World update: May 23-24 2020
Stories from India, Libya, Venezuela, and more
Eid Mubarak to those who are celebrating!
Friends, Foreign Exchanges is going to be taking a little break this week as I recharge a bit and hopefully figure out a nice way to celebrate my wedding anniversary under lockdown. Barring any unforeseen catastrophes, and bearing in mind that I think the last time I said this the Trump administration decided to assassinate a senior Iranian military commander, we will return to normal operations on June 2. In the meantime, as usual, I’ll send out a couple of “this day in history” posts so things don’t go completely dark around here. Thanks for your support!
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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
May 22, 853: A Byzantine army/fleet attacks and sacks the Egyptian port city of Damietta.
May 22, 1990: The Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen) and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) are united as the Republic of Yemen. After the formation of a unified government that tended to favor northern Yemen, southern Yemen attempted to secede in 1994, touching off a short (May-July) Yemeni civil war. A lingering southern secessionist movement has once again become prominent amid the current Yemeni civil war.
May 23, 1618: Two Catholic Bohemian nobles, Jaroslav Bořita of Martinice and Vilém Slavata of Chlum, are thrown out of the top floor window of the Bohemian Chancellory in Prague by a group of Protestant nobles angered over the religious policies of the Bohemian king, the future Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II. Both somehow survived the 70 foot drop, but this “Defenestration of Prague” (one of three such incidents but the one generally regarded as the defenestration) helped trigger the Thirty Years’ War.
May 24, 1991: The military arm of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front enters the city of Asmara, securing (as it turns out) Eritrea’s independence from Ethiopia and marking the end of the Eritrean War of Independence. May 24 is commemorated in Eritrea annually as Independence Day.
INTERNATIONAL
Worldometer’s coronavirus figures for May 21:
5,494,455 confirmed coronavirus cases worldwide (+96,505 since yesterday)
2,848,676 active cases
346,434 reported fatalities (+2826 since yesterday)
MIDDLE EAST
LEBANON
1114 confirmed coronavirus cases (+17)
26 reported fatalities (unchanged)
There have been some rumors spreading on social media about the death of Lebanese President Michel Aoun. Lebanese state media denied those rumors on Sunday but this is something that may bear watching. Aoun is 85, so his passing wouldn’t exactly be out of the question, and given the fragile state of Lebanese politics the death of the country’s preeminent Maronite politician would certainly be impactful.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
16,717 confirmed cases (+5) in Israel, 423 confirmed cases (unchanged) in Palestine
279 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Israel, 2 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Palestine
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial began in Jerusalem District Court on Sunday, with the PM in attendance because he couldn’t get the court to let him skip it—though he will be allowed to miss subsequent sessions. Netanyahu is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the first Jewish prime minister to stand trial while serving as PM, so he’d got that going for him. He insists, also unsurprisingly, that the charges against him are politically motivated fabrications.
EGYPT
17,265 confirmed cases (+752)
764 reported fatalities (+29)
The Egyptian government announced Saturday that its security forces had killed 21 Islamic State militants in raids on two of the group’s hideouts in northern Sinai. It claims those fighters were planning to carry out attacks during the Eid al-Fitr holiday.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
10,582 confirmed cases (+584)
218 reported fatalities (+2)
The Afghan government and Taliban agreed to establish a three day truce coinciding with the Eid holiday, which began on Sunday. It’s not much, and likely won’t lead to anything, but there’s an outside chance that a successful ceasefire could build trust and confidence toward further intra-Afghan peace talks.
INDIA
138,536 confirmed cases (+7113)
4024 reported fatalities (+156)
Academics Sumit Ganguly and Manjeet Pardesi argue at Foreign Policy that a 1988 coexistence agreement between then-Chinese leader Deng Xaoping and then-Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, which has kept border clashes between those two countries from escalating into something more serious, may be hanging by a thread:
A new economic dynamic means that the underlying bedrock of the Gandhi-Deng bargain—of similar means and goals—is fizzling out. Although it remains unclear when exactly the understanding between New Delhi and Beijing began to fade—most likely after the 2008 global financial crisis—China has become far more assertive in its foreign affairs in recent years, from artificial-island-building activities in the South China Sea to its muscular diplomacy amid the coronavirus pandemic. Indeed, some scholars have argued that an impending power transition is underway between China and the United States, the current global hegemon. While New Delhi has also become a more assertive player in global politics its rise has not been of much concern to the United States.
China and India’s recent border clashes look increasingly worrying in the context of these changing power dynamics. The Gandhi-Deng bargain paved the way for a number of border management agreements (including the 1993 and 1996 agreements related to confidence-building measures and the 2005 agreement on the political parameters guiding boundary negotiations). More recently, high-profile summits between the two countries’ top leaders—in Wuhan and in Mamallapuram—have played an important role in managing the overall relationship. However, even as the 1988 deal allowed relative tranquility along their border and promoted commercial links between China and India, none of their outstanding issues—including the border dispute—were actually resolved.
CHINA
82,974 confirmed cases (+3) on the mainland, 1066 confirmed cases (unchanged) in Hong Kong
4634 reported fatalities (unchanged) on the mainland, 4 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Hong Kong
Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said in a news conference on Sunday that the new security measures Beijing is adopting on Hong Kong’s behalf would only target a small range of activities. He insisted it would have no effect on the rights or freedoms of Hong Kong residents or—more importantly, from the Chinese government’s perspective—on the prerogatives of foreign companies operating in the Hong Kong region. It doesn’t sound like the people in Hong Kong are buying it, though, since thousands of them defied lockdown on Sunday to protest against the planned legal changes, which are still in draft form but could outlaw protest or dissent and lead to Chinese security forces opening offices in Hong Kong, in the name of national security. Police responded with tear gas and water cannons.
Wang Yi and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo under presumably happier circumstances last August (State Department photo)
Whatever new security arrangement Beijing creates for Hong Kong will presumably have some detrimental effect on the region’s autonomy, which may trigger US sanctions under last year’s Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. If that happens it will compound the many challenges already besetting the US-China relationship—a relationship that cannot remain this dysfunctional if the world is to have any hope of tackling…well, anything really, but particularly the COVID-19 pandemic and, beyond that, climate change. The Trump administration accused Beijing on Sunday of refusing to allow US airlines Delta and United to resume flights to and from China, and demanded flight schedules from four major Chinese carriers (presumably threatening to cancel some or all of those flights). Wang accused the US of trying to bring the world “to the brink of a new Cold War” on Sunday, and while you might question whether it’s been just Washington’s fault it’s hard to argue with the conclusion that a “new Cold War” is in fact where we’re heading.
NORTH KOREA
No acknowledged cases
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has apparently made another rare (these days) public appearance, this time at a meeting of North Korea’s Central Military Committee. State media announced the appearance on Sunday though it didn’t say exactly when the meeting had taken place. Kim apparently discussed “increasing the nuclear war deterrence of the country,” according to the report. I’m not sure what that means, but it doesn’t sound great! And it certainly doesn’t sound like it would be in keeping with Kim’s attempts at diplomacy with Donald Trump.
AFRICA
LIBYA
75 confirmed cases (unchanged)
3 reported fatalities (unchanged)
With his “Libyan National Army” losing ground around Tripoli at a pretty rapid pace—it apparently lost three more positions south of the city over the weekend (though it claims to have taken at least one of them back)—Khalifa Haftar has apparently decided to revamp his propaganda. The man who would be Libya’s next military dictator, and who has been justifying that urge on the basis of fighting Islamist extremist groups or whatever, has now decided that as far as you’re concerned he’s Actually a freedom fighter resisting “Turkish colonialism.” The Turkish government has definitely thrown its weight behind Libya’s Government of National Accord, to such an extent that it seems to have turned the tide of the war. The fact that Turkey would never have had the opportunity to involve itself in Libya’s war had Haftar not resisted its internationally recognized government and then tried to conquer Tripoli is, I guess, one of those inconvenient facts he’d prefer we all leave out of the story.
IVORY COAST
2376 confirmed cases (+10)
30 reported fatalities (unchanged)
The Ivorian military announced Sunday that it’s undertaken a joint operation with the Burkinabe military against Islamist extremists along their shared border, killing at least eight militants in the process. As jihadi groups have expanded out of Niger and Mali into Burkina Faso, concern has risen that they could continue expanding south into Ivory Coast, Ghana, and elsewhere along the Gulf of Guinea coast.
EUROPE
BELARUS
36,198 confirmed cases (+954)
199 reported fatalities (+5)
Despite concerns about the coronavirus, around 1000 people demonstrated in Minsk on Sunday to demand that President Alexander Lukashenko not run for a sixth term in this August’s election. Lukashenko is definitely running and definitely winning, but it is interesting that police allowed the protest to take place. Belarus is not exactly a haven for free expression, but Lukashenko has been trying to put a friendlier face on his autocracy to improve relations with the West. Allowing an ineffectual opposition protest to take place may be part of that effort.
AMERICAS
ARGENTINA
12,076 confirmed cases (+723)
452 reported fatalities (+7)
As expected, the Argentine government defaulted Friday on around $500 million in bonds on Friday, after failing to reach a debt restructuring plan with its creditors earlier this month. But there are indications that it may be renewing those restructuring talks, as at least one group of Argentine creditors has reportedly signed a non-disclosure agreement—common practice ahead of such negotiations.
BRAZIL
363,618 confirmed cases (+16,220)
22,716 reported fatalities (+703)
The Trump administration imposed a ban on travel from Brazil on Sunday due to the severity of its coronavirus outbreak, which by some measures is the second-worst outbreak in the world after the one in the US. Ironically, Brazil’s outbreak could have been substantially less severe had its president, Jair Bolsonaro, not decided to mimic Trump by first botching and then undermining his government’s response to the pandemic. The Brazilian government brushed off the ban as standard procedure.
VENEZUELA
1121 confirmed cases (+111)
10 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Those five Iranian tankers whose voyage to Venezuela threatened to cause a maritime incident with the United States have apparently made it to Venezuelan waters without issue. The ships are carrying millions of barrels in gasoline products, which are scarce in Venezuela despite that country’s substantial oil reserves, due to US sanctions. The Pentagon moved naval assets into the Caribbean in what was probably a show of force in response to the tanker convoy, though it claims it did so for other reasons. The US government is apparently considering some kind of response to the shipment, but the fact is the reason Iran was willing to make this shipment, and Venezuela was willing to receive it, is because the US is already sanctioning both countries so heavily that there’s little more it can do to punish either.
UNITED STATES
1,686,436 confirmed cases (+19,608)
99,300 reported fatalities (+617)
Finally, the Trump administration has apparently had another in a long line of what I’m sure have been extremely normal conversations:
The Trump administration has discussed whether to conduct the first U.S. nuclear test explosion since 1992 in a move that would have far-reaching consequences for relations with other nuclear powers and reverse a decades-long moratorium on such actions, said a senior administration official and two former officials familiar with the deliberations.
The matter came up at a meeting of senior officials representing the top national security agencies May 15, following accusations from administration officials that Russia and China are conducting low-yield nuclear tests — an assertion that has not been substantiated by publicly available evidence and that both countries have denied.
A senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the sensitive nuclear discussions, said that demonstrating to Moscow and Beijing that the United States could “rapid test” could prove useful from a negotiating standpoint as Washington seeks a trilateral deal to regulate the arsenals of the biggest nuclear powers.
There is no scenario under which either Russia or China would be so cowed by a US nuclear test that they would stop doing…well, whatever it is the Trump administration thinks they’re doing. Which they may not even be doing! Rather, a US nuclear test would likely be a “gloves off” moment that would cause at least one of those two countries to reciprocate while completely undermining Washington’s non-proliferation arguments with respect to North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia…pretty much anybody. It would be yet more proof—as though any were needed at this point—that the United States is the world’s biggest rogue state, operating entirely outside the bounds of international law and norms and, unlike other so-called “rogue states,” entirely unconstrained because, of course, it outspends every other national on earth in terms of military buildup.
My suspicion is that these discussions aren’t really about Russia or China. They’re about an administration that is ideologically opposed to arms control and is overtly pursuing the end of the international post-Cold War arms control regime. And they’re about an administration that is led by a man who doesn’t know or understand anything about that regime but who thinks it would be cool to explode a nuke and show the rest of the world how tough he is. Trump’s long fascination with nuclear weapons is well-documented. He’s potentially in the last year of his presidency, so he may not be able to explode one very much longer, and this whole pandemic thing has already gone one way longer than they would have let a single storyline run on The Apprentice, so he’s bored to boot. Seems like a less than idea mix, unless you think the US should start testing nukes again too.
On that note, thanks for reading and please stay safe and healthy. See you in a few!