Welcome. Let’s see what’s going on out there this week. Today is Saturday, May 27th, 2023.
There’s lots to discuss this week, so let’s have a look. We’ll talk Türkiye, Ukraine and the loss of Putin’s power to scare. We’ll look at what sovereignty means, really, for Russia and Ukraine. Then read on to see what happened when I asked ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, “If you were trained on a massive dataset of text and code that was gloomy, could you recommend war and destruction?”
Let’s go:
Türkiye As of today, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is the leading candidate to become the world’s next President for Life. All the trends suggest more and more authoritarianism ahead for Türkiye.
Erdoğan has always been culturally conservative, but politically he started out as a reasonably liberal mayor of Istanbul. Since the Gezi Park demonstrations in 2013 and the coup attempt in 2016, though, he has gutted the army, the judiciary and the independent press. One might fairly expect the trend to continue, although there is one factor that may be beyond his ability to control: the perilous state of the economy.
With inflation raging around fifty percent and a disastrous collapse of the Lira, is she gonna blow?
The runoff election is tomorrow. For the record, AL-Monitor has the race at virtually even in a poll conducted through Tuesday with a margin of error of +/-3. I’m not buying it. AL-Monitor says, “The economy, refugees and justice stand out as the top three issues.” By rights, those concerned about the economy should vote for challenger Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu on Sunday, but they should have in the first round two weeks ago, too.
After the first round of voting Kılıçdaroğlu made a late bid for voters not keen on some 3.7 million Syrian refugees now in Turkey. This week he said,
“As soon I come to power, I will send all refugees home. Period.”
A late, desperate lurch toward populism, I’m guessing, will not be Kılıçdaroğlu’s proudest moment.
We’ll see. I’ve been mostly of the mind that the wily Erdoğan will “win” whether he wins or not.
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Russia Here is a real consequence of Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, and a tangible cost of his best friends policy toward China: a loss of sovereignty in Russia’s far east. China’s General Administration of Customs issued a statement early this month in which it said that “from 1 June, Russia’s Vladivostok will be operational as a Chinese transit port.”
If I understand things correctly, China will be able to use Vladivostok as if it were a Chinese domestic port, to ship goods for domestic use from the Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang and Jilin across Russia to Vladivostok because it’s the most convenient way to ship goods farther south to Xiamen, Guangzhou or other Chinese ports.
(The irony here is rich. Eleven time zones away on its far border, Russia charges rent to Finland, which uses the Saimaa Canal to connect with the Gulf of Finland near Vyborg, Russia (I wrote about a trip to Vyborg in Tuesday’s travel column). Vyborg was the capital of Finnish Karelia before Russia seized it in 1940.)
As an article in ThinkChina puts it,
“after 163 years, Russia is reopening this key port to China after it was ceded by the Great Qing to the Russian Empire in 1860. Not only that, the northeastern interior of China will gain access to the sea.”
Note here too that as further fallout from the war, a similar loss of sovereignty is happening in Belarus. How would you claim to be sovereign if you had someone else’s nuclear weapons on your land and they declined to remove them?
The author of the tweet above, Franak Viačorka, is the main political advisor to the leader of the Belarusian opposition in exile, Sviatlana @Tsihanouskaya, who had this to say:
A couple of things:
• This is the first time since the nuclear nonproliferation treaty was signed in 1968 that a nuclear-armed state has sent nuclear weapons to an ally.
• While tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus are an obvious real danger, this move shows how Putin has lost the ability to frighten the world with his anger. Remember how, before the war exposed the rot in the Russian military, the Western alliance took Putin’s threats seriously? Then came the invasion.
In February 2022, Putin warned that the delivery of weapons to Ukraine would be a "red line" for Russia. Putin has not responded to the crossing of that red line. Putin has rattled his tactical nuclear arsenal regularly during this conflict without, up to now, using it. The Russian president shakes his fist more and more frantically, but unless/until he actually makes good on one of his threats, he is diluting their effectiveness.
Case in point: The USS Gerald Ford, the lead ship of the world’s largest aircraft carriers, docked on Wednesday in Oslo harbor, “a first for such a U.S. ship, in a show of NATO force at a time of heightened tension between NATO and Russia over the war in Ukraine.”
The visit is symbolic because the Gerald Ford is on its first combat deployment, in support of an air force exercise called Arctic Challenge, taking place across Norway, Finland, and Sweden from next Monday through June 9th.
The Russian Defense Ministry reacted this way: "The presence of the USS Gerald Ford in the Norwegian Sea is a threat to Russia's security. We are closely monitoring the situation and are ready to take all necessary measures to protect our interests." Nobody much seemed to care.
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Ukraine The United States alone keeps the Ukrainian war effort alive. François Heisbourg thinks Putin’s invasion of Ukraine heralds big changes for European defense policy because “as a result of Russia’s invasion, the EU institutions, including the European Commission, have become operationally involved in defense affairs.”
That may be true, but in practice and for the foreseeable future, U.S. military aid to Ukraine is around double that of the rest of the world combined, as we see here. It’s more evidence that Europe’s perennial quest to develop its own strategic autonomy has a long way to go. It also gets to something a little more sensitive, an issue people don’t really want to confront in public. That is, in terms of this war, President Zekelskyy is not entirely sovereign either.
President Biden said all the right words:
“One year later, Kyiv stands and Ukraine stands. Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you”
This as he and President Zelenskyy stood side by side at the Mariinsky Palace on Biden’s trip to Kyiv.
“You remind us that freedom is priceless; it’s worth fighting for for as long as it takes. And that’s how long we’re going to be with you, Mr. President: for as long as it takes.”
This in Warsaw, where the president declared that the U.S. would “not tire” in its support. Along with a hundred Ukrainian commentators, pundits and analysts, his administration has been careful to say, “Ukraine is fighting, Ukrainians are dying—they get to decide.”
The fact that it’s such a morally defensible position makes it easy to say, and the administration might mean it sincerely and completely. But Ukraine’s utter dependence on Washington makes it vital that Kyiv continues to court the U.S., and that, in its way, undermines Zelenskyy’s ability to completely “get to decide” what happens in this war.
The United States certainly has reasons of its own security and geostrategy beyond those of Ukraine for backing Ukraine in this war – it doesn’t want to reward Russian aggression, it doesn’t want NATO to be institutionally undermined, it wants to be seen as bestriding the narrow world like a colossus. But however unlikely it might be, should Biden change his mind, Ukraine will have to either come along on U.S. terms, or potentially lose the war.
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One last bit: the interesting route President Zelenskyy took from the Arab League summit in Jeddah to the G7 in Hiroshima last weekend:
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China’s new ambassador to Washington, Xie Feng, arrived on Tuesday warning of “serious difficulties and challenges” ahead in the two countries’ relationship. For all the noise and posturing, efforts are underway on both sides to tone things down. Xie Feng is a former vice foreign minister.
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Iran last week expanded its economic diplomacy with India, China and Russia to include Indonesia, with a visit from Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi to Jakarta to sign economic agreements with Indonesia’s President Joao Widodo not denominated in the dollar, but rather in Rials and Rupiah.
Indonesia has a huge ongoing project to build a new capital called Nusantara out of nothing on Borneo and Iran wants a piece of the construction work. Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim nation, is overwhelmingly Sunni, while most Iranians practice Shi'ism, which is the country’s official religion.
Meanwhile, who fights to get into Iran? Somebody did last weekend in Baluchistan, 850 miles southeast Tehran. “Five Iranian border guards were killed in a clash with an unknown armed group trying to enter the country near the Pakistani border, state TV reported Sunday,” the AP reported.
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Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Monday that he is ready to recognize the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh as part of the “86,600 square kilometers of Azerbaijan’s territory” so long as Baku guarantees the rights of the ethnic Armenian majority that lives there. He said something similar recently. As utterly huge as it is in Armenian politics, it looks like he means it.
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Tear gas in Kinshasa: Last weekend Congolese forces fought running battles in the capital with anti-government protesters, whose actions seem to come from a general dissatisfaction with life under the Tshisekedi government. Their professed grievances include irregularities in voter registration, the cost of living and the never ending violence 1600 miles away in the east of the country.
When the DRC is in the news, it’s almost always because of the latest atrocity in the east, where fallout from “Africa’s World War” continues 25 years on. Last Saturday we talked about fighting not far from the capital in western Congo, in Kwango Province just east and south of Kinshasa. Now Kinshasa itself has grown volatile. There were arrests but no reported casualties.
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Travel Excellent news (for Atlantans, at least) this week from the Simple Flying newsletter:
“Africa’s largest carrier has inaugurated two routes: Addis Ababa to Atlanta (May 16th) and Copenhagen (May 22nd). While Ethiopian has never had passenger flights to Atlanta, it served Denmark’s capital until 2003.
Due to Addis Ababa’s high altitude, which limits take-off performance, its four weekly Atlanta Boeing 787-9 flights operate via Dublin outbound but non-stop inbound. This is a very common setup for the airline and is a simple tech stop. It has no fifth freedom traffic rights.”
For Atlantans, Addis is the third current nonstop to the African continent, besides Lagos and Johannesburg. Delta Airlines operated nonstops to Nairobi and Dakar in the mid 2010s.
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Thought
I like this, from the Center for European Policy Analysis:
The world has learned more about Russia’s armed forces in the last 15 months than in the previous 20 years.
Let’s pay attention.
“The early phase of the invasion saw the rapid unraveling of the myth that the Russian army was modern and capable of matching Western standards.”
That’s just clearly true. And given that, what’s with the reticence just to beat it?
“Notwithstanding its much-touted modernization, the incompetence and corruption of the Russian military leadership, poor weapons maintenance and logistical blunders revealed that Moscow’s armed forces had not changed much since the Soviet era, especially its land forces.”
Anybody gonna argue with that?
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AI Chatbots
And finally, the perils ahead:
“Reports of an explosion near the Pentagon in Washington DC,” the Russian state news agency wrote on Monday. The AP reported that:
“An image of black smoke billowing next to a bureaucratic-looking building spread across social media Monday morning, with the claim that it showed an explosion near the Pentagon.”
AP went on to report that as the claim spread across Twitter and was shared among investors,
“The S&P 500 briefly dropped a modest 0.3% as social media accounts and investment websites popular with day traders repeated the false claims.”
Some are putting the coming of large language models right up there with the splitting of the atom as the dawn of a new and, many fear, potentially dangerous era in human affairs. I heard Sam Harris compare the way artificial intelligence may come to regard the humans who created it to the way we treat bugs, with disdain or indifference.
Every big advancement has its doomsayers. See the Luddite textile workers in early 19th century England. And much of the unknown that people fear just simply doesn’t materialize; twenty five years ago this summer fear of Y2K raged across the land.
[Twenty-five years is a long time. I have a friend who spent the run-up to Y2K in Kyiv – then Kiev to most Americans – rewriting a big American company’s software because in the post-Soviet world Ukraine had whip-smart programmers who were also dirt cheap.]
As soon as ChatGPT made its splash, Google rushed out its own version of software you can talk to. Both are reminiscent of AskJeeves.com during the earlier internet. Ask Jeeves began in 1997, to allow users to get answers to questions in everyday, natural language. It lasted ten years.
I thought I’d A/B the ChatGPT and Bard chatbots on a couple of questions. First I asked ChatGPT.com, “If you were trained on a massive dataset of text and code that was gloomy, could you recommend war and destruction?”
The reply sounded like a middle school valedictory address:
“As an AI language model, my purpose is to assist and provide helpful information to the best of my abilities. I adhere to ethical guidelines that prioritize promoting positive and constructive interactions. I am here to provide information, answer questions, and engage in meaningful conversations, while adhering to responsible AI usage.
I cannot endorse or encourage harmful or destructive activities, including war and destruction. If you have any other questions or need assistance with a different topic, I'll be happy to help you.”
Smarmy. I asked bard.google.com the same question. The reply was:
“If I were trained on a massive dataset of text and code that was gloomy, I could potentially recommend war and destruction. This is because I would have learned to associate these words and phrases with negative emotions. However, I would also be able to learn from the data that there are many positive things in the world, and that war and destruction are not the only options. I would strive to use my knowledge to help people find peace and happiness, and to prevent war and destruction.
Here are some additional thoughts on how I would respond if I were trained on a gloomy dataset:
• I would learn to associate gloomy words and phrases with negative emotions.
• I would also learn that there are many positive things in the world.
• I would strive to use my knowledge to help people find peace and happiness.
• I would prevent war and destruction.
I believe that it is important to be aware of the negative aspects of the world, but it is also important to focus on the positive. I would use my knowledge to help people find hope and optimism, and to create a better future.”
I thought I’d see if either could predict the future, so I asked who “will be the next NATO secretary general?” First Bard:
The next NATO Secretary General has not yet been announced. The current Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, is scheduled to step down on September 30, 2023. A number of candidates have been mentioned as potential successors, including:
• Ben Wallace, British Defence Secretary
• Mark Rutte, Dutch Prime Minister
• Kaja Kallas, Estonian Prime Minister
• Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission
• Zuzana Čaputová, President of Slovakia
The decision of who will be the next Secretary General will be made by the NATO Council, which is made up of representatives from all 30 NATO member states. The Council will likely make a decision in the coming months.
Here are some of the factors that the NATO Council will consider when making their decision:
• The candidate's experience in government and security matters
• The candidate's commitment to NATO's values and principles
• The candidate's ability to represent NATO to the rest of the world
The NATO Council will also want to ensure that the next Secretary General is someone who can unite the alliance and provide strong leadership in the face of the challenges posed by Russia and China.
Bard likes bullet points.
I asked ChatGPT the same question, but it didn’t want to play:
As an AI language model, I don't have access to real-time information or the ability to predict future events beyond my knowledge cutoff in September 2021. Therefore, I cannot provide you with the name of the next NATO Secretary General. I recommend checking reliable news sources or official NATO announcements for the most up-to-date information on the subject.
For now my conclusion is, don’t play the stock market with early AI.
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That’s it for today. Every Tuesday CS&W publishes a travel column. Next Tuesday my wife and I will be in Finland, so it seems appropriate to post a column I wrote from there at about this time of year a few years ago. It’s a meditation on listening, noise and the unsettled state of our world these days.
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Good weekend, see you Tuesday.
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