Israel

Israel has won the war with Hezbollah. That is if the ceasefire recently announced takes effect as planned.

If Hezbollah has lost then so have backers Iran and the Palestinians in Gaza and on the West Bank. Hezbollah was the keystone in Iran’s “Axis of Resistance.” It effectively turned Lebanon into a buffer state between Israel and Iran.

As for the Palestinians, the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah ordered the rocket attacks on northern Israel with the promise that they would continue until there was a ceasefire in Gaza.

The ceasefire agreement makes no mention of Gaza. Israeli forces continue to fight there. Benjamin Netanyahu has severed the link between Hezbollah and Gaza and between Iran and Gaza. This has in turn given him a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank.

He is further aided by the re-election of Donald Trump. The president-elect has been vague about his Middle East policy. He is known for his unpredictability. But the appointment of Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel provides some hints. Huckabee is opposed to the two-state solution and has hinted that he supports Israeli annexation of the West Bank and northern Gaza.

Surprisingly, opinion polls indicate that only about half of the Israeli population support the ceasefire agreement. Why is unclear.

The agreement says that Israeli and Hezbollah forces must withdraw from territory between the Israeli-Lebanese border and the Litani River which is roughly 30 miles north of Israel. Hezbollah would completely disarm. The buffer zone would be occupied by 10,000 UN troops and 10,000 troops from the official Lebanese army with financial backing from the US and France.

Israel cannot launch offensive operations against Lebanon, but it has the full backing of the US to launch “defensive” operations. “If Hezbollah violates the agreement and tries to arm itself,” said Netanyahu, “we will attack. If it tries to rebuild the terrorist infrastructure near the border we will attack. If it tries to launch a rocket. If it digs a tunnel. If it brings in a truck carrying a rocket, we will attack.”

Israel has clearly abandoned the search for a political resolution and put all of its hopes and dreams into the military option.

United States

The threatened 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada will hit them hard. Eighty percent of Canada’s exports are to the US. The same figure applies to Mexico.

But they will also damage the American economy. America needs Mexico’s $19 billion of machinery, electrical equipment and fruit and vegetables. About half of US fruit imports come from Mexico. And if you fancy avocados, 90 percent of America’s avocados are grown in Mexico.

Transferring that production to the U.S. would be difficult, especially since about half of the 2 million agricultural workers in the U.S. are undocumented Mexicans. At the moment they are protected by a visa system that gives legal status to agricultural workers. But Trump has vowed to end that which would seriously impact the $1.5 trillion American fruit and vegetable industry.

Undocumented workers also make up 60 percent of the work force of the construction companies in the southwest. One construction official complained that deporting them “would devastate our industry, we wouldn’t finish our highways, we wouldn’t finish our schools. New housing would simply disappear.”

Canada exports a wide range of products to the U.S., including up to 30 percent of the oil consumed by America. Refineries in the mid-west and Pacific Northwest are especially reliant on oil pipelines from Canada. GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, Patrick De Haan, reckons that a 25% tax on Canadian crude oil would increase gas prices in the Midwest and the Rockies by 25 cents to 75 cents a gallon,

Canada is also the source of about a quarter of the lumber builders use in the U.S. But that is not all, Canada and the US share the world’s largest bilateral trading relationship in the world. Canadian exports of automotive parts are an essential part of Detroit’s car industry. Then there is gold, iron ore, aluminium, copper, nickel, wheat, beef, fertilisers, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, machinery….

Trump’s threats would also violate the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) that Trump negotiated as a replacement for the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Trump called the USMCA “the fairest, most balanced, and beneficial trade agreement we have ever signed into law. It’s the best agreement we’ve ever made.”

Trump apologists immediately tried to reassure the public that Trump didn’t mean it. Iowa’s Republican senator Chuck Grassley said that the tariff threats were a “negotiating tool.”

The Mexican and Canadian governments disagree. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau immediately called a meeting of provincial premiers to deal with what he clearly regards as a crisis.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum issued an open letter to Trump pointing out that Mexico has developed a comprehensive immigration system that has reduced border encounters by 75% since December 2023. She hinted at retaliatory tariffs.

China

Remember China’s one-child policy? It lasted quite a while, from 1979 to 2015. It was followed by the two-child policy which was succeeded by the three-child policy in 2021. Now it is basically… go wild.

The one-child policy was introduced out of a fear that China was undergoing a population explosion which indicated that every few decades the population would double. This would place an intolerable strain on food and housing.

Now the Chinese Communist Party is worried about creating more workers to service an ageing population and to maintain economic growth. Demographers reckon that each woman needs to produce 2.1 children to have a stable population. At the moment Chinese women are having an average of one each.

To try and reverse the trend the Party has introduced several pro-natalist measures. They include child tax credits; more maternity and paternity leave and, most important of all, easier access to housing loans.

But that is not all. The state is also pouring money into more marriage and relationship counsellors to try and reverse the divorce rate of two of every five marriages. It has also set up dating websites and family planning committees have been established in every neighbourhood.

Banners and wall posters extoll the virtues of large families and television shows now have two, three or more children. During the one-child days school textbooks stuck to the party line with one child per couple in the early reading books. Now the cover displays the father, two children and a pregnant mother.

During the one-child policy, government health officials advised women that pregnancy reduces a woman’s intelligence. Now they have reversed that thesis. Pregnancy, now claims the party, increases intelligence, health, and longevity.

Pre-communist traditional Chinese families were large so that the children could care for the aged parents. The Party has argued that should be the case again. The problem is that China’s development has meant that millions have moved away from the family homes and into a comfortable middle-class urban life. Women, are enjoying being part of the workforce and free from domestic toil. They don’t want to go back.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain".