This is the plain text result:
This has been one of the most eventful years since I began covering global security for the BBC in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks in 2001.
The sudden toppling of Syria’s President Assad, North Korean soldiers fighting for Russia. British and US missiles sent to Ukraine and fired at Russia, Iranian missiles shipped to Russia. US-armed Israeli air strikes in Lebanon and Gaza, Yemeni missiles fired at Israel.
It’s a complex and confusing web of conflicts and it prompts the inevitable question: Are the world’s battle lines becoming ever more interconnected?
Lurid media reports that inexperienced North Korean troops, newly arrived on the battlefield, are “gorging” on internet porn, something unavailable to them in their own closed, hermit state, can not mask the fact that their involvement in this European war is a serious escalation. Serious enough to prompt the US and other Western countries to lift their ban on Ukraine using Western long-range missiles to attack targets deep inside Russia, provoking fury in the Kremlin.
Beyond the battlefield bravado, the arrival of a division-sized contingent of North Korean soldiers, thought to number between 10-12,000, is bad news for Ukraine which is already struggling with a shortage of manpower.
“There will likely be a concerted effort by the incoming Trump administration to force a peace deal in Ukraine. This may well stumble at the first hurdle. President Putin has already made his terms clear and they amount to virtual capitulation for Kyiv so will be largely unacceptable there, even for Ukraine’s exhausted population. But if Trump turns off the tap of US weaponry then Europe cannot possibly make up the shortfall, leaving Ukraine weaker and even more prone to Russian attacks in the air and on the ground. Some kind of messy ceasefire deal may be the least painful of all options for Ukraine, even though it does not trust Putin’s word.
There is already widespread speculation that Donald Trump – who authorised the assassination of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force Commander in 2020 – may work with Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear programme.
Syria could go either way. It could settle down into a successful, pluralistic nation, bucking the trend of other revolutions in the region. Or it could descend into factional infighting. The West will continue to struggle to restrain Turkey from hitting the Syrian Kurds, the West’s chief ally against IS.
Despite the global coalition against IS drawing down its military component in the Middle East, IS-KP (Islamic State Khorasan Province) showed how dangerous they are this year with the Moscow Crocus Hall attack that killed 145 people. Western intelligence estimates are that IS continues to try to capitalise on anger over Gaza and recruit volunteers for attacks in Europe including the UK.
There will be renewed pressure from all sides for a substantive peace deal in Gaza that brings the hostages home and ends Israel’s assault on that battered territory. But Israel is reluctant to withdraw completely from the territory while Hamas, which holds the hostages, has always insisted this has to happen.
There is talk of a grand bargain that sees Saudi Arabia finally recognise the state of Israel in exchange for a binding security deal with Washington. But the Saudis have made clear this can only happen if there is a “clear, irrevocable path to an independent Palestinian state”. That is something that Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu is vehemently opposed to and Israeli settlers seizing of Palestinian land continues apace and with President Trump in the White House its likely to continue further.
His re-arrival on the international stage is one of the reasons why 2025 could be no less eventful than 2024.
Source link
