to the second conflict, in which Germany had to be conquered entirely to establish victory firmly.
There are numerous modern examples as well. The US loss in Vietnam was a perceptual and political loss despite the North Vietnamese never actually winning on the battlefield. Afghanistan played out in much the same way. The Taliban never defeated the US, but the Taliban is still there and the US troops are not, so there’s no way to spin this as anything but a loss. To make matters worse, Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11 and the proximate cause of the war, wasn’t even in Afghanistan after the early stages of the conflict, if he was ever there at all. In Iraq, the US technically won the war as Saddam was deposed, but the war is still considered by the American people to be a loss in all but a technical sense because there were no weapons of mass destruction and the chaos that erupted after the war ended up being a worse and more expensive problem than Iraq was before the conflict.
If Russia and Ukraine agree to more or less the status quo in terms of redrawing borders, who won? Given Russia’s advantaged negotiating position, it is probable that in whatever final settlement is reached, they will end up getting more than what they’ve already acquired and/or gotten the declaration of neutrality which was half the reason for the conflict. Even so, both sides will surely claim victory, Russia because it gained most of what it wanted, and Ukraine because it still exists at all. While no war can legitimately described as a ‘win-win’ both sides can plausibly claim victory.
Gaza is such a conflict as well. The stated goal, the destruction of Hamas, seems straightforward and clear, but upon closer examination, it really isn’t. Does it mean killing every Hamas member down to the last man? That would be a significant departure from the international rules of warfare, such as they are. Does it mean simply killing most of their upper leadership and the planners of the Oct 7th attacks? If so Israel can argue they already have destroyed Hamas. Is the goal to eliminate the entire Hamas organization such that there is no political group called Hamas? If so, doesn’t that invite the other side to simply disband and then reorganize but call themselves something else? Given the fact that militant jihadism, terrorist tactics, antisemitism, and the destruction of Israel in its entirety are politically popular among the Palestinians, isn’t it likely that whatever political organization forms to replace Hamas has a similar creed and similar goals and policies even if its under different leaders?
I am satisfied that Israel has conducted the war about as well as could be expected. There are two ways to win a war regardless of perception. Either conquer your opponent and occupy his territory until the territory can be pacified through one way or the other, or inflict such grievous harm on the enemy that they will give up on their own. Israel was never going to re-occupy Gaza for any significant period. Previous governments already made the calculation that it would simply be an expensive occupation that would be necessarily brutal and generate all manner of public outcry nationally and internationally. Sharon wasn’t wrong. The unstated goal of the Gaza conflict has always been to inflict such misery upon the people of Gaza such that something like Oct. 7th never happens again. It’s punishment pure and simple. Regardless of what was said by Bibi or any other political leaders, this is what the conflict always was. There was always going to be a point where Israel decided enough was enough and then marched back out the way they came and left the Gazans to contemplate the devastation that resulted in them electing Hamas to be their leaders and allowing Hamas to commit an act that, if it were committed by any legal government, would be immediate grounds for warfare. The Israelis have done what could be reasonably expected and minimized their losses. Now they can simply leave Gaza in its devastated state and go back to the previous status quo, but with a greater security presence on the border.
Future events will probably determine whether the war is perceived as successful or not. How many of the hostages came back alive? Did Hamas survive as an organization? How many of its leaders were killed and how much of its capacity to inflict violence did it retain? Will Hamas still enjoy the favor of the Palestinian people? Will the Palestinians themselves give up on their hopeless ‘river to the sea’ rhetoric and accept that Israel will continue to exist, or will they double down on hating Israel and commit further acts of terror? The answers to these questions will become known in time and shape public perception about whether such a nebulous conflict was ‘won’ or ‘lost’.
This is a better analysis than the article above, and it lacks the obvious Zionist bias of the article.
(You are) :satisfied that Israel has conducted the war about as well as could be expected” – What? Are you serious? ..it was and is a genocide, the murder of 60,000+ wholly innocent women, men, children and babies: the coldblooded murder of doctors, medical staff, ambulance drivers, aid workers and journalists! The wanton destruction of schools, universities, mosques, Christian churches, hospitals, farms and homes ….
…and you are “… satisfied that Israel has conducted the war about as well as could be expected” – Are you a sadist? Satanist? or what kind of demonic creature are you?
Yes I am, because I expect war to be awful and for people to die, especially when one side has distributed their personnel and assets in such a way as to use their own people as human shields and/or cause maximal casualties to their own people for the sake of playing to western media. I blame Hamas for the genocide of the Palestinians. They didn’t have to launch an unprovoked attack against Israel on October 7th 2023, but they did. They didn’t have to build their fortresses underneath residential buildingas and hospitals, but they did, because they knew bleeding hearts like yourself would wail and moan about all the casualties. Call me cold and call me a jackass if you like, but I’m not going to be manipulated into sympathy by terrorists willing to sacrifice thousands of their fellow citizens to get sympathy. If given the choice between Israel and Palestine and only one can exist, I’m going to pick Israel every time. Sorry not sorry.
There is no “seems” He needs most of all to placate his ally Trump….as much of a friend in the international realm as he will find. He wants to placate the “hostage square” lefties who despise him…blame him more than hamas. Tough place for Israel…..400 soldiers dead…young men mostly…..and now relinquishing it all as described here. No wonder hamas, Iran and CAIR and sjp are all crowing about their victory. thousand of terrorists released. Israel has paid dearly for its incompetence in allowing the invasion of Oct. 7…the day the Pals will celebrate for generations to come….so they say. The siege of Israel continues and the war will resume at some point. With the same demonstrations and security council resolutions for USA to veto and the UK to either vote in favor of. or abstain.