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PROGRAMMING NOTE: Folks, I screwed up. In Thursday’s roundup I noted that we’ve reached our annual Spring Break and said that I will be away from the newsletter for two weeks starting after Tuesday’s newsletter. My timing was in a word completely wrong, so in actuality tonight’s roundup, not Tuesday’s, will be our last for a couple of weeks. We will resume our regular schedule on Sunday, April 20. As always, thanks for reading and supporting Foreign Exchanges!
TODAY IN HISTORY
April 5, 1818: A rebel army commanded by José de San Martín and Bernardo O’Higgins defeats a royalist force led by Chilean Governor Mariano Osorio at the Battle of Maipú. The royalists lost around 2000 men, roughly double the casualties incurred by the rebels. Among the more decisive battles of the Spanish-American Wars of Independence, Maipú effectively secured the liberation of Chile, which meant that the Argentine-Chilean army was free to begin moving north to liberate parts of southern Peru.
April 5, 1879: The Chilean government declares war on Bolivia and Peru, kicking off the War of the Pacific. The war’s causes are still debated to some extent but certainly included disputes over control of rich nitrate deposits in the Atacama Desert and a growing competition for economic and political dominance in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. Chile emerged victorious over the Bolivian-Peruvian alliance in 1884, seizing parts of southern Peru as well as the entire Atacama and leaving Bolivia landlocked.
April 6, 1250: The Battle of Fariskur ends the ill-fated Seventh Crusade.
April 6, 1896: The Games of the First Olympiad, AKA the first modern Olympics, open in Athens. The ancient Olympic Games, believed to have begun in the early 8th century BCE, were discontinued either by Roman Emperor Theodosius I, in the 390s, or by Theodosius II, in the 420s. French educator Pierre de Coubertin (d. 1937) was the driving force behind their revival, which led to the creation of the International Olympic Committee in 1894 and the first modern Games two years later.
MIDDLE EAST
LEBANON
The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least two people in an airstrike near the Israeli border in southern Lebanon on Sunday. Israeli officials are claiming that both were Hezbollah members who were “attempting to rebuild Hezbollah terror infrastructure sites.” US envoy Morgan Ortagus was in Lebanon over the weekend for discussions with President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam. You may be surprised to learn that she had nothing to say about yet another IDF ceasefire violation.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The IDF spent the weekend establishing its new “Morag Corridor” across southern Gaza. The new cordon cuts through Gaza east-west, like the “Netzarim Corridor” further north, and though its exact position is not yet entirely clear it will likely isolate the decimated city of Rafah from the rest of Gaza when it’s fully implemented. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has talked about “cutting up” Gaza, ostensibly to increase pressure on Hamas to release its remaining captives but really to facilitate the ethnic cleansing plan that Donald Trump proposed during Netanyahu’s visit to Washington two months ago. Netanyahu is heading to the US on Monday for another White House meeting with Trump, and who knows what they might announce this time around.
Elsewhere, there’s been a great deal of attention paid to the IDF’s apparent massacre of at least 15 first responders in southern Gaza last month. That scrutiny increased over the weekend, after the Palestine Red Crescent Society released video of the incident that had been discovered on the cell phone of one of the deceased. While there’s only so much that can be concluded from a single video it appears to completely contradict the story that the IDF has been telling about the incident. The Israelis have claimed that their forces fired on “several uncoordinated vehicles [that] were identified advancing suspiciously toward [Israeli] troops without headlights or emergency signals.” But in the video the vehicles are clearly marked and their emergency lights are flashing when they come under attack.
Confronted with video that directly challenges key elements of their story, Israeli officials acknowledged that their description of events was “mistaken,” which a more cynical observer might characterize as compounding one lie with a second lie but I digress. They’re still claiming that at least six of the first responders were in fact militants, which is down from nine in their previous claims but still not supported by any actual evidence that’s been made public. They’ve also offered no explanation as to why the bodies of the 15 first responders appeared to have been tossed into a hastily dug mass grave along with their vehicles, except to insist that this was only supposed to be a temporary measure to protect the bodies from scavenging animals. Some of the bodies show indications that they were bound and executed at close range, which is inconsistent with a scenario in which Israeli soldiers were in fear for their lives, but I’m fairly confident that isn’t going to be explained either.
YEMEN
US airstrikes killed at least four people in Sanaa on Sunday and at least two people overnight in northern Yemen’s Saada province, according to media outlets aligned with the Houthi movement. A bombing video that Donald Trump posted to social media on Saturday has raised new questions about the Houthis’ casualty figures. Officially they claim that the US military has killed 69 people since resuming its war on Yemen last month, but Trump’s video appears to show more than 70 people killed in a single drone strike ostensibly in Yemen’s Hudaydah province.
Leaving aside the repulsiveness of a US president gleefully posting snuff films online, there are obviously several unanswered questions as to the video and Trump hasn’t exactly earned the benefit of the doubt with respect to his veracity. He’s claiming that the strike targeted some sort of Houthi planning meeting, though Houthi-aligned media has characterized it as an Eid gathering—which, to be fair, doesn’t rule out that the people caught in the blast were somehow connected to the Houthi movement. It’s certainly reasonable to question the Houthis’ own casualty figures, but it’s also certainly reasonable to assume that Trump is full of shit.
IRAN
After a brief respite as Trump reportedly considered the idea of indirect negotiations over their nuclear dispute, the US and Iran appear to be back on course for some sort of military confrontation. On Thursday Trump appeared to reject indirect talks in favor of a direct interaction that Iranian leaders have on several occasions rejected, citing their unsurprising lack of faith in any US commitments stemming from Trump’s decision to scrap their previously negotiated nuclear deal in 2018. Trump went so far as to assert that the Iranians, despite those repeated rejections, would actually prefer direct negotiations, telling reporters that “I know for a fact that I think they would like to have direct talks”—a statement that manages to be incoherent even by Trump’s usual standards.
While I would never doubt Donald Trump’s keen insight into the private hopes and dreams of Iranian leaders, publicly Tehran does not appear to be wavering on this point. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi yet again rejected the idea of immediate direct negotiations on Sunday while yet again putting forward the idea of indirect talks as a way to ease into things diplomatically. If the two countries can’t agree on how they’d like to communicate, that seemingly precludes any actual communication.
ASIA
CAMBODIA
The Cambodian government held a ceremony on Saturday to mark the grand opening of the new major expansion to its Ream naval base, which among other things will allow it to harbor larger ships and carry out repairs in dry dock. The US government has been up in arms about Ream going back to at least 2019, when The Wall Street Journal reported that the Cambodian and Chinese governments had cut a secret deal giving the People’s Liberation Army Navy exclusive access to the facility. Cambodian officials have consistently denied any sort of deal but the Chinese government was involved in the expansion project and part of the new facility houses something called the “China-Cambodia Ream Naval Base Joint Support and Training Center,” so there may be some sort of relationship here.
Still, on Saturday Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet stressed that the facility is open to all and insisted that his government “has no intention, in the past or today or in the future, of violating [Cambodia’s] Constitution by allowing any country’s troops to establish exclusive bases on Cambodian territory.” A Japanese ship is scheduled to be the first foreign vessel to make a call at the newly expanded port, which is undoubtedly a deliberate choice to combat any impression of Chinese favoritism.
SOUTH KOREA
Thousands of people turned out in Seoul on Saturday to demand a reversal of the South Korean Constitutional Court’s decision to uphold former President Yoon Suk-yeol’s impeachment. Not to be a buzzkill but I don’t think their chances of getting that reversal are very high. Nevertheless do I think the outpouring of support for Yoon speaks to a significant level of political tension within South Korea that the forthcoming snap election to replace him is likely to exacerbate.
AFRICA
ALGERIA
Mali’s ruling junta on Sunday confirmed that the Algerian military had shot down a Malian drone overnight Monday into Tuesday. It claimed that the device was a surveillance drone that the Algerians downed in Malian airspace, disputing Algerian claims that the drone had crossed into Algeria. All three members of the Alliance of Sahel States, the junta-led confederation between Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, have now withdrawn their ambassadors from Algiers over the incident.
In happier diplomatic news, I guess, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot visited Algiers on Sunday and, after a lengthy meeting with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, proclaimed that French-Algerian relations are “back to normal.” Those relations nosedived last July when the French government backed a Moroccan proposal to establish its sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara region, a position the Algerian government opposes. They weren’t all that great before that, to be sure, and it’s unclear exactly what “back to normal” means in this context.
SOUTH SUDAN
The Trump administration announced on Saturday that it is revoking all visas given to South Sudanese passport holders and barring entry to the United States to any South Sudanese passport holders who might be thinking about making that journey in the future. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the South Sudanese government of “taking advantage of the United States” by refusing to accept its deported nationals in what the administration considers to be a “timely” fashion.
Now, regular readers might be aware that South Sudan is on the verge of backsliding into civil war, as The Wall Street Journal reiterated on Sunday, so it’s possible that accommodating Donald Trump’s xenophobia is just not terribly high on Juba’s list of priorities right now, but who’s to say? One might even argue that deporting South Sudanese nationals under the circumstances is a violation of the international legal principle of “non-refoulement”—which prohibits deportation when the deportee’s life might be at risk if they return to their country of origin—though I am not a lawyer so I won’t do any more than offer that suggestion.
SOMALIA
Al-Shabab militants fired several mortars on Mogadishu’s international airport on Sunday. There’s no word as to casualties as far as I know, but the attack did disrupt flight schedules. There were also reports of mortar fire on the nearby Halane base camp, which houses the headquarters of the United Nations mission in Somalia and the African Union’s Somali peacekeeping force, among other organizations.
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
The Congolese government and the M23 militant group announced a few days ago that they would be holding their first direct peace talks on April 9 in Qatar. But according to Reuters, they’ve already held “private” peace talks in Qatar. Those “were positive,” according to “a source briefed on the discussions,” who said the militants’ decision finally to withdraw from the town of Walikale stemmed from that interaction.
Elsewhere, The Financial Times reports that the Trump administration is “closing on a deal” that would trade Congolese mineral rights for US backing for the government of DRC President Félix Tshisekedi. Trump envoy Massad Boulos is apparently claiming that he and Tshisekedi have agreed on a “path forward” to a final deal. Several mining firms are being eyed to exploit those mineral rights, and while not all of them are American the main consideration seems to be that none of them are Chinese. It’s unclear what sort of support the US would provide Tshisekedi but one idea apparently floating around would create an “industrial zone” to allow neighboring countries (chiefly Rwanda) that are currently exploiting eastern Congolese mineral resources illicitly to participate in projects to exploit them licitly.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
The Russian military claimed on Sunday that its forces had seized a village along the Russian border inside Ukraine’s Sumy oblast. Russian forces are threatening to turn their defeat of the Ukrainian incursion into neighboring Kursk oblast into a new invasion of Sumy, so any advance on the Ukrainian side of the border could be noteworthy. If the Russians are able to gain a significant foothold in the province it would elevate Ukraine’s Kursk invasion from a failure to a disaster.
FRANCE
National Rally party leader Marine Le Pen held a…rally (sorry) in Paris on Sunday to protest her recent conviction on embezzlement charges and her corresponding five year ban from politics. Citing the “example” of Martin Luther King (not a joke), Le Pen declared her intention to wage “a peaceful fight, a democratic fight” to restore her political rights ahead of the 2027 French presidential election. Le Pen remains the polling favorite to win the first round of that election if she’s allowed to run, though despite her apparent popularity event organizers estimated that just 15,000 people turned out for her rally.
AMERICAS
COLOMBIA
A breakaway faction of Colombia’s National Liberation Army (ELN) rebel group calling itself “Commoners of the South” is reportedly disarming under an agreement with the Colombian government. Commoners of the South is thought to include some 250 combatants and operates in southwestern Colombia’s Nariño province. It broke with the main ELN last year and entered into negotiations with Colombian officials. According to Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez the group had been handing over explosives (mines, grenades, etc.) for two days as of Saturday. This marks a notable if relatively small success in what has otherwise been a very difficult effort by President Gustavo Petro to negotiate peace deals with Colombia’s myriad armed groups.
UNITED STATES
Finally, at Foreign Affairs Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman warn that the nascent trade war between the United States and Europe could have major ramifications for the now Trump-enthralled tech sector:
Silicon Valley’s efforts to cater to the Trump administration threaten to undermine Big Tech’s business model across much of the world. As tech executives have embraced the new U.S. government, they have increasingly embroiled themselves in the brewing conflict between European regulators in Brussels and an executive in Washington acting with striking unilateralism. As a result, Europeans are starting to take a second look at their reliance on U.S. cloud, platform, and satellite providers. They increasingly see such dependence not just as a competitiveness issue but also as a critical strategic vulnerability that could be exploited against them. Most worrying for U.S. tech companies is that even if European politicians are reluctant to act, European judges, regulators, and activists may act in their stead and push to sever data flows between the United States and Europe.
This is not the first time that a rift has opened between the United States and Europe on technology. A decade ago, the National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the United States had been spying on European leaders, revelations that provoked EU threats to limit flows of personal data to the United States. Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, explained in a 2019 book that the uproar around Snowden’s disclosures had created a lasting “chasm between governments and the tech sector.” When the European Court of Justice ruled in 2015 against an arrangement that allowed data on EU citizens to be sent to the United States, Eric Schmidt, then the executive chairman of Alphabet, lamented that the EU might break the global Internet, “one of the greatest achievements of humanity.”
The global Internet will likely continue to exist in the form of shared technical infrastructure. But if U.S. companies persist in identifying with a U.S. administration that is hostile to Europe, it is likely that Europe will want its own companies and platforms to build technological fortifications against its former ally and protector. Chinese firms will try to expand in Europe, too, although they may also face greater public skepticism. Either way, the end result will be lower profits, weakened American innovation, and a more isolated and insecure United States.
Have a nice break, and thanks for your work