World roundup: November 21 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Senegal, Russia, and elsewhere
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PROGRAMMING NOTE: With the Thanksgiving holiday approaching in the US I will as usual be taking a few days off from the newsletter. Sunday’s roundup will be our last before the holiday, and we will resume our regular schedule on December 3.
TODAY IN HISTORY
November 21, 1877: A hitherto relatively obscure inventor named Thomas Edison announces his latest product: the phonograph. Edison had been working on a device to record telephone communications, and his initial rudimentary invention involved a grooved cylinder wrapped in tin foil. As you might expect, the sound quality wasn’t good and the recordings could only be replayed a few times before degrading. Edison seems to have regarded the phonograph as no big deal but (spoiler alert) it made huge waves with the public. It was the first of Edison’s inventions to gain him widespread attention and the modern ubiquity of streaming services I think speaks to the enduring demand for recorded music.
November 21, 1894: The First Sino-Japanese War’s Battle of Lüshunkou, also known as the Battle of Port Arthur, ends with a decisive Imperial Japanese victory. The capture of Lüshunkou was a major achievement for the Japanese, but the battle may be better remembered for what followed, the alleged “Port Arthur Massacre.” Over the following 2-3 days, possibly in retaliation for earlier atrocities committed by Chinese soldiers, Japanese forces are said to have killed between 2600 and 20,000 people in the city (some estimates go as high as 60,000, but 20,000 seems a more plausible upper bound).
INTERNATIONAL
I’m sure nobody could have seen this coming, but it sounds like the United Nations’ COP29 climate summit is on the verge of derailment just one day before it’s scheduled to end. Apparently, while everyone seems to agree in theory that developed nations need to do more to support developing nations as they a) transition away from fossil fuels and b) struggle with the impact of climate change, nobody can seem to agree on how much more they need to do. There’s a UN agency calling for $1.3 trillion per year in climate funding, which is probably in the ballpark but is absurdly unrealistic given that Western countries haven’t even honored their commitment to support $100 billion per year in climate funds and the biggest Western country just elected a reactionary climate denier as president.
There is also a dispute over who, exactly, gets to be considered a “developing country.” By the strict definition of the term, China and Saudi Arabia (to pick two completely random examples) are still considered to be “developing” even though they’re both quite wealthy and major contributors to global carbon emissions. Western countries in particular want to redefine things so that those countries contribute to the climate funding pot, but there’s resistance to that because it feels like the West is trying to pawn off its historic responsibility for climate change. China is a particularly thorny case because while it’s a major carbon emitter it’s also leading the way globally in transitioning to clean energy and Beijing wants that to be taken into account.
Ultimately the government of Azerbaijan, this year’s host nation, is most impacted by these deliberations, inasmuch as a collapse in negotiations (which would be apparent in a failure to issue a post-summit statement) would be embarrassing. Beyond that, I’m not sure it really matters. Even if attendees somehow manage to get on the same page and reach an agreement on climate financing by tomorrow the chances that it will actually be fulfilled are slim to none.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
After months of deliberation and delay the International Criminal Court on Thursday finally issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif (assuming he’s still alive—the Israeli military insists it killed him in July). I don’t want to overstate the importance of this. In theory, Netanyahu should now be at risk of arrest if he travels to any of the ICC’s 124 member states, a list of countries that includes most of Europe, most of Latin America, Canada, and Australia among others. But he’s never going to travel to any of those states unless he has ironclad assurance that he won’t be arrested, so don’t expect to find him in custody in The Hague anytime soon.
That said, any time a sitting world leader is indicted by the ICC it is a huge event. You can tell it’s huge by the extent of the outrage that Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have displayed in response to the court’s announcement. That’s to say nothing of the reaction from the US and other corners of Israel’s international support network. The US is put in a particularly awkward spot, as even though it’s not an ICC member state the self-professed arbiter of the “rules based order” is essentially an unindicted co-conspirator with a man who’s now been charged with crimes against humanity. That’s not very rules based of them. And Netanyahu will of course have to carry the stigma of this indictment around with him for the rest of his life, to the extent that he cares about such things.
LEBANON
The Israeli military (IDF) killed at least 47 people across multiple airstrikes in eastern Lebanon’s Baalbek area on Thursday, while also killing at least 12 people in southern Lebanon and striking Beirut’s southern suburbs “about a dozen times” according to Al Jazeera. US envoy Amos Hochstein is still in the region ostensibly trying to negotiate a ceasefire between the Israelis and Hezbollah, but there are still serious obstacles standing in the way. Reuters reported on Thursday that the Lebanese government amended Hochstein’s ceasefire proposal to incorporate a faster and fuller IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and to make it clear that both Israel and Lebanon are entitled to act in “self-defense” should the ceasefire agreement not hold. Apparently the original proposal only afforded that right to Israel. I suspect Israeli leaders will object to both of those positions.
SYRIA
That IDF attack on the central Syrian city of Palmyra on Wednesday killed at least 82 people, and as that death toll has risen several times throughout the day there’s some possibility it will continue to grow. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is claiming that all of the casualties were members of “pro-Iran groups” and says that the main Israeli target was a meeting of personnel from Hezbollah and the Iraqi militia Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba.
IRAQ
Speaking of Iraq, Musings on Iraq’s Joel Wing believes it’s only a matter of time before the IDF adds that country to its regular strike list alongside Lebanon and, increasingly, Syria. Iraqi militias have undertaken several relatively low-level attacks against Israel, much to Baghdad’s chagrin apparently, and Israeli officials have been musing about striking Iraq in recent days. Earlier this month Israeli officials leaked that they believed Iran was preparing a major attack against Israel that would be launched from Iraqi soil, a claim Iraqi officials have dismissed as an effort to manufacture a justification for an Israeli attack.
IRAN
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors voted to censure Iran on Thursday, following a push from the “E3” (France, Germany, and the UK) and the US. The vote was not particularly close—19 to 3, with Burkina Faso, China, and Russia voting no and 12 members abstaining. The censure motion criticized Iran’s failure to cooperate with the IAEA and demands that Tehran finally respond to the agency’s questions regarding a longstanding investigation into the discovery last year of enriched uranium particles at two facilities in Iran that had not been declared as nuclear sites. In response, it sounds like the Iranian government has ordered the activation of a number of new advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium.
ASIA
PAKISTAN
A convoy carrying Shiʿa residents of Paksitan’s Kurram region was reportedly ambushed while traveling on a highway to the city of Peshawar on Thursday, leaving at least 42 people dead and ten more wounded. At this point Pakistani authorities say they don’t know who carried out the attack. Kurram has seen escalating violence between its Sunni and Shiʿa communities, largely over material disputes but amplified by sectarian tension. And of course Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where Kurram is located, is home to numerous Sunni jihadist groups from Pakstani Taliban factions to Islamic State.
PHILIPPINES
The US military is apparently increasing its presence in the disputed South China Sea:
The U.S. military is supporting Philippine operations in the South China Sea via a special task force, a U.S. embassy official said on Thursday, an initiative Manila said involves intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Task Force-Ayungin, named after the Philippine designation for the contested Second Thomas Shoal, was first mentioned this week by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during a visit to the Philippines.
"Task Force-Ayungin enhances U.S.-Philippine alliance coordination and interoperability by enabling U.S. forces to support Armed Forces of the Philippines activities in the South China Sea," said U.S. embassy spokesperson Kanishka Gangopadhyay.
"This initiative aligns with multiple lines of cooperation between U.S. and Philippine forces," he said, without elaborating on what kind of support the task force provides.
I’m sure this is fine. I mean, when is the last time a US military operation in Southeast Asia escalated beyond its initial objectives?
AFRICA
SENEGAL
The preliminary results of Senegal’s snap parliamentary election are in and, as expected, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s PASTEF party won a landslide victory. Barring some dramatic change in the outcome, PASTEF will control 130 seats in Senegal’s 165 seat parliament moving forward. That should give Faye and Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko a clear path toward implementing their agenda, though they will still have to contend with International Monetary Fund-imposed austerity. At his Sawahil newsletter, Alex Thurston has more on what this outcome portends:
Third, as I mentioned above, Faye, Sonko, and PASTEF now face an even bigger test - can they make a material difference in the lives of the mass of Senegalese citizens? It is ridiculous to call Faye and Sonko “radical,” as the BBC does in this headline; if anything, Faye and Sonko have already shown themselves to be less “radical” than advertised so far. Faye and Sonko come across to me as center-left reformists with a populist bent, figures who are interested in things like boosting Senegal’s oil exports, auditing the previous government’s contracts and statistics, etc. In any case, they did solidly bill themselves as change candidates and voters are expecting change - as they did with Abdoulaye Wade in 2000 and with Macky Sall in 2012. If Faye and Sonko can’t meet expectations, they in turn will become the resented incumbents.
Fourth, the BBC headline about “Senegal’s radical government” is itself one part of a broader international effort to discipline Faye and Sonko through diplomatic, commercial, and media pressures. The two tax inspectors-turned-rulers face an array of powerful forces with leverage over Senegal - the International Monetary Fund, France, other international investors, etc. - that could seriously constrain the reform agenda of PASTEF (and cause more internal divisions within the party). Faye and Sonko now have serious power to get their agenda passed and implemented, but another test will be how they manage external pressures to pare down the degree of change they are pursuing.
MALI
Mali’s ruling junta named one of its own members, spokesperson Abdoulaye Maïga, as the country’s new prime minister on Thursday, one day after sacking civilian PM Choguel Kokalla Maïga and his cabinet. Choguel Maïga was canned after criticizing the junta for its failure to articulate a roadmap back to civilian rule; presumably Abdoulaye Maïga will not make that same mistake. Beyond that I’m not sure the switch matters—the junta seems just as interested in transitioning to elections today as it did yesterday, which is to say not at all.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
The Ukrainian government accused Russia of firing an intercontinental ballistic missile at the city of Dnipro on Thursday, but after a bit of confusion around that claim (US officials, for example, disagreed with it) Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a televised address in which he said that the strike had actually involved “a new intermediate-range ballistic missile.” The device, according to Putin, is hypersonic and does indeed appear to be brand new—Thursday’s strike functioned effectively as a test. US analysts believe the new missile is based on a Russian ICBM design and could be modified to carry a nuclear warhead, though obviously it was not carrying one in this instance. Putin unsurprisingly characterized his decision to deploy it now as a response to the Biden administration’s decision to allow Ukraine to use long-range US munitions against Russian targets.
Elsewhere, the Biden administration blacklisted Russia’s Gazprombank along with its international branches and dozens of other Russian financial institutions on Thursday. Gazprombank is the third largest bank in Russia, but had hitherto escaped sanctions because of its centrality to Russia’s natural gas sector. European countries that were heavily dependent on Russian gas were concerned that blacklisting Gazprombank might complicate their energy imports. But Europe has greatly reduced its overall reliance on Russian natural gas and those concerns are no longer as paramount.
GERMANY
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Thursday that he has no intention of supplanting Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the top of the Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) ticket heading into February’s likely snap election. The unpopular Scholz has been under pressure from within the party to give way to Pistorius, arguably Germany’s most popular politician, to give the SPD a better shot in an election that polling suggests the party is likely to lose.
With the election in mind, Inkstick’s Marc Martorell Junyent looks at how the legacy of Germany’s Cold War divide is still affecting its contemporary politics:
Nowadays, the border between the German federal states of Bavaria and Thuringia is imperceptible. The regional train that connects the Bavarian city of Nuremberg and the Thuringian town of Saalfeld passes through forested hills punctuated by small villages in the lower areas, a tranquil landscape dotted with a stream.
But when arriving in Probstzella, the first village in Thuringia when traveling from Bavaria, there is a reminder that this wasn’t always the case. Between 1949, when the German Democratic Republic (GDR) — East Germany — was founded, and 1990, which marked the reunification of Germany, Probstzella was a border train station where around 20 million people were controlled.
Although US troops were the first to arrive at Thuringia, the territory — under the terms of a 1944 agreement between the Allies — was quickly transferred to Soviet troops, later becoming part of the GDR. Thirty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, which led to the reunification of Germany, there is no physical border between Bavaria and Thuringia anymore, but some significant differences remain.
The most obvious is the wealth gap. Whereas Bavaria is the federal state with the second highest GDP per capita, Thuringia has the lowest value in Germany — only 62% of the average Bavarian GDP. Apart from economic inequalities, there is also a representation gap, as few eastern Germans access the top positions in politics, education, or the private sector. These are grievances that the far-right has skillfully exploited, often using immigrants and refugees as scapegoats with political messages that have very real consequences.
AMERICAS
COLOMBIA
The Colombian military said on Thursday that National Liberation Army (ELN) rebels had killed four soldiers in northwestern Colombia’s Antioquia department. It did not, apparently, bother mentioning when this attack took place. Nevertheless this is the first reported ELN attack against Colombian security forces since the rebels and the government agreed earlier this month to resume peace talks. The Colombian army has killed several ELN fighters in its own operations since then.
UNITED STATES
Finally, TomDispatch’s William Hartung considers the future of a peace movement under Donald Trump:
For any peace movement, figuring out how to approach Trump will be like shadow boxing — trying to imagine what position he’s likely to take next.
The biggest problem in working for peace under a Trump presidency may involve whether groups are even allowed to organize without facing systematic government repression. After all, in the past, Trump has labeled his opponents with the Hitlerian-style insult “vermin” and threatened to jail any number of those he’s designated as his enemies.
Of course, the first job of any future peace movement (which would have applied as well had the Democrats taken the White House) will simply be to grow into a viable political force in such a difficult political climate.