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FILE PHOTO: Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. looks on as he meets with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, at Malacanang Palace in Manila, Philippines, March 19, 2024.
Manila-Beijing talks: Can they agree over South China Sea clashes?
Representatives from China and the Philippines met for crucial talks in Manila on Tuesday to put some guardrails on escalating tension in the South China Sea following a serious confrontation last month. Three of Manila’s ships were damaged on June 17 when Chinese sailors surrounded and boarded them while wielding edged weapons, and one Filipino sailor lost a finger.
Manila had hoped China would promise to pay for the damage they caused during the most recent incident. But the meeting ended without any substantial agreement beyond affirming a joint “commitment to de-escalate tensions without prejudice to their respective positions.”
Still, Washington is likely relieved both sides agreed to keep talking about ways to tone down the increasingly violent confrontations. The US has repeatedly warned China that it will honor its mutual defense treaty obligations to the Philippines if needed.
Neither side wants war, but both Beijing and Manila see the South China Sea issue as one of core sovereignty – both sides feel this is their territory – and don’t find much room for compromise. We’ll be watching any future negotiations that might keep a lid on things until the US election in November, which could cause strategic re-evaluations if Donald Trump wins.“Keep the nuclear codes away from that robot”
The United States has issued a warning to two fellow nuclear powers, in so many words telling China and Russia, “Keep your nuclear weapons firmly in human control.”
In a May 2 press briefing, US State Department official Paul Dean said that the government has explicitly told France and the United Kingdom that the decision to deploy nuclear weapons must stay out of reach of autonomous artificial intelligence systems — and said it welcomes China and Russia to make the same pronouncement.
Global powers are racing to level-up their military capabilities with cutting-edge artificial intelligence. The US military recently tested an autonomously controlled X-62A jet in a dogfight simulation, which it called a success; and AI has been used on both sides of the Russia-Ukraine war. Meanwhile, the US is trying to cut off China from powerful computer chips needed to run AI systems using stringent export controls, while giving grants to chipmakers willing to expand operations in America.
The State Department’s pronouncement sounds alarming, but the nuclear powers may, in fact, be on the same page, even if their diplomatic interests are more entrenched and complicated.
Alex Brideau, Eurasia Group’s practice head for Eurasia, says he doesn’t believe the US was accusing China or Russia of pursuing AI use in their nuclear command and control controls; rather, Washington is seeking public assurance on the matter. Still, since the US-Russia diplomatic relationship has been strained by the war in Ukraine, Russia might revel in the ambiguity.
“That’s not necessarily because Russia intends to explore the use of AI this way,” Brideau says. “Instead, Moscow might want to add it to the broader set of security issues, nuclear and non-nuclear, that it wants Washington to negotiate over.”
Rick Waters and Jeremy Chan, from Eurasia Group’s China practice, said they think China is on the same page as the US regarding this norm. Chan pointed out that Zhang Jun, who until recently served as China’s permanent representative to the UN, made two important points in a UN speech in March: (1) “nuclear weapons must never be used and a nuclear war never fought,” and (2) “countries should continue to enhance the safety, reliability, and controllability of AI technology and ensure that relevant weapon systems are under human control at all times.”
China may issue an explicit statement after the upcoming US-China dialogue, expected in the coming weeks. That said, Chan thinks Beijing may be reluctant to do so given other unresolved disagreements with the US over nuclear doctrine — “namely the US refusal to commit to a no-first-use policy and reduce its nuclear stockpile.”
The US is simply trying to avoid a classic sci-fi scenario: What algorithm can doom civilization without humanity’s involvement? Surely, that’s the quickest path to annihilation. Luckily, it sounds like its adversaries are already on the same page.
FILE PHOTO: Chinese Coast Guard vessels fire water cannons towards a Philippine resupply vessel Unaizah May 4 on its way to a resupply mission at Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea, March 5, 2024.
Is the South China Sea the next Sarajevo?
The US, Japan, Australia, and the Philippines banded together Sunday for their first joint naval exercises in the South China Sea to push back against Beijing’s aggression and territorial claims in the region. A recent op-ed published in the state-owned China Daily drew parallels between current tensions with the Philippines over the disputed maritime zone and the “Sarajevo gunshot” that preceded World War I. This view is echoed by China expert Gordon Chang, who told Fox News that “it’s more likely that the fight starts over the Philippines than it starts over Taiwan or Japan.”
Cue the cavalry: These drills, including anti-submarine warfare training, are designed to uphold the rule of law and freedom of navigation, according to a joint communique. China said it conducted its own military drills in the region in response. The drills come just ahead of a meeting between US President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos on Wednesday, when the allies will discuss further cooperation in the South China Sea — with bigger ambitions on the horizon.
The AUKUS alliance is also flirting with the idea of inviting Japan to be a new partner in countering China's assertiveness. Japan would engage in “Pillar Two” of the Alliance, which commits members to jointly developing quantum computing, undersea, hypersonic, artificial intelligence, and cyber technology. (Pillar One, which will deliver nuclear-powered attack submarines to Australia, will not include Japan. Before JAUKUS is born, however, experts say Japan must enhance its cyber defenses and better protect sensitive information. We’ll be watching for an impending announcement at the summit on Wednesday.The free world comes out swinging
As the Davos jet set arrived in the Swiss Alps earlier this week, the weather matched the mood: gloomy, with much to be gloomy about.
A barometer on global cooperation released by the World Economic Forum suggested that in almost every category – trade, innovation, health, and security – the picture is as turbulent as a brooding J.M.W. Turner seascape.
The study suggested cooperation is being eroded by conflict and competition from autocracies around the world. In the WEF’s Chief Economists Outlook, 56% of the respondents said they expect the global economy to weaken this year, in part because of geopolitical uncertainty.
Events in Ukraine, Gaza, and the Red Sea are precarious, and the Western response is half-hearted, appearing to confirm Russian President Vladimir Putin’s view that democracies are weak and hamstrung by the need to win votes.
Attendees in need of a pick-me-up may have lamented the decision not to repeat the experiment of micro-doses of mind-expanding magic mushrooms that were on offer last year.
Democracies strike back
Strangely though, the clouds cleared, literally and metaphorically, as the week progressed, and leader after leader took to the stage to proclaim their optimism about the world in 2024.
Maybe it is because Western politicians were in such close proximity to the new masters of the technology universe – AI pioneers like Open AI CEO Sam Altman – and their unshakeable confidence that we are on the cusp of a new era of tech-driven prosperity.
Maybe it’s because the global elite are simple people with simple tastes – the best of everything – and Davos is obliging them.
Whatever the explanation, there was a spring in the step of many of last week’s keynote speakers. The democracies were striking back, based on their faith in the resiliency of their systems and their belief in the shortcomings of their adversaries.
The feeling is in line with the conclusion of the aforementioned barometer – that cooperation can co-exist with elements of great power rivalry, and that instances of cooperation can build mutual trust.
Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, said on Tuesday that we have entered a new complex reality of strategic competition in an age of interdependence. This will be an era that builds on the core institutions that have kept the peace since 1945, one where the existing rules – “that crime doesn’t pay” – remain in force, he said.
Rivalry with countries like China means “a small yard with high fences,” Sullivan said, to ensure that technology like advanced semiconductors is not used to undermine America's national security. But he said that does not mean a technology blockade, pointing to a carve-out on commercial chips.
And he said recent agreements, such as renewed military-to-military communications and moves to reduce the export of fentanyl from China that followed Biden’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in San Francisco last November show cooperation remains possible.
China’s conciliatory signals
The large Chinese delegation in Davos was led by Premier Li Qiang, who gave his own speech on Tuesday. He sounded like someone more interested in securing a better deal for China in this new world order than in blowing it up. He said China is seeking to rebuild trust by safeguarding the multilateral trading system. Beijing is committed to a policy of opening up to foreign investment “and will open the door still wider,” he added, to keep fostering a “market-oriented, law-based and world-class business environment.”
Naturally, Chinese leaders who witnessed an outflow of foreign investment in the third quarter of last year would make conciliatory noises, particularly in a room filled with executives from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds.
But Xi will have noted the world’s response to Putin’s aggression and is likely all too conscious that China cannot further alienate its trading partners at a time when it faces economic challenges. Those range from its shaky property sector to high levels of government debt, and from a lack of consumer confidence to demographic challenges.
Sullivan said his job is to worry but that he remains optimistic. “The more others seek to undermine stability, the more it brings our partners together,” he said.
He explained that people around the world are more interested in improving their own lives than in any “imperial projects or ambitions.” He said the democratic model remains more attractive than one based on coercion or intimidation and that violent disruption will fail.
Consensus-building efforts
However, for that to happen, countries have to come together and work toward a common interest, such as stopping Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, he added.
It was a theme reiterated by French President Emmanuel Macron in his address to the forum on Wednesday. He said Davos is always a venue for a global conversation and this year it should be realistic but optimistic, noting that “decisions that can change things are within our hands.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday offered a riposte to the idea that Russia is winning in Ukraine because of Vladimir Putin’s limitless tolerance for casualties and the failure of sanctions to cripple the Russian economy. He said Russia is weaker militarily, economically, and diplomatically than when Putin invaded two years ago. “Europe has severed its energy dependency on Russia. Ukrainians are more united than they’ve ever been. NATO is stronger, is larger, and will be larger still in the coming weeks."
“Putin has already failed in what he set out to do. He set out to erase Ukraine from the map, to eliminate its independence, to subsume it into Russia. That has failed and it cannot, will not succeed,” he said.
As Sullivan noted, nothing in world politics is inevitable. The election of Donald Trump would significantly alter the geopolitical calculus, potentially ending military assistance to Ukraine, giving China free rein to meddle in the South China Sea, and sparking trade wars with even the closest US allies.
But this past week, at least, there seemed to be a feeling in the famed Alpine village that the advantage has shifted in favor of the free world.
British PM Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen shake hands at Windsor Guildhall, Britain, February 27, 2023.
What We’re Watching: Post-Brexit trade, West Bank chaos, Nigeria’s vote count, Teddies for Turkey
A historic post-Brexit breakthrough
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled a plan on Monday they say will finally resolve the complex problem of post-Brexit trade involving Northern Ireland. In the coming days, skeptics (and opponents) of the deal within Sunak’s Conservative Party and the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland will read the proposal closely to decide whether to approve it. The deal is intended to ease the flow of trade between Britain and Northern Ireland, some of which will flow across the UK’s border with the Republic of Ireland and into the EU. The deal creates two lanes for trade: a faster-flowing green lane for goods transiting only between Britain and Northern Ireland and a red lane with more rigorous customs checks for goods bound for the EU. The two biggest (of many) issues that will now be debated in Britain’s parliament: How to determine which lane each shipment of goods will travel through and what role the European Court of Justice will play in resolving trade disputes that involve Northern Ireland. Sunak appears to believe that his plan will pass parliament, but the scale of this important political victory for the embattled PM will depend on how much opposition from his own party and the DUP force him to rely on the opposition Labour Party for the votes needed to get it done. Sunak was in Belfast on Tuesday to sell the deal to the DUP.
West Bank on the brink
The West Bank experienced one of the largest single acts of settler violence on Sunday, when scores of Jewish settlers stormed the town of Hawara, near Nablus, torching vehicles and houses and leaving at least one Palestinian dead. The assailants said it was a “revenge” attack for the shooting of two Israeli brothers by a Palestinian gunman. (Another Israeli was killed in the West Bank on Monday.) This comes as the security situation in the occupied West Bank has been deteriorating for the better part of a year, with a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks in Israel leading to raids on Palestinian terror cells by the Israeli army. While the Israeli Defense Forces have been criticized for not acting fast enough to quell the violence in Hawara, recent events have revealed stark divisions within the far-right government of PM Benjamin Netanyahu. While some members of the government egged on the settlers – including the finance minister, who originally supported calls for burning down Hawara before walking it back – Netanyahu, for his part, gave a rare speech calling on Israelis not to take the law into their own hands and condemning "anarchy." Many analysts say this is a sign that the strong-minded leader fears he’s losing control of the security situation in the West Bank, a sensitive issue that will continue to deepen government fissures if it goes unchecked. Indeed, Bibi can’t afford cracks in his coalition after a new poll found that he would lose elections if they were held today.
Nigerian election count walk-out
Nigeria's two main opposition parties on Monday walked out of the site where results from Saturday's presidential election are being gradually announced after crying fraud over the slower-than-expected electronic transmission of results from polling stations. But according to Amaka Anku, Eurasia Group's top Africa analyst, there is a process for political parties to register complaints over election results related to the new system without having to abandon the premises. All political party agents, she explains, receive copies of the results sheets from each polling station and must sign off on the tallies at various stages of the counting process well before the national count begins. Those are the same sheets that are then uploaded onto a publicly available website. Nonetheless, the inability of the electoral commission to meet the high expectations it created — that those sheets would be immediately published — "casts a shadow over the whole process," says Anku. Final results are now expected on Tuesday, with ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu in the lead so far.
Teddy bears for quake survivor kids in Turkey
It's not all bad news out there. On Sunday, fans attending a Turkish league soccer game in Istanbul between local club Beşiktaş and Antalyaspor in Istanbul showered the field with teddy bears and other toys to be donated to child survivors of the recent earthquakes, the worst natural disaster in Turkey's history. The outpouring of support happened when the match was stopped for a moment of silence at 4 minutes and 17 seconds, marking the exact time — 4:17 am on Feb. 6 — when the first quake struck. But once the ceremony ended, it all got political, with thousands of members of the Çarşı, a hardcore Beşiktaş fan club, chanting to demand that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan step down over his handling of the catastrophe and lax building standards enforced prior to it. There's no love lost between him and the famously left-wing, working-class Çarşı, rabidly loyal Beşiktaş fans with an anti-authoritarian streak whom Erdoğan knows will definitely not vote for him in the May 14 election.
People work at the site of a mudslide after pouring rains in Petropolis, Brazil.
Hard Numbers: Deadly mudslides in Brazil, Israel strikes Syria, Saudi women seek bullets, problem parrots in New Zealand
105: At least 105 people have been killed in mudslides and floods in Brazil. The disaster saw streets “turned into rivers” in the city of Petropolis, 40 miles north of Rio de Janeiro. Hundreds are now expected to be facing homelessness in the wake of the floods.
2: For the second time this month, Israel has conducted missile strikes against targets in Syria. The target this time was reportedly a building where unknown military officials were meeting, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
28,000: A railway company has received 28,000 applications from Saudi women seeking a very cool job: driving bullet trains between Mecca and Medina. But only 30 positions for female train drivers are open. Women weren’t allowed to drive in the Kingdom until 2018.
92: Roughly 92 percent of all escaped pets in New Zealand are exotic parrots from other countries. Authorities now say this is a “real problem” as the birds introduce new diseases and crowd out native birds for nest space and food.Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi, attends a ceremony to mark the second anniversary of the killing of senior Iranian military commander General Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. attack, in Tehran, Iran January 3, 2022.
Hard Numbers: Iranian revenge for Suleimani, China back in Nicaragua, German bleats for vaccines, Turkish inflation explodes
2: On the second anniversary of the US assassination of top Iranian general Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi vowed to avenge his death unless former president Donald Trump and other American officials are tried in court. At the time, Tehran hit back by attacking US military bases in Iraq.
32: China reopened over the weekend its embassy in Managua, which had been shuttered since the Nicaraguan government decided to recognize Taiwan almost 32 years ago. Nicaragua is the latest country to establish ties with Beijing, which has been pushing hard to increase its economic and political clout — and diminish Taipei’s — across Latin America.
700: About 700 goats and sheep were assembled in Schneverdingen, south of Hamburg, in the form of a syringe to encourage Germans to get vaccinated. If you're interested in crazy vax incentives around the world, take our quiz here.
36: Turkey's year-on-year inflation soared to 36 percent in December, the highest rate in almost two decades. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to defy economic orthodoxy by keeping interest rates low despite rising prices and a crashing lira.
Inequity and conflict in Yemen: interview with UN's David Gressly
Why you should remember Yemen’s forgotten war In Yemen, the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis you’ve probably never heard of, 80 percent of people need international aid just to survive.
Two-thirds are hungry, and half don’t know where their next meal will come from.
Life is very hard in Yemen, UN Resident Coordinator David Gressly tells Ian Bremmer. Most infrastructure is destroyed, few can access clean water or health care, and many Yemenis are afraid to go outside because of landmines.
Meanwhile, 1.2 civil servants continue to show up to work, with little or no pay. If they stayed home, the state would cease to exist. The UN is asking for $3.6 billion simply to feed Yemenis and keep the lights on through 2022, but is now still short $1.6 billion. Gressly says that means many Yemenis will go hungry next year.
Regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia have turned Yemen into a seven-year proxy war, with civilians paying the price. The country is divided between the Houthis, an Iran-backed Shia militant group, and the internationally recognized government with Saudi Arabia on its side.
It’s unlikely the conflict will end anytime soon. The Biden administration has delisted the Houthis as a terrorist organization and stopped selling weapons to the Saudis. Gressly thinks that’s a step in the right direction, but not enough.
Watch the episode of GZERO World on Yemen's forgotten war: https://www.gzeromedia.com/gzero-world-with-ian-bremmer/caught-in-the-crossfire-yemens-forgotten-war