قواعد عسكرية مقابل دعم اقتصادي.. ما خبايا مفاوضات موسكو ودمشق؟
كشفت صحيفة وول ستريت جورنال نقلا عن مسؤولين أن علاقة روسيا مع القيادة السورية الجديدة اكتسبت زخما عقب أول مكالمة بين الرئيسين السوري أحمد الشرع والروسي فلاديمير بوتين، وسط أنباء عن مفاوضات لتحتفظ موسكو بقواعدها العسكرية.
وقالت المصادر ذاتها إن المحادثات بشأن قاعدتين روسيتين في سوريا توسعت لتشمل علاقات اقتصادية أوسع بين البلدين، بما في ذلك مليارات الدولارات نقدا واستثمارات بقطاع الغاز.
وسعى الروس إلى التفاوض بشأن مستقبل قاعدة حميميم الجوية الروسية وقاعدة طرطوس البحرية، لكن المحادثات توسعت لتشمل علاقات اقتصادية أوسع، وفقا لأشخاص مطلعين على المناقشات.
كما شملت المحادثات مواصلة بناء ميناء طرطوس الذي تم تعليقه، إضافة إلى تطوير الامتيازات الضخمة للغاز الطبيعي في عرض البحر، ومناجم الفوسفات وحقول الهيدروكربونات في منطقة تدمر، بالإضافة إلى بناء مصنع للأسمدة في حمص وسط سوريا.
وأضافت المصادر أن المفاوضات بين روسيا وسوريا تضمنت اعتذارا محتملا من موسكو عن دورها في قصف المدنيين السوريين.
رفض تسليم الأسد
وتضمنت المفاوضات أيضا طلب دمشق تسليم الرئيس المخلوع بشار الأسد، لكن الروس رفضوا مناقشة ذلك، حسب ما نقلته صحيفة وول ستريت جورنال عن مسؤولين.
ووفق المصادر ذاتها، بدأت المباحثات عندما وصل ميخائيل بوغدانوف نائب وزير الخارجية الروسي ومبعوث روسيا إلى سوريا ألكسندر لافرنتييف في يناير/كانون الثاني الماضي.
وقالت الصحيفة إن روسيا سلمت الشهر الماضي ما يعادل 23 مليون دولار بالليرة السورية بأسعار الصرف الرسمية إلى البنك المركزي في دمشق.
وطُبعت العملات الورقية من قبل روسيا لدعم الاقتصاد السوري الذي يعاني من نقص السيولة بعدما رفضت معظم الدول الأخرى القيام بذلك خوفا من العقوبات، وفقا لمسؤولين سوريين وأوروبيين نقلت عنهم صحيفة “وول ستريت جورنال”.
وسبق أن أقر الشرع في تصريحات سابقة بأن “هناك مصالح إستراتيجية عميقة” بين سوريا وروسيا، والتي زودت على مدى عقود الجيش السوري بالأسلحة ووفرت التمويل لمحطات طاقة وسدود وبنية تحتية رئيسية أخرى.
وبحسب ما ذكرته وكالة رويترز سابقا، فإن بوتين عرض في ديسمبر/كانون الأول الماضي استخدام القاعدتين مركزين لتوصيل المساعدات الإنسانية إلى الشعب السوري، في حين قال سفير موسكو لدى الأمم المتحدة فاسيلي نيبينزيا حينها إن تحالف روسيا مع سوريا “ليس مرتبطا بأي نظام”.
Source: Apps Support
Elon Musk wants to save Western civilization from empathy
A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.
Americans are still in the dark about the scope and scale of what Elon Musk is doing with DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, which is working to drastically shrink the size of government by aiming to cut $1 trillion or more in government spending.
But there’s some insight into what’s driving Musk — namely, an effort to combat what he referred to as “civilizational suicidal empathy.”
During a three-hour interview with the podcaster Joe Rogan released February 28, Musk talked about his deeply held belief in the conspiracy theory that Democrats are working to import as many undocumented immigrants as possible so that they can take over the US government forever.
“If they had another four years, they would legalize enough illegals in the swing states to make the swing states not swing states,” Musk told Rogan. “They would just, they would be blue states. Then they would … win the presidential; they’d win the House, the Senate and the presidency.”
It’s a wild idea along the same lines as the debunked “replacement theory.” And there are many factual holes in the theory, starting with the fact that it’s illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and there’s no direct pathway to citizenship for people who enter the country illegally.
But what came next in the conversation may shine more of a light on what motivates Musk to cut down the size of government, and it melds with his takeover, purchase and founding of companies in the private sector. It’s the belief that empathy for individuals is costly to the collective.
Musk pointed to California’s move to provide medical insurance even to undocumented people who qualify for its low-income Medi-Cal program.
“We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on,” Musk said, borrowing the term from Gad Saad, a Canadian scholar who is also a frequent Rogan host.
While Musk said he believes in empathy and that “you should care about other people,” he also thinks it’s destroying society.
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk said. “There it’s they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”
Empathy, he said, has been “weaponized.”
It’s an important thing to remember as Musk turns his crusade toward the US government. While President Donald Trump has said cuts will not touch safety net programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, except to root out fraud, Musk made clear during the interview that he believes that the concept of Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.”
Musk’s lack of empathy is a theme in the recent biography for which the writer Walter Isaacson was given access to the billionaire throughout his takeover of Twitter.
And Musk’s disregard for individuals employed at his companies is also a throughline in the book, including on production lines at Tesla and at SpaceX, where he is described as quick to fire people.
At each of those companies, Musk expressed a desire to save humanity: with electric cars in the case of Tesla; by making humanity interplanetary in the case of SpaceX; and by sticking up for the First Amendment in the case of Twitter.
“He likes this notion of helping humanity,” Isaacson told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in 2023. “In fact, he has more empathy for humanity in general than he often has for the 20 people around him.
Musk still has that view of himself as a superhero taking risks; he repeatedly told Rogan about his fear of being killed. Now, instead of saving humanity, he believes he is saving the US government by cutting billions of dollars in spending, even if it impacts many Americans’ daily lives — by costing them their jobs or by curtailing government services — in the process.
Source: CNN
The world is beginning to tire of Trump’s whiplash leadership
CNN — Government by chaos is back.
One day, President Donald Trump imposed a punishing tariff regime against Canada and Mexico. The next, he froze auto duties for a month after suddenly realizing that – as everyone had predicted – they could wreck a quintessential American industry.
Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky came to the Oval Office to sign a rare-earth minerals deal that Trump billed as a triumph for the US. But Zelensky was provoked by Vice President JD Vance and kicked out of the White House. European leaders have spent days trying to fix the debacle.
Elon Musk, meanwhile, is taking his chainsaw to the bureaucracy, indiscriminately firing workers and feeding agencies into the wood chipper – pitching citizens and industries who rely on government payments into uncertainty just as the economy softens and is more vulnerable to such shocks.
At first, Trump’s early-term energy on multiple fronts was a bolt of energy as he scratched his Sharpie across executive orders and chased away the lethargy that marked President Joe Biden’s waning months in office.
Six weeks in, however, as Trump makes gut-check calls to dismantle post-Cold War national security arrangements, the global free trade system, and the federal machine – all of which helped make the US a superpower – a new realization is dawning.
There doesn’t seem to be a plan.
Trump’s haphazard efforts to make peace in Ukraine, revive Rust Belt-heavy industry with 19th century-style tariffs and slash government are as improvisational as the “weave” – his name for his stream-of-consciousness campaign screeds.
And the world is once again left hanging on the “America first” president’s whims and obsessions.
“There’s too much unpredictability and chaos coming out of the White House right now,” Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said Wednesday, describing US trade policy as a “psychodrama” her country can’t go through every 30 days.
US President Donald Trump and Ukraine”s President Volodymyr Zelensky meet in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, February 28, 2025.
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Trump’s gut-check leadership can get results, but just as often backfires
America’s friends are often left to puzzle over what exactly Trump is trying to do.
The president, for instance, said Wednesday that Canada hadn’t done enough to stem the flow of fentanyl over the border – but only minuscule amounts of the drug are involved. Sometimes the White House complains about the flow south of undocumented migrants – but these numbers are also small. Trump also wants manufacturing to leave Canada and move south. No wonder some officials in Ottawa have concluded he’s trying to weaken their country to make it easier to annex.
Still, the president can point to some successes with his threat-based foreign policy. For instance, his fury that a Hong Kong-based firm owned two ports at either end of the Panama Canal is precipitating a purchase by US investment giant BlackRock. The president had falsely claimed these ports meant China controlled the vital waterway built by the US, but the change of ownership may still improve the US strategic position.
And Trump might be downgrading the transatlantic alliance that has kept world peace for 80 years – but he’s set off an unprecedented rearmament program among NATO allies that other presidents have demanded for years.
But just as often, it’s as if Trump is more interested in brute force personal power than working off any long-term playbook.
Michael Froman, a former US trade representative who chairs the Council on Foreign Relations, told Jim Sciutto on CNN International Wednesday that while the cost of imposing tariffs often outweighs the benefits, they can be a tool that gets other nations to the negotiating table. This is true in the case of Mexico with which the US has far wider border issues than Canada. But, Froman added, “you have to know what it is you want them to do for that leverage to be useful.”
The essence of Trumpism
To some extent, the chaos is the point. And the theatrics of a president addicted to stunt politics are key to his political appeal.
For some MAGA supporters, Trump’s genius for enraging Democrats, the media and foreign governments is an end in itself. And for ideologues on the populist nationalist right, sparking pandemonium in Washington and destroying governing agencies is a way of deconstructing the administrative state.
Trump’s method was honed in his office high up in the skyscraper that bears his name in Manhattan.
The future president learned through his real estate career how to push opponents off balance with outlandish demands, verbal confrontations and sudden switches of position. In government, he does the same thing to disorientate adversaries and seeks to impose power amid the mayhem.
But while unpredictability is a real estate superpower, it’s a liability when running a country, an economy and a planet – where continuity and predictability are preferred.
“It’s just constant, and it’s exhausting,” said Julian Vikan Karaguesian, a former Canadian Ministry of Finance official, referring to Trump’s scorched-earth tariff offensive. “It’s almost surreal. Is it real? Is it going to be real this time?” Karaguesian, who now lectures at McGill University in Montreal, added: “Maybe the modus operandi here is uncertainty. It’s not tariffs, it’s not anything else, but intentionally creating a sense of chaos and a sense of uncertainty.”
A drone view of Stellantis”s Chrysler Windsor Assembly facility in Windsor, Ontario, on February 4, 2025.
Carlos Osorio/Reuters
Trump blinks on auto tariffs
The auto tariffs that the president froze for a month on Wednesday, a day after imposing blanket 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, shows how he sometimes has second thoughts about his own aggression.
Perhaps his favorite barometer, the stock market, forced his hand. His concession reversed two days of steep losses on the Dow Jones Industrial Average with a handy near-500-point rebound.
CNN reported Wednesday that Trump relented after conversations with the CEOs of the Big Three automakers. And his press secretary Karoline Leavitt said he was open to “hearing about additional exemptions.”
The idea that well-placed CEOs can use their access to the powerful to acquire exemptions and special favors not available to ordinary Americans is the antithesis of an equitable economy. But then Trump has shown little respect for rules-based systems that eliminate the kind of patronage and potential for corruption that thrives in autocratic societies.
Trump’s approach may also mean he likes threatening tariffs more than imposing them. But by constantly threatening tariffs and then creating doubt about whether or when they will be maintained, the president is causing huge uncertainty for businesses that need to establish certainty of costs and supply and consumers who could damage an already-softening economy if they rein in spending.
“There’s so much uncertainty about what the administration is doing that the mere prospect of tariffs is creating a big anchor on the economy,” Bharat Ramamurti, former deputy director of Biden’s National Economic Council, told reporters on a conference call Monday. “The prospect of significant tariffs on our allies has resulted in withholding investments and preemptive price increases that are going to be borne by small businesses and, ultimately, by consumers.”
How Trump’s unpredictability could backfire
Trump’s relentless bullying of America’s friends – while seemingly doing everything he can to advance its traditional adversary Russia in Ukraine – may also drain US power in the long run.
“What we have seen this week is that the dollar has suffered a very sharp decline,” Ruchir Sharma, founder and chief investment officer of Breakout Capital, told Richard Quest on CNN International. “It’s revealing that the rest of the world is getting its act together … and I think investors are beginning to notice there are other countries worth investing in, given all this policy volatility that is emerging in the US,” he said.
The danger for the US therefore is that four more years of Trump’s antics could reshape the globe – in a way that does not comply with his vision of US dominance but leaves Americans looking in from the outside. Mexico and Canada, for instance, can’t change the geography that makes it a no-brainer to trade with the mighty US. But both also may see advantages in expanding trade and investment with America’s rising rival China. And the European Union, which is expecting its own barrage of Trump tariffs soon, may examine similar horizons.
America’s Western allies have too much invested in generations with ties with Washington to want it to fail. But they have their own national interests too. Canada can’t win a trade war against its more powerful neighbor. But its patience is thin over Trump’s brinkmanship and bullying.
Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, home to Canada’s largest provincial economy, says the only way forward is for Trump to eradicate all tariffs rather than an a la carte easing of duties industry by industry, as with autos.
“All this gives us is uncertainty again,” Ford told CNN’s Phil Mattingly on Wednesday. “There is one person that’s causing that problem today: that’s President Trump.”
Source: CNN