Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025, combined with the presence of the Republican-led US Senate, was was widely feared amongst international allies and shall be cheered by some of America’s enemies. While the former placed on a brave face, the latter can barely hide their joy.

ON war in UkraineTrump will likely attempt to force Kiev and Moscow to at the least conform to a ceasefire on their current front lines. This could possibly include a everlasting agreement recognizing Russia’s territorial gains, including the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and occupied territories since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

It can also be likely that Trump will accept Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands stopping Ukraine’s future membership in NATO. Given Trump’s well-known distaste for NATO, it might also put significant pressure on Kiev’s European allies. Trump could once more threaten to desert the alliance to influence Europeans to sign an agreement with Putin on Ukraine.

When it involves Middle EastTrump has been a staunch supporter of Israel and Saudi Arabia in the past. He will likely double down on this, including taking an excellent tougher stance on Iran. This is in step with the current priorities of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu appears determined to destroy Iran’s proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen and seriously degrade Iran’s capabilities. By rejection his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, by criticizing his conduct of the offensive in Gaza, Netanyahu laid the foundations for the continuation of the conflict in that country.

It can also be preparing for an expanded offensive in Lebanon and a potentially devastating attack on Iran in response to further actions Iranian attack on Israel.

Trump’s election will embolden Netanyahu to act. And this, in turn, would also strengthen Trump’s position towards Putin, who relies on Iran’s support in his war in Ukraine. Trump could offer to limit Netanyahu in the future as a bargaining chip against Putin in his game to secure an agreement on Ukraine.

Move to China

Although Ukraine and the Middle East are two areas where changes are looming, relations with China will almost certainly be characterised by continuity relatively than change. With relations with China perhaps the key strategic challenge in U.S. foreign policy, the Biden administration has continued many of the policies adopted by Trump during his first term, and Trump will likely double down on them in his second term.

The Trump White House is more likely to raise import tariffs, and it has done so he talked loads about using them to attack China. But Trump is equally more likely to be open to pragmatic transaction deals with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

As in relations with European allies in NATO, a serious query mark hangs over Trump’s involvement in the so-called defense of Taiwan and other treaty allies in Asia, including the Philippines, South Korea and potentially Japan. Trump is at best indifferent to American security guarantees.

But as his on-and-off relationship with North Korea during his first term showed, Trump is typically willing to accomplish that push the envelope dangerously near war. This happened in 2017 in response to North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile test.

The unpredictability of the Pyongyang regime makes one other such close encounter just as likely as Trump’s unpredictability makes it conceivable that he would accept a nuclear-armed North Korea as part of a broader agreement with Russia, which has forged increasingly closer relations with Kim Jong-un’s regime.

This would give Trump additional influence over China, which was the case anxious on account of growing relations between Russia and North Korea.

Preparations for the Trump White House

Friends and foes alike plan to make use of the remaining months before Trump returns to the White House to try to enhance their standing and tackle issues that will be harder once he takes office.

Anticipating Trump’s push to finish wars in Ukraine and the Middle East will likely result in intensified fighting there to create a establishment that various sides say shall be more acceptable to them. This doesn’t bode well for the humanitarian crises which are already mounting in each regions.

An increase in tension on and around the Korean Peninsula cannot even be ruled out. Pyongyang will likely want this increase its credibility with much more missile – and potentially nuclear – tests.

Intensifying fighting in Europe and the Middle East and tensions in Asia are also more likely to strain relations between the United States and its allies in all three regions. There is fear in Europe that Trump may strike deals with Russia over the heads of its EU and NATO allies and threaten to desert them.

This would undermine the durability of any Ukrainian (or, more broadly, European) agreement with Moscow. Relative dismal condition European defense capabilities and the declining credibility of the US nuclear umbrella wouldn’t only help encourage Putin to further his imperial ambitions after securing an agreement with Trump.

In the Middle East, Netanyahu can be completely unrestrained. And yet, while some Arab regimes may cheer on Israel striking Iran and Iranian proxies, they’ll accomplish that worry about the response on the difficult situation of the Palestinians. Without solving this age-old problem, stability in the region, let alone peace, shall be almost unimaginable.

In Asia, the challenges are different. In this case, the problem is less about US withdrawal and more about unpredictable and potentially unmanageable escalation. Under Trump’s rule, it’s rather more likely that the US and China will find it difficult to flee the so-called Thucydides trap – the inevitability of war between a dominant but declining power and its emerging rival.

This raises the query of whether U.S. alliances in the region are secure in the long run, or whether some of its partners, reminiscent of Indonesia and India, will consider realigning with China.

All of this means, at best, more uncertainty and instability – not only after Trump’s inauguration, but additionally in the months leading as much as that date.

At worst, this may prove to be the undoing of Trump’s self-proclaimed infallibility. But before he and his team realized that geopolitics was more complicated than real estate, they might have began the same chaos they accused Biden and Harris of.

I stand within the basement kitchen and poke on the sheep’s liver, in search of marks on its smooth surface. People are flocking to film the proceedings because I’m here to ask the query everyone wants answered: Will Donald Trump win the US election?

I follow instructions that were first written down by the ancient Babylonians 4,000 years ago and which have survived to this present day. Every wrinkle within the liver has a meaning, and cuneiform tablets discovered in modern-day Iraq explain how to interpret them.

Armed with this information, it is feasible to calculate the reply to any query, provided it’s yes or no, by adding up the variety of positive or negative signs and seeing which one comes out on top.

Since this liver contained an amazing variety of bad omens, I he stated that this time she said “no” to Trump. Although in 2016 this method he predicted victory long before he won the Republican nomination, and in 2020 he predicted that he wouldn’t be re-elected this yr.

What began as a fun conversation at a university open day has since turn out to be a serious part my research – not because I sincerely imagine in it, but since it gives us a few of the earliest evidence in history of how humans reason and think.

Looking at livers also allows us to draw serious conclusions about how people have handled uncertainty throughout history and proceed to struggle with it today. People have developed techniques as diverse as astrology, tarot cards, and even gut-searching in response to the agony of not knowing or the strain of creating a difficult decision.

Given the extent of feeling invested on this election, this can be a unique moment by which perhaps we are able to appreciate that on this respect we aren’t that different from those that lived 1000’s of years ago, even when our methods of looking into the long run are different .

I’m asking in regards to the insides

Developed in its classical form in Babylon, visceral divination was practiced throughout ancient Mesopotamia, with recorded history dating from the third millennium BC to the first century AD

This had enormous significance across all levels of society – it was a typical a part of the political decision-making process on the royal court, but was open to all. Budget options were even available for many who couldn’t afford a sheep.

People addressed their questions directly to the gods and believed that the moment they asked the reply could be written on their insides. This can then be “read” by a diviner trained on this esoteric language.

The British Museum has an archive of real questions asked by the king of Assyria (a kingdom in northern Mesopotamia) within the seventh century BC. All sorts of matters of state were placed before the gods. Will the Egyptians attack? Has the enemy taken over the besieged city? Will the governors return home safely?

Reading the archive, one gets the sensation that one’s nerves are on a knife’s edge because the king waits for news from afar, wanting to know what has happened to his soldiers and trying to resolve what to do next.

He not only asked them about what would occur in the long run, but in addition consulted with them about possible courses of motion. Should the Assyrian army enter the war? Should the king send a messenger to make peace? Asking the gods for his or her opinion would help him feel more confident in his next steps.

The Babylonians had no selections. However, this did not mean that the king could do whatever he wanted. It was vital to his public image that the gods were on his side, in addition to to his own self-confidence.

Each time a robust official was appointed, the entrails were read to make sure the gods’ acceptance. The army commander, high priests, and other vital positions were subject to this requirement. On one occasion, even the selection of the crown prince – and subsequently the long run king of Assyria – was put to the test.

The interpretation of the viscera was done with almost scientific standards of accuracy. Diviners worked in pairs or groups of up to 11 people, checking one another’s work to ensure they did it right. This was not a vague or murky process, but an actual attempt to ensure “accuracy” that might not be manipulated to get the reply the king wanted to hear.

Modern forecasting

We all want to know what the long run holds, and we have provide you with ingenious ways to discover, from opinion polls and data modeling to Paul the octopuswho became famous for selecting the winners of soccer matches throughout the 2010 World Cup. But are our methods really higher than looking contained in the sheep?

As all investors caution, past performance isn’t any guarantee of future performance. However, the one data we have now for our predictions is from the past, and most of our models don’t account for “unknown unknowns.”

As many experts have learned, predicting the long run is a difficult business: Polls can lie and other people can change their minds, while economists were often blindsided by sudden crashes.

Since liver reading only answers “yes” or “no”, it would be correct 50% of the time, according to the law of averages. Despite its randomness, the success rate can have seemed convincing on the time.

And once we trust the authority of the source, it is simple to discover a way to explain a mistaken result – the prediction got to the halfway point, answered a unique query, or would have been right if x hadn’t happened.

We shouldn’t be blind to the weaknesses of our own methods. We are sometimes mistaken, and the Babylonians may sometimes be right.

The vote of the Israeli Parliament on October 28, 2024 on the ban on the operation of the UN agency providing assistance to Palestinian refugees is prone to they affect millions of people – this also matches the pattern.

Aid for refugees, particularly Palestinian refugees, has long been politicized, and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has been a goal throughout its 75-year history.

This was seen earlier in the current conflict in Gaza, when at least a dozen countries, including the US, suspended funding for UNRWAciting Israel’s allegations that 12 UNRWA employees participated in the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. In August, the UN dismissed nine UNRWA employees for his alleged involvement in the attack. Independent UN panel established a set of 50 recommendations ensuring that UNRWA staff respect the principle of neutrality.

The vote in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to ban UNRWA goes a step further. When it enters into force, it can prevent UNRWA from operating in Israel and will seriously impact its ability to serve refugees in any of the occupied territories controlled by Israel, including Gaza. It could have devastating consequences for livelihoods, health, distribution of food aid and education for Palestinians. It would also derail the polio vaccination campaign conducted by UNRWA and its partner organizations carrying out in Gaza from September. Finally, the bill prohibits communications between Israeli officials and UNRWA, which is able to end the agency’s efforts to coordinate the movement of aid employees to stop inadvertent targeting by the Israel Defense Forces.

Help for refugees, and more broadly, humanitarian aid, is theoretically alleged to be neutral and impartial. But as experts in emigration AND international relationswe all know that financing is commonly used as a foreign policy tool through which allies are rewarded and enemies are punished. In this context, we imagine that Israel’s ban on UNRWA is an element of a broader pattern of politicization of aid for refugees, especially Palestinian refugees.

What is UNRWA?

UNRWA, short for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, was created two years after roughly 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes in the months leading as much as the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent Arab–Arab War. Israeli.

Before the creation of UNRWA, international and local organizations, many of them religious, provided services to displaced Palestinians. But then extreme poverty research and the dire situation prevailing in the refugee camps, the UN General Assembly, including all Arab states and Israel, voted to create UNRWA in 1949.

Since then UNRWA is the predominant aid organization providing food, medical care, education and, in some cases, housing for the 6 million Palestinians living in five areas: Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, in addition to the areas that make up the occupied Palestinian territories: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The mass displacement of Palestinians – often called the Nakba, or “catastrophe” – had occurred before 1951 Refugee Conventionwhich defined refugees as any person having a well-founded fear of persecution in reference to “events which took place in Europe before 1 January 1951”. Despite 1967 Protocol extending the definition around the world, Palestinians proceed to be excluded from the predominant international refugee protection system.

Although UNRWA is responsible for providing services to Palestine refugees, the United Nations also established the UN Conciliation Commission on Palestine in 1948 to hunt long-term political solution and “facilitating the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of refugees and the payment of compensation.”

As a result, UNRWA doesn’t have a mandate to push for traditional durable solutions available in other refugee situations. As it happens, the reconciliation commission lasted only a couple of years and has since been sidelined in favor of US-brokered peace processes.

Is UNRWA political?

UNRWA was topic since its inception, and especially during times of heightened tensions between Palestinians and Israelis, to opposing political winds.

Although it’s a UN organization and due to this fact seemingly apolitical, it is definitely so often criticized by Palestinians, Israelis, and donor countries, including the United States, for political activities.

UNRWA has government functions in its five domains, including education, health and infrastructure, but its mandate is proscribed to political or security-related activities.

Palestine’s initial objections to UNRWA stemmed from the organization’s early focus on the economic integration of refugees in host countries.

Although UNRWA officially joined the UN General Assembly Resolution 194 which called for the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes, the UN, the UK and the US officials searched measures to enable the resettlement and integration of Palestinians into host countries, seeing this as a helpful political solution to the situation of Palestinian refugees and the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this sense, Palestinians perceived UNRWA as highly political and actively working against their interests.

In later a long time UNRWA modified the predominant focus from work to education under pressure from Palestinian refugees. But there have been UNRWA educational materials watched by Israel as an additional boost to the Palestinian militia, and the Israeli government insisted on checking and approving all material in Gaza and the West Bank, which it has occupied since 1967.

While Israel does long suspected UNRWA’s role in refugee camps and providing education, the operation of an internationally funded organization, also saves Israel has millions of dollars annually in services it might be required to supply as an occupying power.

Since the Nineteen Sixties, this has been done by the United States – UNRWA’s predominant donor – and other Western countries they’ve repeatedly expressed their desire using aid to stop radicalization amongst refugees.

In response to the increased presence of armed opposition groups, The United States added a provision to UNRWA aid in 1970, requiring that “UNRWA take all possible measures to be certain that no part of the United States contribution is used to supply assistance to any refugee who’s undergoing military training as a member of the so-called Palestine Liberation Movement Army (PLA) or every other guerrilla-type organization.”

UNRWA complies with this requirement, even publishing an annual list of its staff in order that host governments can confirm them, but in addition employs 30,000 peoplethe overwhelming majority of whom are Palestinians.

Questions about UNRWA’s links with any militia led to the formation of Israeli and international militias viewing groups that document the social media activity of the organization’s large Palestinian staff.

In 2018, the Trump administration suspended its implementation $60 million payment to UNRWA. Trump claimed the pause would put political pressure on the Palestinians to barter. President Joe Biden resumed US contributions to UNRWA in 2021.

While other major donors restored UNRWA funding following the conclusion of an investigation in April, the United States still to do that.

“Immediate Disaster”

Israel’s ban on UNRWA will leave already ravenous Palestinians without relief. UN Secretary General António Guterres he said, banning UNRWA “It would be a disaster in the face of an already incomparable disaster.” The foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom issued the regulation joint statement arguing that a ban would have “devastating consequences for the already critical and rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation, especially in the northern Gaza Strip.”

There have been reports Israeli plans for private security firms to take over the distribution of aid in Gaza through dystopian “gated communities” that may effectively be internment camps. This can be a disturbing move. Unlike UNRWA, private contractors have little experience delivering aid and are usually not committed to humanitarian principles neutrality, impartiality or independence.

However, an explicit ban issued by the Knesset may unintentionally force the United States to suspend arms transfers to Israel. American law requires it to stop arms transfers to any country that obstructs the delivery of U.S. humanitarian aid. And the US interruption in UNRWA funding was alleged to be only temporary.

UNRWA is the predominant conduit for aid to Gaza, and the Knesset’s ban clearly shows that the Israeli government is stopping aid from being delivered, making it harder for Washington to disregard it. Before the bill was passed, US Department of State spokesman Matt Miller he warned it “Adoption of the legislation could have implications for U.S. law and policy.”

Two U.S. government agencies at the same time previously alerted Biden administration that Israel obstructed aid to Gaza, yet arms transfers proceed.