World roundup: June 1-2 2024
World roundup: June 1-2 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, South Africa, Mexico, and elsewhere
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THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY
June 1, 1215: After a lengthy siege during which a substantial portion of its population is believed to have starved to death and after which many more were massacred (actual figures are hard to come by), the city of Zhongdu—known today as Beijing—surrenders to Genghis Khan’s invading Mongolian army. Zhongdu had been the capital of the Jin dynasty, which ruled northern China, and this was the second time in very short order that the Mongols had besieged it. After the initial siege the Jin retained control of the city but moved their court to Kaifeng for security, which was perceived by the Mongols as a provocation and thereby triggered the second siege. Because the Mongols turned their attentions west shortly after capturing Zhongdu, the Jin were able to survive at Kaifeng until it (and the dynasty as a whole) fell to the Mongols in 1233.
June 1, 1916: The Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of World War I and at least by some measures the largest in history to that point, ends in what I would say (there’s still disagreement on this point) was a fairly Pyrrhic German victory. The Germans sank substantially more British ships and killed substantially more British personnel than vice versa, but these were losses that the British navy could sustain more easily than the Germans. The German government was able to claim victory in the immediate aftermath of the battle, but the British fleet maintained and arguably even increased its naval superiority for the remainder of the war, while keeping Germany’s High Seas Fleet largely out of the Atlantic Ocean. Put another way, the battle was a German tactical victory but a British strategic one. Of historical note, Jutland was the last major naval battle that featured battleships—aircraft carriers subsequently displaced them as the primary combat ship for large naval powers.
June 2, 1098: The army of the First Crusade captures Antioch after an extended siege. They were subsequently besieged themselves by a Muslim relief army.
June 2, 1896: Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi files a British patent application for his radio telegraphy device, titled “Improvements in Transmitting Electrical impulses and Signals, and in Apparatus therefor.” When it was awarded the following year it became the first patent awarded for a communications system utilizing radio waves.
INTERNATIONAL
The OPEC+ bloc agreed on Sunday to keep its current oil production cuts in place through most or all of 2025. This is likely being driven by Saudi Arabia, but in general it seems The Gang has some concerns about the fact that global oil prices have remained in the $80s per barrel range despite the onset of summer (when demand usually increases) and the present state of affairs in the Middle East. The cuts include a bloc-wide 2 million barrel per day reduction that will continue through the end of next year as well as two sets of cuts adopted by a subset of the group: a 1.65 million bpd cut that will also remain through the end of 2025 and a 2.2 million bpd reduction that will remain at that level through September and then be gradually phased out over the subsequent 12 months.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
Joe Biden’s big ceasefire announcement on Friday is either about to blow up in his face or is the key move in a crafty game of multi-dimensional chess via which Biden has trapped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide which. There were certainly moments this weekend when it looked much more like the former, as Hamas received the proposal fairly warmly while Netanyahu strongly suggested he had no interest in accepting the proposal—even though Biden characterized it as Israel’s proposal. But in an interview with the UK Sunday Times, Netanyahu aide Ophir Falk acknowledged that the deal Biden put forward was “a deal we agreed to,” so that’s significant even if he also told the paper that “it's not a good deal” and “there are a lot of details to be worked out.”
Everybody seems to have their own version of what Biden was trying to do on Friday. As near as I can tell, he’s taken the ceasefire proposal that Hamas accepted last month and repackaged it, with a few tweaks, as an “Israeli” proposal. The cool response from Netanyahu suggests it’s really a “Biden” proposal, but again the Israelis say they did agree to it at least in principle. The Intercept’s Ryan Grim claimed via social media that the Israelis had actually offered this deal to Hamas on Wednesday and the group rejected it (to Netanyahu’s relief), but when Biden announced it publicly Hamas’s reaction was markedly different. That may be because, as Israeli reporter Nadav Eyal suggested, Biden said in his remarks that the initial phase of the ceasefire could be extended “indefinitely” as long as negotiations continue on the terms of a second phase. That appealed to Hamas but not so much to the Israelis.
Although he presented the proposal as though Hamas’s acceptance was the only variable, work is reportedly underway now to pressure both parties to take the deal. I don’t know how much pressure Hamas is going to need—on the one hand you have reporting that says they rejected this same proposal a few days ago, on the other you have reporting that says it’s basically the proposal they put forward a month ago. Biden’s indefinite first phase might be enough for them but who knows? If they come back with any response other than “we accept,” then Netanyahu will likely use it as justification for walking away and that will be that.
Netanyahu, on the other hand, is under pressure from every direction. The Biden administration is of course urging him to do the deal, as are the families of the remaining Gaza hostages. But his far right coalition partners are threatening to abandon him if he does, which would risk collapsing the government and forcing an election Netanyahu doesn’t want because, even though his electoral picture looks a little better than it did a few weeks ago, he would still lose. Opposition leader Yair Lapid is promising to support Netanyahu if he takes the deal, which could forestall an election, but that’s a short term fix at best because Lapid and Benny Gantz will insist on elections at some point in the near future and Netanyahu surely knows that. He could call the far right’s bluff—if they collapse the government it hurts them almost as much as it hurts him—but nothing in Netanyahu’s political history suggests he’d have the stomach for doing so.
Nor is this just a far right consideration. Most of the Israeli public supports the ongoing obliteration of Gaza and Netanyahu now polls better than Gantz on the “who would you rather see as PM?” question because Gantz—who also wants to continue obliterating Gaza but seems to be one of the most inept politicians in the world—is seen as a comparative peacenik. I suspect the Biden administration would be quite happy to see Netanyahu take the deal and blow up his coalition, but while they may feel they have the Israeli PM painted into a corner I’m just not sure that’s the case. If Biden were prepared to impose consequences (cutting off arms shipments, for example) for an Israeli rejection, then Netanyahu might be facing a difficult decision. But we know Biden isn’t going to do that, so while I imagine Netanyahu would like to get some hostages back while still continuing his war and maintaining his coalition, if he has to choose between hostages and war he’s likely to choose war.
Netanyahu’s less-than-hearty support for a proposal he’s supposedly already approved is probably rooted in concern over these political factors. He may be able to convince his coalition partners to go along with the deal in order to remedy their mismanagement of the hostage aspect of this situation under the condition that he breaks off negotiations and resumes the military operation after the first phase. But we’ll see. In the meantime the Israeli military is continuing to pummel Gaza and the humanitarian situation is worse than it’s been at any time since October 7.
LEBANON
An Israeli airstrike killed two civilians, both of them reportedly shepherds, in southern Lebanon on Sunday. Meanwhile, Hezbollah claimed to have carried out a drone strike that damaged an Israeli air defense radar site in the Golan region. The Israeli military has acknowledged some sort of drone activity in the area but hasn’t confirmed any sort of damage to the facility.
EGYPT
A landmine explosion killed two children and wounded six other people (five of them also children) in a northern Sinai town over the weekend. There’s no indication as to when the explosive was planted and it may well be a relic from the heyday of Islamic State’s Sinai insurgency in the 2010s. Egyptian authorities are reportedly searching the area for additional devices.
KUWAIT
Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Mishal al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah named former Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Khalid al-Sabah as his heir apparent on Saturday. It’s been six months since Mishal succeeded to the throne, and given that he’s 83 I imagine there’s been some concern over the lack of a successor. Sabah is a spry 71 so he should inject some youthful vigor into the ruling family. Assuming he does wind up on the throne at some point he will be the first member of the Hamid branch of the ruling al-Sabah family (the branches are named after the sons of Mubarak al-Sabah, Kuwait’s seventh ruler and the progenitor of its current ruling family) to become emir.
IRAN
The Iranian Foreign Ministry summoned China’s ambassador in Tehran on Sunday to protest a recent joint statement from the Chinese and UAE governments that apparently nodded in the direction of Emirati claims over three Persian Gulf islands. The islands in question—the Greater and Lesser Tunbs and Abu Musa, are claimed by both the UAE and Iran but are functionally under Iranian control. Their status is presumably quite low on Beijing’s list of priorities, but the Chinese government does maintain friendly relationships with both the UAE and Iran which means it sometimes runs into the issues that those two countries dispute.
As expected, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad filed on Sunday to run in Iran’s June 28 presidential special election. Polling, to the extent it is reliable, suggests that if he’s allowed to run Ahmadinejad could be a favorite to win. But given his strained (to say the least) relationship with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the fact that the Guardian Council rejected his candidacy in the 2017 and 2021 elections, it is likely that he will be barred from running again.
ASIA
INDIA
India’s general election wrapped up on Saturday and exit polling indicates, to I assume no great surprise, that the ruling National Democratic Alliance coalition, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, has won. Projections give the NDA between 355 and 380 seats in the 543 seat Lok Sabha. That gives the coalition a solid chance of winning a two-thirds majority in the chamber, which would give it the votes to amend the Indian constitution to, say, change the official name of the country or to excise its secular elements in favor of a document that gives special privileges to Hinduism. Modi is known to support the former but BJP has insisted it has no interest in the latter.
MALDIVES
Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu is aiming to ban Israeli passport holders from visiting the country, according to a statement from his office on Sunday, in response to the Israeli military operation in Gaza. There’s no indication when he’s planning to bring this ban into effect. The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a travel warning for the Maldives in response. A scant 528 Israelis visited the Maldives in the first four months of 2024 so this isn’t exactly a major upheaval in global tourism.
PHILIPPINES
Chinese media claimed on Sunday that personnel aboard a Philippine vessel pointed weapons at a Chinese Coast Guard vessel near the disputed Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea. There is video accompanying the story though it’s apparently too blurry to tell precisely what’s happening. It’s unclear when this incident took place but according to Chinese sources it happened in the context of another Philippine supply mission supporting personnel stationed at its makeshift base in the shoal. Those missions are a frequent cause of tension.
NORTH KOREA
The North Korean government said on Sunday that it will stop sending filth-laden balloons into South Korea. It’s floated almost 1000 such devices into South Korea since Tuesday night, in a show of displeasure over leaflet-carrying balloons that have been sent north by groups opposed to the North Korean government. South Korean officials had threatened to take “countermeasures” if the garbage balloons continued.
AFRICA
NIGER
Unidentified gunmen killed three Nigerien government officials and a soldier assigned to protect them in southeastern (not “southwestern” as the article says) Niger’s Diffa region on Wednesday. Nigerien authorities made a statement about the attack on Sunday. The attackers apparently fled across the border into Nigeria, and given Diffa’s location along Lake Chad it’s almost certain that they were jihadists either from Boko Haram or Islamic State West Africa Province.
SOUTH AFRICA
The results of South Africa’s parliamentary election are emerging and, as expected, the African National Congress has lost the majority it’s held through every election since the end of apartheid in 1994. The South African electoral commission has the party at 159 seats, which still makes it the largest in the National Assembly but represents a loss of 71 seats and is well shy of a majority in the 400 seat chamber. The opposition Democratic Alliance finished second with a projected 87 seats, while the MK party led by former ANC leader Jacob Zuma came in third with a projected 58 seats in its first electoral outing.
ANC leader and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa called for parties to “find common ground, overcome their differences, and act together for the good of everyone” in his first post-election comments. There is at this point no indication how the ANC intends to proceed but there is also no indication that Ramaphosa is in danger of losing either of his jobs. A coalition with MK is an obvious possibility but Zuma reportedly wants to oust Ramaphosa as a condition of any deal and as I say the ANC doesn’t seem interested in doing that. There are also rumblings that the ANC and DA could cut some sort of deal despite their ideological incompatibility.
EUROPE
UKRAINE
The Russian military claimed on Sunday that its forces had seized the village of Umanske, in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk oblast. That village is located a bit northwest of Donetsk city and due west of Avdiivka, which the Russians captured in February.
ICELAND
Icelandic voters headed to the polls on Saturday to choose a president, and in what could be considered a minor upset they have elected businesswoman Halla Tómasdóttir. I say “minor upset” because Tómasdóttir was doing fairly well in the polls, though most surveys pointed toward a narrow victory by former Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir. The Icelandic presidency is primarily ceremonial though it does have some veto powers. Tómasdóttir will be the second woman to serve as Iceland’s president.
AMERICAS
MEXICO
Mexican voters headed to the polls on Sunday for that country’s massive general election. In the headline race, the ruling Morena party has already declared victory on behalf of its presidential candidate, former Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum. Assuming that’s accurate, and polling consistently put Sheinbaum well ahead so it would be a major shock if she didn’t emerge victorious, she will become the first woman and first Jewish person to serve as Mexico’s head of state. This election is also noteworthy for a less uplifting reason—the campaign set a record for the most assassinations in Mexican history, with 37 candidates (mostly for local/municipal offices) having been killed along the way. Two people were also killed during the voting on Sunday in attacks on two polling sites in central Mexico’s Puebla state.
UNITED STATES
Finally, in reviewing Samuel Moyn’s new book Liberalism Against Itself for Jacobin, FX contributor Michael Brenes situates the phenomenon of Donald Trump within the waning appeal of the “liberal project”:
But, some argue, Trump is not only a danger to the most vulnerable among us. If we don’t stop Trump, they say, civil war or the death of the republic awaits us. Historians like Ruth Ben-Ghiat have argued that Trump is the epitome of a dictatorial “strongman,” that his 2024 campaign is premised on a “re-education strategy: conditioning Americans to see authoritarianism as a superior form of government to democracy.” Timothy Snyder has urged Americans to “see Trump for what he is: an aspiring fascist who likes, wants, and needs violence.” Historian Heather Cox Richardson does not mince words — Trump’s reelection would mean “the end of American democracy.”
These historians-cum-prognosticators (academic pundits, really) have gained press attention and public popularity for offering answers to “Why Trump?,” for chasing and isolating — with acute awareness of their marketability — the autocratic tendencies within the American right wing. Trump has sustained their clout and secured their book advances.
But Trump has also been good for jarring liberals into action, or at the very least scaring the hell out of them. The prospect of defeating Trump in 2020 propelled a large voter turnout, the highest since 1980. Fundraising for organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also reached all-time highs during the Trump years. Trump’s mendacity and depravity unites the disparate elements of the Democratic coalition in a way no figure has done since Barack Obama in 2008.
Here is the strange conundrum that Trump has bestowed on liberalism. Trump is indeed a threat to democracy. But what will give the liberal project purpose when he is gone?