Great Game

Africa

Ethiopia accused of backing Sudan’s RSF

Sudan has accused Ethiopia of allowing drones to be launched from its territory to carry out attacks against Sudanese government forces. This marks the first time Sudan has directly accused its neighbor of involvement in the three-year civil war against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). In a statement, Sudan’s Foreign Ministry warned of unspecified consequences. The drone accusation follows reports of the construction of an RSF training base in northwest Ethiopia, paid for by the United Arab Emirates. (Map: PCL)

Greater Middle East

UN demands civilian protection amid Middle East escalation

The United Nations urgently called for civilian protection amid growing violence and instability in the Middle East—and particularly in regard to the ongoing US and Israeli military operations against Iran. The UN urged a thorough investigation into a deadly strike on a girls’ school in Iran, and requested the disclosure of all relevant information. The attack in the southern coastal city of Minab reportedly killed 168 people. According to Iran’s Ministry of Education, the overwhelming majority of the slain were schoolgirls aged seven to 12. The strike came on the first day of coordinated US and Israeli airstrikes officially targeting Iranian infrastructure and military facilities. (Photo: Mehr via Wikimedia Commons)

Iran

US preparing to strike Iran?

The Trump White House appears close to launching military strikes on Iran. The US is amassing a large strike force in the Middle East, including two aircraft carriers, over a dozen warships, and advanced fighter jets, suggesting preparations for a prolonged war. After first threatening military action in January during a protest crackdown in Iran that killed thousands, US officials now say a decision could come within days or weeks, depending on the outcome of now-stalled negotiations over Iran’s uranium enrichment and missile development programs. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said any deal must dismantle both programs. Iran’s leaders may view forfeiting these means of deterrenceagainst foreign intervention as more dangerous than a war. (Map: PCL)

Southern Cone

Argentina: Milei offers Trump part of Tierra del Fuego?

In a move sparking outrage from the country’s opposition, Argentina’s central government under President Javier Milei has taken control of the port of Ushuaia—the country’s southernmost seaport and a key gateway to Antarctica. Milei’s move places operation and administration of the port under his executive control for one year—over the objections of the Tierra del Fuego provincial government. The takeover came just days before a US Air Force jet landed at Ushuaia, bringing in a delegation of US lawmakers from the House of Representatives’ Energy & Commerce Committee. Milei, in power since December 2023, has already received two heads of the US Southern Command in Ushuaia. Both visited the Ushuaia Integrated Naval Base, which Argentina has been building since 2022. While Milei insists the base will be under full Argentine control, the country’s opposition press is full of speculation that on the sidelines of the Davos summit, Milei offered the base and all of Ushuaia to the US in exchange for an invitation to join the “Board of Peace” being touted by Trump as an alternative to the United Nations. (Photo: Wikipedia)

Europe

Danish veterans stage silent protest at US embassy

Hundreds of Danish veterans and supporters staged a silent march from the historic Kastellet fortress to the US Embassy in Copenhagen as part of a “No Words” mobilization to protest recent US rhetoric that organizers said demeans Denmark’s combat contributions alongside American forces. Organizers also linked the march to the status of Greenland, upholding the right of self-determination for the Danish island territory. Recent demands by President Donald Trump for US annexation of Greenland, and comments seeming to question the courage of Danish soldiers, have stirred a sense of betrayal for many in Denmark, particularly those who fought alongside US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Image: No Words)

Planet Watch

Doomsday Clock moves: 85 seconds to midnight

The Science & Security Board of the The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the symbolic hands of the Doomsday Clock to an unprecedented 85 seconds to midnight. The decision came a year after the clock was set to an also unprecedented 89 seconds to midnight—and three years after it was moved to 90 seconds to midnight. Each increment since 2017, when it was set at 2.5 minutes of midnight, has brought the Clock closer to doomsday than ever before. This year’s statement reads: “A year ago, we warned that the world was perilously close to global disaster and that any delay in reversing course increased the probability of catastrophe. Rather than heed this warning, Russia, China, the United States, and other major countries have instead become increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic. Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, the misuse of biotechnology, the potential threat of artificial intelligence, and other apocalyptic dangers.” (Image: misucell.com)

Syria

Podcast: twilight of Rojava?

A last-minute “permanent ceasefire” may mean that northeast Syria is back from the brink of Arab-Kurdish ethnic war. But ceasefires have repeatedly broken down since fighting resumed earlier this year, with Damascus demanding disbandment of the Rojava autonomous zone, and the integration of its institutions—including its military wing, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—into the central government. While the new pact sets a more “gradual” pace for this integration, the Kurdish aspiration to regional autonomy and the central government’s insistence on centralization may prove a long-term obstacle to peace. In Episode 315 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg weighs the odds for avoiding a conflict that holds the potential for escalation to genocide, with the connivance of the Great Powers that so recently backed the SDF to fight ISIS. (Photo via Facebook)

Syria

Russia joins US in betraying Syrian Kurds

The Kurdish-held border town of Kobani in northern Syria is under siege again, as it was by ISIS in 2014—but this time by forces of the Syrian central government, which has cut off water and power to the town in the dead of winter, with snow on the ground. Since the start of the year, the Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria have lost almost all of the territory they controlled to a new offensive by the central government. Kobani with Hasakah and Qamishli are the last besieged strongholds of the reduced Rojava autonomous zone. And both the US and Russia, which have backed the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against ISIS, now appear to be cutting them loose—effectively green-lighting the government offensive against them. US special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack has already warned that US support for the SDF is coming to an end. And in the midst of the offensive, Russia has withdrawn its forces from Qamishli, its principal military outpost in Rojava. This came just as Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa was on his second trip to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin—pointing to a quid-pro-quo in which Russia will be allowed to maintain its two major military bases in Syria, on the Mediterranean coast at Khmeimim and Tartous. (Photo: SOHR)

Planet Watch

Today Greenland, tomorrow the world

Trump’s Greenland annexation drive is only secondarily about the strategic minerals, but fundamentally driven by a geostrategic design to divide the planet with Putin. Even if his belated and equivocal disavowal of military force at the Davos summit is to be taken as real, the threat has likely achieved its intended effect—dividing and paralyzing NATO, so as to facilitate Putin’s military ambitions in Europe, even beyond Ukraine Also at Davos, Trump officially inaugurated his “Board of Peace,” seen as parallel body to the United Nations that can eventually displace it—dominated by Trump and Putin, in league with the world’s other authoritarians. In the Greenland gambit, the territory itself is a mere pawn in the drive to establish a Fascist World Order. In Episode 314 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinbergcalls for centering indigenous Inuit voices on the future of Greenland, and universal repudiation of annexationist designs. (Image: TruthSocial)

Planet Watch

Trump’s global imperial court

When US President Donald Trump first proposed establishing a so-called “Board of Peace” to oversee governance of the Gaza Strip for a transitional period back in September, the idea was quickly likened to a form of colonial takeover. The UN nonetheless adopted a Security Council resolution in November giving its blessing to the board’s creation—a vote some member states may now regret. The board was just officially inaugurated in a ceremony in Davos, Switzerland, where Trump was attending the World Economic Forum. But Gaza seems almost incidental to its true mission, which appears to be creating a global strongmen’s club—led by Trump, potentially for life—to rival, if not replace, the UN itself. (Image via Wikipedia)

Iran

Iran & Minneapolis: fearful symmetry

As ICE agents open fire on protesters in Minneapolis, Portland and Los Angeles, Trump frames his military threats against Iran in terms of human rights and democracy—an atypical nod back to the neocons. Following mass deadly repression, the protests in Iran appear to have abated—for now. In Minnesota, both Trump and protesters are turning up the heat. Trump’s blatant hypocrisy highlights the imperative of international solidarity. The challenge for stateside protesters is to repudiate the calumny that the Iran protests are CIA or Mossad astroturf, and recognize them as a genuine self-organized popular uprising. The challenge for Iranian protesters is to repudiate Trump’s bid to exploit them for his imperial ends, as well to reject the ambitions of the reactionary “crown prince” Reza Pahlavi to install himself as leader. In Episode 313 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg urges that explicit mutual support between the anti-authoritarian struggles in the US and Iran is what can move the historical process forward at this grim hour. (Photo: Chad Davis)

Planet Watch

Climate change drives Trump’s Greenland gambit

European troops landed in Greenland amid tense talks between the country’s autonomous government, officials from Denmark, and the United States. President Trump has continued to insist the two-million-square-kilometer Arctic island should belong to the United States—despite pre-existing security agreements and a (previously) strong relationship with Denmark that grants the US significant military access to the territory. Beyond Trump’s ego, there are reasons related to climate change that explain why Greenland is becoming of political interest. The territory’s strategic location has become even more so in recent years as the Greenland ice sheet and surrounding sea ice have retreated significantly: The ice sheet lost 105 billion tonnes in 2024-25, according to scientists. This has disastrous implications—ice helps cool the planet, and its melt will lead to rising seas. But it also allows ships and submarines more freedom of movement, making military planners nervous. (Photo: Pixabay)