GLOBAL EYES

Read all the news that matters from every continent but Antarctica in the Cosmopolitan Globalist's Sunday Reader.

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Welcome, new readers! Where did all of you come from? A completely unprecedented number of you suddenly—as in, within a fifteen minute period—signed up for the free version of this newsletter. I’ve been trying to figure out why, but I’m stumped. Wherever you’re from, we’re so pleased to have you!

And we’ll be even more pleased when you become paying subscribers.

Have you checked out our “Best Essays” section? Have you read our “About” page, which explains what we’re trying to do here, and why? How about the Middle East 101 tab?¹ (Middle East 101 is for our paying subscribers, whom I devoutly hope you’ll join.)

In fact, I’m so excited that you’re here that I’m going to convert you to paying subscribers right away. To that end, GLOBAL EYES will be free today. It’s usually behind a paywall, but today I’ll share it with you so that you can see what you’d receive on the regular if you join the Cosmopolitan Globalist inner circle.

GLOBAL EYES is our comprehensive, round-the-world news survey. It comes in a long and a short version: If you want to be a very well-informed, spend your Sunday morning reading it through from beginning to end. But if that’s too much of a commitment, you can just read the items marked by the following symbols:

• 🚨Urgently important

• ★ Read the summary of this item, at least

• 🌐 Unusually well-written and interesting

Global Eyes also includes popular premium features such as “A Stern Scolding from the CCP”—a bracing warning of Western perfidy and decline to start your day and rectify your thought—and “The Daily Bat,” wherein we see the latest batshit pronouncements from Russian propagandists who yearn to see the incineration of Western capitals. Then we end with “The Daily Animal,” because after reading the Daily Bat, you’ll need cheering up, and we don’t want to end on a low note.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? But it gets better. Just for today, we’re having a sale. Just for you! In fact, it’s an insane, blowout sale. Not ten, not twenty, but fifty percent off if you subscribe by midnight, Paris time, tomorrow. That’s how excited we are to welcome you.

Also, you can have your money back if you don’t think it’s worth it. No questions asked. But you’ll think it’s worth it. Everyone else who subscribes does.

🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩FLASH SALE🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

So come be one of us. (Regular readers, can you help me make this sale? Would you tell our new readers, in the comments, what they’ll get if they subscribe and why you think it’s worth it? I’d sure appreciate it, and the sooner we get enough paid subscribers, the sooner we can buy our riad in Marrakech. We’re almost there—we only need about ten thousand more.)

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GLOBAL EYES

RUSSIA-UKRAINE

→Moldova says Russia has no right to lecture on democracy

→Russians gather in subdued defiance to lay “fearless” Kremlin critic Navalny to rest

→Navalny Buried In Moscow As Tens Of Thousands Risk Arrest To Say Farewell

→Russia says Ukraine attacked Crimea with 38 drones

→Eight killed in Russian drone attack on Odesa, Ukraine says

→Bodies of mother and baby found as death toll from Odesa drone attack rises

→Drone crashes into building in St Petersburg, Russia, national guard says no casualties

→Netherlands’ Rutte signs security deal in Ukraine, promising artillery funding

→Six militants killed in special operation in Russia's Ingushetia region

I want to introduce you to a scholar I should have known about, but didn’t. I was introduced to Keir Giles by Robert Zubrin, who reviewed Giles’ latest book, Russia’s War on Everybody and What it Means for You in the Kyiv Post. I thought it sounded interesting, so I looked up Keir Giles, and discovered someone very interesting. He’s a fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs—Chatham House—in London who has been trying, fruitlessly, for years, to explain Russia’s behavior to policy makers who don’t want to hear it.

I highly recommend his articles and monographs below, even though some of them are now several years old. His analysis only seems more prescient with time.

To Americans who say they don’t understand why Russia should be their problem, his work should be a persuasive response. (I was persuaded to begin with, of course.)

Here’s Robert Zubrin’s review:

… “One of the most damaging and dangerous misconceptions about Russia is that at some deep level Russian and Western interests must align, and the two sides must fundamentally desire the same end result in their relationship,” Giles explains. “While the idea is seductive, it is wholly wrong.”

The Westerners’ mistake follows from their unwillingness to face one simple fact: Russia considers itself at war with the West. Within the mental framework of this undeclared war, all relations between Russia and the West must be zero sum. Anything that harms the West helps Russia, without limit to location or scope.

… In the face of Russia’s undeclared war, the West has been sleepwalking, allowing the Putin gang to achieve one victory after another.

🌐★★★ Russian nuclear intimidation. How Russia uses nuclear threats to shape Western responses to aggression. This research paper is a must-read, particularly in light of Putin’s recent nuclear threats. I wish this paper had made its way to Joe Biden’s desk. It really should have. It’s one he urgently needs to read. Giles argues:

Russia has achieved substantial success in constraining Western support for Ukraine through use of threatening language around the possible use of nuclear weapons. Western leaders have explicitly justified reluctance to provide essential military assistance to Ukraine by reference to Russian narratives of uncontrollable escalation. …

This represents a striking success for Russian information campaigns. That success results from consistent failure among Western audiences and decision-makers to consider how unrealistic Russia’s threats are, or measure them against its real—and unchanged—nuclear posture. It is essential for responses to Russia’s intimidatory rhetoric to be guided by a realistic assessment of its basis in reality, rather than by fear-induced paralysis.

Actual use of nuclear weapons by Russia remains not impossible but highly unlikely. A decision to launch a strike would have to overcome a range of systemic and practical obstacles. Regardless of Western responses, the global consequences of breaking the nuclear taboo would be severe for Russia.

Nevertheless, Western nuclear powers have given Moscow grounds for confidence that there would not be retaliation in kind. US and allied messaging to Russia does not currently convey sufficient determination to respond adequately to nuclear use, and so should be urgently revised to achieve appropriate deterrent effect. [My emphasis.]

I’ve made this point over and over—also to no avail, though Giles is much more influential than I am. Biden has all but invited Russia to see if it can get away with using a nuclear weapon by failing clearly to signal that this would mean Russia’s annihilation, and with it Vladimir Putin’s. As Giles writes:

… The argument for promising grave consequences but remaining vague over what they will be is strong in that this stance maintains flexibility of response and complicates Russian calculus through uncertainty. However, the experience of attempting the same kind of deterrence of Moscow ahead of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine shows that it also suffers from a lack of credibility: the track record of Western powers combined with the vagueness of the threats leave Russia unconvinced that the response would be sufficiently significant. This requires a clearer and more unambiguous statement of intent from the US and its allies, that goes beyond a promise of “grave consequences” and instead touches on interests of personal significance not only to Vladimir Putin but also to his senior military leaders. …

In particular, as in any scenario where the desired outcome is deterring or dissuading Russia from some damaging action, it remains vital for Western leaders to refrain from explaining what they will not do in response to that action. Russia’s conviction that it could use nuclear weapons in Ukraine without retaliation in kind from the West will only have been deepened by President Macron’s signaling, in October 2022, that this was a correct assessment. Providing comfort and confidence to Russian planners in this manner by removing worst-case scenarios from their risk calculations makes the world more dangerous. Assurances from major Western powers ahead of time that there would not be a military response to Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine gave the Kremlin a green light to go ahead. Similar assurances over nuclear use will serve only to encourage even more damaging action by Russia.

Yes! Exactly. And you would think this obvious to Western leaders—it was obvious to every American president from Truman to Reagan—but clearly it isn’t obvious to them anymore.

This is what deterrence looks and sounds like:

• Related: Putin’s bluffing on nukes (for now), says top NATO official. “We do not see any imminent threat of Russia using these weapons,” said military alliance’s deputy secretary-general. He characterized Putin’s threats as “a discourse that delves into the logic of psychological intimidation rather than real intentions.”

★ Handbook of Russian Information Warfare. In 2016, Giles wrote this monograph for the NATO Defense College:

… The period since the Russian seizure of Crimea in early 2014 has seen a large number of new publications on the topic of Russian cyber and information warfare, of widely varying quality. Most of these works discuss a specific aspect of the challenge, and many were highly time-sensitive and are therefore already outdated. The aim of this handbook is instead to circumvent the need for extensive ab initio research by providing a guide to the Russian approach which is both comprehensive and durable.

If you’re not already aware of the material he covers here, read it cover to cover. It’s only about 70 pages. It’s impossible to understand the world we live in if you don’t understand what Russia is doing to shape the way we look at the world.

🎧 Russia’s challenge to the West, a podcast with Angela Stent and Keir Giles.

The Kremlin’s strange victory: How Putin exploits American dysfunction and fuels American decline. This article by Fiona Hill in Foreign Affairs is paywalled, but very much worth reading. I can send you a PDF if you don’t have access to it.²

In the very early years of the post–Cold War era, many analysts and observers had hoped that Russia would slowly but surely converge in some ways with the United States. They predicted that once the Soviet Union and communism had fallen away, Russia would move toward a form of liberal democracy. By the late 1990s, it was clear that such an outcome was not on the horizon. And in more recent years, quite the opposite has happened: the United States has begun to move closer to Russia, as populism, cronyism, and corruption have sapped the strength of American democracy. This is a development that few would have foreseen 20 years ago, but one that American leaders should be doing everything in their power to halt and reverse. 

You know who did see it coming? Gorbachev. I heard him speak in early 1990s. Russia had collapsed first, he said, but the US would follow suit. I laughed. Sour grapes, I thought. It didn’t for a moment occur to me that he could be right.

Indeed, over time, the United States and Russia have become subject to the same economic and social forces. Their populations have proved equally susceptible to political manipulation. Prior to the 2016 US election, Putin recognized that the United States was on a path similar to the one that Russia took in the 1990s, when economic dislocation and political upheaval after the collapse of the Soviet Union had left the Russian state weak and insolvent. In the United States, decades of fast-paced social and demographic changes and the Great Recession of 2008–9 had weakened the country and increased its vulnerability to subversion. Putin realized that despite the lofty rhetoric that flowed from Washington about democratic values and liberal norms, beneath the surface, the United States was beginning to resemble his own country: a place where self-dealing elites had hollowed out vital institutions and where alienated, frustrated people were increasingly open to populist and authoritarian appeals. The fire was already burning; all Putin had to do was pour on some gasoline. …

The polarization of American society has become a national security threat, acting as a barrier to the collective action necessary for combating catastrophes and thwarting external dangers. Partisan spectacles during the global Covid19 pandemic have undermined the country’s international standing as a model of liberal democracy and eroded its authority on public health. The United States’ inability to get its act together has hindered the projection of American soft power, or what Biden has called “the power of our example.” During my time in the Trump administration, I watched as every peril was politicized and turned into fodder for personal gain and partisan games. Successive national security advisers, cabinet members, and their professional staffs were unable to mount coherent responses or defenses to security issues in the face of personalized, chaotic, and opportunistic conduct at the top. …

The United States’ vulnerability to the Kremlin’s subversion has been amplified by social media. American-made technology has magnified the impact of once fringe ideas and subversive actors around the world and become a tool in the hands of hostile states and criminal groups. Extremists can network and reach audiences as never before on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, which are designed to attract people’s attention and divide them into affinity groups. Putin has weaponized this technology against the United States, taking advantage of the ways that social media undermines social cohesion and erodes Americans’ sense of a shared purpose. Policymakers should step up their cooperation with the private sector in order to cast light on and deter Russian intelligence operations and other efforts to exploit social media platforms. They also need to figure out ways to educate the American public about the perils of posting personal and political information online.

Russia is already spreading disinformation in advance of the 2024 election, using fake online accounts and bots to damage President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats:

The dissemination of attacks on Biden is part of a continuing effort by Moscow to undercut American military aid to Ukraine and US support for and solidarity with NATO, experts said. A similar effort is underway in Europe. France, Germany and Poland said this month that Russia has launched a barrage of propaganda to try to influence European parliamentary elections in June.

★ How Putin plans to flood the West with migrants:

Russia is using private militias to control and “weaponize” immigration into Europe, The Telegraph can reveal. The Kremlin has influence over a number of the main routes into the continent and border police are warning that, with the arrival of spring, Russia is likely to “intensify” its efforts to move migrants.

It has been widely feared that Vladimir Putin is using the tactic to destabilize Europe. The Telegraph has now seen intelligence documents detailing plans for Russian agents to set up a “15,000-man strong border police force” comprising former militias in Libya to control the flow of migrants. A security source said: “If you can control the migrant routes into Europe then you can effectively control elections, because you can restrict or flood a certain area with migrants in order to influence public opinion at a crucial time.”

(This is also happening in Latin America. The insanity of the GOP insisting we have to control the border before we control Putin is that you control the border by controlling Putin.)

🌐 Hungover at the Munich Security Conference: The world must finally confront the harsh reality of Europe’s largest land war since World War Two:

… Here are the sobering realities the West needs to acknowledge: Ukraine cannot continue its war effort without additional aid. The US$95 billion tied up before the US Congress is essential to keep Ukraine’s soldiers able to defend our frontline and the economy afloat. President Zelensky has said that he will lose the war without further aid. Europe cannot provide the ammunition and equipment Ukraine needs quickly enough; only Washington can solve our munitions shortage in time to sustain the war effort.

Military spending must increase sharply. More than two percent of GDP defense spending is required when Russia operates under a wartime economic model. Estonia gets this, but France and Germany still struggle to reach that benchmark. Western nations must significantly increase military spending, invest in cutting-edge technology, and provide concrete, immediate support to Ukraine. Europe’s security is in danger.

The West’s gradualism has failed. Gradual military aid allows Russia to adapt its tactics and seek assistance from countries like Iran and North Korea. The delay in supplying F-16s until the summer of 2024 gave Russia precious time to counter Ukrainian MiG and SU aircraft. Another critical issue is artillery. President Zelensky stated that according to Ukrainian intelligence, Russia would receive a million artillery shells from North Korea. In turn, the EU revised its commitment to delivering one million 155 mm artillery rounds to Ukraine by March 2024. As of the end of January, only 330,000 shells have arrived in Kyiv.

★ Putin’s warped idea of Russian history:

… Putin’s rhetoric has become steeped in historical narratives that are as convoluted as they are false, according to Russian historians. His recent interview with Tucker Carlson, during which the Russian president delivered a thirty-minute lecture on Russian history, is the latest example. But the interview was dismissed as boring and worthy of a chuckle. After all, this is not the first time that Putin has forayed into his favorite subject and preached his interpretation of history to the public.

The willingness to dismiss another litany of Putin’s grievances is understandable, especially when the Russian president rambles on about events that happened in Europe a thousand years ago. However, listening closely to what Putin says about the subject he clearly thinks a lot about can reveal the structure of his belief system and increase the predictive value of his policies. 

★ Key elements of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s playbook against the West are on display again. This time, it is in the breakaway Moldovan province of Transnistria, which is situated between non-NATO Moldova on the west and Ukraine to the east:

Mirroring the People’s Republic of Donetsk’s request to become part of the Russian Federation in May 2014, Transnistria’s Congress of Deputies has asked the Kremlin to provide it with protection, repeating in miniature the highly flammable scenario played out by regions of eastern Ukraine now occupied by Moscow. The timing is noteworthy. Putin is scheduled today to give a State of the Nation joint address to both houses of the Federal Assembly—the lower State Duma and the upper Federation Council. Putin is likely to use the speech to take a much-needed victory lap over Ukraine’s tactical withdrawal from Avdiivka in advance of Russia’s Mar. 15 presidential election.

Putin may be planning to use this opportunity to lay the foundation for yet another military intervention under the guise of protecting Russian-speaking peoples. This is exactly what he did in 2014 in the Donbas. An intervention in Moldova would create another front for Ukraine to manage and could also prompt a Romanian response. Moscow might also use Transnistria as yet one more designed distraction for the NATO member-states, just as Putin, in coordination with Tehran, used Hamas’s October 7 attack as cover for a bloody counteroffensive in eastern Ukraine. 

Asymmetric distraction is an increasingly important part of Putin’s playbook. We have already witnessed it elsewhere, including in Iranian-sponsored militia attacks against US military forces in Iraq and Syria, and in ongoing Houthi rebel attacks on underwater cables and naval and maritime shipping, often with Russian military equipment. Transnistria would offer much of the same, playing to both Putin’s long and short games against the West.

★ Russia reorganizes military districts:

The Kremlin announced a transformation of its military districts to “buy” loyalty from its officer corps and organize its military with to prepare for war on and beyond its northwestern borders. The Russian High Command considers the movements of its neighbors and enemies before taking any military action, assessing when the world is most distracted and when Moscow can make its move without immediate interference. Russia wants to expand its military and political opportunities and considers a direct clash with the West highly likely, if not unavoidable, in the near future.

Before starting any military venture, Russia’s military leadership considers international circumstances and the domestic political environment in the United States and its key allies before acting. For example, the aggression against Georgia in 2008 was made on the eve of the presidential elections in the United States when the Bush administration was almost out of office. The first round of aggression against Ukraine became possible soon after the West demonstrated its unwillingness to use force against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, who used chemical weapons against the rebels. The road for the Russian military engagement in Syria in September 2015 was opened after the Minsk-2 agreements of February 2015 when Germany and France demonstrated their unconditional readiness to compromise with Russia. Finally, the Russian ultimatum to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in December 2021 and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 became possible after the insurrection against the US Capitol Building on January 6, 2022, and after the Taliban quickly captured power in Afghanistan. In 2024, there are upcoming elections in the United States and the United Kingdom. There are Houthis who continue to act in the Red Sea and against Israel almost with impunity. Iran and North Korea supply Russia with arms despite the sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council. Moscow calculates all these factors.

★🌐 Wisdom from the Bloodlands. Zbigniew Brzezinski embodied the perspective of Central Europe–and captured a reality that the West ignores at its own peril:

… In Thucydidean terms, Central and Eastern Europe can be best characterized as a Melian Archipelago. We are a stretch of small and weak states that have had to submit to the more powerful, and often suffered horrific destruction from the Scylla in the west and Charybdis in the east. Indeed, we modern day Melians have had too much of doing what we must and our neighbors doing what they will. Therefore, in the third of a century since the democracy revolutions of 1989-91, we have placed at the core of our policies the resolution that never again will we allow ourselves to suffer the fate of our mothers, our fathers, and our ancestors stretching back a thousand years.

This too is why we take what too many consider just a cliché—the rule-based international order—far more seriously than others. Yes, we know the fate of the Melians and what resulted from their having put their faith in treaties and agreements. But what else can we appeal to? For too many to the west of us, it’s a cute cliché as well, a cliché that falls victim to self-interested so-called realism or Realpolitik. But it is why for us, the rules-based European Union and NATO are of such vital importance. 

The Melian tragedy is repeating today right before our eyes in Ukraine. Agreements are not kept, the strong do what they will, and the weak what they must. Tellingly, I think Brzezinski would point out, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (with the exception of the one country faltering in democracy) are the ones who try the most to help a fellow victim. We see this in the percentages of GDP of military assistance given by Poland and the Baltic States, as well as the percentage of our own populations of the number of Ukrainian refugees we have taken in. To say that the task Europe faces in assisting our fellow Melian islander, Ukraine, is daunting, is a massive understatement. While to our west we see Scylla dithering as Ukraine is sucked into the whirlpool, we know full well what will happen if we lose Ukraine from the swath of democracies running from Estonia down to Slovenia. 

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ISRAEL/GAZA

→Hamas arrives in Cairo for ceasefire talks with deal “on the table”

→Israeli military review of Gaza aid convoy deaths finds most killed in stampede

→Vice-President Harris cheered for “immediate ceasefire” call, clarifies she means six-week truce

→Gaza airstrike takes out senior Hamas recruiter as IDF raises troop death toll to 246

→IDF says 450 Hamas terrorists killed in last few days, over 13,000 in total

→Hamas and Fatah were in Moscow on Thursday for reconciliation talks.

★ Israel won’t send team to Cairo, believes Sinwar seeks escalation:

… According to Channel 12, the war cabinet and the professional echelon all agreed that there was no point in sending a delegation to Egypt for ongoing talks given Hamas’s response. Several Hebrew media outlets reported growing pessimism in Israel on Sunday that a hostage and truce deal can be reached before Ramadan. Unnamed officials cited by Channel 12, Ynet and others said Jerusalem suspects Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar has no intention of reaching an agreement in the coming days and hopes to escalate violence over Ramadan, which is expected to start March 10.

In such a scenario, Israel is wary of an escalation not just along its borders with Gaza and Lebanon, but also across the West Bank, where tensions are high, as well as in Jerusalem, where clashes over the Temple Mount and access to the holy site are widely expected.

Following Thursday’s deadly melee in Gaza City surrounding an aid convoy, Israel will try new solutions for delivering humanitarian supplies to northern Gaza this week:

One option is for convoys to be secured by IDF forces without handing over to local guards. … Entering the Gaza Strip through its northern border with Israel, instead of sending the convoy through Kerem Shalom in the south, is also a possibility. Up to this point, trucks have been checked at southern crossings, from which they then must make their way across an active war zone to reach the northern part of the Strip.

The far-reaching consequences of Thursday’s Gaza aid disaster. Deadly incident will likely complicate both war aims—dismantling Hamas and returning the hostages—exacerbate friction on other fronts, boost global calls for permanent ceasefire:

It is far from certain that even the most assiduous efforts by an Israeli leadership to address those two issues could have prevented Thursday morning’s deaths of many Gazans in the chaos and crush surrounding a convoy of aid trucks. But with Israel widely regarded, and regarding itself, as the only non-Hamas address for mid-war Gaza, it is Israel that the international community—relentless enemies and broad supporters alike—considers to be ultimately responsible for the incident.

The very nature of the disaster, involving large crowds desperately converging on precious supplies whose only route into Gaza is via Israeli inspection points, underlines why the finger of blame is being pointed at Israel. And never mind Israel’s claim that much more aid has been made available than the UN has proved able to distribute; that the desperation for food and supplies is largely a consequence of a still partly potent Hamas commandeering aid; and that the deaths on Thursday were almost all a consequence of a stampede around the trucks and of people being run over, with Gazan gunmen also firing at the scene.

🌐 The case for early elections in Israel: What Israel needs is the sober, determined, and farsighted decision-making of David Ben-Gurion. What it has, instead, is the narcissistic, manipulative, shortsighted approach of Benjamin Netanyahu. (By Ehud Barak.)

After more than four months of war in Gaza, two starkly different but equally accurate portraits of Israel have emerged. On the one hand, the war has showcased the tactical prowess of the Israel Defense Forces, inspired a high degree of unity among its troops, and promoted a sense of solidarity among Israeli citizens, who remain collectively traumatized by the barbarous October 7 terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas. On the other hand, the war has revealed the staggering strategic incompetence of the Israeli government and an astonishing leadership vacuum at the top. Members of the ruling coalition have dragged their feet on critical decisions, failed to cooperate with each other in navigating the war, attacked the IDF’s senior ranks, and appeared embarrassingly indifferent and unfocused when it comes to managing relations with Israel’s most important ally, the United States.

🌐 The Gaza war is testing Hezbollah’s strategic capability. Hezbollah knows escalation would hurt Iran and erode its support in Lebanon, forcing it to prioritize:

Although Hezbollah has celebrated some military successes over the past four months, the war in Gaza is testing its strategic capability. Despite being the instigator of the fight, Hezbollah is not setting the agenda. Its main priority is survival rather than victory. 

Over the last four months, Hezbollah has been trying to balance retaining its credibility as a major actor in the Iran-backed “axis of resistance” with steering clear of escalation with Israel. This is because Hezbollah knows that there is little appetite for all-out war among its supporters—and also because such a war would end up hurting, not serving, Iran. Any serious spread of the war into Lebanon would mean Israel fighting on two fronts, which in turn would probably necessitate US intervention to aid Israel. This would draw Iran itself nearer to war—something Tehran is keen to avoid. 

Israel has also tried to avoid such a scenario, despite its threatening rhetoric. The majority of its attacks on Lebanon since October have carefully targeted Hezbollah sites and personnel, exposing the vulnerability of Hezbollah’s military and security apparatus. 

🌐 For Israel to accept a Palestinian state, Israelis must first feel safe. Given the historically hollow international guarantees of Israel’s security, building trust is the first step—once the war is over and the hostages are home:

… The proposed plan and the leaks surrounding it speak of security guarantees that would be offered by Saudi Arabia, the Arab League, the UN, the European Union and the United States. Israelis look back to recent history and see the hollowness of international guarantees in relation to its security. In 2006, in the aftermath of the Second Lebanon War, Israel signed a cease fire agreement agreed to by the Lebanese government and Hezbollah and codified in United Nations resolution 1701 that ended the fighting, explicitly stated that only Lebanese government troops would be deployed in Southern Lebanon and that all militias including Hezbollah would be disarmed and no longer threaten the northern residents of Israel. None of this came to pass and today, 80,000 residents of northern Israel are internally displaced refugees in their own country. Thus, most Israelis are perforce very reluctant and hesitant to accept vague promises of international security umbrellas and normalization with Arab countries and demilitarization of the Palestinian state in the reality they have experienced.

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EUROPE

George Galloway’s Rochdale win should trouble Labour:

The Rochdale by-election raises a question that Labour will find hard to duck in government: can a European left-wing party survive without a pro-Islamist foreign policy? They can’t win with one, as Jeremy Corbyn proved twice. But the shocking success of George Galloway last night shows that the arguments of the Corbyn years have not been settled.

No one can pretend they do not know who the loudmouthed old ham really is after all this time. Just before Muslim voters propelled him to victory, Galloway received the endorsement of none other than Nick Griffin, the former leader of the British National Party. To use an overused label correctly for once, the BNP is genuinely neo-fascist. And yet Griffin had no qualms in recommending that his followers “get out and vote for George Galloway” and “stick two fingers up to the rotten political elite and their fake news media cronies.” Like cocktails before a dinner party, obsessions about Jews bring all the extremists together.

What better illustration could you have of the horseshoe theory? Admirers of dictators admire each other. Galloway "saluted” Saddam Hussein, whose forces killed tens of thousands of Muslims. He praised Bashar al-Assad, as the Syrian president’s forces slaughtered the country’s Sunni Muslim population, for maintaining the ‘fortress of the remaining dignity of the Arabs’—the grandiosity of Galloway’s pompous language was in inverse proportion to the misery Assad inflicted. None of this concerned Muslim voters in Rochdale. Opposition to Israel was all that mattered.

• Demagogues like Galloway feast on human misery, but Labour must stay calm. His victory in Rochdale shows how seriously the party has to take the threat of this kind of politics

Europe’s Socialists scramble for ideas to fight far-right surge. “The very soul of Europe is at risk,” warns Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez:

Europe’s center-left stuck to their guns without presenting many fresh ideas as the threat of a far-right surge loomed over a pre-election gathering in Rome. The Party of European Socialists launched its campaign for the European Parliament election with a focus on core tenets of their political philosophy: protecting workers’ rights, securing salaries and fighting climate change.

“The far right is a poison for democracy. They have no project other than to destroy democracy and our common social Europe,” said Nicolas Schmit, Luxembourg’s EU commissioner, after being chosen as the face of the campaign and the candidate to challenge his boss, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, for her job.

Germany accuses Moscow of “disinformation attack” in leaking senior officers’ call. Russia obtained a call by German officers discussing a hypothetical export of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine:

Russia used the leak of a confidential call between top German military officers as part of an “information war” to destabilize the country, Germany's Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Sunday. The 38-minute recording first emerged on Friday, published by Russia’s state media RT and later confirmed by the German government. In it, four senior Bundeswehr officers, reportedly including Air Force chief Ingo Gerhartz and Brigadier General Frank Gräfe, discuss the hypothetical export of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine and how they could be used to attack Russian infrastructure.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has steadfastly refused to send Kyiv such long-range cruise missiles—unlike the British and the French who have sent their own alternatives—and it’s an issue that is splintering the country’s governing coalition. … “It’s a hybrid disinformation attack — it’s about division, it's about undermining our unity,” Pistorius said, adding: “We mustn't fall for Putin.”

“Heads must roll now,” a former high-ranking Bundeswehr officer told POLITICO on condition of anonymity. “Conducting such a highly confidential conversation over an unsecured line is grossly negligent.”

Transnistria: ‘The Motherland’ doesn’t want you right now:

Transnistria has called an extraordinary session of the Soviet of All Deputies for February 28, only the seventh in its history, with former Communications Minister Gennady Chorba claiming the result would be a formal request to unify with Russia. In accord with the sometimes tenuous grasp of democratic norms in Russian-created mini-states, Chorba cited an 18-year-old referendum as evidence of the popular will in the illegally established breakaway state.

The Kremlin would—given its history—probably have no problem with the democratic failings of this plan. But it did have a serious problem with the former minister of a tiny entity (its official population is fewer than 400,000, or around the size of Cleveland, Ohio) deciding its next moves. Russian forces are far from the borders of Transnistria and the local Russian-officered force of about 1,300 is not considered a serious threat. Even Warhawks in the capital predict nothing but humiliation for Russia should Transnistria formally detach itself from Moldova.

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MIDDLE EAST

★ The truth about the Houthis. They are not anti-Imperialist rebels—they are a vicious and reactionary Islamist cult:

Over the past few months, Yemen’s Houthi rebels have been attacking container ships and energy tankers in the Red Sea. The Houthis say that these attacks are retaliation for Israel’s incursion into Gaza. This has delighted anti-Israel activists in the West, who have taken to the streets with a new chant: “Yemen, Yemen make us proud, turn another ship around.”

It’s clear that those Western leftists currently cheering on the Houthis know very little about this regressive movement.

Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the leader of the Houthis, announced plans to unveil military “surprises” in the Red Sea:

“Our military operations will continue and advance, and we have surprises that our enemies will not expect at all,” the Houthi leader said. … According to Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, the latest threats made by the Houthi leadership to disrupt Red Sea shipping are “a pretty clear indicator that the group is not, in fact, deterred.”

“That’s a serious challenge to US strategy because the Biden administration has been banking on limited, targeted strikes as being enough to change Houthi behavior and diminish the threat they pose to regional security and the global economy,” he added.

(Yeah. I told them so.)

Turkey has received a letter of acceptance and a draft offer for a new F-16 sale package from the United States:

The submission of the acceptance and offer letters marks another turn in the Turkish deal, which has been pending since 2021. A breakthrough in the process came with Turkey’s ratification of Sweden's membership to NATO on Jan. 23 after nearly two years of objections.

The turnout in Iran’s parliamentary elections appears to have dropped to 41 percent, a record low, but according to the official figures, not quite to the levels of mass abstention that some surveys had predicted.

Polls closed at midnight on Friday, six hours later than planned due to what officials claimed was a second surge in polls in the evening, but Tehran’s middle class stayed away, fewer than 24 percent of the 8 million eligible to vote bothering to do so. Overall, the turnout and result could leave conservatives firmly in charge and free to pursue their economic and foreign policies, but they may be weakened by internal factionalism now that reformists have largely been purged. It is possible that some relatively unknown candidates opposed to the status quo have been elected in the provinces, where hundreds of novice candidates were permitted to stand.

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ASIA

→IMF: India “easily” the fastest growing economy

→Indian farmers plan march on Delhi in call for higher crop prices

→India to build new naval base on Lakshadweep archipelago to boost security

→China’s factories send mixed signals about the economy

→Shehbaz Sharif elected Pakistan’s prime minister for second term

→Pakistan Swears in New Parliament as Imran Khan’s Followers Protest

→Philippines spots 50 Chinese ships in disputed South China Sea waters

→Is the United States Overestimating China’s Power?China Risks New Taiwan Strait Crisis

★ India eliminates extreme poverty

Official data now confirms that India has eliminated extreme poverty, as commonly defined in international comparisons. This is an encouraging development with positive implications for global poverty headcount rates. This also means that time has come for India to graduate to a higher poverty line much like other countries. The transition to a higher poverty line provides an opportunity to redefine existing social protection programs particularly with the objective of better identification of intended beneficiaries and providing greater support to the genuine poor.

Claire—Anyone old enough to remember what India used to be like will appreciate what a breathtaking reduction in human misery this represents. I’ve written about India’s economic transformation, here.

• Related: The world’s fastest-growing big economy is living up to its billing:

  India has reported surprisingly robust economic growth, ending 2023 on a high note and providing a boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi just weeks before an election that could give him a third term in office. Gross domestic product in the world’s fastest growing major economy surged 8.4 percent in the final three months of 2023 compared with a year prior, up from growth of 7.6 percent in the June-to-September period, the country’s statistics office said Thursday. The latest increase was much stronger than analysts expected and means India’s economy “ended last year with a bang,” Thamashi De Silva, assistant India economist at Capital Economics, wrote in a note.

The number of babies born in Japan fell for an eighth straight year to a record low in 2023:

The number of births fell 5.1 percent from a year earlier to 758,631, while the number of marriages slid 5.9 percent to 489,281—the first time in 90 years the number fell below 500,000—foreboding a further decline in the population as out-of-wedlock births are rare in Japan.

Myanmar: human rights situation has “morphed into a never-ending nightmare,” says Türk:

“Since I last addressed this Council in September, armed conflict has escalated and spread to nearly every corner of the country. Three years of military rule have inflicted—and continue to inflict—unbearable levels of suffering and cruelty on people in Myanmar. Three years of military operations designed to repress, terrify, dehumanize and destroy. The subversion of the people’s right freely to elect their civilian leaders. Crackdowns on all forms of opposition and dissent. Total abuse of power and impunity. The depth of this crisis impacting all facets of life is emblematic of the persistent failure to respect democratic norms and fundamental freedoms. Development goes into freefall. Conflict proliferates. The human toll is mounting.

Credible sources have verified that over 4,603 civilians, including 659 women and 490 children, have been killed at the hands of the military since February 2021. The actual toll is certainly much higher.

Two Canadian microbiology researchers in Canada passed secrets to China:

… The hundreds of pages of reports about the two researchers, Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng, who were married and born in China, were released to the House of Commons late Wednesday after a national security review by a special parliamentary committee and a panel of three retired senior judges. Canadian officials, who have warned that the country’s academic and research institutions are a target of Chinese intelligence campaigns, have tightened rules around collaborating with foreign universities. Canadian universities can now be disqualified from federal funding if they enter into partnerships with any of 100 institutions in China, Russia and Iran.

The release of the documents was the subject of a prolonged debate in Parliament that began before the last federal election, in September 2021. Opposition parties asked to see the records at least four times and found the Liberal government to be in contempt of Parliament in 2021. The government filed a lawsuit in an attempt to keep the records hidden, but dropped it when the vote was called.

China’s advancements in space technology—and its nuclear triad—are proceeding with incredible speed, even as Russia remains an unpredictable and dangerous threat, top officials from US Strategic Command and Space Command told lawmakers Thursday. 

What “China and Russia are doing, particularly building with their counter-space weapons, they’re moving breathtakingly fast,” Gen. Stephen Whiting, the head of US Space Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. US forces rely heavily on space assets. China and Russia know that, and it’s becoming a growing vulnerability, Whiting said. 

🌐 How to respond to China’s Global Security Initiative:

As Beijing grapples with lean economic times and a strategic environment in which the United States retains enduring advantages, Chinese diplomacy increasingly caters to the worldviews of illiberal states in the developing world. This follows the thinking of leading Chinese international relations scholar Yan Xuetong, who posits that a weaker rising power can overtake a stronger established power if it delineates a moral worldview with greater currency in the international community. In its efforts to cast itself as a force for global good, Beijing consistently juxtaposes its commitment to “true multilateralism” with the “selective multilateralism” it ascribes to the United States and its allies. The implicit goal is not multilateralism per se but rolling back what China (and Russia) view as undue American “hegemony” to advance a multipolar world.

In addition to boosting China’s say in the United Nations and other established international bodies, Beijing promotes an ever-expanding array of global and regional “initiatives.” The largest of these efforts are the Belt and Road Initiative and the “Three Major [Global] initiatives” (三大倡议) announced by Xi from late 2021 through early 2023, comprised of the Global Development Initiative, the Global Security Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative. The effort to establish China as a global security leader is where Beijing’s formula of high-intensity diplomatic engagement, Sinocentric multilateralism, and appealing to the values of likeminded states in the Global South will be most tested.

… As many countries are leery of being compelled to “choose sides” in the ongoing US-Chinese geostrategic rivalry, Washington is correct to focus on developing relationships with states in the Global South in their own right. Indeed, many states in Africa, Asia, and the Americas continue to derive immense value from cooperating with the United States to address shared challenges. However, Washington should also grapple with the reality that many countries in the Global South are deeply suspicious of what they see as America’s selective application of the “rules-based international order.” For many such countries, China’s approach connotes greater respect for cultural diversity and collective, versus individual, advancement. Consequently, efforts by Washington to highlight China’s various international initiatives as “Trojan horses” for Chinese influence risk backfiring by playing into Beijing’s depiction of the United States as a decaying imperial power wedded to sustaining its purported “military hegemony” (美国军事霸权) at all costs. In order to avoid this, Washington should modulate its approach towards the Global South, focusing more on specific areas of mutually beneficial cooperation. …

A rare public opinion poll records popular dissatisfaction ahead of China’s National People’s Congress:

… [A]n independent opinion poll in Southern China’s Guangzhou has revealed record levels of dissatisfaction among China’s populace, especially about the economy, employment and pay. The annual session of the national legislature starting next week comes as socio-economic challenges are compounded by demographic shifts and policy uncertainties. Censors quickly deleted posts about the poll from social media. It will be interesting to see whether party and state leaders stick to the usual self-congratulatory rhetoric at the NPC or acknowledge the stark reality on the ground.

The poll by the Canton Public Opinion Research Center, a well-established NGO, shows public satisfaction with the economy has hit its lowest point since 2015. Some 20 of 26 regularly compiled indicators fell—a first in the 36 polls conducted since 1990. Moreover, assessments of employment and income have worsened, with only 36 percent of respondents satisfied with job prospects and 31 percent satisfied with income. Frustration is widespread, especially among young people, lower-income individuals and the less-educated.

Europe sanctions Chinese companies for indirectly aiding Russian war effort:

On the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Union imposed sanctions on three companies in mainland China and one in Hong Kong for allegedly indirectly aiding Moscow’s war effort. The quartet joins three Hong Kong-based companies, which the EU last year banned from buying selected high-tech components in Europe. The thirteenth Russia-related sanctions package came as the EU investigates whether Chinese car makers and train maker CRRC receive state subsidies that allow them to sell their products at dumping prices. This could see the EU take restrictive measures against Chinese companies.

Providing an economic and political lifeline to what is today Europe’s existential threat is meant to have a cost for China. The EU has consistently said China’s support for Russia would have consequences. But Beijing said the sanctions would worsen relations by violating “the consensus and spirit” of the recent China-EU leaders’ meeting. That begs [sic] the question whether the EU is ready for a possible tit-for-tat escalation with China. It has imposed sanctions as it considers taking restrictive measures against Chinese imports. As the Chinese recently announced investigation into French brandy shows, Beijing seems ready to retaliate. European leaders will have to show the resolve to maintain a joint position as they engage with Xi Jinping.

🌐c★ Developing effective deterrence in Asia:

The state of deterrence against China in the Indo-Pacific is constantly adapting to the evolving threat Beijing poses to the United States and its allies on multiple fronts. But  a growing number of US military service members warn that deterrence is unravelling. …

At the political level, there was no doubt that China had to be deterred from shaping the Indo-Pacific to suit its strategic priorities. But a common theme was the ambiguity regarding US and allied deterrence objectives, and a focus on the need to prioritise which People’s Republic of China activities to deter. Provocative actions by the PRC including its illegal territorial claims, airspace violations, construction and militarization of artificial islands, establishment of administrative structures to exert political pressure, and deployment of militia vessels to gradually cement its presence in contested waters, were key areas of concern. However, deterring these coercive “grey zone” activities, which occur below the threshold of kinetic warfare, requires a different approach to how US allies and partners challenge Beijing’s territorial claims over Taiwan, Japan’s Senkaku islands, or India’s state of Arunachal Pradesh.

China’s moves are beyond a gradual accumulation of small salami-slicing actions that add up to a significant strategic change. A more accurate way of characterizing China’s behaviour is that it reflects a revisionist surge strategy that is multipronged, accelerating, and designed to overwhelm and disrupt the strategic environment to help it ultimately become the preponderant power. This strategic challenge is not one that the US can confront alone but it can be counterbalanced through a collective effort involving allies and partners. A joint effort is needed to push back against China’s goal to assert dominance and reshape the Indo-Pacific strategic environment to align with its interests.

Although US policymakers are increasingly cognisant of China’s multidomain coercive toolkit, there’s an absence of clear political messaging that articulates why safeguarding the Indo-Pacific from Chinese influence is essential for both US and global strategic interests. Making the case for maintaining mare liberum, the free sea, and demonstrating the political will to build and sustain deterrence is vital to reassure allies and partners and to temper China’s revisionist activities.

🌐 Vietnam’s leaders declare war on human rights as a matter of official policy:

For years, the United States and the European Union have argued that deepening ties with Vietnam will help promote human rights in the country. A recently obtained national security policy puts to rest this magical thinking. Just two months before President Biden upgraded diplomatic relations with Vietnam in September 2023, the country’s leaders issued a secret directive that aims to violate human rights and subvert democracy.

In July 2023, the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Vietnam issued Directive 24 “on ensuring national security in the context of comprehensive and deep international integration.” The directive frames all forms of international commerce and cooperation as threats to national security and articulates a disturbing plan to deal with these perceived threats by systematically violating the human rights of the country’s 100 million citizens, who, by virtue of the classified nature of the directive, are completely unaware of its contents. Directive 24 reveals that Vietnam’s leaders are profoundly ambivalent about the country’s integration with the world and offers a rare look into their paranoid minds.

In Directive 24, Vietnam’s leaders lay bare their plan to control foreign travel by Vietnamese citizens, correct a lack of ideological fidelity among communist party members, and stop civil society from shaping state policy and establishing political opposition groups. Ironically for a self-declared socialist state, the formation of independent trade unions is also identified as a national security problem that must be addressed. In short, Directive 24 aims to subvert democratic control over public policy and the economy.

Directive 24 was issued by the Political Bureau of the Central Party Committee on July 13, 2023, and promulgated five months later in an internal party workshop.

China’s embassy condemns Philippine envoy’s remarks on South China Sea

China’s embassy in the Philippines on Sunday said it “strongly” condemns the Philippine ambassador to Washington’s recent China-related remarks, saying they “disregarded basic facts.” The remarks “wantonly hyped up the South China Sea issue and made speculations and malicious smears against China,” the embassy said in a statement. Jose Manuel Romualdez said on Wednesday that while the United States sees both the South China Sea issue and a potential Taiwan conflict as “serious concerns,” he believed the “real flashpoint is the West Philippine Sea” given “all of these skirmishes happening there.”

The Chinese embassy said: “Inviting wolves into the house and engaging in small circles will not only not help resolve the differences in the South China Sea, but on the contrary will complicate the regional situation, and undermine regional peace and stability.” It urged Romualdez to stop spreading the “China threat theory” and “paranoia of persecution,” and to refrain from “acting as a spokesperson for other countries.”

🌐★ China has thousands of Navalnys, hidden from the public. China has no dissident with the kind of public profile that Aleksei A. Navalny had. The government has many critics, but they all disappear from view.

… The names of most Chinese political prisoners are censored online. Once arrested, they are never heard from again. No one can visit them except their direct relatives and their lawyers, although that is not guaranteed. China’s political prisoners cannot correspond with the outside world and are left to rot behind bars, even if they are struggling with health problems — exactly how Mr. Liu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, died from late-stage liver cancer in government custody.

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AFRICA

→ UN rights chief: Blocking aid to Sudan could be a war crime

→US pushes for UN Security Council action to end war in Sudan

→Sudan’s Economy Contracts 40 percent

→ICC orders record US$56 million compensation for Uganda victims

→Gunfire heard in Chad’s capital as government accuses opposition of inciting unrest

→Burkina Faso prosecutor says around 170 “executed” in attacks on villages

→UN Peacekeepers begin withdrawal from Eastern Congo

→A military court in Somalia has sentenced six Islamic State fighters from Morocco to death.

Iran is stepping up shipments of attack drones to the Sudanese military, further internationalizing the North African country’s civil war and potentially providing Tehran with a new ally through which to project power into the Red Sea:

… The SAF is expected to deploy the Mohajer-6 drones to try and block RSF offensive operations that have allowed the rebels to gain control of large swathes of central and western Sudan, as well as much of Khartoum, over the past year. The Sudanese government and the SAF’s commander, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, are largely based today out of Port Sudan on the Red Sea. US and Arab officials said they believe Iran aims to use its relations with the SAF to bolster Tehran’s regional alliances and allow the country to project more power into the strategic waterways in the Red Sea.

In Adré camp, eastern Chad, several Sudanese refugees who fled the city of El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur told Ayin what happened in the Darfur region following the military battles, especially the direct violations against unarmed civilians by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF):

Victims and witnesses who were able to escape reported to Ayin that there were massacres and violations in the state of West Darfur, as well as physical violence, mutilation of dead bodies, and gouging of eyes by the RSF and their allied tribal militias.

★ Ayin also published an investigation (in Arabic), accompanied by a video, showing that survivors of the Ardamata massacre were sold as slaves.

Somalia has signed security deals with the United States, Turkey and Uganda in recent weeks as multiplying tensions in the Horn of Africa raise fears of possible armed conflicts in the region:

An agreement signed with Washington commits the US to building five military bases for the Somali army to bolster the counter’s military capacity amid ongoing threats from the extremist group al-Shabab, while a ten-year security deal with Turkey is aimed at strengthening Somalia’s naval force and to help patrol its 2000-mile country’s coastline. Somalia has also signed an agreement to deepen its military collaboration with Uganda.

The case against military rule. Nigeria needs a change of direction, not a change of government:

With Nigeria plunged into a full-blown crisis due to a worsening economic climate, a cross-section of Nigerians, desperate for a quick turnaround and certain that the Bola Tinubu administration has lost the plot, have started clamoring for a coup d’état. So loud has been the agitation, especially on social media, that Chief of Defense Staff Christopher Musa came out last week to warn those behind it that “the law will come after them,” and that “the armed forces of Nigeria are here to protect democracy.” 

It is an interesting paradox that the same generation of Nigerians who have consistently put their bodies on the line in defense of democracy are the ones now apparently demanding military intervention. The paradox is resolved as soon as it is realized that though seemingly divergent, both the hunger for democracy and the incipient yearning for khaki rule are united by the same impulse. That impulse is, not to put too fine a point on it, a government that delivers and is the thread that runs through the ongoing ferment in Nigeria and the spectacle in Western and Central Africa where, defying expectation, throngs of young people took to the streets to welcome assorted coupists.

Making Bretton Woods work for Africa. The recent push to reform the global financial architecture creates an opportunity to build a more inclusive system that matches Africa’s aspirations, accelerates the green transition, and advances development objectives. Most importantly, such a system must provide equal access to reliable and affordable capital.

African leaders are calling for better controls on the dash for the minerals and metals needed for a clean energy transition:

A resolution for structural change that will promote equitable benefit-sharing from extraction, supported by a group of mainly African countries including Senegal, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Chad, was presented at the UN environmental assembly in Nairobi on Wednesday and called for the sustainable use of transitional minerals. … “We need to make sure that industrialization happens here and that we’re not just serving another continent’s industrialization plan,” said Seble Samuel, head of Africa campaigns and advocacy at the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty initiative. “We cannot afford to replicate the same injustices and extractivism that’s happened with the fossil fuel economy.

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AMERICAS

→Haitian police unions plead for help after attack on main prison.

→Gunfire paralyzes Haiti as gang leader pushes for prime minister’s removal

→Gangs free 4,000 inmates in mass jailbreak

→Kenyan police to tackle Haiti’s gangs.

→Yellen says Argentina moving toward fiscal sustainability

→Mexico is about to have its biggest election ever. Here’s a guide.

→Tanker backlog grows in Venezuela as PDVSA struggles to deliver oil. 

→Bolivia’s socialist rulers and the capitalists they snubbed try to fix shortages 

🌐 The man who now controls the US border. Mexico’s president gets to determine whether an immigration crisis dominates headlines in a US election year:

… The United States might at another time have raised objections to López Obrador’s attacks on Mexican democratic institutions. But the Biden administration has kept quiet. López Obrador has proclaimed again and again his preference for Donald Trump over Joe Biden. The Mexican president lavished Trump with praise and deferred to Trump’s denial of the 2020 presidential-election outcome. López Obrador knows that Trump will say and do nothing to uphold Mexican democracy, whereas he fears that a reelected Biden might. López Obrador’s leading rival for the presidency, Xóchitl Gálvez, told me in Washington, DC, last week, “President López Obrador blackmails America with the issue of immigrants.”

• President Andrés Manuel López Obrador stepped up enforcement to prevent migrant surges along the US border, helping Biden. Can he sustain it?

Mexico City is facing a severe water crisis. The situation has now reached such critical levels that Mexico City could face “day zero” in a matter of months—where the taps run dry for huge swaths of the city.

Mexico’s “hugs, not bullets” crime policy spreads grief, murder, and extortion. Drug cartels have more towns and families in their grip under a presidential policy intended to quell gang violence by emphasizing public aid over policing

How foreign aid to Haiti has fueled organized crime. As Haiti continues to make headlines amid struggles to control crime and insecurity, a new book traces the roots of the institutional weaknesses that have aided the growth and entrenchment of criminal organizations. Here’s an interview with the author, Jake Johnston.

Javier Milei’s shock therapy in Argentina is a big gamble. He needs to show Argentinians a real economic turnaround before patience runs out. He risks being thrown out of office early.

The fabric of international security relationships could be on the cusp of unraveling, with Latin America forced to forge a new path. This piece explores the potential ripple effects of a breakdown in Transatlantic relations on Latin America’s security strategy, asking whether these nations might seek new partnerships or fortify existing ones outside the traditional US-centric framework:

… A disinterested US policy toward Latin American security would likely see competitors such as Russia and China, even Iran, fill in the gaps. Russian officials conducted a charm offensive last week as they visited countries they see as like-minded—Nicaragua, Cuba, and Brazil. China has grown not only as an economic actor, but as a security partner in Latin America in recent years, and the BRICS economic bloc has also made a concerted effort to expand its footprint in the hemisphere. Iran has long had a presence in Venezuela and Bolivia has shown interest in purchasing Iranian weapons.

While Latin American and Caribbean governments may be geographically removed from what many regional leaders consider an internal European conflict, the region has not been spared from the war’s economic and geopolitical repercussions:

In the two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many countries continue their pursuit of nonalignment, neither condemning Russia for the invasion nor fully supporting Ukraine. Some have sought to play a role in peace talks, while the Western Hemisphere’s three consolidated dictatorships (Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) have found themselves squarely in Moscow’s corner. Russia has also stepped up its engagement with the region, hoping to throw the United States off balance with military cooperation and a ceaseless and effective disinformation campaign across the region. Finally, for a small but important segment, the war is anything but distant, as citizens from throughout the hemisphere have signed up to fight on the frontlines for both Russia and Ukraine.

What happened to Lula? How he dashed high hopes for Brazil’s foreign policy—and how he can get back on track:

… during his first year in office, Lula has struggled to translate his vision for a more progressive global order into action. His foreign policy thus far has been beset by diplomatic missteps that have strained relations with partners in both the West and the developing world. His statements and actions have cast doubts on his role as peacemaker, coalition builder, and champion of the marginalized. His commitment to environmental leadership has been marred by his decision to turn Brazil into the latest petrostate. And his grand design overlooks his country’s most pressing threat: the explosive expansion of criminal networks that are working hard to turn Brazil into a failed state and that are undermining the ecological integrity of the Amazon rainforest.

• Lula’s gaffes are dulling Brazil’s G20 shine. Its relationships with the West are healing. But Brazil has not decided what kind of country it will be.

• Lula pulls off rare trick twice, wooing Wall Street and the poor. Brazil economy beat expectations in 2023, but is slowing down. That’s when social spending plans may clash with budget vows.

Bolsonaro seems finished. Bolsonarismo lives on. A large but somewhat uncertain rally points to a transition ahead for Brazil’s conservative movement:

… A crowd of hundreds of thousands gathered on Avenida Paulista on a Sunday afternoon, many dressed in yellow and green Brazilian soccer jerseys, cheered wildly as Jair Bolsonaro took the stage. But it quickly became clear this was a different, more subdued Bolsonaro. Instead of attacking his adversaries, the former president focused on defending himself and his allies from legal troubles stemming from their efforts to overturn the 2022 election.  “What is a coup?” Bolsonaro mused in an almost plaintive tone. “It’s a tank in the street, a gun, a conspiracy. None of that was done in Brazil.” He complained of “abuse by some” in power, but pointedly did not mention either President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Brazil’s Supreme Court, his usual villains, by name.

The case for containing, not coddling, Maduro. The inability of the US to facilitate a return to democracy in Venezuela does not justify accommodating dictatorship in the name of engagement:

It is time for the Biden administration to recognize the truth that has been on display for years: the Maduro dictatorship will not be goaded into meaningful democratic processes that put its power and criminal earnings at risk. It is past time for a US shift from a posture wishful thinking to containment. The benefit of Venezuelan oil on global markets is marginal, while the costs of delaying an aggressive response to Maduro’s cynical posture are enormous. 

Maduro’s demonstrated success in defying the United States makes the powers that count—his security forces and political accomplices—more likely to stay loyal, despite their own doubts and agendas. It reassures leftist populists across the region, from Miguel Diaz-Canel in Cuba to the Ortegas in Nicaragua, that repression, rather than concession, ultimately pays. The restrained US response to Maduro’s transgressions undermines the perception of Administration resolve globally. The perception of US acquiescence and Maduro’s enhanced domestic control encourages US adversaries China, Russia and Iran to expand their commercial, political, and defense engagement with Venezuela at a time in which the growing risk of US-Iran confrontation in the Middle East increases the incentives of Iran and Hezbollah to expand their use of Venezuela as their principal base of operations in the region, and while US and European dithering over support for the Ukraine emboldens Putin to similarly expand his longstanding military activities with Maduro to telegraph his ability to threaten the US in its own near abroad. Maduro’s aggressive claims over the oil and mineral rich Guyanese territory of Essequibo may also be encouraged by his perception of US timidity on sanctions. Finally, Maduro’s expanded oil income from sanctions relief may enhance its ability to support leftist populist movements and destabilize democratic regimes, at a time when the region is under unprecedented socioeconomic stresses. 

Venezuela stops pretending. The world should, too. The international community faces tough decisions once again, after a high-profile arrest and expulsion:

After months of stringing along his own citizens and the international community with hopes of a quasi-democratic thaw, Venezuela’s dictator arrested a well-known human rights activist and then abruptly kicked a United Nations’ human rights agency out of the country, giving its staff 72 hours to leave. … The feeling you hear now, from some activists in Venezuela and diplomats in capitals around the Americas, at least in private, is helplessness.

Venezuela, at this point, looks like a consolidated authoritarian regime, like Cuba (which advises Maduro and has been “going strong” for 65 years now) or Russia. … The international community can still do things to encourage the return of democracy. But it [should recognize] the sad truth that once a dictatorship takes hold, it becomes incredibly difficult to dislodge—and therefore focus first on realistic options for managing the situation as it is.

• More than 65 percent of Venezuelans say they would go back to their country if the opposition wins this year’s presidential elections. Less than 15 percent say they would do so if President Nicolás Maduro secures a third term, even if the economy significantly improves.

Petro’s pension reform tests Colombian Senate. Despite having a minority in the upper house, the ruling Pacto Histórico may get the toned-down proposal approved. The House of Representatives will be tougher.

Ecuador needs economic support to fight its war on gangs. A nationwide military deployment leaves little room for necessary social investments:

… Economics, security, and migration are linked. That means that all three issues must be combated in tandem. Across Latin America, countries incur substantial economic losses due to organized crime. Ecuador alone suffered a loss of more than US$12 billion (6 percent of its GDP based on purchasing power parity) in 2023 due to violence, according to the Institute of Economics and Peace—an annual per capita hit of approximately US$1,127. That value is expected to increase this year.

Other countries across the region—such as Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil—also face substantial economic losses due to criminal gang violence, costing their economies an estimated 29 percent, 11 percent, and 11 percent of their GDPs based on purchasing power parity, respectively. But unlike these nations, Ecuador lacks a trade agreement with the United States, its main trading partner. This impacts the competitiveness of Ecuadorian products in the United States, which face high tariffs. It also limits the ability of Ecuadorian industry to scale up production and job creation.

Argentina’s Milei warns lawmakers he will make reforms “with or without” them, vowing to pass his reforms by presidential decree if lawmakers do not fall in line.

A growing hunger: Argentina’s soup kitchens battle Milei’s spending cuts. Under President Javier Milei, Argentina’s government has cut funds to community kitchens, sparking mass protests.

Why Washington should side with Argentina’s Milei against Beijing:

… Throughout his winning campaign, the country’s new far-right president, a libertarian economist, made it clear he would be no friend to Xi Jinping. … Now that Milei is in office, that policy promises a dramatic reordering of Argentina’s international relations, raises the possibility of an economically devastating diplomatic clash between Buenos Aires and Beijing, and presents the United States with an unexpected opportunity to offer alternatives to Chinese trade and investment. The stakes are high in a region where China’s influence has increased dramatically in recent decades, leaving little incentive for leaders to take sides in the US-Chinese competition. Washington should make the most of this opportunity and demonstrate the benefits of siding with America.

Honduras’s ‘narco-state’ on trial in US:

The first week of the trial of Honduras’ ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández was marked by dramatic testimony that detailed how drug money corrupted every level of the Honduran government and painted a damning picture of how state security forces were co-opted by drug trafficking groups. 

Career US diplomat abruptly admits to spying for Cuba for decades:

… The brief hearing shed no new light on the question that has proved elusive since Rocha’s arrest in December: What exactly did he do to help Cuba while working at the State Department for two decades? That included stints as ambassador to Bolivia and top posts in Argentina, Mexico, the White House and the US Interests Section in Havana.

Peter Lapp, who oversaw FBI counterintelligence against Cuba between 1998 and 2005, said the fast resolution of the case benefits not only the elderly Rocha but also the government, which stands to learn a lot about Cuba’s penetration of US foreign policy circles.

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GLOBAL

How Russia’s invasion of Ukraine affects global food security:

Russia and Ukraine are key suppliers to the global food market and together constituted 12 percent of global food trade between 2019 and 2021. However, since 2022, the export of grain, sunflower oil and other products from Ukraine has been drastically cut by Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea ports. The Black Sea grain initiative was established to ensure the safe passage of grain from Ukraine but Russia withdrew from the agreement.

Blocking these exports has contributed to an increase in global crop and food prices, which were already higher than pre-Covid19 levels. Higher food prices have worsened hunger and poverty around the world, with 345 million people now in immediate danger from acute food insecurity. In addition, disruptions in the Suez Canal due to attacks on ships in the Red Sea along with plummeting transits in the Panama Canal due to dwindling water levels from climate change-induced drought have compounded global food insecurity.

Although distant from the Ukraine conflict, the Indo-Pacific region is similarly being impacted by food insecurity. Even Australia, as a highly food secure country and a net exporter of food, is not immune. Australia is an open trading nation that is very susceptible to what’s occurring on the global food market. A near record increase in food prices in Australia has been driven by factors including the conflict in Ukraine, Covid19 and climate-induced disasters such as drought. For example, the global spike in wheat prices due to the war drove up Australia’s bread and cereal prices.

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🦇 THE DAILY BAT

Don’t miss this one. There are some highly notable moments in it. These children, in Magadan, enjoyed this song, performed by Russian soldiers who had just returned from combat, explaining what Russia is doing in Ukraine.

John Mearsheimer was not available for comment.

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🥢 THE CCP DESPAIRS OF YOU

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TODAY’S ANIMAL

The hamster:

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Wouldn’t you like to receive GLOBAL EYES—and all of our other terrific reports, classes, seminars, and special benefits—regularly? Of course you would! Act now to get 50 percent off, because you have less than 24 hours to claim the offer, after which, who knows—it may never come around again.

Welcome, new subscribers!

1. By the way, for the 12 percent of you who chose “What archive?” when I asked if the ME 101 archive was useful to you, have a look at this newsletter in your browser. Look at the top, where you’ll see this:

If you click on the tab that says “Middle East 101,” you’ll find the complete archive of the class, from the first week to the most recent, in chronological order, with every week’s introduction, reading lists, chronology, discussion questions, videos, and recordings of our meetings. I was just looking through it and (if I do say so myself) it’s a solid introduction to the Arab-Israeli conflict. I was heartened to learn how many of you are following along and getting something out of it. That’s what I was hoping.

2. You can also read a text-only version here.