The past week has seen some simultaneous deescalations across the world, mediated by the US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
Its notable all these are developing at the same time:

India and Pakistan
What was rapidly spiraling out of control between two nuclear powers with missile strikes and cross border shelling and firing was brought to a US mediated ceasefire at Trump's behalf. Within the hour of the ceasefire we heard both sides accuse the other of violations and it appeared shaky at best, but in the past few days it seems the peace has held- for now. Modi now insists that Operation Sindoor is only under a temporary pause and played down Trump's involvement and called it briefing Vance rather than mediation, while Pakistan has vowed to commit to the ceasefire and offered cooperation against terrorism. We'll see if it holds.

Turkey and the PKK
After 47 years of conflict, the Kurdistan Worker's Party with its nominally communist rooted independence fight, labeled as terrorism by both the US and Turkey despite our previous pseudo alliance in Syria- has agreed to disband. The PKK declared a formal ceasefire in March and has now agreed to a total dissolution of its armed forces. This conspicuously comes after Assad fell in Syria and a more overtly turkish aligned HTS took over, which effectively surrounded the Kurds on their mountains. This ends the flareup that happened with the Syrian War and the US arming of Kurds to fight ISIS, which soured our relationship with Turkey. And its a big move towards removing one of the geopolitical wedge issues that had strained western relations in the region. We'll see if Ocalan gets released, since he's the one who advocated dissolution.

China and the USA
Washington and Bejing agreed on a drastic reduction in tariffs in the ongoing trade war, peeling back reciprocal tariffs by 115% each, with the US lowered from 145 to 30% and China from 125 to 10% and the repeal of non-tariff retaliatory measures. Given the chaos of the trade war and length delay in supply chains we'll have to see what this winds up being. Sources on the left and right have both deemed it Trump caving to China and Trump triumphing over China, its weird to read a CNN headline of the latter when it could as easily be spun as the former. We'll see if this phase is measured in hours, days weeks or months.

USA and Syria
During his visit to the KSA, Trump has announced a repeal of the sanctions on Syria that had been in place on the Assad Regime. Its now a murky situation in Syria- the HTS rebels were spawned from Al Qaeda and we had the initial outbreak of a genocide against the Alawite minority that looked like Washington would keep in place the sanctions if not intervene. But as it turns out, the new government has effectively controlled the outbreak of violence and actually restored some measure of peace, and with Saudi backing it looks like Syria has an honest chance at becoming a stable (if destitute and regressive) country. And Trump declared he is giving them that chance, with it being "Syria's time to shine". And that also comes with a $300-600 billion investment in the US by the KSA, which is like 750-1500 trump force one's

Russia and Ukraine
We've seen some serious movements towards a peace summit mediated by Turkey this week. Initially Russia agreed to meet in Istanbul and Ukraine countered by proposing that Zelensky and Putin meet in person on Thursday. So far Russia has only committed to sending Lavrov and Ushakov but hasn't published a full list of who will attend. Ukraine has already committed Zelensky to appear in person, and the US has committed Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg. There remains the possibility that Trump will alter his flight schedule and appear in Istanbul in person to help mediate, and Russia is apparently holding off in talks over this. Will this amount to anything? I don't know. But high level talks like this are the best chance we've got to end the biggest ongoing war.

Thanks Donald

knew I was forgetting one:

Hamas returned the last US-Israeli hostage

and kathy griffin moved into a internment camp

Neocons in shambles

The old regime is dead

Let's preface that we all can agree that less war is a net positive for everybody.

1. As you pointed out Modi said US was not involved in mediating, so hard to call this a US win.

2. That seems largely independent of the US. Unless you want to give Trump props for sacrificing your Kurdish allies back in the first term, which .. I personally wouldn't since i found it disgusting politically but what do I know.

3. The trade war Trunp initiated with no reason came to a temporary hold - selling this as a "Trump win" seems demented to me.

4. No clue about Syria tbh, good if there can be peace. Did Syria promise Trump something personally in return? This is usually why he lifts sanctions in my experience.

5. This is the big one, and we see very slow progress - which might be better than nothing at least. Remember Trump promised an end of the war day 1 of his presidency? That clearly did not happen, did it. Let's not count our chickens before they hatch, but if Trump or his project 2025 minions can negotiate a peace deal that Ukraine wants I am all for it.

This post was edited by SkySwallower on May 14 2025 02:02am

Trump taking credit or not doesn't really matter when its a net positive for everybody. The president gets the credit and the blame for the state of the country and the world whether he has any impact on it or not, and that's certainly true when its election time. Trump won in 2016 and 2024 mostly because of circumstances beyond his control, and he lost in 2020 entirely because of a circumstance beyond his control. Its the difference between Obama killing Bin Laden and Jimmy Carter crashing a helicopter in Iran.

Syria is a complicated bag. It comes down to realpolitik, we have to deal with the reality that HTS is in control of the country thanks to our bungled foreign policy and they lack the reliable strongman of Assad. We could antagonize and isolate them like we do North Korea, or we could seek to influence them and give a carrot to behave. Considering they're just a short step away from genocide and exporting wahabbi terrorism again, it seems a lot easier to take the KSA route of cozying up to HTS rather than what, plunging them back into war, trying to overthrow their government again, creating another power vacuum that would be filled by ISIS. Obama and Biden picked Al Qaeda in this fight, now we're stuck with them. Its making the Saudis happy at any rate.

But you as a citizen should care if the US is involved in reality so you can access what your politicians are doing.

I also do not share your sentiment about recent elections. Trump did not lose solely due to COVID, moreso because of his atrocious handling of the pandemic leading to record voter turnout. He probably would have won without COVID, but he also would have won if he just handled it like a normal person ("do what the experts say, americans together strong, MAGA"). In the same vein Harris probably would have won without global record inflation, but I would not say that this is the main reason for the success of people like Trump.

Far right populists are successful in recent times to the sad combination of
1. Most people being really stupid, seeking easy solutions for problems too complex for them to understand and
2. Targeted disinformation campaigns for those stupid people, often times directly sponsored by Russia. It is no coincidence that Trump said the quiet part out loud as he tends to do: "I love the uneducated". Of course he does, they are easy to manipulate and will vote for him. Just look at this forum and his supporters here.

Those experts were complete morons who where compromised