What Just Happened 21
And what do we do now?
Welcome. Let’s see what’s going on in the world this week. Today is Saturday, July 15th, 2023.
Today we’ll take a look at what just happened at the NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. We’ll consider the Thai election, Romania, scandal in Helsinki, the lack of love for tree huggers in the UK Labour Party, rogue leaders and more.
NATO: There’s lots to say about this week’s NATO summit. On Tuesday, day one of the summit, “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “blasted as ‘absurd' the absence of a timetable for his country’s membership in NATO.”
The next day, near the end of the summit, UK Defense Minister Ben Wallace (an early frontrunner as the next NATO General Secretary) remarked:
“There is a slight word of caution which is, whether we like it or not, people want to see gratitude. My counsel to the Ukrainians is sometimes, look, you are persuading countries to give up their own stocks.
"And yes, the war is a noble war and yes, we see it as you doing a war not just for yourselves but also our freedoms. But sometimes you have got to persuade lawmakers on the Hill in America.
"You have got to persuade doubting politicians in other countries that it is worth it, it’s worthwhile and they are getting something for it. That’s just the reality of it.”
Some called it a gaffe, or at least ungracious, since after all Ukrainians are dying in this war, not Brits. But Wallace seems to have struck a chord, because later on Wednesday Zelenskyy, in remarks to Biden (in a scheduled meeting that still looked slapped together with Courtyard by Marriott furniture, the leaders flanked by aides crammed together side by side) was almost groveling in his thanks, prompting Biden to reply, “thank you for acknowledging the American people.”
Still, Ukraine left less than satisfied, and with some reason.
"We will issue an invitation for Ukraine to join NATO when allies agree and conditions are met" doesn’t sound like a passionate embrace to me. From Stoltenberg, a man who usually aims for ‘earnest’ over ‘imperious,’ it sounded curiously haughty.
Ukraine has been offered a three part plan:
• a new multi-year assistance program
• a new NATO-Ukraine Council (a new talking shop)
and
• “Allies also reaffirmed that Ukraine will become a member of NATO, and agreed to remove the requirement for a Membership Action Plan. “This is a strong package for Ukraine, and a clear path towards its membership in NATO,” said Stoltenberg.
Alongside no guarantee of membership, it seems Ukraine also has to take some medicine. G7 members “signed a joint declaration outlining the long-term security and economic support they plan to provide Ukraine as a result of the Russian invasion, as well as support to facilitate a ‘reform agenda’ that will provide Ukraine with ‘the good governance necessary to advance towards its Euro-Atlantic aspirations.’
Suggesting that Ukraine needs help with “good governance.” Coming alongside the “no, you’re not getting into NATO” message, one might think this part could have been said more quietly.
The G7 declaration itself was vague: things like “deterring Russian aggression in the future by providing modern military equipment,” creating “the conditions conducive to promoting Ukraine’s economic prosperity” and so on.
•
Ex-Estonian President and prolific Tweeter Toomas Ilves summed up Baltic opinion:
Ukraine had been after security “guarantees.” Prior to the summit it had rejected mere “assurances.” Kyiv felt that assurances weren’t enough because it has heard them before. The declaration issued at the Bucharest Summit in April 2008 offered these assurances:
"NATO welcomes Ukraine's and Georgia's Euro-Atlantic aspirations and the progress they have made in their political and economic reforms. We reaffirm our commitment to these countries' right to choose their own security arrangements,” and "we will continue to provide political and practical support to Ukraine and Georgia.
Just a note, as if it weren’t already apparent that the joint aspirations of Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO had been unjoined (starving your political opposition not being a good look when it comes to community building), unlike Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, the Republic of Georgia wasn’t even invited to this NATO summit. Which is unfortunate if you’re a fan of Georgia as a travel destination.
This week Türkiye 1. said its Navy will enforce the Black Sea grain deal for 2 years, 2. it will open a Bayraktar drone plant in Ukraine, 3. it will allow Sweden into NATO and 4. it will become a future recipient of US F-16 fighter jets.
NSC Advisor Jake Sullivan downplayed any connection, but it turns out the Sweden thing was all about the F-16s after all. New Hampshire Senator Jean Shaheen, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said on the first day of the summit that “we could see something move forward when we see the ratification.” That is quid pro quo.
VILNIUS, July 11 (Reuters) - Washington will move ahead with the transfer of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey in consultation with Congress, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday, a day after Ankara gave the green light for Sweden to join NATO.
Turkey, which had been the main stumbling bloc on Sweden's path towards the alliance, had requested in October 2021 to buy $20 billion of Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) F-16 fighters and nearly 80 modernisation kits for its existing warplanes.
Speaking ahead of a summit of NATO leaders that started on Tuesday in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, Sullivan said U.S. President Joe Biden "had been clear that he supports the transfer”.
"He has placed no caveats on this ... He intends to move forward with that transfer," Sullivan told reporters, without giving any details on the timing.
This was a week of power politics, full of words of reassurance and less full of pledges of concrete support for Ukraine. It was a week that saw the West taking care of its own, holding Stockholm’s NATO bid in warm embrace while holding Zelenskyy's at arm’s length with its ‘three elements.’
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as ever, worked all the angles: 1. he released captive Azovstal hero commanders to Zelenskyy, 2. he placated the alliance with his acquiescence to Sweden’s joining NATO, and in the process 3. he pocketed those F-16s.
Stepping back, it’s fair to consider that Erdoğan may have looked at the current state of the world and determined that ultimately Putin will be a loser and has thus elected to move away from his direction. Still, see ‘3’ above.
Erdoğan’s Defense Minister Yaşar Güler spoke by phone late on Monday with his US counterpart, Lloyd Austin. In a glowing statement, the US Defense Department said the pair “lauded the long history of military cooperation between the United States and Turkey and applauded our continued close cooperation”.
For this week, at least, the US was in the business of lauding and applauding Türkiye. And then, after all the praise and appreciation, once the spotlight was off Mr. Erdoğan mentioned that his parliament is too busy to get around to ratification until October.
Here is the entire NATO summit communiqué.
•
ZEITENWENDE: Not strictly related to the NATO summit but NATO news nevertheless, is this item from AP dated June 26:
“BERLIN (AP) — Germany is willing to send around 4,000 troops to Lithuania on a permanent basis to strengthen NATO’s eastern flank, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said during a visit in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius.”
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda welcomed the announcement.
“in reality this may not happen until the end of the decade given the readiness of German combat forces and Lithuanian infrastructure to host them.”
What on earth takes seven years to get 4000 people from one place to the next! Nevertheless, you know it’s a new world when Eastern Europeans are eager to welcome German troops onto their soil.
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ROMANIA: The news we see from Romania lately is mostly about an unsavory character named Andrew Tate, a '“social media personality” charged there with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. More interesting is Romania’s role as a frontline NATO state in Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Romania shares about a 600 kilometer border with southern Ukraine between Hungary and Moldova. Since the start of the war about three and a half million people have fled across its various border crossings, although, since many traveled farther into the EU and some have returned to Ukraine, there are around 110,000 Ukrainian refugees there now.
Romania is quiet about what arms it provides Ukraine, but land corridors through Romania for the movement of arms have been vital to the war effort. And officials announced this week that “training of Ukrainian pilots on United States-made F-16 fighter jets is to begin in Romania in August.”
In December Austria blocked Romania and Bulgaria from joining the visa-free Schengen zone, partly because of its longstanding xenophobia. This has had the effect of leaving Romania with the attitude, when in doubt, rely on NATO, and not the EU.
Hence Romania is unambiguously all in with NATO but generally less publicly belligerent toward Russia than others in the region, namely Poland and the Baltics. Part of the reason for that may be its cultural and historic ties to neighboring Moldova. Some 3.5 million Moldovans share Romanian citizenship, and, with Moldova the country most obviously exposed to further Russian aggression, maybe it’s best to remain circumspect.
Because it’s physically nearby, Romanians are following events at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant closely. Procurement of iodine tablets was a national priority for weeks.
More broadly, as the war has settled into a pattern, inflation has risen as a concern. Romania normally would buy energy from Ukraine in winter but Russian attacks on infrastructure have made that impossible. Also, Romania supplies more than 90 percent of Moldova’s electricity needs. So energy prices, at 35 to 40 percent higher than a year ago, are driving inflation, which currently runs around fifteen percent.
•••••
THAILAND: It didn’t work. Despite an impressive majority, the Move Forward’s Party’s audacious attempt at building a new Thailand was blocked Thursday by an impassive, military-dominated Senate. Move Forward’s leader Pita Limjaroenrat failed to gather the required 375 vote majority of 749 votes in Thailand’s parliament.
“Mr Pita received 311 votes in favour from MPs and 148 against, with 39 abstentions. He received just 13 votes in favour from senators, 34 against and 159 abstentions.”
It was, as Asia Times put it, “a largely preordained vote against the popular will” by the Senators, all appointed by the Thai military.
A second round is set for next Wednesday but it’s not clear whether Mr. Pita can improve on his vote totals, which sets up the possibility of a breakdown in his coalition. While all this runs explicitly against the will of the voters, none of it is unexpected.
Mr. Pita’s undoing may have been promising too much, too soon. His most striking proposal was to reform Thailand’s strict lèse majesté laws, which mandate ten year prison terms for being critical of the royal family.
Pita’s lèse majesté proposal had solid support among his electorate, but the military is broadly allied with the monarchy, and Pita’s proposal gave them a ready reason to vote against Move Forward. “The proposed amendment is disrespectful and is offensive to the monarchy," Senator Seri Suwanpanon told Reuters, for example. In fact, some in Pita’s main coalition partner party Peu Thai urged caution on the lèse majesté promise.
Turning up the heat on Pita, the junta dropped this bombshell on Wednesday:
In the end the story is that junta-appointed senators have again ignored the results of an election and the will of the people - and the question is whether the people will acquiesce.
As of Friday Mr. Pita said he meant to stand again next week.
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FINLAND: I’ve been critical of the new government in Helsinki for some weeks now, I think with good reason. This weekend, the third Finns Party cabinet minister in the government’s three week history is enveloped in scandal. It seems that new Finance Minister and Finns Party head Rikka Perra’s
“comments, made under the username “riikka” on the blog of Purra’s predecessor as Finns party leader, Jussi Halla-aho, included uses of the Finnish equivalent of the N-word, other racial and anti-immigrant slurs, and threats of violence.”
- including:
“One 2008 “riikka” comment talked of “[N-words] selling pirated Vuittons” in Barcelona, which Purra, then a researcher at the University of Turku, was visiting at the time for an academic conference.
Another described “the sound darker males make when they pass you by” as “not whistling (that would be too obvious) but a fucking hiss between the teeth”, adding: “The more eager Abdullah is, the more saliva comes with it.”
In another post, the commenter wrote: “Anyone feel like spitting on beggars and beating [N-word] children today in Helsinki?”
Perra doesn’t deny she wrote these things. Instead she has been on an apology tour from Wednesday, saying her words were ‘stupid’ and were written long ago.
A small parliamentary party called for bringing back the parliament from its summer recess to deal with the matter. That was sure to be unpopular with MPs, who will all be at their mökkis, their summer cabins, just now. Earlier today the Speaker of Parliament Jussi Halla-aho, who is a fellow member of Purra’s Finns Party, said no, the matter just isn’t urgent enough.
DONALD TRUMP: Here in Fulton County, Georgia, about 100 potential jurors sat “in red chairs in a drab but expansive jury assembly room” Tuesday, “among them a teacher, a former firefighter, an investigator and an illustrator,“ as Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney presided over the selection of two grand juries.
As the Atlanta Journal Constitution had it,
“One set of jurors is likely to be asked to bring formal charges against former President Donald Trump and other well-known political and legal figures.”
District Attorney Fani Willis has indicated that any indictments will be announced between July 31 and Aug. 18.
•••••
MORE ROGUE LEADERS: Weeks after a peace mission took a posse of African leaders to Kyiv and Moscow, prominently led by an apparently pro-Putin South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, a previous South African leader has popped up in Moscow. Agence France-Presse reports via the the Moscow Times that:
“South Africa's graft-tainted ex-leader Jacob Zuma is receiving medical treatment in Russia, his spokesman said Friday, a day after the country's highest court upheld a ruling that he should return to prison.”
Whether or not the South African Constitutional Court thinks he should return to prison, as the Moscow Times dryly has it, “it was not immediately clear whether he would return to custody. Prison authorities said they were studying the judgment and would seek legal advice.” Let’s see how long his ‘medical treatment’ takes.
•••••
KENYA: Stories like this are coming about once a week now as terror attacks and provocations spread in Kenya’s northeast:
Al-Shabab militants from Somalia are believed to have been responsible for killing five people in eastern Kenya’s Lamu county on Saturday. The attackers struck two villages, looting homes for food in the process. Lamu is located close to the Somali border and has seen a number of al-Shabab attacks over the past several years.
Meanwhile there’s unrest in the capital. from Reuters:
“Stone-throwing demonstrators clashed with police in Kenyan cities on Wednesday and two were shot dead, officers on the scene said.
Some of the most intense clashes took place on the expressway linking Nairobi to its international airport, where protesters lit fires and pulled down the flower boxes that usually line the road to use as barricades.
President William Ruto was elected last August on a platform of helping Kenya's working poor, but his critics say the tax rises he signed last month will deepen the plight of Kenyans already struggling to afford basic commodities like maize flour.
‘Young guys, they cry that there was a promise, Mr. President. You promised them that you are going to help them, but you didn't,’ Bernard Ochieng, a protester in Nairobi's informal Kibera settlements, told Reuters.
•••••
BRITISH LABOUR IS NOT GREENER THAN THOU: Ed Miliband gave an animated Powerpoint presentation to the shadow cabinet on his revolutionary energy policies this week, speaking excitedly of the hope and change he believed they would bring.
His reception from Sir Keir Starmer, however, was decidedly lukewarm.
“[Starmer] thanked him for his presentation, but said he wasn’t interested in hope and change, he was more interested in creating sustainable new jobs to replace jobs in old sectors that were being lost,” said a source. “He then said he was not interested in tree-huggers, before adding to everyone’s surprise, ‘In fact, I hate tree-huggers’.”
•••••
THE WEATHER: There’s no shortage of tidbits about local weather-related calamities around the world. Like this:
“In the desolate and oil-rich region of the Northwest Territories, nestled in the wooded Taiga Plains about 3o0 miles from the Arctic Ocean, the small town of Norman Wells hit 100 degrees on Saturday.”
•••••
TRAVEL: That green veneer is all just window dressing. The Financial Times says:
“Airlines may try to put a green spin on flying, to monetise the sustainable traveller, but they cannot escape the fact that air travel remains a high-polluting activity. A round-trip flight from London to San Francisco for example emits per person more than a car in a year on average. Lighter luggage or partial offsets are marginal actions, particularly when passenger numbers are forecast to soar in the coming decade. Yet, green schemes can give the impression the onus is on travellers to cut emissions.”
This does not mean broader attempts to curb demand are entirely pointless. Celebrities’ private jet use has come under scrutiny. Some companies, governments, and universities have also already introduced short-haul flight restrictions. In May, France banned domestic flights under 150 minutes where suitable rail services exist. The Swedes even have a term for bragging about taking the train: Tågskryt.”
•
And all the existential angst is over and done for Delta Air Lines, which announced its second quarter results on Thursday: record revenue of $15.6 billion and a pretax income of $2.3 billion. Since we’re captive in Delta’s home city, let’s just say we did our part to help.
•
And this, from this morning’s New York Times:
“Turns out that automatic mood lighting and motorized drapes do not make me a relaxed and happy traveler. And for the last time, I don’t want to download your app.” Encountering the Infuriating, Overwhelming and Unwanted Smart Tech in My Hotel Room.
•••••
FINALLY:
Axios Atlanta reported “A 250-pound bear was killed by authorities in Elberton because they were concerned about the animal's safety near busy roadways and people.”
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On Monday, I’ll argue that the world’s best travel destination is the African safari in my monthly column at 3 Quarks Daily.
There’s a travel column every Tuesday here on CS&W. In past weeks we’ve been to Easter Island, Zambia and Vietnam, among other places. Next Tuesday we’re off to Malaysian Borneo to climb Mt. Kinabalu.
Good weekend, see you Tuesday.
My main take away today was the importance of Romania in the Ukrainian defense, important supply routes run through the country, F-16 pilots may be trained there. I was even surprised at the size of the country.
Regarding your local Georgia, USA news: it still seems to me that the Fulton County district attorney’s suit against Trump for his criminal attempt at influencing the vote count is the strongest and most injurious case against 45, and I wish it was been brought before all of the sex and financial malfeasance cases. I think it’s the strongest case and I wish it would be tried soon. The sooner the better, because this election season is going to be when cocked- up mess.
And I don’t suppose that 250 pound bear was grateful for being killed for his own safety in Elberton. Would that the Ursacide?