World roundup: December 14 2021
Stories from the United Arab Emirates, Mali, Chile, and more
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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
December 13, 1577: Francis Drake begins the expedition that would eventually take him around the world, returning to England in 1580. Although Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigated the Earth first, roughly 60 years earlier, he managed to get himself killed along the way. Drake has the distinction of being the first person to both start and finish his own trip around the world.
December 13, 1937: The Imperial Japanese army defeats the Chinese National Revolutionary Army and captures the city of Nanjing. What followed became known as the Nanjing Massacre, as Japanese soldiers spent the next six weeks slaughtering prisoners and civilians in the city. Estimates of the death toll vary widely, but most scholars believe it was somewhere between 40,000 and the official Chinese count of 300,000.
December 14, 1911: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team become the first human beings (that we know of, I suppose) to set foot on the South Pole. The expedition had set out from its base camp on October 19 and arrived back on January 25, 1912.
December 14, 1995: The Dayton Agreement ends the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. While ending that war was no minor feat, the agreement has had mixed at best results overall. Under Dayton’s terms the various warring parties—Bosniak, Bosnian Croat, and Bosnian Serb—agreed not to divide Bosnia and Herzegovina but instead to establish an internal partition between the Serbian Republika Srpska and the Croatian-Bosniak Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The effect has been similar to a full partition or arguably even worse, because instead of two functioning states (or one, had Republika Srpska united with Serbia) what’s emerged is one state whose two component halves rarely agree on anything. That leaves most governance up to the “High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina” who is selected by Dayton’s “Peace Implementation Council” or in other words imposed on Bosnia from abroad. Dayton’s terms were intended to end the war and provide a short-term governing solution while the parties negotiated a more durable permanent solution, ideally laying the groundwork for a “Bosnian” national identity in the process. But instead it’s been the law of the land for 24 years, and today the country is closer to breaking apart than it is to coalescing into a functional state.
INTERNATIONAL
In today’s global news:
Worldometer is tracking COVID-19 cases and fatalities.
The New York Times is tracking global vaccine distribution.
MIDDLE EAST
TÜRKIYE (?)
In case you missed it, as I did, Turkey is now apparently “Türkiye,” though it sounds like they’ll also accept “Turkiye,” sans umlaut, in a pinch. Not only does the change bring the country’s internationally recognized name more in line with what it’s called in the Turkish (Türkiyish?) language, it also gets away from some of the more ignoble meanings of the word “turkey,” which I guess is good for #branding purposes. That’s assuming people don’t start calling the large bird many Americans eat on Thanksgiving a “Türkiye,” which I think is a safe assumption.
I have no idea if this slight name change is going to catch on generally, but here at Foreign Exchanges we try to be sensitive to these things (notwithstanding the extended amount of time it took me to get used to “Czechia”), so I suppose we’ll use this nomenclature moving forward. Unless I forget, which to be honest seems almost inevitable. So I guess this means farewell “Turkey.” You had a good run. Well, you had a run, anyway.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Emirati officials may tell the United States to take its F-35s and stick them where the sun don’t shine, which is a good idea anyway as I’m pretty sure the aircraft’s fuselage comes apart in direct sunlight. The UAE is threatening to back out of a $23 billion deal to acquire the jet along with other advanced US military hardware, including Reaper drones, over restrictions the US is placing in order to prevent the technology from falling into adversarial (i.e., Chinese) hands. It’s unclear whether the US is imposing more onerous restrictions given recent reporting about the state of the UAE-Chinese relationship or if the Emiratis are just balking at the typical set of restrictions the US would impose on a sale like this, though I suspect the former. It’s also unclear whether the UAE is bluffing as a negotiating tactic or genuinely intends to cancel the sale, and again I suspect the former.
If you’re wondering why this UAE threat to pull out of the sale—a sale it demanded as part of the Trump administration’s “Abraham Accords” project to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states—would produce anything other than a yawn from Washington, you have to think like a member of the US foreign policy establishment. First of all I suppose there’s some concern that the Emiratis might back out of the Abraham Accords, though they seem plenty happy with their new relationship with Israel. There’s the $23 billion price tag and the plight of our poor, struggling defense contractors to consider, and given the corporate capture of America’s defense establishment that’s a big consideration. And there are strategic considerations at play. When the US sells weapons to a country it’s not just selling those weapons. It’s selling follow on deals for maintenance, ammunition, etc. that mean additional revenue and also leave that country dependent to some degree on the United States and not, say, on China. It’s also showing that country’s neighbors that the United States is a Good Friend who’s open for business when it comes to military hardware. Implicit in this UAE threat is the possibility that it could go shopping in Beijing, or elsewhere, for its war-making goodies, and the US doesn’t want that.
IRAN
With European diplomats souring on the potential for an agreement to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and Iranian diplomats angrily lashing out at them, and with the US and Israel now apparently war-gaming joint strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, Annelle Sheline and Bruce Reidel explain the folly of military action:
Israeli officials in Washington on Thursday reportedly urged the United States to launch strikes against Iranian targets, in what would be an unprecedented escalation of hostilities. Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Mossad chief David Barnea pushed the Biden administration to engage in military action in order to get Iran to “soften its position at the negotiating table.”
While the talks in Vienna have yielded little progress, this appeal marks just the latest example of the failed paradigm with which both the United States and Israel have approached Iran: the belief that greater pressure and more aggression will force Tehran to capitulate, when the likelier outcome would be to provoke a similarly militant response.
Israel says it is under an increasingly dire threat, prompting President Herzog to assert, “If the international community does not take a vigorous stance on this issue, Israel will do so. Israel will protect itself.” Yet neither Israel nor the United States would be in this position if Trump had stayed in the deal, or if Biden had swiftly rejoined it upon taking office.
ASIA
ARMENIA
Speaking to parliament on Monday, Turkish/Türkiyish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said that Ankara will soon be appointing a “special representative” to negotiate the normalization of relations with Armenia. The Armenian government will be doing likewise, at least according to Çavuşoğlu. The two countries have not had normal diplomatic ties since Armenia became independent in the early 1990s and Türkiye has closed its side of the border since 1993. They’ve had periodic interactions about changing this situation but ultimately the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict has squashed those efforts. Normalization now could be part of a more comprehensive South Caucasian peace process that includes Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and Russia, though that’s a tall order. According to Turkish officials representatives of those six countries were supposed to hold their first regional peace meeting in Russia on Friday, but I’ve seen no indication the meeting actually took place.
INDIA
Indian soldiers killed one alleged Kashmiri militant in a clash in the Jammu region early Tuesday morning. Elsewhere, the death toll from Monday’s bus attack in Srinagar now stands at three after one of the police officers wounded in the attack succumbed to his wounds. Indian authorities believe the jihadist Jaish-e-Mohammed group was responsible for that attack.
MYANMAR
Myanmar photojournalist Soe Naing has died in unclear circumstances after having been arrested on Friday. He’s been in military custody since his arrest, while covering a protest in Yangon, and is believed to be the first journalist (though certainly not the first person) to die in detention since February’s coup. There is a reasonable likelihood that he was tortured to death though barring a legitimate investigation (which is extremely unlikely) there’s no way to know with any degree of certainty.
PHILIPPINES
Monday brought another twist in the saga of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and the 2022 election, when Duterte announced that he will not, as previously planned, be running for a senate seat. I’ve sort of given up trying to figure out what Duterte is trying to achieve in next year’s election—he’s barred from running for reelection—in part because I’m pretty sure he himself doesn’t know.
AFRICA
MALI
The French military’s drawdown in Mali hit a new milestone on Tuesday as it handed control of a major base at Timbuktu over to Malian security forces, almost eight years to the day after it first intervened in the northern Mali conflict in “Operation Serval.” France 24’s report explains the significance:
The French government is ending “Operation Barkhane,” Serval’s successor, and is reducing its total deployment in the Sahel from roughly 5100 soldiers to somewhere around 3000 in the next few months. It aims to move to more of a support role and to supplement its forces with a larger European Union presence in the region. Civilians in much of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger seem as happy to see the French go as they were to see the French arriving back in 2013, and there’s reason to think that the French departure could open up more space for diplomacy, at least at the local level, between government officials and jihadist groups.
BURKINA FASO
Of course, diplomacy isn’t for everybody. The Burkinabé army said on Monday that a joint operation with its Nigerien counterpart killed upwards of 100 Islamist militants along their shared border between November 25 and December 9. Some 20 militants were arrested and large amounts of equipment and explosives were seized. Four Burkinabé soldiers were killed and nine more wounded in the operation.
SOMALIA
The New Arab, citing the Anadolu news agency in, uh, Türkiye, says that al-Shabab fighters seized the town of Mataban in central Somalia’s Hirshabelle state on Monday, but then promptly lost it back to Somali security forces. There’s no word on casualties, but given reports of heavy fighting it’s possible the casualty count is high. Mataban is relatively close to Mogadishu (about 250 miles away), so it has some strategic value.
EQUATORIAL GUINEA
Pirates attacked a Greek-operated cargo ship near the Equatorial Guinean island of Bioko on Monday, kidnapping six members of its crew. A Danish frigate responded to the incident but was unable to rescue the captives before the pirates entered Nigerian waters and the Danes had to stand down. The Gulf of Guinea remains the world’s hottest spot for piracy, having assumed that ignominious title from the Somali coast back in 2012.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday lambasted a new Russian claim that the alliance is planning to deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe, as well as Moscow’s call for a moratorium on such weapons in Europe. It is the US and NATO position that Russia violated the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty with the deployment of a weapon that NATO designates as the “SSC-8.” That alleged violation (the Russians, unsurprisingly, insist that the SSC-8’s range is below intermediate levels) provided the justification for the Trump administration to abandon the INF treaty in 2018 (technically 2019, after the months-long withdrawal process), though its actual reasons for doing so had more to do with China than Russia. Stoltenberg called on Moscow to destroy its stockpile of SSC-8s if it’s really serious about eliminating intermediate-range missiles in Europe.
BELARUS
A Belarusian court sentenced leading opposition figure Sergei Tikhanovsky to 18 years in prison on Monday after his conviction on charges of inciting public disorder and attempting to overthrow the Belarusian government. Tikhanovsky is the husband of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who ran against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in the August 2020 election and who has led, albeit from exile, the protest movement that began in the wake of that election. Tikhanovsky had been planning to run in that election until his arrest in May 2020, at which point Tikhanovskaya took his place. His sentence has already drawn condemnations from the United States and the European Union and will most likely prompt additional sanctions against Lukashenko’s government.
SERBIA
The Serbian government expanded its EU membership negotiations into four new policy areas—energy, environment, transportation, and trans-European infrastructure—on Tuesday, bringing it a few steps closer to actually becoming an EU member. Prospective members must reach agreements with Brussels on 35 separate policy areas, and the Serbs are now in talks on 22 of them. Nevertheless, there’s still one thing blocking Belgrade from EU membership and that’s its ongoing dispute with Kosovo, which has also started its own EU membership process. There’s no indication of any progress on that front.
AMERICAS
CHILE
A new poll shows the race tightening ahead of Chile’s presidential runoff on Sunday, which may still be up for grabs. The survey, from Cadem, has leftist Gabriel Boric, who finished second in the first round last month, at 39 percent support, just three points ahead of far right candidate José Antonio Kast, who won the first round but has consistently polled behind Boric heading into the runoff. Removing invalid votes from that field gives Boric a 52-48 victory, whereas Cadem’s previous poll on November 26 had him winning 54-46. Another survey, from La Cosa Nostra, has Boric ahead 52.5 percent to 47.5 percent. There are a large number of undecideds and turnout is expected to be fairly low, both of which add to the uncertainty about the outcome.
BRAZIL
The polling is less ambiguous in Brazil, where former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva still looks like the clear favorite to win next year’s presidential election and unseat incumbent Jair Bolsonaro. This survey, from Inteligencia em Pesquisa e Consultoria, has Lula at 48 percent support compared with just 21 percent for Bolsonaro. Of course, the polling is only relevant if the election is going to conducted legitimately, and that may not happen. It seems that Bolsonaro’s first defense minister, Fernando Azevedo e Silva, who left that post in March, is in line to serve as the secretary-general of Brazil’s electoral court through the election. He won’t have any judicial authority but if you’re concerned that Bolsonaro might try to manipulate the electoral process then the news of this appointment is probably not going to make you feel any better.
COLOMBIA
Twin bombings at Camilo Daza International Airport in Cúcuta killed at least three people on Tuesday, two of them police officers. The third person found dead was likely the bomber though I’m not sure that’s been confirmed yet. There’s no indication as yet who was responsible for the attack. Cúcuta is the capital of Colombia’s Norte de Santander state, which is home to a variety of armed groups including drug traffickers, National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels, and dissident ex-Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels.
UNITED STATES
Finally, Inkstick’s Laicie Heeley argues that Joe Biden’s defense budget doesn’t reflect Joe Biden’s stated priorities (remember “a foreign policy for the middle class”)—nor does it align with what America needs:
It might be tempting to pass the blame for these budget woes to Congress. After all, lawmakers did just add $25 billion to the defense topline as part of the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Biden’s opening bid, however, did all but tee this increase up. The $753 billion budget proposal embraced over $100 billion in spending increases seen under President Donald Trump, and included spending to rebuild all three legs of the nuclear triad and develop new tactical nuclear weapons.
What’s more, the Biden administration proposed that the US maintain the current size of the active force, decreasing end strength by just 5,400 across the services after a Trump-era increase of 80,000. The administration did so even as it continues to shift its attention toward China, a move that should require a greater emphasis on naval and air forces over ground. And the savings Americans might have expected as a result of our withdrawal from Afghanistan? Those remained in the budget, reallocated toward weapons for a hypothetical war with China. A war with another nuclear power that, were it to come to pass, would certainly not be good for America’s middle class.
All this while many experts would argue there are more pressing matters at hand. Climate change threatens to end life as we know it and, in many ways, an ongoing global pandemic already has. Building the type of resilience necessary to confront the full range of threats facing the American middle class will require a significant shift in priorities. In a recent piece, analyst Mike Mazarr suggests spending of, perhaps, $550–600 billion per year would do the trick, with the additional resources we currently spend on the Pentagon’s budget redirected toward building domestic resilience.
The reason for this shift is clear: The vast majority of our current discretionary resources go to the military. The size of the Department of Defense’s budget is bigger than the next 11 departments combined. Despite this concentration of funds, a wide body of evidence suggests that the military is not suited to tackle the greatest current threats to the homeland. Not least because the military, itself, is a major contributor to climate change — the US military is the single largest petroleum consumer in the world and also the largest greenhouse gas emitter. But also because expanding the military’s role in domestic life isn’t great for democracy.