My thoughts for the day revolve around the geopolitical and military-strategic threats and challenges.
“Time is out of joint”, Hamlet already said, Shakespeare claimed. And let me, as an illustration at the present time, recall what is happening these days, in the form of urgent military actions, and let me, in connection with today's news of Israel's astonishing attack on Hamas targets in the US-allied mediator country Qatar, begin the list with precisely Israel which over the past two years has carried out more or less sustained bombing attacks on a) Gaza (Hamas), b) Lebanon (Hezbollah), c) Syria (various targets at different stages), d) Yemen (the Houthis), e) Iran (including nuclear targets) and now f) Qatar, in all cases with essentially unconditional support from (Biden's and) Trump's USA, but recently raising the question of whether, and if so where, a Trumpian "red line" exists: a clear stop signal.
And Trump's USA, In parallel with this, the inherited military target picture (according to the "war on terror", like the Taliban before and IS later) has been expanded to include a massive B2 attack on Iran's nuclear facilities this summer, airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen and - most recently - attacks on Venezuelan ships in the Caribbean. In addition to all sorts of further Israel-supporting efforts. And in addition to the movement of American nuclear submarines closer to Russia, in response to Medvedev's verbal threats.
This is in addition to and at the same time as Russia war of aggression against Ukraine and recent violations of Polish airspace.
So acts of war like these remind us daily, everyday, that time is out of order. At the same time, the recent summit in China, within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, with the participation of not only Putin and Xi but also leaders such as India's Modi and Turkey's Erdogan, reminds us that time is out of order also as a result of the ongoing trend towards multipolarization.
Not surprisingly, Donald Trump has clearly shown that he also wants to be a "peace president" with ambitions that are shamelessly emphasized (with the support of a growing number of supplicants in the White House) to receive the Nobel Peace Prize like his predecessor Obama. When he sums up his efforts on this account, Trump now usually claims that he has "fixed" peace, i.e. a cease-fire, in no less than 7 different interstate conflict arenas; a) Israel-Iran, b) DRC-Rwanda, c) Cambodia-Thailand, d) India-Pakistan, e) Serbia-Kosovo, f) Egypt-Ethiopia and g) Armenia-Azerbaijan. The fact that time is out of joint is of course also illustrated by this list of acute interstate conflicts that each could in principle have developed into a threat to world peace, regardless of how one wants and can evaluate the great importance of American diplomacy when each fire could be temporarily extinguished through (usually) a cease-fire agreement. The word “temporary” thus constitutes a warning that the danger is not over. The total picture thus includes both acts of war and wars that could be stopped in their tracks, for the time being.
The exceptions to the picture of wars that have been stopped or prevented, cases where both Trump and the rest of the international community have so far failed to achieve either peace or (even) a ceasefire/ceasefire (in English, the diversity of alternative terms is striking – truce, ceasefire, cessation of hostilities, armistice, etc.) are of course Sudan, Gaza and Ukraine, mentioned here without ranking. In none of these catastrophic wars has “man” (the parties, the outside world) succeeded in establishing a sustainable ceasefire, despite long-term and intensive attempts and despite all the desperate humanitarian needs that could be met. solely through a ceasefire – as a prerequisite for relevant humanitarian relief and as a prerequisite for an orderly process towards a final peace, worthy of the name.
Let me return to these three cases, but first a few words about the ceasefire as a (necessary) step towards peace. Note here that the “necessity” was strongly emphasized in the August meetings before, during and after Alaska and Washington, both by Zelinsky and by his partners in the “coalition of the willing” – the yesterday not to negotiate peace during an ongoing war, it was emphasized with emphasis, first with and then without Trump's agreement, after the bilateral in Alaska with Putin. But still, sometimes you have to, history shows.
So what are these extraordinary difficulties in achieving a ceasefire, even after years of devastating war? Although each war case is unique in many ways, historically as well as today, one can of course always point to the common problem of asymmetry, that one or both parties refuse to agree to a ceasefire because they believe that they can (still) win, or that each can win from a prolonged war by achieving a better negotiating position. And that there is a lack of sufficiently powerful third-party mediation/facilitation to “force” the parties to a ceasefire. And that external factors exist that make mediation more difficult by interfering in the conflict, often so that no party in the conflict is “allowed” to “win”.
The somewhat longer, more current answer is that the international tensions of our time have generally weakened the UN – in practice the UN's divided Security Council – in its intended role as a peacemaker and have tended to encourage conflict-fuelling polarization around the various conflicts and the resurgence of intergovernmental conflicts, in contrast to the previous dominance of intrastate conflicts. Technological developments have certainly also contributed to complicating and prolonging conflicts. We are therefore dealing with a modern version of an old truth, that it is easy to start wars, but difficult to end them. The unknown terrain we have ahead of us seems to mean, if not "forever wars", then at least, once again, long wars, in terms of duration now soon comparable to the two world wars. This also applies to the death toll.
All of this has, I believe, contributed to making ceasefire agreements more difficult because either party or both tend to build long-term peace conditions into negotiations on short-term ceasefires. As Putin often says: even a ceasefire must be based on a negotiation/agreement on the “root causes” of the conflict. I will return to Ukraine.
But first a few words about the tragedy Sudan, the country that has already been divided once (South Sudan's independence in 2011 after generations of civil war) and which has been embroiled in a civil war since April 2023 that is ultimately about a personal conflict between two rival generals, al-Burhan and Hamedi, as leaders of the regular army and the rebel group RSF, respectively, but whose humanitarian consequences after two and a half years of war have developed or degenerated into the world's worst humanitarian disaster in terms of the number of people affected, also as a result of the proximity to crisis-stricken neighbors Libya and Yemen and the accompanying complicated foreign involvement. Repeated attempts, by the US, UN, Egypt, African Union, etc., to persuade the parties to a ceasefire to enable access for humanitarian convoys, have failed due to the parties' unwillingness or inability to take into account other considerations than their own military successes. Sudan has long been referred to as “the forgotten disaster”, given the competition for political and media attention from other and simultaneous crises, and it is quite obvious that Sudan will today be valued by posterity as an extremely clear example of how a financially and politically weakened international community has grossly failed in the case of Sudan. At this moment in early September 2025, there are no answers in the case of Sudan, and no ceasefire on the horizon. And soon the UN General Assembly’s 80th anniversary celebration in New York will be missed.
More than a year ago, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution, this time not blocked by an American veto, and based on a proposal by President Biden, on a ceasefire in gaza, a plan for a ceasefire divided into phases for gradual steps towards a final peace settlement with the phased release of Hamas hostages, the resumption of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian civilian population and the phased withdrawal of the Israeli army, etc. But even at this moment over a year later – no ceasefire, and continued suffering for both the Israeli hostages and the Palestinians. The history of all attempts to achieve politically and humanitarianly necessary ceasefires. Biden-era as well as Trump-era, has become tragically long – even though the regime change in the US prompted Israel's Netanyahu to agree to a temporary ceasefire at the beginning of this year.
What are these difficulties in the case of Gaza? The short answer is partly the fact that the parties, the Israeli coalition government under Netanyahu and Hamas respectively, have always and still continue to have completely different, completely opposing war goals that have made compromise impossible – “total victory” and political and physical survival respectively – and partly that the US’s unconditional support (especially under Trump) for Israel and its government has given Netanyahu a free hand to promote his war goals and has otherwise rendered the outside world reasonably powerless in its efforts to enforce a ceasefire, for the sake of the hostages and the affected Palestinian population. It seems obvious that the Netanyahu government has now ended up so far down the path that there is no room for regret or willingness to compromise; hence the fact that they now seem to be betting even more unequivocally on military “victory” through the announced invasion of Gaza City and the announced mass evacuation of the city’s new and old residents to already cramped places to the south, or abroad. And it continues with Trump-American understanding, despite the international outcry – before the UNGA, the General Assembly.
And then finally the case Ukraine, and the elusive ceasefire there. Time does not allow me more now than a brief report of what I perceive as a difficult dilemma for the Ukrainian leadership and its defenders in Europe. The starting point was the fear at the beginning of the year and the beginning of the Trump regime that he, Trump, would do what he had predicted in the election campaign, namely to try to quickly ("in 24 hours") make a deal with colleague Putin on a "solution" to the Ukrainian war, as well as a deal on future favorable business relations between the two nuclear powers, which would completely contradict the vital security interests of both Ukraine and Europe and be done over their heads. To prevent this, but in a way that would avoid antagonizing the US president as much as possible and giving him an excuse to abandon the defense of both Ukraine and Europe, this then became the balancing act that Europe, now represented by the UK and France-led "coalition of the willing" given the weakening of the NATO format "without" the US, had to try to accomplish.
The various rounds that followed, during an ongoing and rapidly growing war in a deadlocked state of attrition, were basically about the conditions, the conditions of both sides, for a ceasefire as the intended start of a process towards peace, however, all the time with uncertainty about what the discussions were actually about, a ceasefire or final peace, with a kind of culmination at the bilateral meeting in Alaska when the “West” (the coalition plus Trump) had agreed to push hard for the necessity of a ceasefire as the basis and prerequisite for a continued process, but when Trump was persuaded by Putin to skip the focus on an “unconditional ceasefire” and instead aim for final peace, including “root causes”. But by that time, Ukraine’s and the European Western camp’s conditions for a ceasefire had also been gradually formulated; for a ceasefire and as a basis for possible high-level meetings between the parties, with or without Trump, Western (binding) security guarantees were required for Ukraine, including Western commitments regarding the relevant troop presence in Ukraine to monitor a ceasefire (corresponding to) and (preferably) Western commitments regarding future NATO membership for Ukraine, both of which were rejected by Putin during the summer talks.
The paradoxical, and dilemma-laden, consequence of all this has been that the necessary ceasefire – as a basis for continued process and future meetings at the highest level – has been pushed forward in a fog of uncertainty, both as a result of Putin's talk about "root causes" and his rejection of the Western "conditions", and as a result of Ukraine's and the European coalition's talk about security guarantees, including a military presence in Ukraine in relevant quantities, also as a way of safeguarding "back stop" guarantees from the other side of the Atlantic through demonstrated responsibility. And these pledges without being related to a known agreement with Putin's Russia, with known dimensioning parameters, thus with a theoretical risk that the Western troop presence functions as legitimization of Russian conquests up to the demarcation lines.
Strongly aware of the complexity and sensitivity of these issues, these thoughts for the day conclude with a final emphasis on the necessity, but at the same time the difficulty, of ceasefires in our time.