World roundup: June 3-4 2023
World roundup: June 3-4 2023
Stories from Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Ukraine, and elsewhere
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THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY
June 3, 1940: World War II’s Battle of Dunkirk ends with the last British soldiers evacuating that city and leaving the Nazis victorious. At Winston Churchill’s order, the Royal Navy returned to Dunkirk the following day to evacuate roughly 26,000 French soldiers, so the full evacuation wasn’t completed until June 4. In all the British military (aided by dozens of small civilian vessels) evacuated 338,226 soldiers from Dunkirk, along with another roughly 192,000 evacuated from other parts of France over the ensuing three weeks. The Nazis rolled into Paris on June 14, completing their conquest of France. Britain left a considerable quantity of materiel behind but the successful rescue of most of the personnel who were trapped at Dunkirk prevented a major defeat from reaching catastrophic levels.
June 4, 1615: The army of the Tokugawa Shogunate captures Osaka, ending a siege that had begun the previous month. This was the second Tokugawa siege of Osaka in less than a year—the initial incident, which lasted from November 1614 to January 1615, had ended with a peace agreement that quickly collapsed. With its capture of Osaka, the Tokugawa clan was able to force the disbanding of the Toyotomi clan, the last serious obstacle to full Tokugawa control over Japan.
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
TURKEY
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan unveiled his new cabinet on Sunday with what looks like an eye toward changing directions a bit. More to the point, Erdoğan named Mehmet Şimşek as his minister of treasury and finance in what was surely an attempt to show The Market that he’s seen the light on economic policy. Şimşek previously served in that role from 2009-2015 before falling out with Erdoğan over the latter’s unorthodox economic ideas—keeping interest rates low during a period of high inflation, for example. His reappointment indicates a return to economic orthodoxy, for better or worse, at least for the time being.
Erdoğan also replaced his top foreign policy/security surrogates, naming National Intelligence Organisation director Hakan Fidan to succeed Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and Turkish military chief of staff Yaşar Güler to succeed Defense Minister Hulusi Akar. I don’t know that there’s much to be gleaned from those changes but it is worth noting that the push to convince a post-election Erdoğan to drop his block on Sweden’s entry into NATO is continuing. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg visited Ankara over the weekend to press Sweden’s case and apparently got Erdoğan to agree to another round of talks between Swedish and Turkish (and Finnish) delegations later this month.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
An apparent shootout between Israeli and Egyptian security forces left three Israeli soldiers and one Egyptian police officer dead on Saturday. Circumstances are still under investigation but smugglers appear to have been involved. The Israeli version of events has an Egyptian security officer killing two Israeli soldiers as they were responding to an apparent cross-border incursion by smugglers. The third Israeli soldier and the Egyptian were then killed in a subsequent clash. According to the Egyptians, the shooting happened after their security officers chased the smugglers into Israel. As far as I can tell nobody has actually produced these alleged smugglers. Both governments are continuing to investigate and considering their close relations I wouldn’t expect any serious friction to come of this incident.
SAUDI ARABIA
Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman announced on Sunday that the kingdom plans to impose a new 1 million barrel per day oil production cut for the month of July, with the possibility of extending it beyond that. He made the announcement following the OPEC+ group’s monthly “how’s it going” meeting, which presumably means he wasn’t able to convince the rest of The Gang to go along with a bloc-wide production cut. AFP reported on Friday that the Saudis and Russia did not see eye to eye on the idea of another cut, with the Saudis favoring one to stop the steady recent decline in global oil prices. OPEC+ did agree to extend some previous cuts through at least the end of the year, but those cuts have not been enough to sustain high oil prices.
IRAN
The US Navy says that its forces, along with UK Royal Navy forces, responded to a distress call from a merchant vessel in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday. Said vessel, they claim, was being harassed by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps speedboats that withdrew after the US and UK ships reacted. There’s been no comment from the IRGC but Iranian authorities have seized a couple of tankers in the region in recent weeks, likely in response to the US seizure of an Iranian tanker back in April.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
The Washington Post reports that the Afghan government is shifting its de facto capital from Kabul to Kandahar, mostly because that’s where Taliban Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada is. There’s a suggestion in the piece that the shift is part of an effort to marginalize more socially moderate Taliban factions that have set up in Kabul, though I’m not sure the cause-and-effect relationship this piece posits is quite right. Kandahar is the Taliban’s home base and, whatever factionalism may exist within the lower ranks of the group, Akhundzada is its undisputed leader and there’s no indication he’s facing any sort of internal challenge.
PAKISTAN
Pakistani Taliban fighters attacked a security checkpoint in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Saturday, killing at least two Pakistani soldiers. Two Taliban fighters were also killed in the clash.
CHINA
According to the US Navy, a Chinese naval vessel “executed maneuvers in an unsafe manner” near the destroyer USS Chung-Hoon in the Taiwan Strait on Saturday. Specifically it cut across the Chung-Hoon’s bow a couple of times at close distance, risking a collision. The Chinese military denied that its ship had engaged in any dangerous operations and instead criticized the Chung-Hoon’s presence in the Strait as a provocation. The US ship was making another “freedom of navigation” trek, this time alongside a Canadian vessel.
AFRICA
SUDAN
Fighting between the Sudanese military and the Rapid Support Forces reportedly intensified in and around Khartoum over the weekend, something that had been feared when their truce talks broke down a few days ago. There are also reports of new fighting in Darfur, but most of the attention remains focused on the Sudanese capital amid suggestions that the military quit those negotiations in part because it’s preparing to launch a major operation to drive the RSF out of the city. The RSF is pretty well dug in to several areas of Khartoum, particularly residential areas and some major institutional buildings like the Sudanese national museum. It hasn’t exactly endeared itself to residents, but an offensive in the city would likely involve heavy casualties and material damage with no guarantee of success.
SENEGAL
At least 15 people have been killed over several days of protests by supporters of Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko. As we noted on Friday, Sonko has been sentenced to two years in prison on a charge of “immoral behavior,” which if it holds will keep him from running in next year’s presidential election. His supporters have been protesting, and Senegalese security forces have been trying to stop them, since the verdict and sentencing became public on Thursday, with the heaviest violence reported in Dakar and in the city of Ziguinchor, where Sonko serves as mayor. Senegalese authorities have reportedly cut mobile internet access in an attempt to stifle the unrest.
GUINEA-BISSAU
Voters in Guinea-Bissau headed to the polls on Sunday to elect a new parliament, more than a year after President Umaro Sissoco Embaló dissolved the old one amid acrimony and the fallout of an attempted coup last February. I get the sense that there’s no expectation that the new parliament will be any more to Embaló’s liking than the previous one was.
SOMALIA
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni revealed over the weekend that 54 Ugandan peacekeepers were killed in battle with al-Shabab fighters in Somalia’s Lower Shabelle region. The fighting began a week ago Friday, when the militants attacked a base being used by the Ugandan personnel. According to Museveni the Ugandan forces briefly lost control of the facility but were able to regroup and recapture it by Tuesday.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
The “Russian Volunteer Corps” and “Freedom of Russia Legion” apparently continued their latest operation in Russia’s Belgorod oblast through the weekend, with regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov acknowledging that the groups had taken Russian prisoners and offering to discuss a prisoner exchange. The Russian military has claimed several times to have driven these militants out of Belgorod and back into Ukraine, but Gladkov’s comments seem to corroborate the militant groups’ insistence that they’re still fighting on Russian soil. The groups say they intend to turn their prisoners over to Ukrainian authorities for an exchange with the Russians. That reinforces the degree to which these groups are working in coordination with the Ukrainian military—coordination that apparently includes Ukraine providing them with US-made weapons despite Washington’s public insistence that US materiel not be used in any operations on Russian soil.
UKRAINE
The Russian military on Monday morning (local time) claimed to have killed some 250 Ukrainian soldiers and destroyed dozens of vehicles in stymieing an attempted Ukrainian offensive in Donetsk oblast. There’s been no comment from the Ukrainians and no independent confirmation, but if this is true it could represent an inauspicious start to Ukraine’s big spring counteroffensive.
AMERICAS
UNITED STATES
Finally, TomDispatch’s Andrew Bacevich questions the logic behind US support for an extended war in Ukraine:
Western support, especially the more than $75 billion in assistance the U.S. has so far committed, has certainly kept Ukraine in the fight. The West’s implicit game plan is one of mutual attrition — bleeding Ukraine as a way to bleed Russia — with the apparent expectation that the Kremlin will eventually say uncle.
Prospects of success depend on either of two factors: a change in leadership in the Kremlin or a change of heart on the part of President Putin. Neither of those, however, appears imminent.
In the meantime, the bloodletting continues, a depressing reality that at least some in the U.S. national security apparatus actually find agreeable. Put simply, a war of attrition in which the U.S. suffers no casualties while plenty of Russians die suits some key players in Washington. In such circles, whether it comports with the well-being of the Ukrainian people receives no more than lip service.