Welcome. There’s a lot going on out there this week. Let’s have a look. Today is Saturday, June 24th, 2023.
Today the Prime Minister of India visits Washington, we’ll consider Russia, Ukraine and the run-up to the NATO summit next month in Vilnius, we’ll take a quick look at politics in Finland, examine dire warnings about the Hindu Kush/Himalaya ecosystem, a massacre in Africa, and why Amazon Prime – surprise – is mostly good for Amazon.
Events last night and this morning pretty well upended everything. We’ll go into much more depth next Saturday. For now, just a couple of things on the Wagner revolt in Russia:
and
Events are likely to outpace punditry for a few days. For now, it’s pretty sure the mutiny is for real and while it will be a real surprise if it succeeds, the bet here is, it undermines and shortens the Putin regime.
Recall the Russian president’s Covid timidity:
In 1991 Boris Yeltsin stood on a tank to defend the Russian White House. After a night of silence, Putin spoke briefly this morning, and closed his speech like this:
“I believe that we will defend and preserve what’s sacred for us. And together with the motherland, we will overcome all challenges, and become even stronger.”
I’d be surprised.
Unless events quickly overwhelm the Kremlin, or Prigozhin is killed, the weekend’s cable TV chatter will probably center around: “Putin looks weak, critics emerge, Pregozhin’s antics shorten the Putin regime.”
Already, at the very least, Russian troops are certain to be rudderless in Ukraine for at least the medium term. Questions, then: how does Ukraine best capitalize on a weakened Putin’s distraction, and when Putin falls, what happens next in Moscow?
More to come.
NATO: SecGen for Life? With time running out ahead of the NATO summit in Vilnius July 11 & 12, the AP, Washington Times and a flurry of military websites ran a series of stories like "Stoltenberg to be asked to stay as NATO Secretary General for another year" last weekend. Then the story went mostly silent until Wednesday, when The Economist quoted Ben Wallace, UK Secretary of Defense on his own prospects to lead the organization:
“It’s not going to happen,” he tells The Economist. America wants Mr Stoltenberg to stay, he says, visibly deflated. That would defer the decision to next year.”
Stoltenberg, an economist by trade and former Prime Minister of Norway, has served as NATO head since 2014. Shortly after the latest Russian aggression in Ukraine the NATO allies agreed on March 24th last year to extend his term for a further year, until this September 30th. That appears to be happening again.
That would mean Denmark’s PM Mette Frederiksen’s NATO job interview with the Biden administration in early June didn’t go the way she might have wanted (She met with Biden and CIA head Bill Burns in Washington on June 5th). The Economist article pointed out that “Denmark is far short of meeting the nato target of spending 2% of gap on defence, which irks many eastern European countries who do.” It also hedged, saying “Sources close to Mr. Wallace stress that the process remains open.”
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INDIA is poor, full stop. Poverty is necessarily priority one for Indian leadership, before Pakistan, before China, before corruption. This is why, unsavory as it may be, you can’t really blame the Modi government for buying cheap oil from the Russians. But you can attempt to wean them from dependence on Russian military hardware, which was an aim of the state visit this week in Washington.
India’s reliance on the former Soviet Union is mostly an outgrowth of the Cold War, during which India remained officially non-aligned as the US preferred Pakistan as its subcontinental ally of choice.
Two obvious reasons luring India away from dependence on Russian hardware is more likely now - first, Russian performance in the showcase of its war on Ukraine has been ham-handed and ineffective, and second, Russia will presumably choose to prioritize rebuilding its own war stocks in the immediate future.
There is already progress toward this US goal: In the run-up to last week’s state visit Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan both visited New Delhi. Austin’s trip was to wrap up negotiations on a technology transfer deal in which General Electric would produce jet engines powering Indian military aircraft in that country, a deal that was announced as completed on Thursday. Reuters continues:
”India’s state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) (HIAE.NS) had previously said it planned to use the GE-manufactured 414 engine on a second generation of light-combat aircraft and that it was in talks over domestic production of those engines.
The deal is not finalized and also requires notification to the U.S. Congress, according to two of the people briefed on the arrangement.”
All this movement toward New Delhi is sort of ‘Nixon to China’ writ small – convincing a big important country into the US’s corner against another big rival – a perennial goal of administration after administration. it’s just that somewhere along the way the other big rival changed from Russia into China.
As ever, the leader of India came seeking help to transform “India into a modern, global technology powerhouse that competes with China.” In this respect Indian and American goals are consonant. Thus the Biden team seems to have downplayed the lectures and looked past human rights concerns. It certainly did so in public.
(Incidentally, this is shaping up to be a year of sustained engagement between India and the US. The trip is currently scheduled for October 23-24, 2023. Joe Biden is scheduled to visit New Delhi and Ahmedabad on October 23 & 24, and although the White House has not yet released a final itinerary, expect stops in Japan and South Korea, on that trip, too.)
In remarks to a group of Indian and American businessmen a couple of weeks ago Secretary Blinken avowed that “we are here almost literally on the eve of what we believe will be a historic state visit by Prime Minister Modi – one that will further solidify what President Biden has called the “defining relationship” of the 21st century.”
But India is one of those places where hope springs eternal. We are forever resetting, or on the cusp of real engagement, or setting up a talking shop like the Quad, yet nothing fundamental ever quite changes. It’s like the eternal promise of the Indian economy. Always promising, never quite delivering.
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The first post WWII generation grew up with a belief in a sort of Keynesian compact between government, labor and business that would provide for the common good. In the next generation, from, say, the 1980s, the market became the vehicle thru which to attain the common good. This was the era of the Chicago school, Milton Friedman, Thatcher and Reagan.
Fashions in economic policy go through cycles just like fashions in hemlines, and today there’s no consensus on how to achieve common good.
I spent the 1990s and 2000s – during the ‘End of History’ – wanting to hurry history, yearning for the POST-Post Cold War era - to see what would follow all the self-congratulation of the ‘unipolar’ era and the presumptiveness of so many economists and fortune seekers trying to reengineer the collapsed Soviet Union in America’s image. It was time for something new, but there was nothing new.
One thing we know now, the 2008-2009 financial crisis put a definitive end to the era of the market as savior. That economic spasm dealt a gutting blow to the economy, with US GDP falling by 6.3 percent in 2009, the largest decline since the Great Depression. Moreover, as people lost their homes while banks were bailed out, they also lost their faith in banks, politicians and the whole underlying grid of Western institutions.
As the west reeled from the effects of that debacle, the institutions set up after WWII continued to become less and less relevant to the state of the real world. And Russia moved on its near abroad, invading and annexing South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia in 2008. In 2014 and 2022 it invaded Ukraine. Somehow, somewhere in there, we found ourselves in my long-awaited POST-Post Cold War era.
The world has spent thirty years in ferment since Russia dissolved into chaos in 1991. The first Green Foreign Minister from Germany, Joshka Fischer, wrote on this bigger picture a couple of weeks ago:
“The post-1945 era of global stability is over and gone. From the bipolar world of the Cold War to the American-dominated unipolar world that replaced it, we have long benefited from a sense of strategic order.”
Mostly we’ve benefitted because of our sense of order. Our idea that someone was in charge, that there was a more or less steady hand on the tiller (and at least half of those in charge were good and powerful and on our side).
Post Cold War, the U.S. is used to having a strong opponent. What’s new is the novel strength of the middle tier of powers and its opportunities to play the big guys off each other. (emphasis is mine)
This is the relatively new idea of the geopolitical swing state, and India is a charter member. Thus, as Narendra Modi brought his democracy-skeptical, anti-Muslim road show to Washington, the Biden administration’s gaze was fixed firmly past the ugly Hindu nationalism his leadership represents.
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PAKISTAN: Stop me if you’ve heard this one. If not, here is a juicy digression on the US’s Cold War warmth toward Islamabad. It’s just about spy thriller stuff. When then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger disappeared on his secret trip to China during the Nixon administration, the government of Pakistani President Yahya Khan acted as intermediary.
While on a publicly announced trip to Vietnam, Thailand, India, and Pakistan, Kissinger used the excuse of a stomach ailment to disappear and slip away to China to meet with Chou en-Lai. Pakistan hid him and facilitated the trip. I found a fascinating account of the trip, from Kissinger’s close aid Winston Lord. Here is an excerpt:
”We went publicly to Pakistan. There was a public banquet the first night. We went back to the government guest house. We packed and, at about 3:00 a.m. we were driven to the Islamabad airport by the Pakistani Foreign Minister I believe — Sultan Khan. It seems that they’re all named Khan. I’ve seen him since. We went to President Yahya Khan’s plane. Apparently, there was one reporter from some news service who thought he saw us and reported this to his editor. The editor said that the reporter was crazy and spiked the story.
On that morning the story was put out that Kissinger was not feeling well and, at the invitation of the Pakistanis, he was going up to a hill station [mountain resort] to recuperate for a day.
There was a Secret Service agent in a car, slumped over. It wasn’t supposed to be an impersonation but he played Kissinger up to the hill station and, I believe, Hal Saunders was with him. So there was a motorcade going up to the hill station. All of this was done fairly early in the morning so that there were no journalists around.”
Read the rest here, from the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training.
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EUROPEAN DEFENSE: (This was written before developments in Russia at the weekend, and could be overtaken by events.) British war historian Max Hastings is making the media rounds these last few weeks offering one iteration of this argument or another everywhere he goes. It makes sense:
”the Kremlin is pinning its hopes on protracting hostilities until the West grows weary. The logic of this prospect demands that our governments energise munitions supply chains and reinforce our own defences against possible escalation. We need to think, and act, both swift and long. The Nordic nations and Poland are behaving thus prudently: the latter is positioning itself to become a keystone of European defence. Finland and Sweden are notable for the urgency with which they are re-arming. The US military is also galvanised. A year or two from now, despite the huge quantities of materiel shipped, thanks to imaginative planning and Congressional support, America’s armed forces will be stronger than they were before the war started. Western European nations, by contrast, display a lassitude entirely discordant from their words. Germany continues to do almost nothing, France very little.”
He makes a fair point. Where have we heard that Western Europe isn’t doing enough in its own defense before?
Everywhere?
The whole Hastings article, sure to be paywalled, his here, in the Times of London.
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FINLAND: And they’re off. A new and already wearying Finnish government was confirmed on Tuesday. Here’s an overview.
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TORY ENGLAND, 2023: Not a (Drinks) Party: You could accept that they did it, of course, but what’s hard to accept is how banal it was:
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Not a (political) Party, at least, one with much of a future: Tory British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak didn’t vote on whether to accept the parliamentary report on Boris Johnson. But then, not a single British voter voted for Sunak either. By not voting Sunak takes a lesson from the growing roster of US Republicans running against Donald Trump: be afraid of bullies.
Regardless, when only 18% of 2016 leave voters believe Brexit has been a success (according to polling for the think tank UK in a Changing Europe), the Tory party, which has governed in the seven years since the referendum, would appear to be set up for a fall.
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HINDU KUSH/HIMALAYA: “The HKH stretches 3,500km from Afghanistan to Myanmar, has the highest mountain ranges in the world, the largest volume of ice of on Earth outside the polar regions and holds all or parts of four global biodiversity hotspots supporting diverse flora and fauna.”
A Nepalese think tank issued an alarming report on Tuesday called Water, ice, society, and ecosystems in the Hindu Kush Himalaya, warning
“Glaciers in Asia’s Hindu Kush Himalayas are melting at unprecedented rates and could lose up to 75 percent of their volume by century’s end,” and
”that flash floods and avalanches would grow more likely in coming years if greenhouse gases are not sharply reduced.”
Al-Jazeera’s story covering release of the report carried a pithy quote from one of the report’s authors,
“The people living in these mountains who have contributed next to nothing to global warming are at high risk due to climate change.”
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SUDAN: It’s hard to piece together what’s happening in places with almost no media, but it looks like there’s been a massacre in Darfur over the past couple of weeks. The VOA reports:
“Medical charity MSF said on Monday that some 15,000 people had fled West Darfur over the previous four days, and it said many arrivals reported seeing people shot and killed as they tried to escape El Geneina. MSF also reported rapes.”
The center of the violence appears to be the capital of West Darfur, El Geneina, a town of about half a million people a few miles from the border with Chad.
An al-Jazeera reporter in the region wrote on Wednesday that people were being shot “even as they continue to flee for their lives” into Chad. The flight was apparently set off when the state governor of West Darfur was killed on June 14, shortly after he accused the Rapid Support Forces and allied militias of genocide.
VOA blames “militias from Arab nomadic tribes along with members of the Rapid Support Forces.” It says:
”A large number of people tried to seek protection near the army headquarters in El Geneina on June 14 but were blocked, said Ibrahim, a resident who made it to the Chadian town of Adre, about 27 kilometers (17 miles) from El Geneina.
‘All of a sudden, the militias came out and sprayed people with gunfire,’ he said by phone, asking to use only his first name. ‘We got surprised by thousands of people running back. People were killed. They were trampled.’
El Geneina is no stranger to militia violence. The UNHCR in April 2021 headlined, ‘West Darfur clashes force nearly 2,000 refugees into Chad.’”
On Thursday the Center on National Security reported that:
”Heavy clashes broke out between rival military factions in several parts of Sudan’s capital on Wednesday as a 72-hour ceasefire brokered by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia expired, witnesses said. Shortly before the truce ended early Wednesday morning, fighting was reported in all three of the cities that make up the wider capital region: Khartoum, Bahri, and Omdurman.”
And this week the US ‘adjourned’ its peacemaking efforts because they’re not working.
ELSEWHERE AROUND THE HORN: Somalia continues to radiate ill will in all directions. Reuters reported:
“Armed factions in Somalia's semi-autonomous state of Puntland agreed a ceasefire on Wednesday, a local leader said, a day after at least 26 people were killed and 30 injured in clashes over proposed changes to the region's voting system.”
”Seven people were killed in two separate incidents when vehicles ran over improvised explosives in north-east Kenya, with police saying in one of the cases that they suspected members of al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab were responsible.”
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BELARUS: It’s always fun to speculate about getting rid of Belarus’s leader, who either fled or didn’t flee to Turkey on a plane associated with him and his family at midnight Friday night/Saturday morning. Anway, this article suggests Vladimir Putin wants Lukasnenka out by the end of 2024.
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1669487034870767617
”Given the poor health of #Belarus dictator, the Kremlin aims to ensure a controlled transition process without leaving the decision to the will of people. It is critical to select a successor, who would satisfy both the Kremlin and Lukashenko himself.”
It says,
”parliamentary elections would be held on February 25, 2024, allowing forming a loyal and compliant legislative body. In April 2024, the first session of a so called All-Belarusian People's Assembly would take place, with Lukashenko being elected as the lifelong chairman. It can help to maintain a control over the country's processes and ensure personal and family security guarantees. In September 2024, presidential elections would be held under Lukashenko's direct control but without his participation, allowing him to celebrate his 70th birthday and the 30th anniversary of his rule.”
Meanwhile, as of publication today, Lukashenka hasn’t been heard from since the Wagner uprising started. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who outpolled Lukashenka in the most recent election and fled to exile in Lithuania, makes like she’s ready:
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A BIT OF TRAVEL: A New, Really Really Long Flight
From James Pearson’s Simple Flying routes newsletter this week:
The most notable new route this week is surely Qantas’ introduction of Sydney to New York JFK via Auckland. Taking off on June 14th, it has fifth freedom rights on Auckland-JFK-Auckland.
It has returned to the Big Apple. Previously, it operated via Los Angeles, which ended in early 2020. Due to 'cabotage,' it could not carry local passengers on LAX-JFK-LAX, undermining the operation.Running three weekly, QF3 departs Sydney at 09:30, arrives in Auckland at 14:35 local, departs at 16:35, and arrives in JFK at 16:50 the same day. The operating Boeing 787-9 takes 21h 20m to cover 10,173 miles (16,371 km).
Returning to Australia, QF4 leaves JFK at 19:30 and arrives in New Zealand two days later at 05:00. It departs at 07:00 and gets back in Sydney at 08:40, ending a 23h 10m journey.
Qantas’ launch was nearly exactly eight months after Air New Zealand began the same route. Also three weekly, it uses the flight numbers NZ2 to JFK and NZ1 back, previously on London Heathrow flights.
It comes as Qantas falls 12 places to 17th in list of world’s best airlines in the World Airline Awards 2023 released by Skytrax, which are based on customer surveys it conducts. The Australian national carrier admits service was ‘not our best.’
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Thought:
From Matt Stoller’s Big newsletter:
The Federal Trade Commission just started to chip away at Amazon’s power with an important consumer protection complaint about how the online giant deceived Prime members. The short story is that Amazon made it almost impossible to cancel Prime. Internally, Amazon called its cancelation process “Iliad,” referring to “Homer’s epic about the long, arduous Trojan War.” Amazon also lied to the FTC and withheld documents from investigators.
Prime brings in $25 billion a year directly in subscription revenues, but the revenue for Prime isn’t the point of the product. Amazon’s goal is to control how consumers buy, and then use that aggregated buying power to charge third party sellers and packaged goods producers huge fees for access to the market. For more context, check out my piece in 2021 titled “Amazon Prime Is an Economy-Distorting Lie.”
Do read that 2021 article if you’ve got time: Stoller explains how pretty much, Amazon has raised the price of everything it sells, and not just on Amazon, to cover shipping. And it gets to keep your Amazon Prime fees.
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Finally, elsewhere on the internet, my monthly travel column at 3 Quarks Daily was published this week, called On the Road: Spring and NATO come to Finland, a report on my recent trip up north. Check it out.
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That’s it for today. The Grindadráp is on again in the Faroe Islands. It is a spectacle in which, as The Guardian puts it,
“hunters surround pilot whales and dolphins with a wide semi-circle of fishing boats and drive them into a shallow bay where they are beached. Fishermen on the shore slaughter them with knives.”
In the past decade or so the annual event has become a spectacle in which international media gang up on the tiny archipelago. I’m not going to contend that the Grind, as it’s known, is anything but gross. But there are two sides.
For my book Out in the Cold I visited the Faroes and took what I think is a measured look at the question. For Tuesday’s travel column I’ll excerpt that section of the book. See you then.
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Good weekend, see you Tuesday.
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