In this new world order of military burden sharing between America and Europe it is not clear that the British Royal Navy is up to the task
Today, there are only three global naval powers: the United States, China, and Russia. The British Royal Navy is, sadly, reduced to a small regional naval power, able occasionally to deploy further afield. If Donald Trump wants European states to look after their own collective security, Britain might be better off keeping its handful of ships in the Atlantic.
European politicians and journalists talk constantly about the huge challenge in countering an apparently imminent Russian invasion, should the U.S. back away from NATO under President Trump. With Russia’s Black Sea fleet largely confined to the eastern Black Sea during the war, although still able to inflict severe damage on Ukraine, few people talk about the real Russian naval capacity to challenge Western dominance. Or, indeed, how this will increasingly come up against U.S. naval interests in the Pacific and, potentially, in the Arctic.
This was brought into sharp focus on April 22, when the Royal Navy deployed its Carrier Strike Group 25 on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific. Aboard the aircraft carrier, HMS The Prince of Wales, his battleship grey hair perfectly set like a character from a low-budget Top Gun movie, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the deployment shows the UK’s “commitment to global stability. That is an incredible message to our adversaries. It is an incredible show of unity to our allies and our commitment to NATO.”
I wasn’t persuaded by this message. Supported by a frigate each from Canada, Norway, and Spain, almost half of Britain’s fighting ships embarked from Portsmouth and Devonport to much fanfare. When I say half of the ships, I mean, specifically, 1 aircraft carrier, 1 destroyer, 1 frigate, and 1 attack submarine. That’s right, four vessels.
That means the Royal Navy now has only one destroyer, two frigates (a third frigate is currently in Oman), and one attack submarine to defend British shores. Nine other ships are in dry docks, and another three are undergoing maintenance. Three of the Astute Class attack subs — only launched in 2014 — have been under repair for an average of two years each, and HMS Daring, “the world’s most advanced air defense destroyer,” has been in the dry dock since 2017.
If President Trump thought Britain could take more responsibility in Europe for naval security in the Atlantic, he would be wrong. The United Kingdom, the world’s first naval hegemon, now has nine fighting ships that are seaworthy, not including the nuclear missile submarines that are Britain’s Continuous At Sea Deterrent.
I’ve just finished reading “The Royal and Russian Navies, Cooperation, Competition and Confrontation,”written by Britain’s former Naval Attache to Moscow, Captain David Fields RN (Ret’d), and Robert Avery OBE, retired Principal Lecturer at the Defence Centre for Languages & Culture at the UK’s Defence Academy. The authors argue that while we have focused most of our attention on Russia’s army in Ukraine, its navy has rearmed at a fast clip. And thinking about Russia as a relic of its Cold War self is a huge mistake.
Despite being half the size of Britain, economically, laboring under sanctions and the tight fiscal constraints of the war in Ukraine, Russia’s naval yards have built new vessels non-stop for the past decade. Since 2011, Russia has taken delivery of 27 submarines, 6 frigates, 9 corvettes, 16 small missile ships, and other logistic support vessels. Many more are under construction and will arrive by the end of this decade. As the Russians say, “quantity has a quality all of its own.”
Russia now has a terrifying ability to threaten NATO countries through capabilities tested during the Ukraine war, such as its Kalibr Land Attack Cruise Missile, which has been used extensively against Ukrainian critical infrastructure. Its new ships are being fitted for the Tsirkon hypersonic missile and other innovations such as an underwater nuclear drone. I’ve been studying Russia long enough to remember the 2015 accidental (really, not accidental) TV leak of Russia’s plans for a nuclear torpedo.
The Royal Navy, on the other hand, has continued to shrink in the teeth of defense cuts, and each new efficiency drive makes it smaller. The two Albion-class landing vessels, in service for only 20 years, are laid up, and negotiations about their sale to Brazil are at an advanced stage. The increase in defense spending to 2.5% of GDP will mostly be swallowed by the MoD’s bloated procurement programs that are typically delayed and always over budget. It will not produce a rapid conveyor belt of ship-building that has seen Russia overtake Britain at a rapid pace since the Ukraine crisis started.
The book also underlines the importance of dialogue as a key component of deterrence and reminds the reader of the significant naval cooperation that took place between the two navies after the Cold War. When HMS Battleaxe sailed into Baltiysk in 1992, the first Royal Navy ship visit to modern-day Russia, it discovered the remnants of the Soviet Navy, most ships rusting over and unseaworthy, in a dilapidated dockyard. This was an allegory, perhaps, of the Royal Navy today. Fast forward to 2010, and the tide was already turning. The Russian Navy had become the main beneficiary of Russia’s state armament program, and a Russian admiral was saying the UK’s decision to give up the Nimrod Maritime Patrol Aircraft in 2010 made his “life easier.”
When Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, practically all direct engagement between the Royal and Russian navies was cut at the instigation of the UK government. Today, the UK and Russia have no serving military attachés in their respective embassies in London and Moscow for the first time since 1941. Our modern generation of seafarers are now only able to view Russians through binoculars, periscopes, and gun sights. And they have more guns than we do. Britain has literally watched a modernizing Russian navy sail off into a distant horizon as we’ve criticized Russia from an ivory conning tower.
From his ridiculous photo op on the deck of HMS The Prince of Wales, it’s not clear that Keir Starmer has understood that the world now contains just three global naval powers: the United States of America, China, and Russia.
Russian naval ambitions have now grown in the High North (Arctic) and in the Pacific.
While Britain’s modest Carrier Strike Group steams east, Russia has already been active in joint naval exercises with China and Iran, as well as ship visits to Myanmar and other locations. Britain has practically no scope to control Russia’s increasingly assertive naval posture in Asia.
This decade-long lack of engagement — not just by Britain but by America pre-Trump — has left us sailing blind on how Russian doctrine and tactics have shifted in the forge of war in Ukraine. It's clear to me that in this new world order of military burden sharing between America and Europe, Britain would be better placed keeping its handful of ships in the Atlantic, while America increasingly comes into contact with the Russian Navy in the Pacific.
The Bunker appears originally at the Project on Government Oversight and is republished here with permission.
When playing Pentagon poker, when is a loss not a loss? When reading the tea leaves convinces you that today’s loss will yield a bigger win tomorrow. You knew this was coming as soon as the Air Force general in charge of dropping nuclear bombs dropped one last month: The Pentagon’s planned buy of 100 B-21 bombers isn’t enough. He really, honestly, truthinessly needs 145 of the bat-winged warplanes.
Things have changed since that original number was set in 2011, and it just won’t do in today’s world, General Anthony Cotton, chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, said March 18. “The production rate that was agreed upon was, I think, in [that] geopolitical environment. That’s a little different than the geopolitical environment that we will face for decades to come,” he said. “Hence, I, as a customer, would love to see larger production rates.”
So, as day follows night, 35 days later Northrop announced that it was taking a $477 million loss on its B-21 program. Largely, that’s so it — wait for it! — can build more of the highly-classified bombers, faster. Much of that sum is dedicated to an unspecified production “process change” for the B-21. “That process change supports the accelerated production rates,” Kathy Warden, Northrop’s CEO, said April 22. “We can ramp beyond the quantities in the program of record,” she added, referring to the Air Force’s piddling 100-bomber buy. “Which is something that we and the government decided was important for the optionality to support the scenarios that they have been looking at to increase the current build rate.”
“Optionality”?
Of course, pretty much everything about the B-21 Raider, including its “build rate” — how many a year we’ll get to buy — remains secret. But Northrop’s website does have a handy-dandy FAQ section dedicated to the bomber. “The U.S. Air Force has stated plans to acquire at least 100 aircraft,” it says. “Some defense analysts believe that the Air Force should plan to purchase at least 200 B-21s.” Gotta wonder how much of a bonus the PR whiz pocketed who added “at least 200.”
The B-21 made its first flight late in 2023, and five more bombers are now under construction in California. Capable of carrying both nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, the B-21 is slated to go operational in 2027. Calculating its cost can be challenging. Bloomberg reported in 2022 that the 100 bombers would cost $89.1 billion to produce, or $891 million a copy. But that’s based on 2019 dollars. While the bomber may have some ability to elude enemy radar, it can’t elude inflation.
But not to worry. That’s why we have Congress. On Sunday(!), April 27, GOP lawmakers proposed that the Pentagon needs $150 billion more, including $4.5 billion “for acceleration of the B-21 long-range bomber aircraft” (PDF).
Hurray for Lockheed! Sure, that’s not The Bunker’s usual take on the Pentagon’s biggest contractor. But on April 22, the company did something refreshing. Instead of challenging competitor Boeing’s recent winning bid to build the Air Force’s new F-47 fighter, it decided to improve the existing Lockheed-built F-35.
Now granted, the F-35 continues to be plagued by cost, production, and readiness woes. But when defense contractors lose a major contract, many opt to file a “bid protest” with the Government Accountability Office in hopes of reversing the decision. It rarely works and only serves to delay the program.
In this case, Lockheed has instead decided to cram some of the unspecified new technologies it has developed for its losing F-47 sixth-generation bid into the fifth-generation F-35. “There are techniques and capabilities … that were developed for [our F-47 bid] that we can now apply here,” Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet said. “We’re basically going to take the [F-35's] chassis and turn it into a Ferrari.” That’s pretty funny, because four years ago the Air Force’s top officer said the F-35 was already a Ferrari. (And for all those years you thought the “F” in F-16s, F-35s, etc., stood for “Fighter.”)
But what’s not funny is something else Taiclet said: “My challenge here on my aeronautics team is, let’s get 80% of six-gen capability at half the price … they wouldn’t have agreed to this if they didn’t think there was a path to get there.” (But don’t think that’ll be a bargain. Best estimates suggest that F-47s will end up costing $300 million each, meaning a supercharged F-35 would cost $150 million.)
Why should it take losing a contract to compel a contractor to build something nearly as good for half the price? No doubt there’s some Lockheed hyperbole there. But it’s no more hyperbolic than the hypersonic frenzy used to justify the F-47. Here’s an inside tip: Foreign foes are never as threatening as those with an (in)vested interest in fighting them claim. And its corollary: Shiny new U.S. weapons are never as good when they roll off the assembly line as they are at conception.
You may have seen images of Pope Francis in his open coffin last week. That’s because the Vatican wanted you to see them. But what if some terror group — or rogue state — didn’t want the world to know their leader had been killed by a U.S. missile strike, or offed during a capture-or-kill mission that defaulted to the death option?
That’s no longer a theoretical question. “Synthetic media may allow terrorist organizations to simulate the continued presence of deceased leaders, undermining public belief in their deaths,” Army Lieutenant Colonel Matthew J. Fecteau wrote April 23 at West Point’s Modern War Institute website. “Generative AI is not just a tactical threat; it is a strategic disruptor that challenges the foundations of belief, perception, and reality in modern warfare.”
In other words, the next time a good guy kills a bad guy, AI could generate a fake living bad guy to declare: “You missed.”
→ Shield of dreams
Declaring you’re going to build a “Golden Dome” missile shield and building it are two very different things, NPR’s Geoff Brumfiel explained April 22.
→ Walking the plank
James Holmes of the Naval War College autopsies the 1989 blast aboard the USS Iowa that killed 47 sailors and details how and why the Navy compounded the tragedy with its disgraceful investigation, April 23 in The National Interest.
→ War game
A new book by Phil Tinline, reviewed in the New York Times April 27, examines a 1967 magazine article that argued that war is “the essential economic stabilizer of modern societies.” It was a crafty hoax, but so well done, that it infects U.S. society even today.
Thanks for infecting The Bunker with your attention this week. Consider forwarding it to friends so they can subscribe here.
The photographs, television images and newspaper stories make it perfectly clear: there was an urgency, a frenzy even, as the U.S. Embassy in Saigon shuttered and its diplomats and staff were evacuated, along with other military, journalists, and foreigners, as well as thousands of Vietnamese civilians, who all wanted out of the country as the North Vietnamese victors rolled into the city center.
It was April 30, 1975 — 50 years ago today — yet the nightmare left behind that day only accentuated the failure of the United States, along with the South Vietnamese army, to resist a takeover by the communists under the leadership of the North. It was not only an extraordinarily bloody chapter for Vietnam (well over 1.5 million military and civilian deaths, depending on estimates, from 1965 to 1975), but a dark episode for America, too.
Beyond the failure of Washington’s Cold War policy — that intervening in Vietnam’s post-Colonial struggles for independence was necessary to prevent the “dominoes” of communism from tumbling across Southeast Asia — more than 55,000 Americans were killed. An untold number who returned suffered lifelong injuries, impacts of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and illnesses and other symptoms due to Agent Orange and other toxic exposures.
The nation had been ruptured politically and socially over the war, a divide that one could say has never really healed.
Yet ironically, Washington’s proclivity to intervene in other countries’ affairs and to use military power as the first resort has only grown. It would seem the true lessons of Vietnam were left on that iconic rooftop from which the last helicopter left Saigon 50 years ago.
Some say after WWII, U.S. power and intervention has always maintained the global liberal order and that Vietnam was a “mistake” — a one-off. Others say it was a sign that the pretense of America as the "indispensable nation” was folly from the beginning, that the Cold War had blinded us to the realities of the world and the limits of military intervention.
So we asked experts, both in geopolitics and history, what they think:
Was the failure of Vietnam a feature or a bug of U.S. foreign policy after WWII?
***
Andrew Bacevich; Greg Daddis; Carolyn Eisenberg; Morton H. Halperin; Steve Kinzer; Noah Kulwin; Robert Levering; Anatol Lieven; Daniel McCarthy; Robert Merry; Paul Pillar; Tim Shorrock; Monica Duffy Toft; Stephen Walt; Cora Weiss
***
Andrew Bacevich, co-founder and Emeritus Board Chair of the Quincy Institute
The United States has yet to reckon fully with the causes and consequences of the Vietnam War. Why? Because American foreign policy elites have spent the last 50 years engaged in a concerted effort to evade their responsibility for that disaster. Their success in doing so helps explain the dubious record of U.S. policy since. Yesterday's mistakes become the basis for tomorrow's actions.
Greg Daddis, director of the Center of War and Society at San Diego State University, and board member at the Quincy Institute
Americans came home from World War II with a faith in their power — and, increasingly, in their responsibility — to maintain a stable international order in the wake of such a catastrophic global conflict. That faith was coupled with fears of a growing communist threat, a threat seemingly existential to policymakers and ordinary citizens alike. These universalizing fears, coupled with a faith in military power’s transformative capacities overseas, ultimately would lead the United States to embark upon its misguided Southeast Asian crusade. Yet this wasn’t a “one-off.” Throughout the Cold War, the American policy elite committed the nation to conflicts that, far from furthering U.S. national security interests, only brought death and misery to peoples abroad. They feared the potentially toxic mixture of self-determination and communism as emerging nations grappled with new identities in the postcolonial era. And they held faith, even in the face of contrary evidence, that war created a safer global environment in its destructive aftermath.
Carolyn Eisenberg, author of “Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia”
Lessons not learned. Absent a “truth commission” or some recognized official proceeding, the most egregious American attitudes and behaviors associated with the Vietnam War were never properly addressed. The conviction that the U.S. has a right to violently shape the internal life of foreign nations, that our “national security” depends on military dominance, and that lying to the public is a necessary feature of governance, never disappeared. Left intact was a governmental apparatus oriented to war, and procedures which anesthetized officials to the human costs of their decisions. Under the rubric of “complexity,” the sacrifice of millions of Asians and tens of thousands of American soldiers, became clouded for subsequent generations. And while adjustments were made, the habit of military intervention remained — from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere. We currently see its precipitate, from Democratic and Republican administrations, as the U.S. bombs Yemen, and enables Israel’s massacre of Palestinian children.
Morton H. Halperin is an American expert on foreign policy and civil liberties
The American military intervention in Vietnam and its failure was a bug and not a feature of U.S. foreign policy after WWII. In deciding whether to intervene in armed conflicts abroad in the period after World War II, the United States was guided by the Truman Doctrine which said that we would “support free peoples resisting subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressure.”
This was a commitment to support local efforts not to replace them or to intervene in all conflicts. The United States stayed out of the Chinese civil war and ceded Soviet control of Eastern Europe while supporting the Greek and Korean resistance to communist control.
The disastrous American intervention in Vietnam should have taught us that we should only consider intervention when we are supporting people struggling for their freedom. This principle is key to understanding why the American intervention in Afghanistan was such a disaster and why we must help defend Ukraine.
Steve Kinzer, Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs, Brown University
America’s war in Vietnam was not an aberration. It reflected a key fact of American history: domestic politics shapes our foreign policy. The United States refused to accept the 1954 Geneva accord that would have settled the Vietnam question peacefully. President Eisenhower feared that doing so would, as his press secretary James Hagerty put it, “give the Democrats a chance to say that we sat idly by and let Indochina be sold down the river to the Communists.” A decade later, Lyndon Johnson concluded that Congress would never approve his Great Society programs if he pulled troops out of Vietnam: “They won’t be talking about my civil rights bill or education or beautification. No, sir. They’ll be pushing Vietnam up my ass every time.”
Washington helped create the Cold War narrative that Americans came to accept. That narrative wound up limiting presidents’ ability to make difficult foreign policy decisions.
Noah Kulwin, writer and co-host of “Blowback” podcast
The U.S. war on Vietnam could not have ended in any way other than failure. The collapse of our South Vietnamese client; the strategic pointlessness of our air campaign; the breakdown of order among infantry, airmen and sailors; the arms industry gravy train; the list of causes is endless. But the striking resemblance between how that war failed and how wars since have failed must be observed. In Iraq, but most of all in Afghanistan. That the U.S. has lost wars in the same way for a half-century suggests a pattern — not an aberration.
Robert Levering, Executive Producer of “The Movement and the ‘Madman’”
I was of draft age during the Vietnam war. So, U.S. foreign policy was an intensely personal matter for me. I gradually became clear that I could not fight in an unjust and immoral war and decided to resist the draft and become a fulltime antiwar organizer. At the time, I thought the Vietnam war was just a horrible mistake. The Iraq and Afghan wars and the constant American involvement in conflicts throughout the world since then have convinced me otherwise. I now see the Vietnam war as only a symptom of America's systemic commitment to global military domination since World War II.
By chance, I've spent the last two weeks in Vietnam. I've been seeing the real-world implications. Among other things, I've seen the site of the My Lai massacre and a rehab center for children of the fourth generation of Agent Orange victims.
Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia program at the Quincy Institute
Tragically, the failures of the U.S. in Vietnam were due to persistent features of U.S. policymaking culture that contributed heavily to the disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine, and will, if not addressed, recur in future. The first is a failure to seriously study other countries. This led for many years to a disastrous blindness to the power of Vietnamese nationalism. Instead, you have ideological stereotyping, leading to a division of the world into giant blocs of friends and enemies, from the “Communist Bloc” through the “Axis of Evil” to today’s supposed “Alliance of Autocrats.” Finally, there is the unlovely combination of humanitarian rhetoric with brutal indifference to the lives of the real people on the ground that are the objects of U.S. strategy. Vietnamese, Cambodians, Central Americans, Africans, Kurds, Afghans and Iraqis have all been used in this way. Today, it is the Ukrainians’ turn.
Daniel McCarthy, vice president for the Collegiate Network at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Vietnam conflict was over as a war by the time I was born in the late 1970s, but during my lifetime the Vietnam era has never really ended. Neither the superficial success of the 1991 Persian Gulf War nor the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America’s own soil erased the Vietnam experience as the defining narrative of what it means for our country to go to war under modern conditions. All our wars are still Vietnams. Our Indochinese quagmire began with threat inflation — “domino theory” — and a refusal to acknowledge that we didn’t have enough support among the people we were trying to “save” to win a war against native opponents. Threat inflation, domino theories — the latest says that if Putin takes the Donbas, he’ll surely take Tallinn then Paris then London — and ignorance of local attitudes remain the hallmarks of U.S. interventionism today, as does the use of overwhelming firepower as a substitute for rather than a plausible means to victory. Vietnam syndrome has never been cured because our leaders persist in the same behaviors that brought it on half a century ago, and they reap the same results. With every war they renew the lessons of Vietnam.
Robert Merry, author of “Where they Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians”
America’s Vietnam misadventure was not a policy aberration but a natural and probably inevitable product of the country’s Cold War mentality. By January 1949 the West had won the war’s first phase, the struggle for Europe. The continent was now fortified against a Russian invasion. But a new era quickly emerged, characterized by East Bloc efforts to probe and drive against the vulnerable colonial flanks and strategic assets of the West, in China, Southeast Asia, Korea, Egypt, and wherever Western weakness was discerned. America took the bait, but not because its leaders were fools. They were being consistent with the country’s perception of the protracted struggle they faced. In many ways, though, it was a mug’s game, forcing upon America multiple challenges at once, of Soviet choosing. But in a bipolar world on the edge of conflict, such challenges had to be confronted. That leaves execution as the big question.
Paul Pillar, non-resident fellow of the Quincy Institute and non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Security Studies of Georgetown University
The military tragedy in Vietnam grew directly out of attitudes central to the Cold War, the dominant framework of U.S. foreign policy in the half century following World War II. The Viet Minh/Viet Cong campaign was seen not for what it really was — the continuation of a nationalist, anti-colonial struggle — but instead as part of a worldwide communist advance led by Moscow and Beijing. That perception led to the erroneous assumptions underlying the U.S. military intervention, including that a communist victory would cause other countries to fall like dominoes and that a U.S. failure to show resolve in Vietnam would lead to other setbacks elsewhere in the world. The mistakes cannot be blamed on excessive optimism, since even those policymakers who held gloomy views about the intervention thought the U.S. had to make the effort. Nor can they be blamed on any shortcuts in the policymaking process.
Tim Shorrock, Washington-based journalist
The "failure of Vietnam," or what I would call the "liberation of Vietnam," was most definitely a feature of U.S. foreign policy that grew out of the aggressive Cold War tactics carried out by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations soon after World War II. This was especially true in Asia. To defeat anti-colonial, independence movements and ensure pro-American, anticommunist regimes, U.S. leaders allied themselves with a motley crew of fascists and collaborators with Japanese colonialism, starting with the far-right in Southern Korea and then Japan itself. That created the conditions for the Korean War against North Korea and Revolutionary China, which inspired Truman to block the Taiwan straits, send the first U.S. military aid to the French in Vietnam, and unleash the CIA as the cops of the world. Vietnam did not want to be part of a French or American empire. We were on the wrong side; they won.
Monica Duffy Toft, non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and Professor of International Politics at Tufts University
The failure in Vietnam was a feature — not a bug. American leaders have repeatedly failed to internalize history. In Vietnam — again in Afghanistan — they underestimated the power of nationalism and the resilience of guerrilla warfare. Since the rise of modern nationalism, strong states have increasingly struggled to defeat weaker opponents fighting for their homeland. These adversaries are often defending existential interests, while the United States tends to fight in peripheral theaters with few vital interests at stake. In Afghanistan, the U.S. achieved its core military objectives by December 2001 — destroying al-Qaida’s sanctuary and removing the Taliban from power. Yet rather than recognize success, the mission creeped into nation-building, committing the U.S. to 20 years of costly engagement. Vietnam and Afghanistan thus reflect a persistent flaw in U.S. strategy: conflating military victory with political transformation and the mistaken belief that foreign societies can be remade through prolonged and externally driven intervention.
Stephen Walt, board member at the Quincy Institute, Robert and Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School
Vietnam exemplifies most of the pathologies that have undermined U.S. foreign policy for decades. It was justified by threat-inflation and dubious ideas like the domino theory. U.S. policymakers were trying to use massive amounts of military force to remake a society whose history, culture, and national sentiments that they did not understand. They relied on corrupt and incompetent local clients, concealed basic truths about the war from the American people, and refused to raise taxes to pay for the war. The leaders who mismanaged this debacle were never held accountable and remained leading players in the establishment for the rest of their lives. Finally, the country learned little from this bitter experience, and repeated these same errors in Iraq, Afghanistan, and several other places.”
Cora Weiss, peace activist, organizer of the November 15, 1969 anti-war march on the National Mall
The U.S. government took on the mantle of political and military interventions after World War II. The decade long Vietnam War was one of many — not an aberration.
To diminish the likelihood and horrors of U.S. interventions, civil society must know and utilize its power. During the Vietnam War, in addition to marches to end the war, civil society provided some measure of direct relief to POWs. The anti-war movement sent me and two other women to work with the Vietnam Women’s Union to establish a channel for mail and packages to POWs. This resulted in an accurate list of prisoners, confirmed their treatment, and eventually allowed us to bring three prisoners home.
To constrain and eventually overturn America’s impulse to rule the world by force, we must put peace education into our curriculum, teach diplomacy, and embrace UNSC Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security.
The latest round of Gaza ceasefire negotiations in Cairo encapsulates the agonizing paradox gripping the devastated enclave.
Even as Egyptian security sources signaled a "significant breakthrough" towards a long-term truce on April 28, and a Hamas delegation departed after "intensive talks," the familiar impasse quickly reasserted itself. Israeli officials promptly denied any progress, Qatari mediators confirmed advances but no agreement on ending the 18-month-old war, and Hamas reiterated its refusal to disarm – a non-negotiable point for Israel.
The flurry of diplomatic activity masks fundamentally irreconcilable visions for Gaza's future, not only between Israel and the Palestinians but, critically, among the key Arab states themselves. While mediators shuttle between capitals, Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pursues indefinite military control, buoyed by a seemingly permissive Trump administration.
Israel's position, articulated clearly by Netanyahu and his government, forms one pole of this impasse. The official war aims – destroying Hamas and freeing hostages – remain operationally contradictory, yet Israel's actions prioritize the former. Netanyahu explicitly rules out Palestinian Authority (PA) governance in Gaza and insists that Israel must maintain overarching security control "over the entire area west of the Jordan River," rendering any Palestinian state less than sovereign.
This stance is reinforced by far-right coalition partners pushing for mass displacement and the dissolution of the PA.
Against this hardline Israeli stance, the Arab world presents a fractured landscape of competing visions over Hamas and Gaza’s political future.
At the diplomatic nexus lies Egypt, performing a precarious balancing act. Driven by the existential fear of inheriting millions of displaced Palestinians – a nightmare scenario given historical traumas and the ongoing Sudanese refugee crisis – Cairo’s primary goal is stability and preventing demographic shifts. Its policy is thus pragmatic: despite President Sisi’s own history of crushing political Islam domestically, it maintains communication channels with Hamas, the de facto power it must deal with as mediator.
Egypt prioritizes reopening the Rafah crossing under Palestinian control to manage aid and facilitate the return of Gazans currently stranded in Egypt, where their legal status is precarious and they receive only limited support. Cairo’s ambitious $53 billion Gaza reconstruction plan, envisaging an interim technocratic committee excluding Hamas before a potential PA return, aimed to counter Trump's displacement scheme and preserve a path to Palestinian statehood. Yet, this plan floundered against Israeli rejection and U.S. indifference.
Egypt neverthless persists in mediation, seeking an elusive intra-Palestinian deal, but its leverage is constrained by regional rivalries and its own economic fragility.
In sharp contrast stands the United Arab Emirates (UAE), whose approach is shaped by an ideological commitment to eradicating political Islam and advancing its regional influence through the Abraham Accords framework. The UAE views Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot, as an entity to be eliminated, not engaged. The UAE’s stance towards Hamas manifests primarily through stringent pre-conditions for reconstruction aid — which demand the group's exclusion from power, a position revealed more through diplomatic channels than public overtures.
Reports indicate the UAE actively lobbied the Trump administration to torpedo Egypt's reconstruction plan, deeming it too accommodating of Hamas. Central to the Emirati vision is Mohammed Dahlan, the former Fatah security chief in Gaza and Abbas rival exiled in Abu Dhabi. With a history of antagonism towards Hamas and close ties to the Emirati president, Mohammed bin Zayed, Dahlan represents the strongman figure the UAE hopes will govern a post-Hamas Gaza, potentially in coordination with Israel.
Despite Dahlan's minimal popularity among Palestinians, the UAE promotes him as a viable option, leveraging its financial muscle and Washington connections.
Jordan, bordering the West Bank and home to a large Palestinian population, views the crisis as an existential threat. The specter of mass displacement, the "alternative homeland" scenario long feared in Amman, is a red line uniting the monarchy, the opposition, and the public. King Abdullah II emphatically rejected Trump's resettlement proposals, despite facing the awkward pressure of a publicly televised White House meeting where Trump linked U.S. aid (already partially frozen) to Jordan's compliance.
Jordan navigates a treacherous path: upholding its U.S. alliance and its peace treaty with Israel while facing intense domestic anger over perceived complicity in Israeli actions and U.S. policy.
This pressure intensified after the opposition Islamic Action Front (IAF), the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, made significant gains in the 2024 elections. However, in April, potentially under pressure from Saudi Arabia and the UAE or seeking favour with Israel and the Trump administration, Jordan banned the Muslim Brotherhood, accusing it of plotting instability and raiding IAF headquarters. This crackdown aligns with Jordan’s own proposal to exile thousands of Hamas members and disarm the group to facilitate a PA return, combining its anti-displacement stance with a clear anti-Hamas position.
Qatar, meanwhile, plays a uniquely complex game. As Hamas's long-term host (since 2012, with U.S. acquiescence) and a key financial supporter of Gaza (often with past Israeli consent), Doha insists engagement with Hamas is indispensable for mediation and eventual peace. It leverages its position as host of the vital U.S. Al Udeid air base and Major Non-NATO Ally status to maintain influence in D.C. while simultaneously engaging Hamas – which Washington formally designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) in 1997 – and other U.S. adversaries, notably Iran, creating a delicate, high-stakes balancing act.
Its state-funded Al Jazeera network provides critical, albeit controversial, coverage of Gaza, drawing accusations from Israel of collusion with Hamas and leading to the outlet’s ban by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank. While more open to Hamas's inclusion in the broader Palestinian political landscape compared to the UAE or Jordan, Qatar’s primary role remains that of a facilitator constrained by the conflicting demands it mediates.
Saudi Arabia firmly links any normalization with Israel to the establishment of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital, vehemently rejecting Netanyahu’s inflammatory suggestion of creating a Palestinian state within Saudi territory. Its opposition to Iranian-backed militias like Hamas and Hezbollah aligns with its broader regional strategy favoring state institutions.
Saudi-owned media initially labeled Hamas leaders as "terrorists," but subsequently softened its tone, particularly after provocative remarks from Netanyahu and Trump regarding displacement.
This media shift, while not a formal policy change, suggests tactical flexibility. The Kingdom endorsed the Egyptian-led Arab League plan as a counter to Trump's proposals and maintains that lasting peace requires a two-state solution. Its position remains pragmatic: recognizing Hamas's spoiling power while insisting on its eventual disarmament and PA governance as part of a comprehensive settlement tied to Palestinian statehood.
Caught within this maelstrom are the Palestinians themselves. Hamas, though battered, demonstrates resilience, reportedly regrouping and prepared to continue fighting. Its leadership signals openness to ceding governance but maintains disarmament as a red line, which is unacceptable to Israel, the UAE, and Jordan. The PA under Mahmoud Abbas remains weak, plagued by internal divisions, perceived corruption, and a lack of legitimacy, exacerbated by Abbas's own vitriolic denunciations of Hamas, whom he recently called “sons of dogs.”
This deep Fatah-Hamas schism prevents the emergence of a unified leadership capable of commanding broad support, further complicating any "day after" scenario.
The endgame in Gaza is thus gridlocked by these competing, often contradictory, agendas. Egypt and Qatar mediate within tight constraints. Jordan defends its red line against displacement while now cracking down on Islamists at home, signaling disapproval of a future role for Hamas in Gaza. The UAE pursues a Dahlan-led, Hamas-free outcome aligned with its anti-Islamist drive.
Meanwhile, Israel, under a leadership perhaps politically invested in perpetual conflict, pursues military dominance and indefinite control. The United States under Trump offers inconsistent signals while failing to impose a coherent path forward. The result is a devastating stalemate, where irreconcilable visions condemn Gaza to ruins and its people to a future trapped between destruction and despair.
By subscribing to our recent updates, you will gain access to a wealth of valuable information, including breaking news, expert analysis, and thought-provoking articles. Whether you are interested in science, technology, business, health, or any other field, our updates will keep you informed and engaged.
©2025 Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
©2025 Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.
