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San Francisco Chronicle
a minute ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
The Trump administration wants to end the UN peacekeeping in Lebanon. Europe is pushing back
WASHINGTON (AP) — The future of U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon has split the United States and its European allies, raising implications for security in the Middle East and becoming the latest snag to vex relations between the U.S. and key partners like France, Britain and Italy. At issue is the peacekeeping operation known as UNIFIL, whose mandate expires at the end of August and will need to be renewed by the U.N. Security Council to continue. It was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel's 1978 invasion, and its mission was expanded following the monthlong 2006 war between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah. The multinational force has played a significant role in monitoring the security situation in southern Lebanon for decades, including during the Israel-Hezbollah war last year, but has drawn criticism from both sides and numerous U.S. lawmakers, some of whom now hold prominent roles in President Donald Trump's administration or wield new influence with the White House. Trump administration political appointees came into office this year with the aim of shutting down UNIFIL as soon as possible. They regard the operation as an ineffectual waste of money that is merely delaying the goal of eliminating Hezbollah's influence and restoring full security control to the Lebanese Armed Forces that the government says it is not yet capable of doing. After securing major cuts in U.S. funding to the peacekeeping force, Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed off early last week on a plan that would wind down and end UNIFIL in the next six months, according to Trump administration officials and congressional aides familiar with the discussions. It's another step as the Trump administration drastically pares back its foreign affairs priorities and budget, including expressing skepticism of international alliances and cutting funding to U.N. agencies and missions. The transatlantic divide also has been apparent on issues ranging from Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza and the Russia-Ukraine conflict to trade, technology and free speech issues. Israel has for years sought an end to UNIFIL's mandate, and renewal votes have often come after weeks of political wrangling. Now, the stakes are particularly high after last year's war and more vigorous opposition in Washington. European nations, notably France and Italy, have objected to winding down UNIFIL. With the support of Tom Barrack, U.S. ambassador to Turkey and envoy to Lebanon, they successfully lobbied Rubio and others to support a one-year extension of the peacekeeping mandate followed by a time-certain wind-down period of six months, according to the administration officials and congressional aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private diplomatic negotiations. Israel also reluctantly agreed to an extension, they said. The European argument was that prematurely ending UNIFIL before the Lebanese army is able to fully secure the border area would create a vacuum that Hezbollah could easily exploit. The French noted that when a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali was terminated before government troops were ready to deal with security threats, Islamic extremists moved in. With the U.S. easing off, the issue ahead of the U.N. vote expected at the end of August now appears to be resistance by France and others to setting a firm deadline for the operation to end after the one-year extension, according to the officials and congressional aides. French officials did not respond to requests for comment. The final French draft resolution, obtained by The Associated Press, does not include a date for UNIFIL's withdrawal, which U.S. officials say is required for their support. Instead, it would extend the peacekeeping mission for one year and indicates the U.N. Security Council's 'intention to work on a withdrawal.' But even if the mandate is renewed, the peacekeeping mission might be scaled down for financial reasons, with the U.N. system likely facing drastic budget cuts, said a U.N. official, who was not authorized to comment to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity. One of the U.S. officials said an option being considered was reducing UNIFIL's numbers while boosting its technological means to monitor the situation on the ground. The peacekeeping force has faced criticism There are about 10,000 peacekeepers in southern Lebanon, while the Lebanese army has around 6,000 soldiers, a number that is supposed to increase to 10,000. Hezbollah supporters in Lebanon have frequently accused the U.N. mission of collusion with Israel and sometimes attacked peacekeepers on patrol. Israel, meanwhile, has accused the peacekeepers of turning a blind eye to Hezbollah's military activities in southern Lebanon and lobbied for its mandate to end. Sarit Zehavi, a former Israeli military intelligence analyst and founder of the Israeli think tank Alma Research and Education Center, said UNIFIL has played a 'damaging role with regard to the mission of disarming Hezbollah in south Lebanon.' She pointed to the discovery of Hezbollah tunnels and weapons caches close to UNIFIL facilities during and after last year's Israel-Hezbollah war, when much of the militant group's senior leadership was killed and much of its arsenal destroyed. Hezbollah is now under increasing pressure to give up the rest of its weapons. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UNIFIL continues to discover unauthorized weapons, including rocket launchers, mortar rounds and bomb fuses, this week, which it reported to the Lebanese army. Under the U.S.- and France-brokered ceasefire, Israel and Hezbollah were to withdraw from southern Lebanon, with the Lebanese army taking control in conjunction with UNIFIL. Israel has continued to occupy five strategic points on the Lebanese side and carry out near-daily airstrikes that it says aim to stop Hezbollah from regrouping. Lebanon supports keeping UN peacekeepers Lebanese officials have called for UNIFIL to remain, saying the country's cash-strapped and overstretched army is not yet able to patrol the full area on its own until it. Retired Lebanese Army Gen. Khalil Helou said that if UNIFIL's mandate were to abruptly end, soldiers would need to be pulled away from the porous border with Syria, where smuggling is rife, or from other areas inside of Lebanon — 'and this could have consequences for the stability' of the country. UNIFIL 'is maybe not fulfilling 100% what the Western powers or Israel desire. But for Lebanon, their presence is important,' he said. The United Nations also calls the peacekeepers critical to regional stability, Dujarric said. UNIFIL spokesperson Andrea Tenenti said deciding on the renewal of the mandate is the prerogative of the U.N. Security Council. 'We are here to assist the parties in implementation of the mission's mandate and we're waiting for the final decision,' he said.
Washington Post
2 minutes ago
- Washington Post
The Trump administration wants to end the UN peacekeeping in Lebanon. Europe is pushing back
WASHINGTON — The future of U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon has split the United States and its European allies, raising implications for security in the Middle East and becoming the latest snag to vex relations between the U.S. and key partners like France, Britain and Italy. At issue is the peacekeeping operation known as UNIFIL , whose mandate expires at the end of August and will need to be renewed by the U.N. Security Council to continue. It was created to oversee the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon after Israel's 1978 invasion, and its mission was expanded following the monthlong 2006 war between Israel and the militant group Hezbollah .
New York Times
2 minutes ago
- New York Times
Putin Sees Ukraine Through a Lens of Grievance Over Lost Glory
After all the pre-summit talk of land swaps and the technicalities of a possible cease-fire in Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin made clear after his meeting in Alaska with President Trump that his deepest concern is not an end to three and half years of bloodshed. Rather, it is with what he called the 'situation around Ukraine,' code for his standard litany of grievances over Russia's lost glory. Returning to grudges he first aired angrily in 2007 at a security conference in Munich, and revived in February 2022 to announce and justify his full scale-invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Putin in his post-summit remarks in Alaska demanded that 'a fair balance in the security sphere in Europe and the world as whole must be restored.' Only this, he said, would remove 'the root causes of the crisis' in Ukraine — Kremlin shorthand for Russia's diminished status since it lost the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of Moscow's hegemony over Eastern Europe. Mr. Putin didn't directly mention the war, saying only that he 'was sincerely interested' in halting 'what is happening' because Russians and Ukrainians 'have the same roots' and 'for us this is a tragedy and a great pain.' Casting Russia as the victim of the war it itself started has been a staple of Kremlin propaganda ever since Mr. Putin announced his invasion — described as a 'special military operation' to save Russia — in 2022. 'Putin and Russia are revisionist; they cannot accept having lost the Cold War,' said Laurynas Kasciunas, the former defense minister of Lithuania, which until 1991 was part of the Soviet Union and has since joined NATO. Also now in NATO are Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and other former members of Moscow's now-defunct military alliance, the Warsaw Pact. Mr. Putin, Mr. Kasciunas added, never mentions the war and refers instead to the 'situation around Ukraine' so as to 'portray everything as a Western plot against Russia that merely uses Ukraine as a pawn and an instrument.' Russia's foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, unsubtly signaled the Kremlin's ambitions by arriving at his Alaska hotel wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the letters 'CCCP,' Cyrillic for USSR. But just before Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump met on Friday, Poland gave Moscow a pointed reminder that the old order is gone by holding a parade of tanks and other military hardware, much of it American-made, along the Vistula River in Warsaw. The display of military might, which also included a flyover of warplanes and helicopters, celebrated Polish victory over the Red Army in 1920 and showcased what is now the biggest military in the European Union. In an apparent effort to salve Mr. Putin's wounded pride over his country's reduced post Cold War status, Mr. Trump, in an interview after the summit, with Sean Hannity of Fox News, inflated Russia's position in the global hierarchy. Ignoring China and the European Union, he said: 'We are No. 1 and they are No. 2 in the world.' That, like that effusive welcome and applause given to Mr. Putin by Mr. Trump when he arrived in Alaska, went down well in Russia, where Kremlin-controlled media outlets and nationalist pundits rejoiced at what they saw as Russia's readmission to the club of respectable and respected nations. 'I didn't expect such a good result,' Aleksandr Dugin, a belligerent geopolitical theorist, said on Telegram. 'I congratulate all of us on a perfect summit. It was grandiose. To win everything and lose nothing, only Aleksandr III could do that,' he added, referring to the reactionary 19th-century czar who overturned the liberal reforms of his father. Andrei Klishas, a nationalist senator who after the start of all-out war in Ukraine in 2022 said Russia should have contacts with the West only 'through binoculars and gunsights,' said that the summit had 'confirmed Russia's desire for peace, long-term and fair' and left it free to carry out the special military operation 'by either military or diplomatic means.' Insisting that Russia has the upper hand on the battlefield and is 'liberating more and more territories,' he added: 'A new architecture of European and international security is on the agenda, and everyone must accept it.' Exactly what this new architecture would look like is unclear, but its main pillar is the restoration of Russia to its Cold War position as a regional hegemon and global power treated as an equal by the United States, as it was at the Yalta conference in 1945. Shortly before attacking Ukraine in 2022, Russia presented NATO and the United States with draft treaties demanding that NATO retreat from Eastern Europe and bar Ukraine from ever entering the alliance. These demands, which would reverse Russia's Cold War defeat, were swiftly dismissed. Mr. Putin, in a television address in 2022 announcing the invasion, focused not on Ukraine but on complaints about what he described as Western bullying and disregard for legitimate Russian interests and status. 'Over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe,' he said. 'In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns.' A central part of Mr. Putin's push to reshape the post Cold War order has been his effort to weaken or destroy the trans-Atlantic relationship created after World War II and expanded since 1991 with the admission to NATO of formerly Communist nations in Eastern Europe. On that score, the invasion of Ukraine has backfired, increasing NATO's presence near Russia's borders. Finland, which has an 830-mile border with Russia, in 2023 cast aside decades of military nonalignment to join the NATO alliance. Sweden also joined. But Mr. Trump, who has blown hot and cold for months on supporting Ukraine, sowed discord in the alliance in Alaska by seeming to adopt Mr. Putin's plan to seek a sweeping peace agreement in Ukraine instead of securing the urgent cease-fire he said he wanted before the summit. The American president's moves got a chilly reception in Europe, where leaders have time and again seen Mr. Trump reverse positions on Ukraine after speaking with Mr. Putin. Echoing Russia's line that Ukraine is a second-tier country whose interests cannot compete with those of Russia, he told Fox News: 'Russia is a very big power, and they're not.' Whether the war ends, he added, depends on Ukraine and Europe, not the United States. 'Now it is really up to President Zelensky to get it done,' he said. 'I would also say the European nations have to get involved a little bit.' Dmitri Medvedev, Russia's hawkish former president, celebrated the summit for restoring 'a full-fledged mechanism for meeting between Russia and the United States at the highest level' and showing that negotiations are possible between the two big powers 'simultaneously with the continuation' of Russia's military campaign in Ukraine. Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting from Moscow, and Tomas Dapkus from Vilnius, Lithuania.
