The war has been a failure. Moscow has taken only about 20 percent of Ukrainian territory, thus failing to rebuild a decisive buffer. It has weakened the Russian economy. And it imperiled the regime by sparking unrest and coup attempts, which Moscow successfully suppressed. Russia has done what it does best: It has failed but survived. It must now devise a strategy for the future that is more than just survival.

On Feb. 11, the U.S. and Russia exchanged prisoners after President Vladimir Putin said U.S.-Russia relations were in danger of collapsing. For his part, President Donald Trump said phone calls between them were constant. Rumors of summit planning were in the air and have since been validated by reports that Trump and Putin spoke on the phone, with both agreeing to start negotiations to end the war. (Trump spoke later with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.) This is all a fairly normal negotiation process: One side threatens to leave the table, the other side displays patience, and both sides ultimately reach small agreements. In order to understand the geopolitical meaning of all this, we must consider the positions and strategies of both Russia and the United States in these negotiations.

Russia is in the process of redefining its relations with the rest of the world while preserving the state, building a healthy economy and wielding foreign influence. Strategically, Russia’s problem is that it is a vast country vulnerable to potential adversaries. The nation could not regain its position without unity, and unity required a powerful military and economic center. Throughout history, the government has been stable, but it had limited options, which forced it into strategies it did not have the resources to execute.

Russia’s failure to conquer Ukraine has created an economic – and even military – threat from Europe. To its east, Russia faces China, which is a historical Russian enemy with which it fought border wars even when both were communist states. China did not vote to support Russia in its invasion of Ukraine at the first United Nations meeting on the matter. (It abstained.) China was far more interested in relations with the United States and Europe than anything Russia had to offer. Strategically, Russia had to win the war outright to demonstrate its power. It failed, and now it has no strategic ally with an interest in supporting it. In other words, Russia has no strategic counterweight.

Russia’s long-term adversary is the United States, which thwarted Russia’s strategy in Ukraine. The U.S. has no existential threat facing it. Europe is divided. China has significant economic and internal problems, and its military is currently in no position to challenge the United States. Russia therefore must accept its current weakened position or deal with the United States.

The U.S. has a history of getting into unthinkable alliances with former enemies. U.S. grand strategy is founded on opportunism and flexibility, its passions reserved for domestic conceptions. Trump has demonstrated systematic unpredictability, which means that he has given himself maximum flexibility in negotiating with Russia. That the U.S. is fundamentally unthreatened on the world stage gives it options in negotiations. In stating – during his election campaign – that Ukraine was a European war and not an American war, Trump told Russia that it could deal with the U.S. For Washington, the fear was that Russia would, under Soviet rule, dominate Europe and thus radically shift the balance of power in the global system. If that was still a concern before 2022, Russia’s subsequent failure has put it to rest.

Without a sufficient military that is able to fully defeat Ukraine militarily, Russia is left to focus on economic development to return to power. This is a very long and potentially dangerous path as it leaves Russia militarily exposed. The other option is to reach an accommodation with the United States. Washington has no moral qualms in overlooking ideology and behavior to form worthwhile relationships. If an understanding were reached, the U.S. would be free of its responsibility for European security, eliminating China’s already vain hope of establishing an alliance with a powerful ally, and giving it more room to tend to its own interests. National interest rules all, and national interest is determined by power.

Ending a war is easier if one side has won and the other side has lost. It’s much trickier if the goal is to create long-term peace, rather than a brief suspension, absent a decisive outcome. That is the issue now. Russia, like Germany after World War II, must demand economic growth in which the U.S. would likely participate. (Russia is Russia, of course, so caution must be exercised as it recovers.) The negotiations will seem painful and filled with insults, breakdowns and threats. And hanging over all of this is the threat of nuclear weapons, which I believe are irrelevant to the negotiations; mutually assured destruction means that whoever attacks will be dead with his family within the hour. But, in time, the negotiations will bear the fruit that the diplomats will take credit for, even though it was raw power that decided the outcome.

George Friedman is an internationally recognized geopolitical forecaster and strategist on international affairs and the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures.

Courtesy: Geopolitical Futures

The Palestinian question was the focal point of Arab foreign policy until the 1967 Six-Day War. Since then, Arab countries have sought various peace treaties with Israel and grown dependent on U.S. protection for their survival. Though they cannot endorse Trump’s plan to evict Palestinians from Gaza and transform the strip into a “Riviera of the Middle East,” neither can they simply dismiss his assertions. Trump has challenged Arab leaders to come up with an alternative plan for Gaza, knowing they likely cannot.

Resettlement Revisited

Many observers have compared Trump’s proposal to resettle Palestinians in neighboring countries to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s willingness to host them in Sinai in the early 1950s. But the conditions that led Nasser to favor the resettlement of Gazan refugees differ fundamentally from the situation in the region today. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, it was the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) that proposed resettling refugees who had fled to Gaza during the conflict, in accordance with U.N. General Assembly resolution 194. The initiative would not have affected the 80,000 Gaza residents who were living there before the war. Arabs generally viewed it as a humanitarian endeavor, given the wide range of relief services the agency provided, rather than a liquidation plan, as opponents of Trump’s proposal see it.

However, even the U.N.-sponsored initiative ultimately collapsed. In 1953, UNRWA and Egypt, under Nasser, signed a plan to resettle 120,000 refugees from Gaza. Two years later, they agreed that the Egyptian town of Qantara, located east of Suez and 220 kilometers (140 miles) southwest of Gaza, would be the location of a new settlement for the refugees. But in retaliation for the United States and Britain’s refusal to fund the construction of the Aswan High Dam, Nasser withdrew his support from the project.

Arab Reactions

The Palestinian issue has long been a sensitive topic in the Arab world, so Arab governments know they cannot be seen as supportive of a U.S. plan to remove Palestinians from Gaza. Still, Arab countries’ responses to the proposal have been weak and indecisive. They even postponed an emergency Arab League summit scheduled for the end of this month to discuss an alternative plan for Gaza, under the pretext that some Arab heads of state had prior commitments.

El-Sissi launched a fierce media campaign to try to convince the Egyptian public that Cairo will not give in to threats and blackmail. (Pentagon officials had hinted to Egyptian officials that military aid, including repairs to equipment and spare parts, could be affected by Egypt’s position on the Trump plan.) Egyptian officials also helped organize demonstrations against the proposal, hoping to convey a message to Washington that the Egyptian people (and not just the government) rejected the relocation plan. Egypt’s top mufti called the proposal irresponsible and provocative and said it violates international norms and humanitarian standards – sentiments Arab leaders dare not say themselves.

El-Sissi has erroneously claimed that the relocation of Gazans to Egypt would be a direct threat to his regime, as Palestinians would disseminate a culture of resistance and promote their own interests inside Egypt. In a public address, el-Sissi described the displacement of Palestinians as an injustice in which Cairo cannot participate and insisted that he would not tolerate any actions that harm Egyptian national security, without specifying how resettling Gazans in Sinai would do so. But he also reiterated his determination to work with Trump and said the U.S. president still wants to achieve a two-state solution. Despite believing that Israel will not allow the establishment of a Palestinian state, Egypt at least officially continues to focus on the importance of cooperation with the United States to achieve a just peace between the Palestinians and Israel and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

Egyptian officials told the U.S. director of national intelligence that Cairo will cancel its peace agreement with Israel if the Trump administration continues to push to displace Gaza residents or stops the flow of U.S. aid. However, the most el-Sissi can do is temporarily suspend the Camp David Accords, knowing the consequences of fully repealing the treaty would be intolerable for Cairo. The Egyptians fear that Trump’s global ambitions go beyond annexing Canada and Greenland and acquiring Ukraine’s mineral resources. They believe he could be eyeing the Sinai Desert, given its strategic location, abundance of natural resources and tourist attractions.

Egypt has learned the lessons of the 1967 war. It is not serious about a military confrontation with Israel, no matter what happens to Palestinians in Gaza, and it will not create the conditions for another disastrous conflict, despite the uproar. The Egyptian government even released a statement saying the Egyptian and U.S. presidents agreed on a number of topics during a recent call, avoiding any mention of Trump’s Gaza proposal.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, most Arab countries, including Jordan, issued perfunctory statements rejecting Trump’s calls to displace people from Gaza. But they failed to announce any measures to counter the plan. Their responses likely won’t go beyond verbal denunciations, a time-honored practice for Arab officials.

Egypt’s Proposal

Cairo has said it is preparing a plan to reconstruct Gaza within three to five years without displacing its residents. For several reasons, however, the proposal is impractical and would be difficult to implement. Experts say reconstruction could take more than a decade. It would be nearly impossible to reconstruct Gaza with Palestinians remaining in the strip because it is such a small area. Though the destruction is valued at more than $100 billion, Egypt says reconstruction will cost half that amount. Arab Gulf countries have promised to contribute $20 billion, but their commitment is doubtful considering they have broken many promises in the past. The biggest question is where the rest of the money, more than $30 billion, will come from. It’s unlikely the Trump administration will provide all or part of it, especially in light of its move to suspend much of its foreign aid.

Meanwhile, Egypt is suffering from a worsening economic crisis. Since el-Sissi took power after his 2013 coup d’etat, his policies have triggered high inflation, multiple currency devaluations, soaring foreign debt and high unemployment. Internal discontent is high, and social unrest looms on the horizon. The urgent need for U.S. aid will likely lead el-Sissi to comply with Trump’s plan for Gaza, though he will continue to resist to secure more economic benefits from Trump.

Trump exempted Egypt from his recent decision to cut off foreign aid to many countries. Earlier this month, the U.S. approved two deals to sell arms to Egypt, worth about $930 million. In addition, the only Arab rulers Trump has invited to the White House so far are the Jordanian king and the Egyptian president. He also expressed interest in mediating the 15-year conflict between Cairo and Addis Ababa over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

But Trump does not need to motivate el-Sissi or King Abdullah to accept his plan because he knows they can’t reject it, despite their public statements and the media fanfare. Trump knows that the Arab regimes are oppressive dictatorships that depend on U.S. approval and protection for their survival.

El-Sissi has no empathy for the Palestinians and views Hamas as an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood. Shortly after the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, el-Sissi proposed relocating the people of Gaza to the radioactively contaminated Negev Desert until Israel finishes eliminating Hamas. He also suggested a peace deal between Arab states and Israel in 2017, three years before Trump announced the Abraham Accords, even though he later denied doing so. There is a big gap between what el-Sissi says, mainly for local public consumption, and what he means. Trump’s statements, meanwhile, are often meant to intimidate and shouldn’t be interpreted as concrete policy. But regardless of where his Gaza plan ultimately settles, Arab leaders wouldn’t dare challenge him on it.

Hilal Khashan is a contributing analyst at Geopolitical Futures, and a Professor of political science at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Courtesy: Geopolitical Science