Trump's mission for Ukraine and Taiwan & fragile Israel-Gaza ceasefire 'holding'
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Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com I asked him what exactly had happened and he replied along the lines of the bombs came from the sky, they killed many people, they didn't kill me, but they killed my eyes and my eyes went to heaven before I did. They said he will start a war, I'm not going to start a war, I'm going to stop wars.

I recognise the challenges from Ukraine to Gaza to Sudan and beyond. War, hunger, terrorism. I just find bombs and I find dead people. But it's a really scary thing. I'm Roland Oliphant and this is Battlelines. It's Monday 20th January 2025. Today we hear from the Israel-based journalist Yotam Konfino on the progress of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire

Rosalia Bolan of UNICEF joins us from Gaza, where she describes the scale of the humanitarian challenge after the ceasefire. And on Donald Trump's first day back in the White House, Brussels correspondent Joe Barnes examines just what he wants from the world and whether he'll get it. But first, a quick catch up of the latest death tolls, both civilian and military, since October the 7th, 2023.

Gaza's death toll is 46,913 people. The West Bank's is 838 people. Israel's is 1,843 people. On top of that, we should add that there are 91 hostages left in Gaza after yesterday's release from the 251 seized by Hamas on October 7th. Israel believes that only 57 are still alive.

The war in Gaza is finally over, for now at least. After a nerve-wracking delay, the fighting finally stopped and Hamas handed over three Israeli hostages on Sunday afternoon. Shortly afterwards, busses carried 90 freed Palestinians out of Israel's Ofa prison. So far, so good, but the truce remains extremely delicate and humanitarian organisations have said there is no time to lose in getting medical aid and food into the Strip.

Joining us from Israel, the journalist Yotam Konfina. Thank you for joining us. The ceasefire came into effect...

on Sunday, that's yesterday. Could you give us the latest this morning? I suppose the basic question is, is it holding and is it going to hold? First of all, yes, it is holding as of now. Israel has not launched any airstrikes or attacked Hamas whatsoever inside the Gaza Strip, and Hamas has also seized its hostilities. So in that sense, it's holding. And the three hostages were released yesterday as per the ceasefire agreement.

And the 90 Palestinian prisoners were released from Israeli jails. Everything is going according to plan, relatively speaking, I would say, because there was a slight delay

with the release of the hostages and the Palestinian prisoners, but that was to be expected. It was the same in November 2023 when Israel and Hamas struck the first ceasefire. Will it hold? I don't think so. And the reason why I'm saying that is because this is an extremely complicated ceasefire which is divided into three phases. The first phase is 42 days long where 33 hostages are set to be released in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

And a lot can go wrong in those 42 days. It doesn't take many miscalculations or provocations, or even if Hamas for some reason can't locate some of the hostages in time, that could also derail everything. That's just the first phase. Then you have the second and the third phase, which are also complicated, especially the last phase where there's supposed to be talks about who's going to rule Gaza. That's a hugely complicated issue.

And Hamas is not going to just lay down their weapons and hand them over to the Palestinian Authority. So I don't think we're going to see this ceasefire being completed. And even if it is completed, I think it's just a matter of time before the next conflict between Israel and Hamas erupts.

How is this going down in Israel? And is that, is what you've just described, this sense that this probably isn't going to last, is that a widespread expectation? I would say so. And mainly because most Israelis know their enemy. They know Hamas. It's not the first time that Israel and Hamas are engaged in wars. And they know that Hamas has not given up on their ultimate goal, which is to destroy Israel. They've said so even on the day of the announcement.

The point man on the negotiations, Khalil al-Hayas, said so in so many words that it was just a matter of time before they would destroy Israel. So every Israeli knows that Hamas, first of all, has not been destroyed fully. We saw that in Gaza yesterday. We saw hundreds of members of Hamas armed in crisp new uniforms. They were driving in pickup trucks, and they were clearly controlling the area.

And I think a lot of Israelis were a bit disappointed, and they were also, I think, annoyed and angry with the government because Netanyahu's government has been telling the Israeli public for a long time now that Hamas has been completely destroyed. And that's not true. So I think most Israelis yesterday realized that

what they'd been told was not completely accurate and that Hamas is absolutely still a player in the Gaza Strip. And if Hamas is still a player in the Gaza Strip, it's just a matter of time before they will try to launch another attack.

I don't believe that they can launch another October 7 style attack in the near future. But Hamas is playing the long game here. And this is exactly what I believe that they're trying to do in the long run. Could you just talk us through the political fallout inside Israel? I think we saw six resignations from the security cabinet in protest at this.

this ceasefire, but it did go through nonetheless. Where does this leave Prime Minister Netanyahu and the government? Does it leave him more vulnerable in the domestic front? And does that kind of sense that, oh, well, we were told Hamas was destroyed, but clearly not, does that damage him? It is damaging. I think what we saw yesterday is damaging to Netanyahu because he's been promising total victory.

What we saw yesterday was not total victory. Having three hostages paraded through Gaza with hundreds of Hamas members surrounding them is not a picture of total victory. Secondly, Netanyahu is vulnerable now because he has succumbed to pressure, not only from the Israeli public to strike a deal, but from Donald Trump. And the Jewish power party that resigned from the government said they're not ready to overthrow him just yet.

But it is definitely a possibility that they will start during the ceasefire to work actively against Netanyahu. And they're trying now to also convince another party, the Religious Zionism Party, which is also a far-right national religious party, to also leave the government. They've also threatened with doing that.

If they do, technically Netanyahu will be toppled, but he has been thrown a lifeline by the opposition leader, Yair Lapid, who told Netanyahu, "Don't worry about those two parties. If they leave, we will make sure that you have a majority coalition because we want this ceasefire to be completed." But after the ceasefire, I believe that Yair Lapid would pull his support and then it would trigger elections most likely. Yet another Israeli election.

What are the next hurdles to get through? And if you think this is going to all fall apart, where do you think are the critical points where you think this could all collapse and we could be back in a war? I believe probably in the second phase, because that's where many, many more members of Hamas are also expected to be released.

And that's apparently also where Hamas and Israel had widely disagreed last week, which led to a holdup in the announcement from Israel's side of a ceasefire. Because Hamas, they're still pushing to get certain people out of Israeli jails, among them Mawan Bagouti, who is a very popular figure among Palestinians. And he has been in Israeli jail for 20 years. He was convicted for murdering five people.

And he's serving life in prison. But he's one of the people that Hamas are trying to get out. So I believe eventually there'll be a huge disagreement over the names of specific top Hamas or Palestinian Jihad or Fatah people set to be released in jail. And if not in the second phase, I believe in the third phase it will collapse.

Because, like I said, Hamas is not ready to hand over control to the Palestinian Authority. And that's really what the third phase is all about. It's about having the Palestinian Authority sitting down with local Gazan politicians who are not affiliated with terror groups to try and form an interim government. And they need the support from the international system, of course. And then in the long run, apparently, according to the United States' plan,

the Palestinian Authority will take over Gaza. And Israel, with Netanyahu leading Israel, is not interested in that. They've said that repeatedly because they believe that the PA, the Palestinian Authority, is a corrupt and terror-supporting entity. So I think this is just a recipe for disaster, really, with so many conflicting interests. How long have we got before it falls apart? The million-dollar question. The first phase lasts 42 days.

And Israel and Hamas will continue negotiating the implementation of the second phase 16 days into the ceasefire. So in about two weeks' time, they're going to start renegotiating or finalizing some of the details on the implementation, and it could easily derail then.

Of course, we hope that it's not going to happen, but I see so many bumps along the way that could very easily just explode in both Hamas' initial space. Could we talk a little bit about the hostages? Three came out.

I'm just doing my arithmetic here. If I'm right, that means that Israel believes there's still 91 unaccounted for, only 57 of whom they believe are alive. I may not be wrong there, but the deal says only 33 are going to come out in this first phase. Tell us about the condition of these three who came out yesterday.

So Emily Damari, who's a British citizen, she had two of her fingers blown off after Hamas shot her on October the 7th. I believe she was holding her dog and they shot the dog and they hit her hand. So she's missing two fingers.

But other than that, she's in an okay condition physically. She's undergoing medical assessments now. She's still at the hospital. The two other hostages are also said to be in an okay condition physically speaking. I think the big issue here is how they are mentally because being held captive for 470 days by a terror organization will leave scars. We heard that from other hostages who were released in the first...

a ceasefire in November 2023. And then you have the rest of the 30 hostages who are set to be released. We believe that 25 of the 33 hostages in that round, they are alive. We don't know for sure, but that's the Israeli estimate.

And the 33 hostages are mainly made up of elderly women, two children, and those who are ill, those who are suffering from different kinds of medical conditions. And that will be probably, I think, it's going to be quite heartbreaking to see some of those coming out who have suffered medical conditions for 470 days. On this point, as you say, 470 days...

It's kind of remarkable, I was just reflecting this morning, that in all that time, very, very few have actually been rescued by the IDF. How is it that the IDF were unable to find these people over such a long time? And I suppose I'm kind of coming back to the point you were making about this not entirely looking like victory. Does the fact that

you know, Izzo's had to make a deal to let these people come out. Does that leave people thinking maybe this isn't a victory at all? I think those who thought or believed in Netanyahu's promise of total victory, they were quite naive because I think anyone who saw what happened on October 7th

and saw the 251 people taken hostage knew that there was going to be a very heavy price to pay for Israel, not only in terms of how many Palestinian prisoners they were supposed to release in order to get them back, but also going into Gaza

which is densely populated, which is, it's a nightmare for any soldier. Really. There's nothing like it in the world. I've spoken to several military experts who told me that Mosul, for example, in Iraq or Raqqa with Islamic state, it fades in comparison to Gaza because Hamas is so strong and so embedded in every single aspect and corner of, of Gaza. So

I think that those who believed that the IDF could just walk in there and free 251 hostages were very naive. And I'm not surprised that the IDF didn't manage to do it. It's very difficult to rescue hostages who are held in dungeons and tunnels deep underground because it's a vast tunnel system they have, 500 kilometer long, and

all over Gaza. So it was never really realistic, I think, for Israel to do that. And they paid a heavy price also with the amount of soldiers who were killed. If I'm not mistaken, it's around 400 who've been killed in there. That was Yotam Konfino speaking to us from Israel.

Now, the fighting may be over, but on the ground a new war, a war against disease and hunger, is just getting underway. The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that 92% of homes in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or damaged, 90% of the population displaced, 1.8 million people in urgent need of emergency shelter and essential household items.

The solid waste system, the organisation says, has collapsed, causing serious environmental and health risks, and the water system has been drastically cut. My colleague Venetia Rainey spoke to Rosalia Bollan, a UNICEF communications specialist who is currently in Al-Mawassi in southern Gaza. She told us about the scale of the challenges and the hurdles facing the humanitarian response.

The ceasefire on its own is not going to automatically end the suffering of children in Gaza who have experienced utter deprivation for 15 months now. All central services have collapsed. The scale of destruction is just unimaginable. And 15 months into this war, the level of humanitarian needs is just enormous. UNICEF and our partners were ready to scale up our

response. And in terms of priorities, the interventions that we'd be focused on, they're actually multiple. First off, we will be facilitating immunization catch-up activities.

When it comes to regular immunization efforts, it's important that that is fully restarted. We'll continue to work on malnutrition, not just for children, but also for pregnant and breastfeeding mothers. We've already been rolling out very important nutrition programming over the past year. We've been doing malnutrition screening. We've handed out nutritional supplements, high energy biscuits, therapeutic food,

But, you know, as long as families are unable to access a very diverse and sufficient diet, as long as there is not enough food in the market and as long as it isn't affordable, it's a bit like bringing water to the ocean almost for everyone.

nutrition to improve the nutrition situation, the commercial sector also needs to be able to bring in supplies in parallel, dairy products, vegetables, fruit, so that children can have a nutritious and diverse diet through the family food. UNICEF will also support the increase of hospital capacity, especially when it comes to neonatal care.

Clean water remains a very, very big challenge here. So we plan to support the production of more water in the south and in the north and to bring in supplies, pumps, generators, cement to really fix the water infrastructure.

We will also scale up mental health and psychosocial services. You know, children are scarred not just physically, but also psychologically. Every single child in Gaza today is in very dire need of psychosocial mental health support. Children have been stuck physically.

in this permanent cycle of exposure to violence but also very toxic stress because they're acutely aware that no place is safe inside Gaza. We have been supporting mental health sessions for children, individual sessions, group sessions, using art, using counseling, we've been training teachers.

how to deal with children who have been exposed to very traumatic events. We'll also work on education because children have been out of school for one year and a half right now. They haven't had any formal learning opportunities yet.

That needs to restart immediately to avoid a lost generation. And schools are not just places of learning, but also places of socialization, places that are important for the social development of children. And lastly, we have a cash transfer program, a humanitarian cash transfer program. Vulnerable families can receive...

through an e-wallet digital transfers and they can use that to buy basic supplies. I'm wondering if you can share with us a story that has stuck with you from your time in Gaza.

You must have come across lots of children. I'm wondering if there's a particular story that you could share with us that humanises the vast scale of the suffering in Gaza. One story that will stay with me forever really is the story of five-year-old Saad. I met Saad for the first time in November at a centre that is specialised in care for children with disabilities.

That center is supported by UNICEF. For instance, we provide supplies to the center. Five-year-old Saad lost his eyesight as a result of an airstrike on his home. He actually had a skull fracture and lost his vision.

He also sustained quite severe burns on the lower part of his body. And when I met him for the first time, he was at that center with his mom. I met him again last month when he was waiting to receive winter clothes that UNICEF was distributing and

every time I spoke with Saad, it struck me how he spoke about what had happened to him. I asked him what exactly had happened and he replied along the lines of the bombs came, the bombs came from the sky, they killed many people. They didn't kill me, but they killed my eyes and my eyes went to heaven before I did.

I thought there was a very particular way of describing what had happened to him, especially considering that he's only five years old, especially at the time that we did the winter clothes distribution. So that was last month.

He actually, he was sitting in a corner. He obviously still needs to get used to the fact that he has no more his eyesight. His sister was opening the box with winter clothes for him.

And while he couldn't see the clothes, he was over overjoyed. He enjoyed touching the box itself, the card. The clothes were individually wrapped in plastic, so he then felt the plastic. And as his older sister was pulling out these clothes, he really enjoyed touching the different fabrics. There was a fleece sweater, there was cotton socks.

There were shoes in it and he was just giggling every time his sister gave him a piece of clothing. So it was heartwarming, but at the same time it was heartbreaking to see that such a young boy will be marked for the rest of his life as a result of this war. Children really have been bearing the brunt, they've been bearing the cost of this war, although they didn't start it and they also don't have the means to end it. How difficult will it be for

UNICEF as part of the UN to move forward in terms of aid distribution once the ban, Israel's ban on UNRWA takes effect? Does that create operational difficulties? Along with the rest of the UN system, UNICEF has been deeply concerned by these efforts to restrict UNRWA's work in the state of Palestine. You'll have heard the UN Secretary General, but also others say that

UNRWA is irreplaceable and indispensable for the humanitarian response, especially in Gaza. If its activities are restricted, that's very, very bad news for Palestinian families in Gaza. On the one hand, that's because if UNRWA's

own operations, they operate at scale, they also have lots of infrastructure, lots of facilities that the rest of the humanitarian system relies on. So it will definitely complicate our ability, UNICEF's ability, to deliver the caseload. The number of families who will need to receive support would drastically increase if UNRWA is no longer able to service them.

and at a time when the needs are just so enormous, families in Gaza need more support, not less.

And then just finally, we've obviously heard lots about looting of aid, lots of people accusing Hamas of buying aid and reselling it to people. I'm wondering if you can speak about what UNICEF's experience has been of working with Hamas on the ground or whatever security authorities that there are in place now in terms of distributing aid safely in the coming weeks.

The humanitarian operation inside Gaza is a very, very complex one. And we indeed face serious challenges and constraints as a result of the operating environments and not least the security situation, which may actually deteriorate after a ceasefire. You know, the breakdown of public order and activities of armed gangs

are very serious concerns for us and a great impediment to our ability to deliver aid. What we've seen happening over the past year here in Gaza is that insufficient amount of aid has come in.

What has come in has been woefully inadequate to address even the most basic needs of families in Gaza. So that has created enormous, enormous pressure. It has incentivized looting. People are desperate to try to get their hands on whatever they can, but equally it has incentivized criminal gangs.

Because obviously in an austerity economy, prices go up and it is profitable to loot these supplies. And the looting itself is further contributing or feeding into this downward spiral, into this very, very vicious circle. So we absolutely must break out of it. And it is therefore key.

that the commercial sector is also allowed to bring in supplies into Gaza at scale, large volumes of supplies, things like food, but also things like sanitary items, soap, shampoo, sanitary pads. The commercial sector should be able to bring that in, to take the pressure off the market. This would also allow humanitarians to focus on what we're good at, to focus on

humanitarian supplies. So for instance, when it comes to malnutrition, UNICEF can focus on therapeutic food, on plumpy nuts, high energy biscuits, and it should be the commercial sector who's bringing in dairy products, meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, to ensure that families can access these products and have a diverse diet.

I'd like to close just by reiterating that the ceasefire is long overdue for the children and families of Gaza. They've endured more than 15 months of relentless bombing and deprivation. And equally, it's also long overdue for the hostages in Gaza and for their families. I'd like to underline that this war has taken really a horrific toll on Gaza's children.

leaving reportedly at least 14,500 children dead, tens of thousands more injured. We estimate there's 17,000 children who have been accompanied or separated from their parents.

Nearly one million children are displaced and every single child in Gaza is in need of psychosocial support today. So this ceasefire is long overdue, it's much needed, and it will finally give some reprieve to these children and their families who've been through unimaginable things. That was Rosalia Bolin of UNICEF in southern Gaza speaking to Venetia Rainey.

After the break, Donald Trump says the Gaza ceasefire is the first foreign policy triumph of his presidency. As he's sworn into the White House for a second time, what else does he have planned for the world? Welcome back. Now, Donald Trump...

is entering the White House for the second time today and he has already claimed credit for the ceasefire in Gaza. He says it could not have happened if he had not won the election. Well, if it is the first triumph of his presidency, it's quite a dramatic one. So what else has he got planned for the world?

And how likely is he to achieve those aims? I'm joined now by Joe Barnes, our Brussels correspondent, who's been following Donald Trump's proposed foreign policy quite closely.

Joe, let's maybe start with the Middle East because that's what we've been talking about. Where do we see Donald Trump going from here? Does he have any broader vision for the region beyond what we've seen over the past few days in Gaza? Yeah, I think he does have bigger visions and sort of grander plans for the Middle East. First of all, it's a godsend that he comes to office with a deal on the table, this ceasefire deal done, finalised, because it's much easier to enforce a ceasefire than it is to negotiate it and

and then start enforcing it when entering office. I actually think it's fair enough for Donald Trump to say that he had a degree of influence over the signing of this deal and the timing wasn't exactly a coincidence. Joe Biden has had a really tough time dealing with Israel. I spent two months in the US running up to the election and he basically was undermined and disrespected by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, almost every twist and turn. But what Donald Trump does have is

He is considered a friend of Israel. He's always had this sort of strange focus on the Middle East. If you look back to his first term when he was signing the Abraham Accords to normalize relations between Arab countries and Israel. And then you talk about there's been a lot of reporting from

Israeli settlers in the West Bank who think that Donald Trump is going to be the president that will allow them to move closer to annexation there. You had moves like the US embassy being moved to Jerusalem. So for a whole numerous amount of reasons, Donald Trump is considered a friend of Israel. I think he's going to once now having to build on this ceasefire, he's going to try and

move the Abraham Accords further around the Middle East. He's going to want to see that deal expanded. It's one of the things that I see him doing. He's got a big focus on Iran, so he's going to help Israel in its sort of armed struggle against Iran. It's been sort of a proxy war of such because Iran backs Hamas, it backs Hezbollah, it backs the Houthis. In Yemen,

But I think we'll see Donald Trump saying, Israel, we will give you more missiles, we'll give you more defenses to head off potential Iranian missile attacks on Iran, but also retaliate because he wants to quash the Iranian regime and basically stop its nuclear ambitions. And that's something both Israel and the US under Trump shares.

But I don't expect Donald Trump to spend a great deal of time on the Middle East now. He's got the deal. He can come after sort of the more diplomatic efforts in normalization, expanding the Abraham Accord, etc. I see him sort of probably moving on closer to Europe in my eyes and saying I've probably been watching more closely. Well, let's then move on. If I was to ask you, what does Donald Trump want from the world?

What are the top three things that he wants from the rest of the planet? If I was to give you three things that Donald Trump really wants when we're talking about foreign policy is he wants people to be speaking and praising Donald Trump. He wants a Nobel Peace Prize. He was very much annoyed and angered that Barack Obama was handed a peace prize and he wasn't over the Abraham Accords.

And then he just wants to be remembered as a guy who got things done. He always speaks about brokering good deals and great deals, but ultimately he wants to build a legacy. And by brokering these great deals, these amazing deals, these beautiful deals, he sees that as something that he will be remembered by as a great leader.

It's striking to me there. You know, the top three things Donald Trump points in the foreign policy, none of it involves a single other country. It's all about him. Yeah, that's exactly it. And look, it's going to benefit countries like Israel because they're going to get increased support. The Middle East is going to hopefully be stabilized because

Donald Trump sees doing that as a way for people to speak about him, a way to win a Nobel Prize. Same with Ukraine. He doesn't have to support Ukraine. He doesn't have to try and end the war because it's not going to reflect terribly on him if it carries on for four years because that's something that could happen. But if he is the man to do that, he will be the one credited with ending that war. He'll say Joe Biden...

oversaw a period of violence and destruction that has seen Ukrainian cities razed to the ground and completely destroyed. When I came in, in the first 100 days, I helped broker a deal and ended the war. And thanks to me, Donald Trump, you will all remember me as the man who

ended sort of the bloodiest conflict, the biggest European land war of this century. What is on his mind, on his foreign policy dossier? We've had some pretty dramatic comments from him regarding, I mean, pretty much anywhere from annexing Greenland to trade wars with Europe and China as well. What is it he wants to do? Could you give us, I read, a sense of where America and the world are going under this presidency?

You have to sort of whittle away at Donald Trump's comments. We're all talking about him wanting to use military force to annex Greenland from sort of his independence status under Denmark. Actually, if you sort of take away the layers and sort of the box office nature of every time Donald Trump speaks, he actually makes a really interesting and valid point. Russia and China have been

Trying to expand into that region, a region that has lots of natural resources available to it, is strategically very important for military purposes. And actually, if Donald Trump had just said, look, we actually need to keep an eye on what is going on around Greenland, sort of position in the world, it connects America and Russia once a year or so when the ice forms in winter.

He's actually saying, look, we need to actually pay a lot more attention to that. And if Europe isn't going to take responsibility for it, then am I going to have to, as the American president, sort of come and deal with it? Staying in Europe, we have the whole issue with NATO. Again, Donald Trump isn't the first US president to complain about

European military spending in terms of NATO. That's been dwindling since Bill Clinton came to office. What do we think Trump is going to do on that score? And what does it mean for European leaders? What are they fretting about?

So Donald Trump has said, I think you actually covered it, Roland, to start with. He basically said he would let Russia do whatever the hell it wanted to NATO allies that don't meet the spending pledge. So first of all, he basically run roughshod over the Article 5 treaty clause, which is mutual defense clause. The attack on one NATO member is an attack on all of them. He basically cast doubt over that massive doubt.

And this was before he was elected. So that was basically European countries were fretting about the idea of does article five actually mean anything? Now Donald Trump is saying that not only does he want countries to come up to 2%, he wants them to come up to 5% of GDP on defense, which is a target that not even America hits at the moment. America sits just below on about 3.8% or something like that. It's only Poland that comes closest on 4.12% from memory.

But what's quite interesting is actually nobody's ruling it out. You have Mark Rutte, who's the former NATO Secretary General, but he's also the former Prime Minister of the Netherlands. And he has been speaking in recent weeks about this tough decision you have to make as a national leader. Do you spend money on health or do you spend money on defence? So he's trying to normalise this conversation that we actually have to pick out priorities and maybe defence is a bigger priority than healthcare at the moment. For many leaders, that's an incredibly tough decision to make.

But I think it's one that they're trying to normalize. And they're doing this because under Joe Biden, under Barack Obama, under George Bush, go back through numerous presidents since NATO has been formed. I don't think anyone's ever been worried that a U.S. president is sort of mad dog enough to take America out of NATO, where people actually think Donald Trump could do it.

And that's because he doesn't really, I think in his foreign policy world, he doesn't really care about Europe that much in terms of a defence and foreign policy realm. His biggest priority is China. Let's then talk about China. You know, as far as you could glean while you were out there reporting, what's on top of his inbox as far as China's concerned? You've got Taiwan and Xi Jinping's sort of stated aims of reunifying basically China

annexing, taking over Taiwan and bringing it back under the power of China. You've got the ongoing battle on critical minerals and rare earths and metals, the things that are used to produce the next generation of technology. And then you just have, I think, the idea that China is an industrial powerhouse that other countries in the West just aren't. And Donald Trump would like America to have

the ability to be producing all of these cars, motorcycles, anything that sort of is made in China. Donald Trump would like that to be produced in the US and being sold around the world. And that brings us on to the question of his tariffs. How disruptive could that be if it goes ahead? Yeah, tariffs aren't good for anyone. I think there's been reporting, there's been think tank studies into this. And actually,

trade would sort of significantly drop. So it would actually cost both America and its trading partners. Everyone would be worse off if Donald Trump was to enact these tariffs. And he's talking as high as sort of 100% on Chinese goods.

In Europe, they're sort of looking at how to talk Trump down from this threat of tariffs. They're talking about making offers to buy more US energy, so LMG. They're working out what can we, as sort of a European continent, instead of keeping the defense industry European, can we actually buy more American kit?

And then this is their offers of other things that we can buy. Can we buy more Levi jeans? Can we buy more Harley Davidsons? Can we buy more bourbon whiskey? Things that are traditionally associated with America, like these sort of very symbolic products. Can we actually purchase more of them to basically show Donald Trump that look, we're buying American products. Please don't slap us with tariffs. You're in Brussels. You cover NATO. You also cover the European Union. You get a sense of what European leaders are thinking.

How nervous are they going into this Trump presidency? Do you get the sense that European governments, European diplomats, European leaders are incredibly scared of the unknown? Or have they come to the terms with the idea of this new kind of American leader? There's two ways to sort of answer this question. On one hand, they've experienced and survived a Donald Trump presidency in the past.

They've got these sort of these playbooks. So the playbook of buying American is something that Jean-Claude Juncker and his trade department in the European Commission back during the first term of Donald Trump formulated. At that point, they promised to buy more LNG and more American soya beans in exchange for Donald Trump not putting tariffs on

and steel exports and trade. So on that hand, lots of people are reverting back to the same old tactics that in NATO, they're talking about Trump pleasing, which is just basically, let's show him that we're doing stuff that are his priorities. We're speaking about China, we're increasing defense spending. Then on the other hand, you've always got, and it's probably Donald Trump's biggest sort of foreign policy trend

Trump car to avoid that pun is that we just don't know what he's going to do. He's unpredictable. He lurches from policy idea to policy idea. Look at how many of these close advisors in the first term were sort of championed as the world's best thinker and then suddenly sort of thrown out the door as soon as they disagree with him because he probably woke up and heard a new voice on Fox News. He read a different newspaper. You just don't know what Donald Trump is going to do from day to day.

So on one hand, they've got these well-formulated plans that they know have worked in the past. But then on the other hand, Donald Trump might just wake up one morning and say, you know what, I've got this idea. I'm going to do it. And that is completely a U-turn or a different position on something he's done before. Joe Barnes in Brussels. That's all for today. I'll be back on Friday looking at whatever foreign policy surprises the first week of Donald Trump's presidency brings us. In the meantime, that was Battlelines. Goodbye.

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