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Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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November 21, 2025

Fareed: Trump Raises a

White Flag in Ukraine

“President Donald Trump has a new Ukraine policy,” Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column. “It’s the same as his old Ukraine policy—force Kyiv to make more concessions and hope that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be satisfied, take the deal and set the stage for Trump to get his Nobel Prize. It hasn’t worked before, and it won’t work now. Worse, it comes at a moment of critical vulnerability for Ukraine. Reports from the field suggest that the fighting has intensified, the metrics are worsening and, without action, Ukraine could soon suffer a military defeat that will give Russia an important symbolic victory and perhaps more.”
 
Indeed, a new peace plan is circulating. Pushed by Trump’s top Russia–Ukraine envoy, Steve Witkoff, it includes 28 points. Trump is pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to it by Thanksgiving or lose US support against Moscow’s invading army. So far, Europe has rebuffed the plan, and Zelensky finds himself in a difficult position yet again. As the British war historian Lawrence Freedman writes in his Comment Is Freed newsletter, it’s not clear that Ukraine or Europe had any input in crafting the proposal, which crosses several Ukrainian red lines. Kyiv would have to cede land Russia has not captured, and it would have to limit the size of its army moving forward.
 
Fareed concludes: “Russia’s strategy has always been to outlast the West, believing that the U.S. and Europe would tire of this conflict. That belief is being reinforced not by Moscow’s victories, but by the West’s internal divisions and dysfunctions. Without a course correction, America may soon preside over the first negotiated defeat of a modern democracy at the hands of an aggressive autocracy in the heart of Europe, an area that American presidents have declared as vital to its national interest for 80 years. Incidentally, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded for peace, not surrender.”

Poking the Dragon

Relations between China and Japan have reached a recent low. What issue is driving a new wedge between the two regional rivals?

a) Taiwan
b) The disputed Senkaku Islands
c) Fishing rights
d) Tariffs

To see the answer, scroll to the end of this newsletter.

Sudan’s Gordian Knot

Trump appears to be newly interested in the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. After meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS) at the White House this week, Trump said MBS had filled him in on Sudan’s civil war; before that, the US president said, he had not considered getting more seriously involved.
 
Under the guidance of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the US has sought to bring together a “Quad” of regional stakeholders to work toward peace in Sudan—with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joining Washington. That approach has won praise from some experts, as outside powers have been determinative in perpetuating Sudan’s miserable conflict.
 
14 million people have been displaced, more than 30 million need humanitarian aid, and famine has been declared in two Sudanese cities. Not only that, Sudanese civilians face harrowing violence and seemingly impossible journeys from areas of acute danger.  Danish Refugee Council Secretary-General Charlotte Slente recently told Foreign Policy’s John Haltiwanger: “A family I talked to, a young couple and their 2-year-old child—the young man’s brother was killed as they escaped. He was asked if he was from the opposing group and he said, ‘No, I’m just a civilian.’ He was shot at close quarters with everyone observing it. Their 7-year-old boy was shot dead as well. And that family told us about their route to Chad. They went through 40 checkpoints with a lot of violence happening. They were looted along the way. They were in such a state of shock—just blank faces. … The crisis has been overlooked for so long, and it’s been devastating and horrendous right from the start.”

The Brookings Institution’s Jeffrey Feltman writes that conditions are terrifying for people living under both of Sudan’s warring factions, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). "While their methods may vary—the SAF launches airstrikes on civilian marketplaces and has been sanctioned for the use of chemical weapons, while the RSF massacres non-Arabs in Darfur—both forces demonstrate disdain for international humanitarian law and contempt for Sudan’s citizens,” Feltman writes.
 
Analysts are unanimous in calling for more international attention and in warning that the conflict is a complicated knot of foreign interests, a rivalry between two Sudanese generals, and competing local factions. Political scientist Kristof Titeca of the Belgian Egmont Institute wrote recently: “At the local level, actors—villages, ethnic groups, clans—clash over land, water, and trade routes. At the national level, the struggle is about ideology and identity, as well as for control of the state and its resources. Regionally, neighbouring countries intervene based on their own security and power interests. And at the geopolitical level, Sudan is part of a broader contest among Gulf power blocs for access to gold, ports, and strategic corridors. All these levels directly influence one another.” If the US-led peace effort is to succeed, Brookings’ Feltman writes, “Sudan must shift higher on Washington’s already crowded agendas with Abu Dhabi, Cairo, and Riyadh.” 

Considering the Day

After in Venezuela

As Trump pressures Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, the waiting game continues. The US president has several coercive tools in motion, but no clear endgame—and analysts disagree on whether escalation or de-escalation is the likelier (or better) path.
 
With a US aircraft carrier strike group now in the region, Ryan Berg of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has suggested Trump has just a few weeks to decide whether or not to strike Venezuela militarily, before those forces are needed elsewhere in the world. 
 
Would Trump be wise to attempt regime change? Writing for Foreign Affairs, the hawkish Elliott Abrams argues for removing Maduro: “Venezuela is a far better candidate for regime change and a return of democracy than were countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. After bringing down the dictator Marcos Pérez Jimenez in 1958, Venezuelans enjoyed two generations of democracy and built a large and educated middle class until Hugo Chávez and Maduro brought repression and ruin. The country has no significant ethnic or religious divisions. It has a long tradition of close financial, commercial, social, educational, and military contacts with the United States.”

At the Barcelona Center for International Affairs, Anna Ayuso and Susanne Gratius argue the opposite: “It is difficult to envision a land-based military attack in a country as complex as Venezuela, with a multitude of armed groups and inhospitable regions, and it contradicts Trump’s promise to not launch new military campaigns overseas.” A war would likely be unpopular in the US. On top of that, outside pressure from the US splits Venezuela’s opposition and bolsters Maduro’s anti-US rhetoric, which reverberates throughout Latin America, Ayuso and Gratius write. 
 
Still, some observers are making predictions. Bloomberg columnist Andreas Kluth writes: “My guess is that Trump will soon grasp at anything that Maduro offers—more access to Venezuela’s oil, for example —as his excuse to ratchet down the Caribbean campaign … One analogy might be Trump’s brief bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen earlier this year, which he abruptly ended when it became too expensive and pointless, by declaring a victory that nobody outside his fan base could define or fathom.”

The International Crisis Group’s Phil Gunson writes in a New York Times guest essay from Caracas: “[T]here are broadly speaking two main directions this could go. Either the U.S. fleet disperses, presumably after demonstrating its firepower on some terrestrial targets as a token show of force, and leaves Mr. Maduro in power, or the Trump administration succeeds in toppling the government, with or without landing U.S. troops on Venezuelan soil. In the first scenario, Mr. Maduro would benefit from having faced down ‘the empire’ … Ousting Mr. Maduro could prove even more costly. Unless [leading Venezuelan opposition figure and recent Nobel laureate María Corina] Machado and her allies have an unlikely secret transition deal with key figures in the Venezuelan military … a swift ouster could produce a power vacuum. That, in turn, could lead to an open-ended internal conflict … Without the commitment of a huge U.S. military force … Mr. Maduro’s ouster could usher in protracted, bloody chaos that would likely spill over Venezuela’s porous borders.”

An ISIS Resurgence

USAID left a void in Mozambique after the Trump administration dismantled the agency. And it appears that ISIS has stepped into the vacuum. CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh traveled to the African nation to see firsthand how quickly things have changed.

It’s Still the Economy

Democrats secured a string of victories in off-year elections this month by campaigning on the theme of America’s high post-pandemic cost of living. The New Yorker’s John Cassidy wrote recently that Trump’s main political problem might be this: “In the past five years or so, rising prices have largely eaten up wage gains, leaving low- and middle-income Americans (many of whom voted for Trump) struggling to make ends meet.” The Wall Street Journal’s Rachel Louise Ensign and Rachel Wolfe underscore the importance for the middle class: “After nearly five years of high prices, many middle-class earners thought life would be more affordable by now. Costs for goods and services are 25% above where they were in 2020. Even though the inflation rate is below its recent 2022 high, certain essentials like coffee, ground beef and car repairs are up markedly this year. ‘Life felt more doable a year and a half ago,’ said Holly Frew, a college communications director with a household income around $135,000 living in Atlanta. ‘I need to know where the light is at the end of the tunnel.’”

Moving On From Trump?

After Republican lawmakers broke from Trump to demand the release of Justice Department files related to Jeffrey Epstein, analysts are wondering if Trump’s vise-like hold on the party has slipped—for good. 
 
The New York Times’ Carl Hulse writes: “even Republicans concede that there is a shift underway that was probably inevitable, given the history of presidential power and the rapidity with which it can dissipate.” Trump’s “political threats and caustic personal attacks” did not sway Republican Rep. Thomas Massie from demanding the Epstein documents’ release. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene faced down Trump very publicly. 
 
The Atlantic’s Jonathan Lemire adds that the Epstein showdown has “begun to give Republicans a permission structure for pushing back against Trump and jockeying for power with an eye to the elections ahead. This was not the plan. Trump and his inner circle used their four years out of office to create a policy blueprint—drawn substantially from Project 2025—and form a disciplined team of true believers … Trump has been a steamroller. But that has begun to change. Voters punished Trump’s party in this month’s elections, seeming to condemn his presidential overreach and the abandonment of his central campaign promise to rehabilitate the nation’s economy. A rare Republican rebellion on Capitol Hill rattled the West Wing and embarrassed the president. And although the White House likes to project a political image of never surrendering, a pair of retreats in the past few days”—on the Epstein documents and in rolling back some tariffs over cost-of-living concerns—“has punctured Trump’s aura of invincibility.”

News Quiz:

The Answer Is …

Question: What issue is driving a new wedge between regional rivals China and Japan? Answer: Taiwan.
 
The tiff centers on Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s recent comments about mobilizing Japan’s military if Beijing seeks to seize Taiwan by force. The Economist explains: “Takaichi Sanae was bound to rile China sooner rather than later. Japan’s new prime minister … is an outspoken nationalist with a reputation as a China hawk. As it turned out, it took less than three weeks. On November 7th, in Japan’s Diet [the national legislature], she was asked what might prompt Japan to exercise ‘collective self-defence’. The term refers to Japan’s proclaimed right to use military force to defend an ally, such as America, when deemed necessary for Japan’s own survival. Her answer: if force is used against Taiwan. China is furious.”
 
China watcher James Palmer of Foreign Policy writes that Beijing “has gone on a media blitz, canceled diplomatic meetings, launched new patrols around disputed islands, and warned Chinese citizens against traveling to Japan, leading to around half a million canceled trips. … Such quarrels can have long-lasting effects on diplomacy … But China and Japan have extensive trade ties, and neither can afford another blow to their already struggling economies. This may lead to a quiet de-escalation once the issue fades from the headlines.”
 
At the World Politics Review, Derek Grossman views the tensions similarly: “In the past, Japanese leaders have avoided public discussion of specific Taiwan scenarios, though in recent years, successive governments have more frequently noted their growing concerns ... In response to Takaichi’s comments, China’s consul general in Osaka, Xue Jian, commented in Japanese on social media that ‘the dirty head that sticks itself in must be cut off’—a clear threat to Takaichi’s life. The post was later removed, but the damage was already done. … Although passions are running high right now, it is more likely that cooler heads will prevail in the end. The reality is that both Tokyo and Beijing have much to lose and little to gain from an escalation of their dispute. … Bilateral relations between Asia’s top two economies are thus likely to recover, as they have from past incidents. However, a resolution may prove slower to come this time, given the entrenched nationalist sentiments in both countries and their respective leaders’ desire to avoid looking weak.”