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Combating cybercrime a focus at G7 and Biden-Putin summits
Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, Eurasia Group senior advisor and former MEP, discusses trends in big tech, privacy protection and cyberspace:
Cyber issues took center stage at the G7 summit. Is there a consensus among world leaders on how to handle cyberweapons?
Well, depending on who is included, there is a growing consensus that the escalations of conflict in cyberspace must stop. And G7 leaders that are now all representing democracies did call on Russia to hold perpetrators of cybercrime that operate from within its borders to account. So, I guess hope dies last because laws in Russia prevents the extradition of suspects to the US, even if Vladimir Putin answered positively when Joe Biden asked for cooperation on that front. And when it comes to limiting the spread of tools that are used for hacking, surveillance and infiltration, the EU has just moved ahead and adopted new dual use regulations which reflect the concerns for human rights violations when journalists are targeted the way that Jamal Khashoggi was. So ending the proliferation of systems that are used to attack would be an urgent but also obvious step for democratic nations to agree on.
Will Biden's meeting with Putin influence a united Western approach in combating cybercrime?
Well, after the intense and high-profile series of ransomware attacks, there's a fresh focus on deterrence and accountability in this space. Biden announced several sectors of critical infrastructure should be off limits for cyberattacks. But the need is really for sufficient consequences to force those in Russia, but also elsewhere to stop their lucrative, cynical practices.
Why Joe Biden, Russia skeptic, wants to work with Russia
Joe Biden may not trust Vladimir Putin, but he's willing to work with Russia as a "predictable, stable" partner. For Ivo Daalder, former US Representative to NATO, that's somewhat surprising because he regards Biden as the most skeptical about Russia — and Putin himself — of all the post-Cold War US presidents.
Watch his interview with Ian Bremmer on the upcoming episode of GZERO World, which begins airing on US public television this Friday, June 18. Check local listings.
What to expect from Biden-Putin summit; Israel-Hamas tenuous ceasefire holds
Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on global politics this week:
How did the Biden-Putin summit go?
Well, we don't know, because it's not over yet, but I'll tell you, the opening, the opening looked fine. They shook hands. They're well prepped. Putin had to be on time because Biden was coming later. That made it a little bit easier. I think this is so overdone. This is not Gorbachev-Reagan. This is Russia in the context of a much more important strategic priority, China, for the United States. I expect little is going to come out, in terms of substance. The meeting will be cordial. There will be some desire to work together on things like arms control. The big question will be, what exactly is said, and if anything is committed to on cyberattacks, how the US is going to respond because so far Biden's looked pretty weak on that issue.
With Israel resuming airstrikes, is the ceasefire with Hamas over?
No. There was a series of attacks back and forth, incendiary balloons sent by Hamas from Gaza, landing in fields, didn't kill anybody. Israel responding immediately with airstrikes on Hamas training bases, didn't kill anybody. That's an end to that. It is, obviously, a very tenuous ceasefire, and it could blow up. Another point to raise is that this administration, run by new Premiere Naftali Bennett, is every bit as hard-line on dealing with the Palestinians, a general policy that gets large majorities of the Israelis to support it, as Netanyahu was. The problem, if there is an explosion in the ceasefire, is that the Arab party that is a part of the coalition could pull out and force yet another election. So, there is some consequence here, but I don't actually think that we've yet blown it up.
How is North Korea managing its food crisis?
Looks like its worst since the 1990s. The answer is, not really well. This has been both a flooding issue and horrible agricultural mismanagement. Plus, they've also had supply-chain problems and they're being hit with a horrible COVID explosion. And they don't really trust vaccines that are coming from other countries, not even China. And so, as a consequence, there could be more instability in North Korea than any of us assess right now. We don't get great information out of that country. It's not like Eurasia Group has stringers on the ground as we do everywhere else. So it's a hard one. I do think that there is now as a consequence of this, more of an opening for the Biden administration, if they want it. They are clearly thinking about reaching out to the North Koreans, not with a summit, but the possibility of starting some framework for arms control negotiations. If that's happening, it is out of a recognition that North Korea is a nuclear power and denuclearization is not going to happen. This is a space worth watching. I would focus on it over the next coming weeks because it's being discussed actively in the White House right now.
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Biden likely to push Putin on cybersecurity in Geneva meeting
Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, Eurasia Group senior advisor and former MEP, discusses trends in big tech, privacy protection and cyberspace:
When President Biden and President Putin meet, will cybersecurity will be a key issue that they discuss?
Now, I'm sure that there will be many thorny issues on the table. But after American fingers pointed to Russia and hold it responsible for the SolarWinds hack, it's likely. Criminals in Russia were also not hindered when they held the Colonial Pipeline Company ransom through a ransomware attack. And really, when journalists and opposition leaders cannot speak a single critical word without being caught, how come cybercriminals can act with impunity in Russia? So the need for prevention and accountability really is significant. And I hope the President Biden can push and persuade Putin to change the confrontational and aggressive course that he is on.
Biden-Putin summit: US wants predictability; G7's strong COVID response
Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on global politics this week:
What topics will be in focus at the G7 summit?
Well, most importantly is the collective response to coronavirus. 1 billion vaccines, repurposed, and tens of billions of dollars in financing from the G7 to lower income economies around the world. It is by far the most significant show of leadership displayed since the pandemic started and it's coming from the United States and its allies. That is meaningful, especially given the direction that the world has been heading, this G-Zero world over the course of the past decades. It's nice to see. Lots of other issues being discussed. It's only 60 seconds. I can't go that far.
What do you make of the EU joining the US in a push to investigate the origins of coronavirus?
Sure you don't want to go back to the G7? It's a much happier conversation. It means that the US-China relationship is getting more challenging. It means that the Chinese are going to be incredibly defensive about the fact that they have not provided access to the international community to investigate the origins of coronavirus. There are other countries around the world that are increasingly concerned about it. And if this becomes a really big flap, it is possible that we could start to see more formal Chinese decoupling from the West around issues of healthcare and epidemiology. I could imagine even the Chinese government leaving the World Health Organization, which would be very significant since that's where lots of the necessary transparency really is absent for the rest of the world. Anyway, we watch this space.
With Biden and Putin to meet next week, in Geneva, what does each want from the summit?
Biden's made very clear, he said it himself, and so has Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken, they want a more predictable relationship between the US and Russia. In other words, the status quo is not great, but they'd like it to persist. That's the baseline. They don't want it to get worse. They don't want sudden crises, whether it's on hacking, whether it's around Belarus, whether it's around issues of human rights, they don't want to rock the boat unnecessarily when the US-China relationship is considered to be by far the top priority, the biggest challenge. In the case of the Russians, he wants to be treated with more respect and he's unhappy with the status quo. He thinks that the West needs to be more divided, both internally and as a transatlantic relationship. Hard to see a lot being accomplished between the two leaders. But I do think if it surprises, the meeting will surprise on the upside. We'll watch next week.
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Biden wants Putin out
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: “For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power.” You heard it. I heard it. We all heard it. It was not a part of the formal remarks. Biden's comments closing his trip to Europe while he was in Warsaw, Poland, not so far from the Ukrainian border, was immediately walked back by White House aides. "No, it doesn't mean that President Biden or the United States has a plan or is going to take Putin out. It's not regime change." Political opponents domestically jumped all over him saying, "He's going to start World War III." Emmanuel Macron, sensing a political opportunity, said it wasn't responsible, promoting himself as the guy that can do diplomacy.
It is not a call for regime change. The United States is not trying to actively remove Putin from office. There is no capacity to do so, a man who is an authoritarian leader with a large military capability and a whole bunch, thousands of nuclear warheads at his disposal. This is the same United States that refuses to do a no-fly zone or to send troops to defend Ukrainians getting massacred. Why? Because it doesn't want to risk direct military confrontation with Russia. There's no difference here with not having a policy of regime change. That's fairly obvious. But, and this is important, Biden does want Putin out.
He refers to him as a war criminal. The State Department, having gone through an assessment, agrees. That's a big deal. Negotiations certainly aren't happening anytime between Biden and Putin going forward, which by the way, is a big place where Macron certainly disagrees. The relationship between the United States and Russia is inexorably broken, and that will be the case irrespective of whether or not we are able to freeze the war presently going on and still going on as it enters what Russia calls the second phase, even though the first phase wasn't a war. It was a special military operation. No, no, no. What was Biden doing? Well, I mean, “For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power.” It was kind of like, “For God's sake, we can't keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere.” I could see him saying exactly both of those things with a level of frustration and emotion, and knowing full well that Putin is going to remain in power and that we're going to continue to pump carbon into the atmosphere.
Now I do recognize that the United States and NATO has a policy that the NATO allies all hope will move in the direction of destabilizing the Russian president, helping Ukraine to destroy Russian troops, helping to destroy the Russian economy. And let's be clear, the only reason why Russia's economy isn't decreasing by 30% of GDP as opposed to 15% is because the Europeans desperately still need Russian gas. If they didn't, they'd cut that off too. It's not because they're worried about, "Oh my God, what happens if the Russian economy is truly in free fall? What happens if we end the Russian economy and cause massive civilian concerns on the ground in Russia?" That is not the limitation here. It is how can you do as much damage as possible to Putin. So, that clearly is what's happening, and Biden would certainly support that leading to the destabilization of the Russian political system and that leading to much more direct opposition to Putin in the streets.
But to quote Vince Lombardi, "Hope is not a strategy." And Putin's ability to stay in power is very high. So I want to say I'm not all that worked up. Certainly not the way the headlines are displaying over the weekend and today over this statement. I do think the biggest problem is that it plays into Kremlin propaganda. And that's precisely because over for the last four weeks, the Kremlin has been focusing on Ukrainians being run by Nazis and focusing on de-Nazification and disarmament, and all of the genocide they say was being perpetrated by the Ukrainians against Russians in the occupied territories, all of which was completely fake news. But now they're pivoting away from that. Now the Russians are saying we're nearing the end, successful conclusion of the first phase of the military strategy. And that's because they've gotten rid of a lot of the Nazis that are in the Azov Battalion in Mariupol. So, they will have done a lot of the disarmament and de-Nazification.
So what are they focusing on now? Now they're focusing on the United States and NATO and saying that the West is trying to cancel Putin and saying that the West is trying to destroy Russia, destroy the Russian economy and destroy the Russian government. And of course, all of those statements, Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister, saying it's total war. All of those statements, they're just going to play over and over and over again. Biden saying, "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power," and saying it is an explicit policy of regime change. You don't even need to fake the quote. You have it right there.
So in that regard, I think it was a mistake, but I do think that Biden made a more significant mistake this last week and it's not getting a lot of coverage, and I would much rather focus on that, which is that Biden personally is increasingly painting the conflict with Russia as a global war against democracy. He said it right before he got on a plane to leave for Europe. He says, "We need a new world order and the United States needs to lead it." He said in his speeches in Europe that this is about the world's democracies versus autocracies. He said that Russia needs to be kicked out of the G20. I think that's all dangerous, and it's dangerous for a number of reasons.
First of all, because the world's democracies aren't with the United States. It is true that a majority of the world's democracies voted to condemn the Russian invasion at the United Nations General Assembly, though I'd point out that a majority of the world's population did not. They either abstained or they opposed. And that of course includes countries like India and South Africa, which are absolutely democratic and absolutely not with the United States, and its idea that this is a conflict between democracies and authoritarian regimes, not at all. Furthermore, of the US, it is not in the US interest for this to be a fight against Russia and China. And China is absolutely and Xi Jinping is absolutely on Russia's side here, but you don't want it to go further in that direction. You don't want a cold war against Russia to become a cold war against Russia and China. The damage to everyone, to the global economy, to American interest directly would be far, far more severe.
And yet when you paint this as a new world order the Americans will lead, that's obviously a message that will be rejected strongly by the Chinese. When you say that Russia needs to be thrown out of the G20, and the Chinese strongly oppose because that's their best friend on the global stage. Well, what are the Chinese going to do? They're going to focus on the BRICs.They're going to focus on the developing world. They're going to focus on how the Americans are being excluding everyone and only the rich countries are with the Americans. And by the way, 141 countries voted in favor of condemning Russia. But in favor of sanctions? Only the rich countries around the world. It is a mistake for the Americans to believe that the world is on America's side, not least as which because the United States increasingly is not a great model to lead global democracy itself.
We saw this with the Democracy Summit that Biden hosted a few months ago. It feels like years ago, which was kind of problematic. The United States has a bunch of friends that are authoritarian regimes, and they obviously feel like they're thrown under the bus with this kind of rhetoric. And further, when we look ahead to our midterm elections, we look ahead at 2024, the likelihood that Trump becomes the Republican nominee and the likelihood that a majority of Americans continue to have big questions about the legitimacy of its own election process and whoever loses is almost certain to believe that the election was stolen. How do you get to say that this is about democracies versus authoritarian regimes when the United States thinks of itself increasingly as a very dysfunctional and non-represented democracy?
So for all of these reasons, I think this is a tack that Biden feels very strongly about personally, but should be suppressing, because it will not be effective for the United States globally, and it certainly will not reflect well on the state of American influence around the world, where you want it to be as multilateral as humanly possible.
Anyway, that's a few thoughts from me just to kick off the week. Hope everyone's doing well and I'll talk to you all real soon.
For more of Ian Bremmer's weekly analyses, subscribe to his GZERO World newsletter at ianbremmer.bulletin.com