World roundup: September 24 2024
World roundup: September 24 2024
Stories from Israel-Palestine, Somalia, Bolivia, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
September 24, 1645: Amid the First English Civil War, parliamentarians defeat a royalist army at the Battle of Rowton Heath. The parliamentarians killed some 600 royalist soldiers and took some 900 more prisoner (parliamentarian casualties are apparently unknown). For the royalists, the defeat scuppered their chances of relieving the besieged Chester, the last English port still loyal to King Charles I, which eventually surrendered in February 1646.
September 24, 1877: The Japanese Army defeats a heavily outnumbered and even more heavily outgunned samurai force under the command of rebel leader Saigō Takamori, whose entire 500 man army was wiped out, in the Battle of Shiroyama. The battle ended the Satsuma Rebellion and the role of the samurai as Japan’s warrior class. The 2003 film The Last Samurai depicts a heavily fictionalized, and (arguably) quite ahistorical, version of this battle and the wider rebellion.
INTERNATIONAL
A new report from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research warns that humanity could be on the verge of making the oceans too acidic to support current marine life. The report looked at nine “tipping elements” thought to be key to sustaining life on Earth. We’ve already breached six of them, apparently, and ocean acidification would be the seventh. Carbon dioxide emissions are to blame, as CO2 dissolves into ocean water and lowers its pH in the process. Acidic oceans cause coral bleaching and death which undermines entire marine ecosystems. The report suggests that even a rapid immediate decrease in emissions wouldn’t prevent breaching this tipping point because of the level of CO2 that is already in the atmosphere.
MIDDLE EAST
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
The AP reports that Palestinians in Gaza are worried that the rapid onset of war between Israel and Hezbollah is going to drive their own plight out of the news and out of public consciousness. Understandably they fear what shifting global attention could allow the Israeli military (IDF) to get away with, both in terms of direct violence and worsening the territory’s already unbearable humanitarian situation. If it’s any consolation, a new report from ProPublica makes it clear that the Biden administration never cared about them in the first place:
The U.S. government’s two foremost authorities on humanitarian assistance concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza.
The U.S. Agency for International Development delivered its assessment to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the State Department’s refugees bureau made its stance known to top diplomats in late April. Their conclusion was explosive because U.S. law requires the government to cut off weapons shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of U.S.-backed humanitarian aid. Israel has been largely dependent on American bombs and other weapons in Gaza since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.
But Blinken and the administration of President Joe Biden did not accept either finding. Days later, on May 10, Blinken delivered a carefully worded statement to Congress that said, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”
It would be wrong to say that this report is surprising—the Biden administration and Blinken specifically have made it abundantly clear how far they’re willing to go to shield Israel from any sort of accountability. But there is a particularly interesting account in this piece of an internal State Department discussion about the need to approve a tranche of some $827 million in financial assistance so that the Israeli government could use it to pay for previous arms purchases. I guess we’re also willing to shred the rulebook when it comes to making sure that defense contractors get paid. State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration was unwilling to certify that Israel wasn’t blocking aid in order to allow the money to be released, until the rest of the department pressured its officials into backing down.
By the way, Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani characterized Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide” in his United Nations General Assembly speech on Tuesday. I mention this because Qatar is one of the two Arab states still mediating whatever is left of the ceasefire talks, and I suspect that he would not have used that term—which is bound to inflame tension with Israel—if the Qataris believed there was still any chance of that process actually succeeding.
TURKEY
One of the main sticking points in the US-Turkey relationship remains Ankara’s 2017 purchase of Russia’s S-400 air defense system, for which the US booted it out of the F-35 program—costing Turkey both the ability to purchase the aircraft and the economic benefit of having Turkish firms involved in its production. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has consistently refused US demands to sell or otherwise rid himself of the system. Recently, however, the US government has reportedly offered Erdoğan a way out of the penalty box, which would involve transferring Turkey’s S-400 system (which it has yet to bring online) to the İncirlik airbase. This would effectively put it under US control while technically maintaining Turkey’s ownership. I find it impossible to believe that Moscow would be comfortable with such an arrangement, which could allow US personnel to study the Russian system, but nevertheless Erdoğan may be considering it.
LEBANON
Another Israeli airstrike in southern Beirut killed at least six people (with another 15 wounded) on Tuesday, including senior Hezbollah official Ibrahim Qubaisi. The IDF characterized him as the commander of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile forces, which may be an overstatement though he does seem to have been highly positioned in that unit at least. This strike took place amid the IDF’s much broader bombardment of southern and eastern Lebanon, which has killed at least 569 people (50 of them children) and wounded at least 1835 over two days and counting. Lebanese officials say they’ve registered some 27,000 people as officially displaced by this bombardment (the UN has estimated that the IDF attack forced “tens of thousands” of people to leave their homes). Hezbollah retaliated on Tuesday by firing a barrage of hundreds of rockets into Israel.
There’s been a flurry of commentary regarding last week’s Israeli “pager attack” (I’m using that as shorthand). Spencer Ackerman unambiguously calls it a terrorist attack, citing among other things the fact that Israeli officials not only didn’t know who would have the devices or where they would be when they detonated them, but that they knew that they didn’t know. This means that from their perspective any civilian casualties were not so much accidental as incidental—part of the expected result but not the main Israeli focus. Foreign Policy’s Howard French advances a similar argument, adding criticism of an Israeli foreign policy that (with US support) seems to have no solution for the country’s long-term geopolitical challenges apart from ceaseless violence. And Charli Carpenter at World Politics Review considers that, civilian risk aside, the attacks very likely violated international law regarding the humane treatment of combatants.
QATAR
The Biden administration admitted Qatar to the US government’s visa waiver program on Tuesday, meaning that Qatari nationals can stay in the US visa-free for up to 90 days effective December 1 and US nationals will receive the same consideration from the Qatari government. Qatar is the first Arab country to gain admission to the program.
ASIA
SRI LANKA
New Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake dissolved the country’s parliament on Tuesday, just one day after he took office and only hours after he named Harini Amarasuriya as his prime minister (making her the first woman to hold that post in Sri Lanka in 24 years). The move is not unexpected though it is certainly abrupt. Dissanayake’s National People’s Power coalition currently holds all of three parliamentary seats, so a snap election capitalizing on his immediate post-election wave of popularity is his best bet in terms of arranging a more amenable legislature.
MYANMAR
Myanmar rebels are reportedly approaching the country’s second-largest city, Mandalay, but as Al Jazeera reports this is not necessarily causing much consternation among the city’s population. While worried about the risks of combat, many of them seem more supportive of the rebels than they are of the country’s current military government. The Mandalay People’s Defense Force seems to be the main rebel group in the area, supported by the Ta’ang National Liberation Army. It’s unclear whether the TNLA will countenance an attempt to take Mandalay and it may be under some pressure from the Chinese government not to do so.
CHINA
The Washington Post reports that the Chinese government just rolled out a new economic stimulus package:
China’s financial authorities unleashed unusually broad measures designed to inject momentum into the world’s second-largest economy, announcing on Tuesday the most significant stimulus package since the pandemic struck almost five years ago.
These measures — which include cutting interest rates and supporting the beleaguered property and stock markets — come amid signs the Chinese economy will miss the government’s growth target of 5 percent this year.
The decision by the People’s Bank of China to cut its benchmark interest rate comes less than a week after the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates by half a point.
The decision showed China’s central bank had shifted from a “hang in there until the Fed blinks” stance, said Larry Hu of Macquarie Group, to one of “fight deflation now.”
While much of the world has been battling inflation, Chinese authorities have been struggling to boost demand and stem a fall in prices amid widespread gloom about the economic outlook.
AFRICA
MALI
Malian junta boss Assimi Goïta reportedly met with his senior military officers on Monday to “adjust strategy,” as his office put it, in their campaigns against jihadists and other militant groups. This confab was of course prompted by last week’s jihadist attack on Bamako, which pierced the media shell the junta had erected around the capital and struck a direct blow against its claims to legitimacy. It’s unclear how they intend to switch things up but my guess is it won’t work.
BURKINA FASO
The junta in neighboring Burkina Faso, meanwhile, claimed on Monday evening that it has prevented another coup possibly fueled by last month’s jihadist massacre of dozens of civilians in the country’s Center-North region. The junta’s security minister claimed in televised remarks that “persons residing in Ivory Coast” had been cooking up some sort of nefarious plot. At least one person named in the supposed plot, journalist Newton Ahmed Barry, denied the allegation via social media and suggested that the junta manufactured the idea of a coup plot to shift attention away from the massacre and its own failures.
SOMALIA
Tensions in the Horn of Africa are rising again after an Egyptian arms shipment arrived in Somalia on Monday. That’s the second such delivery in about a month, courtesy of a security cooperation deal the two countries signed in mid-August. These shipments come in the context of Somalia’s ongoing dispute with Ethiopia over the latter’s involvement with the secessionist government of the Somaliland region, and the ongoing dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the management of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
Without explicitly mentioning Egypt, as far as I know, Ethiopian Foreign Minister Taye Atske-Selassie expressed to reporters his concern that weapons supplied by “external forces would further exacerbate the fragile security and would end up in the hands of terrorists in Somalia.” Somali Foreign Minister Ahmed Moalim Fiqi shot back (rhetorically), and in so doing he accused the Ethiopian government of smuggling weapons into Somalia that “are falling into the hands of civilians and terrorists.” He didn’t offer any evidence, but presumably he’s referring to Ethiopia’s support for the Somaliland administration. Somali officials have also accused the Ethiopian government of sending arms to the government of the autonomous Puntland region.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
According to Reuters, the Iranian government has brokered a discussion between the its Russian counterpart and the Houthi movement in Yemen regarding the former providing the latter with upgraded anti-ship missiles. Moscow apparently hasn’t yet decided whether to go through with the proposed transfer, but you may recall that The Washington Post reported over the weekend that Vladimir Putin has been looking for a new way to threaten Ukraine’s Western supporters because his repeated (and repeatedly unfulfilled) nuclear threats are no longer packing the same punch they once did. Enhancing the Houthis’ ability to interdict Red Sea commerce is one obvious way he could do that. There was reporting a few months ago about a possible Russia-Houthi connection but this is the first reporting on Iran’s involvement.
Reuters suggests that the Saudis might be especially concerned at the prospect of the Houthis acquiring Russian missiles. They could pressure Russia against going through with it. They could also pressure the US against doing anything in support of Ukraine that might provoke Russia to go through with it.
UKRAINE
The Biden administration announced a new $375 million arms package for Ukraine on Tuesday, featuring rockets and other artillery munitions including more cluster bombs. They’re the military gift that keeps on giving, after all. This package is being assembled via presidential drawdown authority, which means the items will be shipped out of existing Pentagon stockpiles and should get to Ukraine in fairly short order. The administration is still sitting on around $6 billion in drawdown authorizations that will expire at the end of this month unless Congress votes to extend their deadline.
AMERICAS
BOLIVIA
Supporters of former Bolivian President Evo Morales clashed with supporters of current President Luis Arce in La Paz on Monday evening, as the former’s march on the Bolivian capital finally reached its finish line. Morales added to the tension by declaring a 24 hour ultimatum for Arce to make unspecified cabinet changes, which Arce’s government rejected on Tuesday. It’s unclear what the “or else” was underpinning Morales’ demand but I assume we will find out soon enough.
HAITI
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo announced in his UNGA speech on Tuesday that his government intends to provide 150 police officers to the international mission that is supposed to be tackling gang/insurgent violence in Haiti. That mission has been hamstrung by a lack of manpower and resources. As to the former, Kenyan President William Ruto visited Haiti over the weekend and promised to make good on the remaining 600 police officers of the 1000 his government is supposed to be providing…someday. Ruto said that the officers are “undergoing redeployment training” and he’s hoping they’ll be “mission-ready in a few weeks’ time.” It’s unclear what “a few” means in this context. That still won’t resolve the fact that the mission has received inadequate financial support.
UNITED STATES
A US naval replenishment vessel, the USNS Big Horn, apparently ran aground in the Arabian Sea on Tuesday (or possibly the previous day), sustaining damage though nothing catastrophic. It’s being escorted to port. The Big Horn is supporting the USS Abraham Lincoln and its carrier group, primarily by refueling escort vessels and the group’s aircraft, and its loss is going to pose significant logistical problems for the Navy until it can get another replenishment vessel to the region.
Finally, Joe Biden delivered what should be his final UNGA address on Tuesday, speaking impotently about the need to reduce tensions in the Middle East while steadfastly doing nothing to achieve that aim. Biden did announce that the US is donating 1 million doses of mpox vaccine plus $500 million to help African nations respond to the current outbreak of that illness. But otherwise, as Foreign Policy’s Michael Hirsch argued, the speech was notable more for the juxtaposition between the foreign policy goals Biden had at the start of his presidency and the state of the world he’s leaving at the end:
No doubt the most memorable moment of Biden’s speech came toward the end when he alluded to his decision not to run for another term at age 81 and declared: “My fellow leaders, let us never forget some things are more important than staying in power.” Biden received sustained applause for that line—which was rather ironic since so many of the countries represented in the hall are now led by autocrats desperately trying to stay in power no matter the cost.
But then, as the president was ushered off the stage—both the actual stage in Turtle Bay and, simultaneously, the world stage—something else was clear: The failing global system that Biden had hoped to reclaim and revitalize as president has largely passed him by. It’s not just that, with four months left as president, Biden has little chance of resolving the bloody conflicts now raging—one of which grows hotter by the day as Israel attacks Hezbollah in Lebanon while U.S. diplomats have all but given up on restraining it. “Biden may love diplomacy, but diplomacy doesn’t love him back,” Walter Russell Mead wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Monday.
No, it’s more that the United Nations itself—and everything it once represented—is fast becoming as irrelevant as the League of Nations once was. With the United States on one side and Russia and China joined at the hip on the other—in other words, three of the five veto-bearing members of the U.N. Security Council—the U.N. is once again a football of the major powers, a forum for confrontation and endless stalemate. The situation is reminiscent of the height of the Cold War when the Soviet Union simply vetoed nearly everything in sight (with a few key exceptions, such as the Marshall Plan and the Korean War resolution—Soviet delegates were absent both days—and minor truce oversight missions in places such as Cyprus).