Författare: Jonathan Este Senior International Affairs Editor Associate

There has been a great deal of heat – and not an overabundance of light – when it comes to the media’s reactions to Donald Trump’s renewed interest in acquiring Greenland from Denmark after he resumes the US presidency on January 20. The tone of commentary has very much had a flavour of, “What on earth is Trump on about now?” The president-elect’s refusal this week to rule out using economic or military force if necessary to take control of the world’s biggest island has been met with copious, if predictable, warnings from world leaders about sovereignty and the inviolability of borders.

This is by no means to denigrate the vital importance of sovereignty, the rule of law or the inviolability of national borders. These should go without saying. But asking politicians to rule things out at press conferences is a classic journalistic gambit that almost always draws the answer “no”. It’s a fairly meaningless exercise.

Now, more than ever, it’s vital to be informed about the important issues affecting global stability. Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

So it’s particularly useful to read this offering by Stefan Wolff, an expert in international security and regular contributor to The Conversation, who provides valuable nuance and context to the debate. First, as Wolff points out, Trump is not the first US president to float the idea of buying Greenland. The idea was first suggested in 1868 (by US secretary of state William H. Seward) and surfaced at reasonably regular intervals thereafter. In 1946 the then US president Harry Truman made a formal offer of US$100 million (US$1 billion or £812 million today).

And there are plenty of reasons why such a deal might make sense for the US, Greenland’s exceptional mineral wealth and strategic location chief among them.

Strategic location: Greenland.
Peter Hermes Furian

But whether Trump’s diplomatic approach is the most effective way of prosecuting the US case is debatable, warns Wolff. Greenlanders are themselves exploring options for independence from Denmark, for one. And in any case, Denmark – with which Greenland has had a home rule arrangement since 1979 – is a Nato ally. At present, given the geopolitical situation, the most sensible approach is one that does nothing to undermine the alliance. It’s not clear that this is uppermost in Trump’s mind, writes Wolff.

Read more:
Trump’s Greenland bid is really about control of the Arctic and the coming battle with China

The other (rather smaller but no less strategically vital) bit of land that the US president-elect has his acquisitive eye on is the Panama Canal, which Trump says the US needs for economic security. It’s particularly poignant that the canal should be in the news the week after the death of Jimmy Carter, as Carter was the US president who presided over the 1977 deal which gave Panama ownership of the canal – one of his most significant moves during his time in the White House.

The 82km Panama Canal cost US$13 billion and 4,600 American lives to build.
Dimitrios Karamitros

Amalendu Misra, a professor of international politics at Lancaster University, runs through the history of the canal, which was the most expensive US building project when it was completed. Trump asserts that the canal should never have been handed to Panama and claims that is is now “being operated by China”. But as Misra points out, while two of the ports at either end of the canal are operated by Hong Kong-based company Hutchison Whampoa, the canal itself is owned and operated by an independent government agency, the Panama Canal Authority.

Under the terms of Carter’s treaty, the US cannot legally take control of the canal. That’s not to say the US couldn’t take control by force. Those with long enough memories will remember that US forces, under the direction of then-president George H.W. Bush, invaded Panama and deposed President Manuel Noriega in 1990 in what it dubbed “Operation Just Cause”. (Fun fact: to persuade Noriega to surrender and give himself up, US troops blared rock music from a fleet of Humvees non-stop for three days – a form of torture for the Panamanian president, who is said to have been a devotee of opera music.)

But as Misra notes, yet another attempt to intervene with force in Latin America would be likely to severely undermine the US position in a region which could, instead, turn towards China, Russia or Iran for alliances. So while the Trump may not have “ruled out” sending in the marines to occupy the canal, Misra believes this eventuality to be highly unlikely.

Read more:
Why Donald Trump is threatening to take control of the Panama Canal

It’s not as if many Latin American countries aren’t already looking towards China, which over the past two decades has “dramatically expanded its role as a top trading partner for Latin America,” writes Jose Caballero. Caballero, a senior economist with the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), says the first Trump term was widely seen as driving many Latin American countries towards China as a more reliable trade and development partner than the US. And things hardly improved under Joe Biden.

Since 2002, writes Caballero, trade between China and the region has risen from US$18 billion to US$500 billion by 2023. And, in the first two months of 2024, China’s exports to Latin America increased by 20.6%. “China is certainly ready to build on its partnerships in the region if, and when, opportunities arise,” Caballero believes.

An “America first” policy and rising tariffs are likely to exacerbate the situation. This will not be helped by Trump’s undeniably clumsy rhetoric (an example of which was the US president-elect’s rather bumptious recent suggestion that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the Gulf of America).

If isolationism becomes the name of the game in a Trump White House and the US seeks to disengage from its network of international ties, China has shown it is more than willing to step in and take its place, writes Caballero.

Read more:
With Trump in the White House, China and Latin America may try to forge an even deeper relationship

Double act

It’s hard to say who has been getting more press in recent days: Trump or his close associate, South African-born tech mogul Elon Musk. Certainly both appear to have studied the same playbook when it comes to international diplomacy. And Musk’s intervention in the domestic politics of several European countries must be seen as giving considerable cause for alarm.

While Trump and Musk appear as thick as thieves, there are those who think Washington’s not big enough for the two towering personalities and that a major falling out is all but inevitable. Certainly, writes Thomas Gift, an expert in US politics at UCL, there are signs that Musk is beginning to fall out with others in the Make America Great Again (Maga) crowd.

The problem, Gift believes, is immigration policy: specifically the H1-B visas which the US issues to allow immigrants to work in the US based on speciality talents or skills. This is particularly an issue in the tech industry, where Silicon Valley (and Musk himself) is scooping up talent from countries such as India.

On the other side of the debate are nativists such as Steve Bannon, who was Trump’s ideological alter ego in his first terms. Since emerging from a prison sentence last year in time for the election campaign, Bannon has been attempting to reposition himself as the loudest voice in the president-elect’s ear. He says that the H1-B visa schemes is “a total and complete scam from its top to the bottom”. He and like-minded Maga identities want to train up US-born and educated talent, in line with the general move away from mass migration to the US.

As Gift points out, it’s just one aspect of an increasingly bitter debate over globalisation which may rupture the still close partnership between Trump and his closest “tech bro”.

Read more:
Elon Musk and the tech titans v the rest of Maga — here’s where the big splits could happen

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They don’t make world leaders like they used to, as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned. Talking to a Kremlin-friendly gathering of journalists at his traditional end-of-year press conference earlier today, the Russian president spoke with fond nostalgia of the old gang, saying he’d like to spend more time with “people close to me”, such as the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, the former French president Jacques Chirac and Silvio Berlusconi, late prime minister of Italy. High office aside, these men have another thing in common: they are all now dead.

Whether this was Putin’s way of saying that the only good European leader’s a dead European leader or whether it was an arch reflection on having outlasted all three is not clear. What is clear, though, is that if he were to visit the countries they led next week, he’d be liable for arrest under the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in 2023 on charges concerning the alleged illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Stefan Wolff, of the University of Birmingham, watched Putin’s press conference as it unfolded. He reflects here on what it tells us about his intentions for the war in Ukraine in 2025 and how that contrasts with the messages emerging from meetings between Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and top EU leaders, including European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the new president of the European Council, Antonio Costa.

Wolff observes that the rhetoric from both camps continues to insist on their maximalist war aims. Putin vows to get rid of “the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, which seized power back in 2014” and “to drive the enemy out from our territory”. EU leaders, meanwhile, are talking of upping aid to Kyiv to enable Ukraine “not just to hold on, but to tilt the balance to their favour because Putin will not stop, unless he’s stopped”.

But of course all that could change “in one day”, if incoming US president Donald Trump is as good as his word. And this, says Wolff, is the spectre that looms ever larger. A Trump-brokered peace deal, he says, “carries too many risks” including the “prospect of Putin using a mere break in the fighting to regroup and rearm and then posing an even greater threat to European security in the future”.

Read more:
Ukraine war: as 2025 approaches, Kyiv is left with few good options and allies in a Trump 2.0 world

Now, more than ever, it’s vital to be informed about the important issues affecting global stability. Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

Putin’s war machine, meanwhile, lost a key figure this week when the man in charge of its Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Forces, Lt Gen Igor Kyrillov, was killed in a bomb blast outside his Moscow home. Ukraine’s security agency, the SBU, was quick to claim responsibility, saying that Kirillov had been charged in absentia for war crimes over what it said were 4,800 instances of Russia using chemical weapons since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022.

Crime scene: Igor Kirillov and an aide were reportedly killed in a blast outside of an apartment building in Moscow.
EPA-EFE/Yuri Kochetkov

Anneleen van der Meer is an expert in chemical warfare at Leiden University. She’s been tracking reports of chemical weapons use in Ukraine and believes that the invading forces have used both tear gas and chloropicrin, a toxic nerve irritant. While not being as deadly as the sarin allegedly used by the Assad regime in Syria, both will have made things much more unpleasant for the Ukrainian defenders.

Meer also believes that Russia’s use of chemicals – if accurately reported – are likely to have served a dual purpose. On top of any actual military advantage, the use of chemicals – in spite of a ban ratified by almost every country in the world – is designed to send the threatening message that Russia doesn’t feel bound by any of the rules of war: “This has effects beyond the battlefield, provoking fear in Ukrainian defenders but also challenging Ukraine’s own commitment to play by the rules,” she concludes.

Read more:
Ukraine war: what chemical weapons is Russia accused of using and why?

View from Washington

One thing on which Putin and the incoming US president Donald Trump would appear to have in common is their attitude to the news media. If they aren’t compliant, they must be enemies of the people.

Trump will at least expect to have a modicum of control of the agenda through his close (for the time being) relationship with Elon Musk, whose social media site X has gradually morphed into what appears to be a personal propaganda machine. Musk has also been tasked, alongside fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, with heading up a new department of government efficiency, which appears not to be a department at all but feels more like a kind of management consultancy group.

It’s a fair assessment of the quality of Trump’s initial appointments that the two billionaires are by no means the most curious choices. Not when compared to former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, who has been accused of sexual assault (which he denies) as well as – by his own admission – having once had an over-fondness for self-medication with alcohol.

Or there’s RFK Jr., Trump’s vaccine-sceptical nominee for health secretary. Or Jared Kushner’s dad, Charles, a lawyer disbarred in three states and real-estate developer, who has been picked as ambassador to France. Kushner senior served time for what the prosecutor called “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he had prosecuted. You can look up Charles Kushner for yourself. Bring a strong stomach to the exercise.

The list goes on. Barbara Yoxon, an expert in international politics at Lancaster University, has been scratching her head on our behalf at Trump’s picks. This looks like something out of the authoritarian leaders’ playbook, whereby he appoints a cabinet whose inexperience is matched only by their loyalty, in order to insulate himself from any potential plotting among his subordinates.

All in this together? Time will tell.
EPA-EFE/Mohammed Badra

But, loyalty aside, Yoxon believes that picking a cabinet of none of the talents could be a risky business for Trump 2.0. Yes-men tend to tell a leader what he or she wants to hear, rather than what is sensible. With a trade war looming with Mexico, Canada and – possibly most consequential of all – China, as well as major wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and flashpoints pretty much everywhere you look around the globe, this could lead to problems. She concludes: “In this highly dangerous new world, it is even more important than ever that he choose advisers wisely.”

Read more:
How Trump’s plan to surround himself with inexperienced loyalists could backfire

When it comes to Ukraine, as we know Trump has promised an immediate end to the conflict. It’s clear that all parties to the war are now watching Trump very carefully for clues as to how he might seek to achieve this. On a recent visit to Europe, he caught up with the Ukrainian president who reported their meeting to have been “good and productive”. For his part, Trump posted after the meeting on his Truth Social website that: “There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin,” – adding that: “China can help.”

Writing with his regular collaborator, Tetyana Malyarenko of the University of Odesa, Stefan Wolff notes that while Trump may be keen to involve China in any peace negotiations, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has his own agenda. And this may not favour bringing hostilities in Ukraine to a swift ending. Tying the US up in a war in Europe plays into China’s hands, they write. Not only will it detract from Washington’s planned military pivot towards Asia, it also suits China to pit Russia and the west against each other in Europe.

The damage the war is doing to Russia’s economy can only serve Beijing’s interests. The “no-limits friendship” between Russia and China is fairly lopsided at present, with Beijing as very much the senior partner. That’s unlikely to change while Russia is mired in Ukraine and that suits XI just fine, Wolff and Malyarenko conclude.

Read more:
Trump wants China’s help in making peace in Ukraine – he’s unlikely to get it

The true meaning of genocide

Leaders across the Middle East will also be factoring in Trump’s imminent inauguration to their calculations. It’s too early to make any kind of informed prediction as to how the situation in Syria might play out. The latest announcement from Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), the rebel group which led the offensive that ousted Bashar al-Assad, is that rather than aiming for a federal set-up which might give Kurds in the country’s north a degree of autonomy, the HTS preference is for a unified state which would require Kurdish armed groups to disband and disarm, including the US-backed coalition, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). This will please Turkey, but it won’t go down well in Washington. We’ll have more on this in the new year.

One of our other focuses this week has been on a spat between the Irish and Israeli governments which led Israel to withdraw its ambassador to Ireland. Ireland has formally applied to intervene in South Africa’s case in the International Court of Justice over whether Israel is in fact committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Ireland says current international law concerning what comprises genocide has far too narrow a definition – which, it says could lead to a “culture of impunity in which the protection of civilians is minimised”.

International legal scholar James Sweeney of Lancaster Law School explains here how the law of genocide works and how it has been applied in the past.

Read more:
Gaza: why it’s difficult to reach a legal judgment of genocide against Israel

World Affairs Briefing from The Conversation UK is available as a weekly email newsletter. Click here to get our updates directly in your inbox. Läs mer…

They don’t make world leaders like they used to, as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned. Talking to a Kremlin-friendly gathering of journalists at his traditional end-of-year press conference earlier today, the Russian president spoke with fond nostalgia of the old gang, saying he’d like to spend more time with “people close to me”, such as the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, the former French president Jacques Chirac and Silvio Berlusconi, late prime minister of Italy. High office aside, these men have another thing in common: they are all now dead.

Whether this was Putin’s way of saying that the only good European leader’s a dead European leader or whether it was an arch reflection on having outlasted all three is not clear. What is clear, though, is that if he were to visit the countries they led next week, he’d be liable for arrest under the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in 2023 on charges concerning the alleged illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Stefan Wolff, of the University of Birmingham, watched Putin’s press conference as it unfolded. He reflects here on what it tells us about his intentions for the war in Ukraine in 2025 and how that contrasts with the messages emerging from meetings between Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and top EU leaders, including European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the new president of the European Council, Antonio Costa.

Wolff observes that the rhetoric from both camps continues to insist on their maximalist war aims. Putin vows to get rid of “the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, which seized power back in 2014” and “to drive the enemy out from our territory”. EU leaders, meanwhile, are talking of upping aid to Kyiv to enable Ukraine “not just to hold on, but to tilt the balance to their favour because Putin will not stop, unless he’s stopped”.

But of course all that could change “in one day”, if incoming US president Donald Trump is as good as his word. And this, says Wolff, is the spectre that looms ever larger. A Trump-brokered peace deal, he says, “carries too many risks” including the “prospect of Putin using a mere break in the fighting to regroup and rearm and then posing an even greater threat to European security in the future”.

Read more:
Ukraine war: as 2025 approaches, Kyiv is left with few good options and allies in a Trump 2.0 world

Now, more than ever, it’s vital to be informed about the important issues affecting global stability. Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

Putin’s war machine, meanwhile, lost a key figure this week when the man in charge of its Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Forces, Lt Gen Igor Kyrillov, was killed in a bomb blast outside his Moscow home. Ukraine’s security agency, the SBU, was quick to claim responsibility, saying that Kirillov had been charged in absentia for war crimes over what it said were 4,800 instances of Russia using chemical weapons since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022.

Crime scene: Igor Kirillov and an aide were reportedly killed in a blast outside of an apartment building in Moscow.
EPA-EFE/Yuri Kochetkov

Anneleen van der Meer is an expert in chemical warfare at Leiden University. She’s been tracking reports of chemical weapons use in Ukraine and believes that the invading forces have used both tear gas and chloropicrin, a toxic nerve irritant. While not being as deadly as the sarin allegedly used by the Assad regime in Syria, both will have made things much more unpleasant for the Ukrainian defenders.

Meer also believes that Russia’s use of chemicals – if accurately reported – are likely to have served a dual purpose. On top of any actual military advantage, the use of chemicals – in spite of a ban ratified by almost every country in the world – is designed to send the threatening message that Russia doesn’t feel bound by any of the rules of war: “This has effects beyond the battlefield, provoking fear in Ukrainian defenders but also challenging Ukraine’s own commitment to play by the rules,” she concludes.

Read more:
Ukraine war: what chemical weapons is Russia accused of using and why?

View from Washington

One thing on which Putin and the incoming US president Donald Trump would appear to have in common is their attitude to the news media. If they aren’t compliant, they must be enemies of the people.

Trump will at least expect to have a modicum of control of the agenda through his close (for the time being) relationship with Elon Musk, whose social media site X has gradually morphed into what appears to be a personal propaganda machine. Musk has also been tasked, alongside fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, with heading up a new department of government efficiency, which appears not to be a department at all but feels more like a kind of management consultancy group.

It’s a fair assessment of the quality of Trump’s initial appointments that the two billionaires are by no means the most curious choices. Not when compared to former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, who has been accused of sexual assault (which he denies) as well as – by his own admission – having once had an over-fondness for self-medication with alcohol.

Or there’s RFK Jr., Trump’s vaccine-sceptical nominee for health secretary. Or Jared Kushner’s dad, Charles, a lawyer disbarred in three states and real-estate developer, who has been picked as ambassador to France. Kushner senior served time for what the prosecutor called “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he had prosecuted. You can look up Charles Kushner for yourself. Bring a strong stomach to the exercise.

The list goes on. Barbara Yoxon, an expert in international politics at Lancaster University, has been scratching her head on our behalf at Trump’s picks. This looks like something out of the authoritarian leaders’ playbook, whereby he appoints a cabinet whose inexperience is matched only by their loyalty, in order to insulate himself from any potential plotting among his subordinates.

All in this together? Time will tell.
EPA-EFE/Mohammed Badra

But, loyalty aside, Yoxon believes that picking a cabinet of none of the talents could be a risky business for Trump 2.0. Yes-men tend to tell a leader what he or she wants to hear, rather than what is sensible. With a trade war looming with Mexico, Canada and – possibly most consequential of all – China, as well as major wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and flashpoints pretty much everywhere you look around the globe, this could lead to problems. She concludes: “In this highly dangerous new world, it is even more important than ever that he choose advisers wisely.”

Read more:
How Trump’s plan to surround himself with inexperienced loyalists could backfire

When it comes to Ukraine, as we know Trump has promised an immediate end to the conflict. It’s clear that all parties to the war are now watching Trump very carefully for clues as to how he might seek to achieve this. On a recent visit to Europe, he caught up with the Ukrainian president who reported their meeting to have been “good and productive”. For his part, Trump posted after the meeting on his Truth Social website that: “There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin,” – adding that: “China can help.”

Writing with his regular collaborator, Tetyana Malyarenko of the University of Odesa, Stefan Wolff notes that while Trump may be keen to involve China in any peace negotiations, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has his own agenda. And this may not favour bringing hostilities in Ukraine to a swift ending. Tying the US up in a war in Europe plays into China’s hands, they write. Not only will it detract from Washington’s planned military pivot towards Asia, it also suits China to pit Russia and the west against each other in Europe.

The damage the war is doing to Russia’s economy can only serve Beijing’s interests. The “no-limits friendship” between Russia and China is fairly lopsided at present, with Beijing as very much the senior partner. That’s unlikely to change while Russia is mired in Ukraine and that suits XI just fine, Wolff and Malyarenko conclude.

Read more:
Trump wants China’s help in making peace in Ukraine – he’s unlikely to get it

The true meaning of genocide

Leaders across the Middle East will also be factoring in Trump’s imminent inauguration to their calculations. It’s too early to make any kind of informed prediction as to how the situation in Syria might play out. The latest announcement from Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), the rebel group which led the offensive that ousted Bashar al-Assad, is that rather than aiming for a federal set-up which might give Kurds in the country’s north a degree of autonomy, the HTS preference is for a unified state which would require Kurdish armed groups to disband and disarm, including the US-backed coalition, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). This will please Turkey, but it won’t go down well in Washington. We’ll have more on this in the new year.

One of our other focuses this week has been on a spat between the Irish and Israeli governments which led Israel to withdraw its ambassador to Ireland. Ireland has formally applied to intervene in South Africa’s case in the International Court of Justice over whether Israel is in fact committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Ireland says current international law concerning what comprises genocide has far too narrow a definition – which, it says could lead to a “culture of impunity in which the protection of civilians is minimised”.

International legal scholar James Sweeney of Lancaster Law School explains here how the law of genocide works and how it has been applied in the past.

Read more:
Gaza: why it’s difficult to reach a legal judgment of genocide against Israel

World Affairs Briefing from The Conversation UK is available as a weekly email newsletter. Click here to get our updates directly in your inbox. Läs mer…

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Recalling the past week, two famous quotes spring to mind. Lenin is often credited with saying: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen” (although whether the Russian revolutionary leader actually uttered these words is a matter of fierce debate). Less ambiguous is Ernest Hemingway’s line in The Sun Also Rises, where one of his characters is asked how he had gone bankrupt: “Gradually. And then suddenly,” came the reply.

And so to Syria. This time last week, rebel forces had taken the country’s second city of Aleppo, the strategically important city of Hama and were poised to sweep down on Homs. As regular contributor Scott Lucas, of University College Dublin, rather perspicaciously observed at that stage: “The Russia-Iran-Assad ‘axis of the vulnerable’ is cracking in Syria”.

That was Thursday. By Saturday December 8 reports emerged that Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, had fallen – cutting government forces off from the Assad Alawite stronghold along the coast and opening up the road to Damascus. There were also reports that the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad had fled with his family to Russia where they were granted asylum. The following day it was confirmed that rebel forces, spearheaded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) under the leadership of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, had entered the Syrian capital of Damascus. In 11 days, more than five decades of oppression under the Assad dynasty had been brought to an end.

Now, more than ever, it’s vital to be informed about the important issues affecting global stability. Sign up to receive our weekly World Affairs Briefing newsletter from The Conversation UK. Every Thursday we’ll bring you expert analysis of the big stories in international relations.

There is, understandably, a degree of apprehension about who will run the new Syria. HTS was formed in 2017 as a union between a number of Islamist armed groups in northwestern Syria, including the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda, known as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham or the Al-Nusra Front. As a result, some observers wondered whether the cure would be worse than the affliction if the result was another militant Islamist group with more experience in insurgency than government.

William Plowright, an expert in international security at Durham University, interviewed some of the people who would go on to be involved in HTS while researching a book on why some armed groups follow the rules of international humanitarian law and others do not.

He believes that HTS has moved away from its radical origins and is keen to engage with the outside world. A lot will depend on how the outside world chooses to engage: “As I learned by speaking with them, armed groups such as HTS tend to listen when the international community tries to engage with them … Key to determining the future of Syria will be the actions of other countries who seek to engage HTS and its affiliates.”

Read more:
I interviewed Syria’s militias at the start of the war – they will listen if other countries engage them

So, what sort of leader is al-Jolani (or, as he is also referred to by some, al-Golani, such are the vagaries of transliteration)? Sara Harmouch of American University in Washington DC has worked with Nato on religious militant groups in the Middle East. She has traced the metamorphosis of HTS and al-Jolani from its militant beginnings to a more pragmatic style of leadership encompassing the notion of public service as well as his obvious military prowess.

Under his leadership HTS has focused its message increasingly on protecting the people from the cruelty of the Assad regime. He has also consolidated many of the other armed groups in northern Syria under the HTS umbrella. Harmouch notes that the US and UK, at least, appear to be giving him the benefit of the doubt. She reports that Washington is considering removing the US$10 million bounty on his head, while the UK government is talking about removing HTS from its list of proscribed terror organisations.

Read more:
Abu Mohammed al-Golani may become the face of post-Assad Syria – but who is he and why does he have $10M US bounty on his head?

It’ll now be interesting to see how Mohammed al-Bashir, the electrical engineer who has been tasked with heading Syria’s interim government, sets about laying the ground rules for a democratic transition. We will have more on him once the dust begins to settle.

A region holding its breath

Much attention is now being focused on how this may affect power dynamics in the Middle East. It’s something of a cliche to describe Syria as a fault-line – there are, after all, so many of these in the region right now – but it’s no less accurate for that.

Syrian opposition forces toppled the Assad regime after only 11 days of fighting.
Institute for the Study of War

A lot will depend on Turkey, writes Natasha Lindstaedt, an international affairs expert at Essex University. Turkey gave HTS the go-ahead to proceed with its offensive after Ankara’s attempts to normalise relations with Damascus fell on deaf ears. Assad offered little or no help to Turkey in its strategy of trying to contain Kurdish national aspirations. To the contrary, Damascus’s directive to Ankara that all Turkish troops must leave Syria would probably have resulted in even more Syrian refugees heading north as well (Turkey already hosts the most refugees from Syria).

Ankara will want a say in how Syria deals with the 2.5 million Kurds estimated to be living in the north of the country. At present Washington funds the Kurdish-led Syrian Defence Forces which holds sway in the north-east. Turkey’s proxy force, the Syrian National Army controls much of the north-west. The future stability of a new-look Syria will depend, in large part, on how it – and its neighbours and backers – deal with the warring factions.

Read more:
What Syria’s rebel takeover means for the region’s major players: Turkey, Iran and Russia

The rapid fall of the house of Assad has exposed two of the other powers in the region with the most invested in Syria: Iran and Russia. Iran and Syria have enjoyed close relations since the Assad dynasty took power in the 1970s. When the ousted dictator’s father, Hafeez al-Assad, seized control of the Ba’athist party in 1970 there were questions about where his Alawite sect sat as a branch of Islam. Iranian clerics ruled that the Alawites are a branch of Shia Islam. This ensured that, when the ayatollahs took power in 1979, Tehran looked to Syria and the Assads as natural allies.

Selfie: Syrian rebels enjoy some down time in Hama, December 5, before embarking on the final push south to Damsacus.
EPA-EFE/Bilal al Hammoud

When the Arab Spring threw Syria into chaos in 2011, Iran offered military and logistical support to Damascus and, as Ali Bilgic observes, took the opportunity to weld Syria into its “Shia crescent” which stretched from Iran-backed militias in Iraq to Hezbollah in Lebanon. This is now in disarray, particularly after Israel’s recent war against Hezbollah.

Bilgic, a Middle East expert at the University of Loughborough, believes that Iran has a range of options to consider and its focus will be sharpened (something you have read here a lot recently) by the propect of an imminent Trump presidency. It could opt to divert the considerable funds it has been spending in Syria to hasten its programme of uranium enrichment. If the new regime in Damascus is not as happy to host its Quds force fighters, Tehran could opt to try to destabilise the new regime. Both of these options, writes Bilgic, “could escalate regional uncertainty beyond the impacts of the past 13 years”. This would likely be as bad as it sounds, given how conflict-ridden the region already is.

Or it could try to resurrect the programme of normalisation between itself and Saudi Arabia, which was brokered by China in the spring of 2023 and had led to the resumption of diplomatic relations between the two countries. This would represent a major foreign policy shift for Tehran, but could considerably ease tensions in the Middle East, an outcome greatly to be desired.

Read more:
Syria: fall of Assad a blow for Iran’s ’Shia crescent’ – here are its foreign policy options in the new-look Middle East

The view from Moscow

Russia, meanwhile, has also caught short by the rapid turn of events that toppled Assad. Since 2015, Russia has been one of Assad’s most important guarantors, flexing its considerable military muscles to crush resistance in much of the country.

Moscow has considerable interests in Syria, including two enormously important bases: its warm-water ports on the Mediterranean coast at Tartus and, further north, the airbase at Khmeimim, which it was handed in 2015. The future of both of these bases is now in doubt.

Vital for Russia’s global image: Tartus naval base in 2019.
AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko

But perhaps more of a blow to Vladimir Putin, writes Stefan Wolff, is that Russia was unable to do anything to save Assad: “The fact that Moscow was unable to save an important ally like Assad exposes critical weaknesses in Russia’s ability to act, rather than just talk, like a great power.”

Wolff, an expert in international security at the University of Birmingham, believes that Russia’s position in the Middle East is in “peril”. Iran and Hezbollah are greatly weakened, Syria looks to be gone and its regional rivals, Israel and Turkey now find their hands considerably strengthened.

Read more:
What the fall of Assad says about Putin’s ambitions for Russia’s great-power status

It’s hugely embarassing for Russia, writes maritime security expert Basil Germond of the University of Lancaster, and is compounded by the fact that if it loses Tartus, its naval assets in the Mediterranean would be “forced to either start a long – and frankly humiliating – journey back to Russian bases, or find another temporary base in the region”.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Turkey exercised its right under the Montreaux convention to close off access to the Turkish Straits to Russian warships. This has closed off access to Russia’s bases at Sevastopol and Novorossiysk in the Black Sea.

But like Wolff, Germond also sees the fall of Assad and the possible loss of its bases as a blow to Russia’s credibility as a world power. It remains to be seen what the incoming US president, Donald Trump, wants to make of that. At the time of writing, Russian sources were reporting that Moscow was close to doing a deal with Damascus over the future of its bases. This will be well worth keeping an eye on as it could have consequences beyond the Middle East.

Read more:
How the loss of its Mediterranean naval base in Syria would weaken Russia as a global power

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