RadixJournal - What to make of the Gaza ceasefire？

00:00:00.000 Everyone, I hope you're well. I was just going to talk briefly about the ceasefire agreement

00:00:08.840 that just came down. Both Trump and Biden are taking credit for it. And in a way,

00:00:17.840 they're both justified. Obviously, Trump is not in office yet, even though it almost feels like

00:00:25.480 he is, and some people might think he is, in fact. It is the Biden administration diplomats who are

00:00:33.100 securing this deal. Although I think Trump probably should get credit for it. His contradictory,

00:00:41.460 ambiguous shit talking no doubt had something to do with this. There's going to be hell to pay if 0.99

00:00:49.780 the hostages aren't released by the time I get in office. I think stuff like that is seemingly

00:00:57.700 meaningless jabber, but I actually think it's important. And it no doubt affected this deal.

00:01:04.280 So in many ways, Trump could take credit. Here's the problem. And I do want to talk about this

00:01:12.500 on a big picture level. I'm certainly not an expert in these matters, A. But B, I think oftentimes you

00:01:19.640 can get lost in the weeds or lost in the trees and not really see the forest and kind of get into

00:01:27.660 these tedious disputes about details. Nothing has really fundamentally changed. Now, I think some

00:01:36.820 things have changed. First off, there have been people who have been held hostage. Many of them are

00:01:42.900 no longer alive, no doubt. They're going to be returned. That's great. Israeli military is pulling 0.94

00:01:51.220 out of Gaza and some trucks are going to get in and so on. You can correct me on some of these details

00:01:56.960 if you like. All good stuff. Fewer people are going to die in the coming months than in the previous

00:02:06.140 months. Great. Who could really be against that? I also think that Trump wants to present himself

00:02:14.880 as a peacemaker. And this has been an important... I don't know what it means to him personally,

00:02:22.340 to be honest, because Trump is such an enigma. But it's definitely been an important meme among

00:02:29.460 Trump supporters. Under the Trump administration, 2017 through 20, no new wars were started. Now,

00:02:36.840 that's a bit of a deceptive way of talking, but sort of true. I mean, no wars were ended. And yet,

00:02:46.740 a war under the Biden administration was ended. And Trump dropped the mother of all bombs and

00:02:51.860 got us very close to a major war with Iran, blah, blah, blah. But let's not talk about that.

00:02:59.120 It's a meme for him. And it's a meme for a lot of his supporters and the Trump intelligentsia such

00:03:08.420 as it is. And so he can present himself as a peacemaker. He wants to present himself as a

00:03:13.900 peacemaker in Ukraine as well. Ukraine is going to have to give up some territory. We might sort of

00:03:19.860 freeze the conflict, but we're going to end the actual fighting and dying, which is so horrible,

00:03:25.720 and so on. So all of that is fair. And it's also fair for Trump fans to take a victory lap.

00:03:37.340 Sure. The problem is, I think Trump is going to have some real difficulties with his friends,

00:03:47.060 and not necessarily with his enemies. So let me explain what I mean by that. And I'll go to

00:03:55.180 Ukraine first. Now, of course, officially, Ukraine is our friend. Zelensky is our friend and Putin is

00:04:03.220 our enemy. But the dynamic of the situation for the last few years has been very different than that.

00:04:09.860 Putin is the friend of the MAGA movement. Putin panders to the MAGA movement. Putin has clear

00:04:17.460 involvement with MAGA influencers, speculatively with Tucker Carlson, et cetera, and quite literally

00:04:25.840 with the erstwhile tenant media. Trump wants to get along with Putin. This is something that he's

00:04:33.860 consistently said for a long time. The problem is, let's say that Trump goes to Putin or makes a Nixon

00:04:44.500 to China trip to Russia. And he says, all right, why don't you just, we're going to freeze the

00:04:50.780 conflict. You're going to take these territories. You're welcome. Zelensky, shut up with the war talk.

00:04:58.680 We're ending this thing. Might Zelensky accept that deal? Perhaps. Perhaps. I mean, he effectively

00:05:08.200 accepted the seizure of Crimea for some time. Now, he never officially did, and he probably didn't

00:05:15.320 accept it in his heart of hearts. But there was this kind of slow simmering conflict around these

00:05:23.860 areas. But in effect, Russia controlled Crimea, et cetera. So is Zelensky in Ukraine reeling?

00:05:33.460 They have such a smaller population size. Can they not afford to engage in this for 10 years? There

00:05:39.620 are going to be no Ukrainians left. He'll accept some L to get the bigger W, which is Western involvement 0.99

00:05:47.580 in West Ukraine or whatever it's called, and an end to the dying? Maybe. Fair enough. He might want to 1.00

00:05:56.360 accept that. And the Ukrainian people might want to accept that. Will Putin accept that? Putin is not

00:06:04.520 in full control of territories that he has already officially annexed, brought into the Russian sphere.

00:06:13.440 So it would be a little bit of an L for Putin. Is Putin, psychologically speaking, a man who

00:06:21.660 has is going to engage in the sunk cost fallacy? He has invested so much in this that he will not

00:06:30.360 accept it. I think that is a good psychological reading of Vladimir Putin. Might Putin really dislike

00:06:39.280 the idea of a Ukraine with intense Western involvement directly on the border of the Russian

00:06:49.640 sphere. So there's no real buffer zone. Now, there could be a promise that Ukraine won't join NATO for

00:06:55.020 10 years, but Putin would likely view that accurately, I would say, as I'm going to put this off for 10

00:07:04.320 years, they're going to slowly rearm, and then we're going to have this conflict again 10 years later

00:07:11.620 when I or my successor is in office. I don't think he likes this ideal. I don't think this is how he

00:07:19.360 thinks. I think it's very likely that Putin would just reject Trump's peace proposal if these are more

00:07:28.960 or less the terms that it would have to adhere to. Similar thing in Israel, where Trump is going to

00:07:37.820 have to deal with his, he's going to have problems dealing with his friend that is Netanyahu, as opposed

00:07:43.880 to his enemies. Okay, so some 40 to 50,000 deaths have occurred in Gaza. And it's in some ways that

00:07:56.480 underestimates the human toll that has taken place over the past two years. It's just been a complete

00:08:06.280 disaster, or I should say a year and a half. But Hamas has, from what I have read, recouped its losses. 0.78

00:08:17.580 This is something that Elon Musk said quite insightfully at one point, that sure, you can go 0.75

00:08:27.100 and kill a bunch of terrorists, but you have to look at the cost benefits of killing a bunch of 0.99

00:08:34.740 terrorists. If for every terrorist you murder, two more people get radicalized as terrorists or future 0.98

00:08:44.520 terrorists, then it's actually not worth it. You have to look at some point in life, you have to look at a

00:08:49.760 cost benefit of analysis. And if you're just simply creating a more radicalized population, then this is

00:08:56.920 actually not a good thing at all. That's an insightful comment. Certainly, he's not the first one to make

00:09:02.880 it, but insightful. Nonetheless, he seems to have forgotten this over the past year or so. But anyway, Hamas has 0.86

00:09:11.980 reportedly recouped its losses. It has enough recruits to fill out the roles of the dead terrorist.

00:09:22.340 And so exactly what Elon Musk suggested might happen is happening. So they can use this time,

00:09:33.220 a ceasefire to redo the tunnels, regroup, come up with a new strategy, not purchase pagers or things

00:09:46.020 like that. Like they can use this time to regroup when the Israeli armies are withdrawing to some degree

00:09:54.300 and not engaging in a direct violent assault against them. So what is Bibi Netanyahu

00:10:03.460 going to think about this? Is he going to like this? Is he going to like the possibility that we have a

00:10:13.920 ceasefire? Hamas has been, at least the Hamas of 2023 has just been devastated. Millions, not millions,

00:10:23.920 thousands of deaths, destruction of hospitals that were hiding terror caves or whatever the hell they

00:10:32.120 were saying. But you end up in the same place. You end up at the same place in 2005 when George W. Bush

00:10:40.740 in his democratic fervor basically said, we need elections in occupied Gaza Strip.

00:10:50.600 And lo and behold, what happened to those elections? Hamas won. The terrorists won. They kind of, that was

00:10:58.620 almost the end of the democratic dream in many ways. They elected the terrorists. They elected the

00:11:04.440 anti-democratic forces. You might as well have a situation where you have a democracy and they elect a

00:11:10.280 king and there's a referendum to end democracy. It was this weird contradiction of popular will

00:11:15.880 that was expressed in 2005 and certainly is the background cause of where we are now. Does Bibi Netanyahu

00:11:26.140 really want this? Now, is he willing to reinvade? That would be something. What else is sort of on offer

00:11:36.300 here as well? There is reporting that Sheldon, it's not Sheldon, Miriam Adelson's, Sheldon Adelson's widow

00:11:46.260 who gave Trump a hundred million dollars or something like this. The deal in that was we are going to

00:11:55.480 help you win. You're not going to jail, Donald Trump. You were down low, but we're going to lift you up,

00:12:04.200 resurrect you. And what we get in return is going to be the annexation of the West Bank, perhaps the annexation

00:12:13.540 of Gaza as well. Now, what do you even do with Gaza? Gaza is effectively rubble. I don't know the degree to which

00:12:20.040 infrastructure exists in Gaza. I'm sure it does to some degree. It's a disaster zone. So if that is the 0.95

00:12:29.780 case, then we are going to be in another shit show where the international community is going to be 0.97

00:12:38.580 against the Trump administration. Netanyahu will, of course, like this, but we're just sort of back where 0.97

00:12:45.680 we were, uh, where, uh, you know, not, not immediately after October 7th of 2023, but, but certainly

00:12:52.840 throughout 2024, um, where, uh, Bibi is, is sort of a pariah, uh, uh, leader, uh, America is begrudgingly 0.69

00:13:03.040 supporting him, uh, et cetera. Um, so we could be in there. Um, if that happens, there's no doubt that

00:13:12.280 the Gazans are going to go balls to the wall, uh, everything or nothing. Uh, we support just 0.96

00:13:21.760 outright attacks against Israel if they see quite accurately Israel as a expansion, annexing state.

00:13:31.820 So I guess my point is sure. It's great. You know, it's a W take a victory lap. If you're a Trump fan,

00:13:40.340 you could even arguably do that if you're a Biden fan, but nothing's fundamentally changed.

00:13:47.000 And Donald Trump is going to have a lot of problems dealing with his friends in this case,

00:13:54.620 uh, Bibi Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin. So anyway, just some thoughts on the matter. Uh, if you have a

00:14:03.080 question or two, I could, uh, answer them. I keep trying to do this to try to get feedback.

00:14:10.440 And all you guys do is press the heart button and then just make brief comments. Maybe that's what

00:14:17.580 you want. You want me to just talk at these things. Uh, okay. I'm not seeing a, uh, a real question,

00:14:26.560 so I'll just leave it there. All right. So that was my, uh, uh, quick reaction and, uh, hope that you

00:14:34.160 enjoyed it. Uh, definitely. I would, I would highly recommend, uh, subscribing to the Substack 0.90

00:14:41.320 because we do twice a week long calls, uh, at least two hours. Sometimes there are super marathons

00:14:49.140 and we, there's a ton of interaction and back and forth and discussion on those. So those are

00:14:54.560 a lot more rewarding than, um, just these little quick hits that I do. And then on Sundays we do

00:15:00.640 Alex, you, which, uh, where we, uh, do serious study of a, uh, a major text in the canon. And we're

00:15:09.560 of course reading the Bible. So, um, uh, awesome stuff. All right. So please subscribe. I'll talk to

00:15:17.140 you later. Bye-bye.

00:15:19.140 Bye-bye.

RadixJournal - January 15, 2025

What to make of the Gaza ceasefire？

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