March 17, 2025
مشغل الصوت
Nasser Kandil
• U.S. President Donald Trump sought to compensate for American weakness with his loud voice and threatening tone. He employed this approach in his dealings with Panama, Canada, Mexico, Denmark (which owns Greenland), and later with Jordan and Egypt in the Gaza resettlement plan. However, he did not hesitate to retract his threats without explanation whenever he realised that his bluster failed to produce the desired effect. Yet, Trump’s perception of power balances and his belief in wielding force to impose American will are most clearly revealed in the one confrontation that alone holds strategic significance in defining the vital spheres of American presence in international politics, his standoff with Russia. Here, Trump made no secret of his priority: seeking an understanding with Russia and ending the open-ended war in Ukraine by accommodating Russian conditions and standards for peace, even at the expense of Europe’s vital interests. Europe, having willingly become a pliable tool for Washington in this war, and Ukraine, whose leadership has burned its own country, resources, infrastructure, and stability, will ultimately be forced to sacrifice its sovereignty and unity as the price for aligning with American policies.
• Trump’s America, eager to placate Russia to avoid a losing confrontation, tries to present its retreat as a correction of a past administration’s miscalculation that went against U.S. interests. Yet, the world understands that global power balances rest on three major pillars: the U.S., Russia, and China. Europe, serving as Washington’s decisive weight in its struggle with Russia and China, finds itself the primary victim of this shifting equilibrium. What is unfolding is a U.S. retreat before Russia, likely to be followed by a similar retreat before China. Against this backdrop, Washington’s escalation against Yemen appears, in part, as an attempt to reclaim an image of strength lost in Ukraine, where Russia now stands as the sole player redrawing the map and dictating the course of events.
• Washington recognises that boasting about U.S.-Israeli military achievements in West Asia remains premature. Despite the painful blows dealt to resistance forces, these strikes have failed to establish a new balance of power between the Washington-Tel Aviv axis and the resistance front. The losses inflicted on the resistance have merely driven it to reposition behind new defensive lines. In Lebanon, the resistance has opted for a tactical withdrawal in favour of the Lebanese state, a U.S. ally, while monitoring whether Washington and Tel Aviv are willing to reciprocate – a precondition for securing a long-term truce. Here, Washington finds itself caught between managing its alliance with a newly emergent Lebanese state and grappling with Israel’s profound weakness, which prevents it from making even the slightest concession to Lebanon, despite the strategic advantage this would offer by undermining the legitimacy of the resistance.
In Gaza, the resistance has also ceded its governing role, agreeing to an arrangement brokered by Egypt under the banner of the Palestinian Authority. Yet, Washington stumbles in handling its relationship with its Egyptian and Saudi allies, as well as in linking a Gaza resolution to an Arab framework that cannot ignore the two-state solution as the only viable path forward. The historical moment suggests that Israel’s ability to accommodate a Palestinian state in the West Bank has become a relic of the past, never to return.
• Amid this American confusion, Gaza negotiations continue, following Tel Aviv’s suspension of a U.S.-brokered agreement that it had initially accepted. Washington now finds itself trapped between the anvil of acknowledging the futility of returning to war, given the impossibility of eliminating the resistance and recovering its captives without an agreement, and the hammer of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Palestine delivering a decisive blow to the forced displacement project. As Israel turns to starvation as a weapon, Yemen counters with a naval blockade, prompting Washington to resort to threats. But what has changed in the Red Sea standoff over the past year and a half? Even if Trump blames his predecessor, Joe Biden, do American military commanders truly believe that challenging Yemen will yield different results when they themselves have acknowledged the futility of such an endeavour?
• Yemen has emerged as the purest expression of power within the resistance axis, where leadership, armed forces, and the people exhibit a rare and extraordinary unity. Here, instinct, intellect, faith, and Palestine converge as unifying forces for all Yemenis. Thus, despite all the loud rhetoric about messages aimed at Iran or decisive action to end Yemen’s control over Red Sea shipping lanes, Washington’s strategy appears to be little more than propaganda, concealing its retreat before Russia while offering symbolic support to the occupying entity. The real objective is to set the stage for a return to the Gaza agreement, once Israeli public opinion, pressured by extremist threats to topple Netanyahu’s government, forces a breakthrough. When Gaza’s blockade is lifted, Yemen’s blockade of the occupying entity will follow, giving Washington an exit strategy from its failed war.
• Tactics do not become strategy simply because they are labeled as such.
