You’re reading the web version of Foreign Exchanges. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, sign up today:
TODAY IN HISTORY
November 11, 1813: A relatively small and heavily outnumbered British-Canadian force defeats an invading US army near the town of Morrisburg in what is now the Canadian province of Ontario, in the War of 1812’s Battle of Crysler’s Farm. The American defeat, following so closely on the heels of their defeat at the Battle of the Châteauguay in late October, ended the US army’s Saint Lawrence Campaign and thus its hopes of capturing Montreal.
November 11, 1918: Marshal Józef Piłsudski becomes Chief of State of the first Polish nation to have existed since Austria, Prussia, and Russia carved up the previous one in the “Third Partition” in 1795. The German and Austrian governments had formed a Polish Regency Council the previous year, and with Germany defeated, Austria-Hungary defeated and disintegrating, and Russia in chaos following its 1917 revolution, the council availed itself of the opportunity to declare independence in October 1918. Piłsudski, who in 1914 founded a military unit that would eventually grow into the “Polish Legions” and advance the Polish national cause through World War I, was the obvious choice as head of state. His appointment is considered the foundation of the modern Polish state and it’s therefore this date that’s commemorated every year as Polish Independence Day.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s White House visit on Monday did include an agreement for Syria to join the US-led anti-Islamic State coalition. However, according to a social media post from Syrian Information Minister Hamza al-Mustafa, “the agreement is political and until now contains no military components.” I’m not entirely clear on what that means given that there’s an inherent military component to what the coalition does, but this may be some sort of preliminary arrangement.
LEBANON
Israeli media is reporting that the Israeli military (IDF) is building a wall some two kilometers inside southern Lebanon around areas that it is still occupying a year into its alleged ceasefire with Hezbollah. This could of course simply be a temporary security measure…or it could reflect an intention to remain in place on the Lebanese side of the border indefinitely. There is some precedent for this sort of thing.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
There are a few items of note:
Officials in Gaza said on Tuesday afternoon that the IDF had killed three people over the previous 24 hours. This presumably includes the two people it killed in Khan Younis on Monday but the circumstances of the third killing are unclear.
According to an official with Gaza’s power company “zero” electricity is reaching the territory a month into the ceasefire. Combined with continued obstructions to humanitarian aid this has left conditions inside Gaza extremely dire.
An Israeli settler mob swarmed into a town near the West Bank city of Tulkarm on Tuesday evening in one of the largest of what’s been a string of violent attacks. The United Nations reported late last week that October was the most violent month it’s recorded in the West Bank since it started keeping track in 2006, involving “at least 264” settler attacks on Palestinians. Over at American Prestige we interviewed journalist Jasper Nathaniel yesterday about the violence he personally experienced in the West Bank recently. I mention this because he brought up two urgent issues that readers may want to take up and so I’m including links for people to a) prod their representatives to protect the Palestinian village of Umm al-Khair from Israeli demolition orders and b) to support calls for the release of 16 year old Palestinian-American Mohammed Ibrahim from Israeli military detention.
Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer resigned his position on Tuesday. Dermer’s role has been to serve as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s consiglieri and he’s led past ceasefire negotiations on his boss’s behalf. This appears at least on its face to be a personal decision. Dermer took the job in late 2022 and says he’d promised his family at the time that he would not serve more than two years, so he’s now a year over that term.
YEMEN
Yemen’s Houthi movement has published a letter that it apparently sent to Hamas’s Qassam Brigades in which the head of its military wing, Yusuf Hassan al-Madani, indicates that the group has stopping attacking commercial shipping now that there’s a ceasefire at least nominally in place in Gaza. This may be as close to an official public acknowledgement that they’re standing down as the Houthis are willing to make. Their last definite attack targeted a cargo vessel in the Gulf of Aden in late September—a fire aboard a liquefied natural gas tanker in the same body of water last month appears to have been accidental.
IRAQ
Iraqi election officials are claiming that the turnout in Tuesday’s parliamentary vote was 55 percent. This would be shockingly high, given that turnout in 2021 dropped to 41 percent and one of Iraq’s most prominent political figures—Muqtada al-Sadr—boycotted this year’s vote. It is so shocking that I’m not sure it’s believable. There’s no indication yet as to the results.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
A suicide bomber killed at least 12 people in Islamabad on Tuesday. The Pakistani Taliban (TTP) claimed responsibility. The bomber apparently tried to enter a “court building” but detonated outside instead, probably reducing the casualty toll. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif blamed the Indian government, as Pakistani officials are wont to do after these sorts of incidents. There may also be repercussions here for the ceasefire between Pakistan and Afghanistan, as Islamabad blames the Afghan Taliban for harboring TTP militants within that country’s borders.
INDIA
Police killed six Maoist Naxalite rebels in a clash in India’s Chhattisgarh state on Tuesday. The circumstances surrounding this incident aren’t entirely clear. The Indian government has pledged to end the Naxalite rebellion, which began in the 1960s, by March. The rebels announced back in September that they were suspending that rebellion but it’s possible that factions within the movement are not on board with that decision.
The death toll from Monday’s car explosion in Delhi has reached 13 and Indian authorities appear to be treating it as an act of terrorism. Despite that, it’s still not entirely clear that this was an intentional bombing though it’s also unclear what else it could have been. The car was apparently registered in India’s Haryana state, where police arrested a “Kashmiri doctor” on terrorism charges hours before the explosion, which is an interesting if circumstantial detail.
CHINA
At Foreign Policy, the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Jane Nakano and Mathias Zacarias argue that the Chinese government is outpacing the US on another renewable energy front—hydrogen:
Often referred to as the “Swiss Army knife” of the energy transition, hydrogen is uniquely flexible. It can be produced from various types of resources, including natural gas and renewables. One of hydrogen’s biggest value propositions is that it can help decarbonize the “hard to abate” sectors that lack cost-effective clean alternatives and are difficult to electrify. These include critical industrial base sectors, such as petrochemical refining and steelmaking, as well as innovative clean fuels for the maritime and aviation sectors. What’s more, hydrogen can act as a store of energy over long periods, meaning that it can be used to enhance energy system integration, resilience, and reliability.
In short, hydrogen use could give U.S. industries a competitive edge on the global stage while creating new export opportunities and buttressing the nation’s power system.
The concern now is that we could witness a repeat of the story where the United States and its allies lead in innovation but fall behind in manufacturing and cost reductions. The result would be a global supply chain that lacks resilience and robustness against supply disruptions. China has already dominated the global supply chains for solar photovoltaics and electric vehicle batteries. Now, it is ramping up its efforts to do the same for electrolyzers, the critical machines that use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Plus, it is also heavily investing in developing advanced electrolyzer technologies—with an eye toward export opportunities around the world.
AFRICA
SUDAN
According to the United Nations, humanitarian operations in Sudan are “on the brink of collapse” due to continued instability and a lack of funds:
The U.N. migration agency warned on Tuesday that humanitarian efforts in Sudan’s war-torn North Darfur region might come to a complete halt unless immediate funding and safe delivery of relief supplies are ensured.
“Despite the rising need, humanitarian operations are now on the brink of collapse,” the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement. It added: “Warehouses are nearly empty, aid convoys face significant insecurity, and access restrictions continue to prevent the delivery of sufficient aid.”
The IOM said more funding is needed to ease the humanitarian impact of the war between the Sudanese army and its rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The agency warned of “an even greater catastrophe” if its appeal went unheeded.
“Our teams are responding, but insecurity and depleted supplies mean we are only reaching a fraction of those in need,” IOM Director General Amy Pope said in a statement.
MALI
On Friday, a TikTok personality named Mariam Cissé was executed—almost certainly by Jamaʿat Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin militants—in the town of Tonka in northern Mali’s Timbuktu region. Cissé had made posts supportive of Mali’s military government, but Alex Thurston argues that executing her was also about enforcing a code of conduct on Malian society:
Press coverage of the incident - and the shock and mourning it has generated - has focused on Cissé’s pro-military, pro-Malian posts. That content, and jihadists’ allegations that she was informing on them to the military, appears to have been the primary motive for killing her.
I would add that the staging of the execution, which was done in the public square of Tonka in front of a crowd, suggests to me that jihadists were seeking not just to punish an alleged collaborator of the military, but also to enforce a broader form of social control.
Scrolling back through the last few weeks of Cissé’s posts on TikTok, which is a haunting journey, her posts supporting the Malian military (wearing their uniform, celebrating the troops, etc.) definitely stand out. But those posts are the minority. Many of her videos on TikTok showcase fashion, humor, appearance, relationships, parties…I don’t think it’s as simple as saying that jihadists killed her because she was a young woman trying to live and show off a fun life in northern Mali, but I do suspect that’s part of it.
Viewed in that light her killing was not just the act of a militant group at war with whatever passes for the Malian state. It was also the act of a group that is aiming to supplant that state and feels like it’s in a strong enough position to impose its values on the people it wants to rule.
EUROPE
EUROPEAN UNION
As The Wall Street Journal reports, a rise in unexplained (but probably not all that mysterious) drone encounters has European officials talking openly about “no longer” being “at peace” with Russia:
Germany alone has three drone incursions a day on average—over military installations, defense-industry facilities and critical infrastructure points—according to a previously unreleased tally by German authorities.
Drones are part of an intensifying barrage that European leaders suspect Russia is directing at the continent over its support for Ukraine. It includes sabotage, cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns.
“We are not at war” with Russia, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said recently, “but we are no longer at peace either.”
For Russia and the West’s other adversaries, including China, Iran and North Korea, small-scale action can yield big payoffs. Moscow is bogged down militarily in Ukraine and so would struggle to engage members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in conventional combat. Instead, malicious activities that are often dubbed hybrid war or gray-zone conflict let the Kremlin challenge its adversaries without overt hostilities.
The Russian government denies that it’s responsible for the drones but it remains the most obvious culprit. Even if it’s not Russia these sightings appear to signal something new with respect to the use of drones in intelligence gathering (which as far as I know is the only thing these drones have done so far) and potentially sabotage or other nuisance acts.
UKRAINE
The Russian military says that its forces moved deeper into the Ukrainian cities of Kupiansk and Pokrovsk on Tuesday, as bloggers posted video ostensibly showing Russian soldiers entering the latter on motorcycles and various other scavenged vehicles. Russian officials have taken to counting the number of buildings they’ve seized in Pokrovsk, reinforcing reports of basically “building to building” fighting there. While insisting that their forces are holding in both cities, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi acknowledged the challenges they’re facing and also painted a grim picture of the Ukrainian position under a renewed Russian offensive in Zaporizhzhia oblast.
AMERICAS
COLOMBIA
Colombian President Gustavo Petro ordered the country’s security forces to stop sharing intelligence with their US interlocutors on Tuesday. He cited the ongoing US War on Drug Boats as his rationale and said that “the fight against drugs must be subordinated to the human rights of the Caribbean people” in a social media post. Relations between the US and Colombia have bottomed out since the Trump administration decertified Bogotá as a counternarcotics partner and then cut off US aid. The administration subsequently blacklisted Petro and members of his family.
UNITED STATES
Finally, the USS Gerald R. Ford has arrived in the Caribbean, potentially bringing us closer to whatever move the Trump administration is planning to make (if any) against Venezuela. On Tuesday, Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino announced a number of measures intended to defend the country against invasion, including the “massive deployment of ground, aerial, naval, riverine and missile forces.” Responsible Statecraft’s Paul Pillar argues that the Trump administration is borrowing some troubling tendencies from recently-deceased former US Vice President Dick Cheney:
The Donald Trump administration’s escalation of confrontation with Venezuela displays disturbing parallels with the run-up to the Iraq War. In some respects where the stories appear to differ, the circumstances involving Trump and Venezuela are even more alarming than was the case with Iraq.
One similarity involves corruption of the relationship between intelligence and policy. Instead of policymakers using intelligence as an input to their decisions, they have tried to use scraps of intelligence publicly to make a case for a predetermined policy. This part of the story of the Iraq War I have recounted in detail elsewhere.
Cheney’s [August 2002] speech to the [Veterans of Foreign Wars] preceded and in effect pre-empted work by the intelligence community on a classified estimate, which would become notorious in its own right, about Iraqi weapons programs. When Bob Graham, who died last year and in 2002 was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, became one of the few members of Congress to bother to read that estimate, he was so taken aback by how far short the intelligence community’s judgments were from what the administration was saying publicly that he voted against the resolution authorizing the war.
The Trump administration is using the same tactic of preemptive messaging from the top, regardless of what the intelligence agencies may be saying about Venezuela, that the Bush administration used regarding Iraq. Trump’s declarations about the regime of Nicolás Maduro have a definitive tone similar to Cheney’s “no doubt” formulation about Iraqi weapons programs.