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Modi and the Maldives “beach off”
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new job is beach, and the Maldives aren’t having it.
In an attempt to boost tourism to Indian beaches, Modi posted some snaps of himself enjoying a vacation on Lakshadweep, an island chain in the Indian Ocean. Seventy nautical miles to the South, the Maldives – where Indian tourists comprise up to 11% of tourism revenue – took great offense, calling Modi ” a “terrorist” and a “puppet of Israel.”
A #boycottmaldives campaign flared up in response, with Modi’s cult following posting screenshots of their canceled trips to the island nation. Meanwhile, government officials, Bollywood stars, and cricketers have urged Indians to join Modi for a snorkel (with a life jacket on, of course) in Lakshadweep.
The Barbie-worthy “beach off” comes at a contentious time. The two nations are strategic allies, but their relationship is strained by the new pro-China Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu tilting the country away from New Delhi and toward Beijing.Top 10 game changers of 2023
Whether you win or lose, in politics it is still how you play the game that matters. This year, several global players not only played the game, but they changed it in significant and surprising ways. Join us as we revisit some of the most pivotal moments, figures, and trends of the year in geopolitics.
1. Welcome to the AI era
The intelligence may be artificial, but the political stakes are real. Geeks have quietly been developing AI for years, but it wasn’t until the release of ChatGPT late last year that everyone became fully aware of and spooked by the technology’s immense power. It promises to make our societies more efficient, while also threatening to eliminate jobs and undermine trust in institutions, elections, and media (deepfakes anyone?). Throughout 2023, the most powerful governments in the world began racing to find regulatory balances for AI that decrease risks without stifling innovation. The game has changed: 2023 was just the start.
2. The Mugshot
You would think that a twice-impeached former president facing multiple indictments would have almost no shot at the White House. But Donald Trump, the first ex-president to be criminally indicted in US history, remains an enigma in American politics. Rather than undermining his 2024 campaign, Trump’s legal woes seem to have given him major momentum. His mugshot from Georgia played a particularly big role in bolstering his campaign – helping the former president raise millions. Trump ends 2023 far ahead of the remaining GOP contenders – without even participating in presidential debates – and he’s also leading President Joe Biden in the polls.
3. Russian trenches
In 2023, Ukraine launched a counteroffensive it hoped would score major gains against Russian invaders and persuade American and European backers that their military and financial investments could help Ukraine win the war. But Russia’s ability to entrench its troops behind heavily fortified barriers frustrated Ukraine’s plans, and Russian forces still occupy 18% of Ukraine’s territory. The war grinds on, and Vladimir Putin is now more confident than ever that Russia can outlast Western support for Ukraine.
4. Modi’s moment
During the pandemic, and then as Western sanctions against Russia pushed global food and fuel prices higher, the world’s wealthy democracies and developing countries of the Global South grew further apart on important issues. No one did more to bridge that gap in 2023 than India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. By improving India’s relationship with the G7 and through his leadership of the G20 this year, Modi brokered practical compromises on issues like climate policy and debt. Even controversies over the murder of an activist in Canada and a suspected plot against another in the US didn’t much dent Modi's standing with Western powers that increasingly see him as an important ally against China.
5. American Unions – strong again?
US unions flexed in 2023. Striking autoworkers won concessions from Big Auto and even drew a US president to the picket lines for the first time. Actors and writers' guilds shut down Hollywood for months, and the Teamsters reached a deal with UPS to avoid crippling 6% of the US economy. Overall, nearly half a million workers went on strike this year, nearly eight times as many as in 2021. Non-union employment is still expanding faster, yes, but organized labor has muscled its way back into the political conversation, and popular support for unions is near highs not seen since the 1960s.
6. Hamas
Until the evening of Oct. 6, 2023, an increasingly right-wing Israel looked like it was able to contain Hamas in the Gaza Strip, deepen its illegal occupation of the West Bank with impunity, and still move towards normalizing ties with the Arab world’s most formidable powers. The plight and aspirations of the Palestinians, meanwhile, had fallen almost entirely out of the global spotlight. You already know what happened next.
7. MBS
A few years back, Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal murder was seemingly all anyone talked about when they mentioned Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS. But the oil-rich kingdom’s investments in popular sports – primarily soccer and golf – have shifted the conversation away from his acts of impunity and his country’s record of human rights abuses. The Saudi soccer league snatched up some of the world’s top players in 2023 after roping in superstar Cristiano Ronaldo, disrupting the status quo in a sport long dominated by Europe. Critics say MBS is “sportswashing” to distract from various other controversies, but he doesn’t seem to care as long as it helps the kingdom increase its GDP and become a top tourist destination.
8. Power Barbie
In the decades since 1945, when Ruth Handler first decided to make a doll that encouraged pursuits beyond motherhood, Barbie had strayed from its feminist origins. But director Greta Gerwig rediscovered them with “Barbie,” a global cinematic sensation in which Barbie pushes Ken aside and pursues her own ambitions. Speaking of ambitions, the film made Gerwig the first woman to direct a film surpassing $1 billion at the box office worldwide.
9. Giorgia Meloni
Meloni was a relative unknown on the international stage when Italian voters put her far-right Fratelli d’Italia Party in power late last year, triggering anxieties about the EU’s third-largest economy becoming something like Hungary on steroids: isolated and a thorn in Brussels’ side. Instead, Meloni’s eager embrace of the EU and Ukraine ingratiated her with EU leaders — who in turn have been more open to listening to her ideas on tightening migration policy. It’s a new, electable model for far-right leaders in a Western Europe increasingly invested in the EU but worried about immigration.
10. China owes big
China’s booming economy defined the geopolitical trajectory of the 2010s, but 2023 looks like the year the world began to wonder and worry whether the engine was finally running out of steam. Beijing’s efforts to rein in a staggering debt-to-GDP ratio of 272% have caused knock-on effects ranging from the property market, where two-thirds of Chinese household wealth is invested, to low youth employment, right down to the balance sheets of local governments. It constrained economic growth in 2023, causing global concern about the health of the world’s second-largest economy, — and even seemed to force Xi Jinping to take a more conciliatory approach in relations with the US.
Hard Numbers: Trump’s big lead, Russian nationalists and pig heads, a bet on steel and fusion, Taiwan’s new sub, Barbie’s underground Russian adventure
16: Recent polling averages show that Donald Trump leads the combined rest of the GOP presidential field by 16 percentage points.
3: Three prominent Russian military analysts, including one who recently wrote an article calling for the killing of Ukrainian civilians, have discovered severed pig heads outside their homes in recent weeks.
35 million: In an unprecedented step, Nucor, the largest US steelmaker, is working with a nuclear fusion startup on construction of a 500-megawatt fusion power plant that would be placed at one of Nucor’s steel mills by 2030. The company’s $35 million investment is an early bet that steel will eventually be made without carbon emissions.
10: To help deter a potential future Chinese invasion, Taiwan has unveiled its first domestically made submarine. Over time, the island nation’s government wants to build a fleet of 10 submarines and equip them with missiles.
0: In today’s edition, we really wanted to highlight the excitement generated in Russia by underground screenings of the movie Barbie. Unfortunately, we found zero good numbers we could use from the press coverage, some of which you can see here, here, and here.Hard Numbers: Muddy festival, climate credits, Ukrainian amputees, astronauts return, "Barbie" tops charts
70,000: An unexpected storm this weekend trapped 70,000 attendees of the annual counter-culture Burning Man festival in the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada, as floods turned the sand to mud. One person reportedly died, but officials said the incident was “unrelated to the weather.” Many have now begun their trips home.
450,000,000: At the first-ever African Climate Summit in Kenya, the United Arab Emirates committed to buying 450,000,000 of carbon credits from the Africa Carbon Markets Initiative. The initiative seeks to boost Africa's carbon credit production 19-fold by 2030.
20,000: According to the Superhumans Center for rehabilitation in Ukraine, 20,000 Ukrainians have become amputees since the start of the war with Russia. These include soldiers and civilians, with most injuries being blast-related.
4:Four astronauts returned to Earth in a SpaceX capsule after spending six months in the International Space Station. The crew included two NASA and one Russian astronaut, as well as the first astronaut from the United Arab Emirates to spend an extended time in space.
1: This week, "Barbie" beat the "Super Mario Bros. Movie" for the title of number one film of the year. The dynamic doll pulled in $1.38 billion globally, overtaking the cartoon character’s $1.36 billion. Sparkle!
Vladimir Putin, film critic
This summer the only thing hotter than the melting planet has been the BOX OFFICES. Hear what esteemed film critics Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un thought of the season’s blockbusters.
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Hard Numbers: Pakistan suffers blast, Phoenix melts, Bolivia embraces yuan, US aids Taiwan, Barbie rakes it in
45: At least 45 people were killed and over 150 injured in a bomb blast Sunday in Pakistan at a convention of the country’s conservative Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Party in Bajaur ahead of this year’s elections. No group has claimed responsibility, but a local branch of the Islamic State group in Pakistan is believed to have launched recent attacks in Bajaur.
31: As of Sunday, the city of Phoenix, AZ, had sweltered in 110-degree heat for a record 31 days, according to the National Weather Service. The previous record was 18 days, set in 1974. But luckily, it looks like things are set to cool off with the arrival of late monsoon rains.
10: Bolivia announced that 10% of its trade between May and July was done in yuan, rather than the American dollar. Following in the footsteps of Argentina and Brazil, Bolivia is the third South American nation to begin to pivot from the greenback to the yuan.
345 million: On Friday, the US announced a $345 million military aid package for Taiwan to help counter China. In addition to education, training, intelligence and surveillance capabilities, Washington will send man-portable air defense systems, firearms, and missiles.
750 million: "Barbie" is predicted to top $750 million in box office earnings worldwide after its second weekend in theaters, making it 2023’s fourth-biggest domestic release ("The Super Mario Bros. Movie," "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse," and "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3" in the 1-2-3 positions). But in case you’ve forgotten that we’re living in a Barbenheimer world, "Oppenheimer" was expected to pull in a cool $400 million by the end of the weekend.MBS: A Barbie girl living in a Saudi world
A movie about building a dream world to explore fourth-wave feminism?
MBS will be first in line for tickets.
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Where is China's foreign minister?
What are the consequences from Russia's exit from the Black Sea grain deal? Where is Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang? "Oppenheimer" is out. Will you be watching? Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
What are the consequences from Russia's exit from the Black Sea grain deal?
Well, a lot of antagonism from the Global South because prices are now going up. That's why the Russians hadn't wanted to leave. Look, I mean, there is an ammonia pipeline that was sabotaged that the Russians wanted to use traversing Ukraine, that hasn't gotten fixed. They also wanna be able to get back into SWIFT for the agricultural banks, and neither of those things happen. So they have pulled out of the deal. They are also now attacking Odessa, stepped up way, including grain capacity and blowing up a whole bunch of food. And this is, these are all war crimes. And now you've got a whole bunch of sub-Saharan countries in particular that are gonna be angry with Russia as a consequence, one of the places they've done comparatively well since the beginning of the war.
Where is Chinese foreign minister Qin Gang?
I have no idea, and especially because, I mean, I know him pretty well. When he was ambassador to Washington, I used to see him all the time and he is very close to the Chinese president. So the fact that it's been about four weeks now and he has not been heard from, initially, the Chinese government said it was a medical issue. They stopped saying that after the first couple of times. And the only thing we've heard is some scandals about, you know, maybe a relationship with some journalist. I have no idea, but clearly given who he is and his backing, it's going to be a fairly big deal. And some long knives from opponents have to be seriously out for him to be away as long as he has. Hopefully we'll hear about that soon because you need an effective foreign minister.
"Oppenheimer" is out. Will you be watching?
Well, I'm not watching "Barbie." I wasn't sure if I was going to, but then I saw my buddy Fred Kaplan, who wrote "Wizards of Armageddon" and is like probably one of the preeminent historians on the atomic bomb, he saw an early version of the film, all three hours of it, and said it was not only historically accurate, but also fantastic. And that makes me want to go see it, because let's face it, I mean, this is the guy, the father of the Manhattan Project, made the atomic bomb happen. He is a very, very controversial figure, and it's an issue we need to be talking a lot more about because we are facing much greater dangers from nuclear proliferation and from nuclear war today than at any point since 1962. So I'm glad it's coming out and hopefully it raises some awareness.
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