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IAEA chief backs Japan-North Korea talks
International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi said Tuesday that the UN body supports Japan’s efforts to hold a summit with North Korea to boost engagement, even if nuclear weapons aren’t on the agenda.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has said he is prepared to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as he tries to bring back Japanese nationals abducted to North Korea between 1977 and 1983. Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong, who holds considerable sway, indicated that Pyongyang would be open to talks with Japan last month.
Japan secured the release of five abductees in 2002, and of their children in 2004, but Pyongyang has since stonewalled. Of the 12 people Japan believes remain imprisoned, North Korea claims eight are dead and that four were never abducted.
Why the change of heart? Kim may be hoping to use the talks to muck up the growing closeness between Tokyo, Seoul, and Washington. The Supreme Leader has made significant rhetorical changes toward the South, renouncing the goal of reunification and referring to Seoul as “the main enemy.” Hawkish South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol wasn’t eager for rapprochement anyway, while the Biden administration has mostly ignored Pyongyang.
Only Kishida, facing an election expected this year amid sagging approval and scandals, has any reason to talk with Kim. A breakthrough on the emotional issue of abductees — even simply obtaining proof of life or death — could goose his numbers.For China, Russia, and Israel, patience is a virtue in 2024
In January, Taiwan elected pro-independence candidate William Lai and, despite warnings, China’s response has been restrained, possibly influenced by Beijing’s belief that the leading US presidential candidate may treat Taiwan like a “discarded chess piece.”
That’s what Chinese Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Chen Binhua said would happen if Donald Trump won the US election in November after the former president refused to say whether he would defend Taiwan. His comments shook US ally Japan strongly enough that senior Kishida administration officials are reportedly contacting Trump’s camp to warn against cutting any kind of deal with China.
The view from China: The prospect of a friendlier – or at least more transactional – US administration might be good news for cross-strait relations in the short term. There's no point in rocking the boat in a way that might hurt either Trump’s prospects or what trust Beijing has built with the Biden administration over the last year (Joe Biden, after all, could win too).
Beijing isn’t alone in recognizing that a little patience could pay big dividends after November. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, Israeli far-right leader Itamar Ben-Gvir said Israel would have carte blanche under Trump 2.0.
“Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with humanitarian aid and fuel, which goes to Hamas,” he said. “If Trump [were] in power, the US conduct would be completely different.”
The view from the Kremlin is just as rosy. Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul has been arguing for months that Vladimir Putin is waiting for Trump to be re-elected to sue for peace in Ukraine because of how destabilizing another dose of Trump will be to NATO. Former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daaldermade a similar argument last week. And Trump did tell European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, “By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO” in 2020.
GZERO also has its eye on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. He and Trump left it in a bad place after their whirlwind romance in 2018 … but who knows what another love letter might spark?
What’s Kim Jong Un playing at?
On Tuesday, North Korean state media reported that Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un had proposed changing the country’s constitution to remove all references to reunification with South Korea and to frame Seoul as the country’s “primary foe.” It echoes the rejection of reunification Kim made in his New Year’s speech and comes a week after North Korean forces fired artillery shells across their disputed maritime border with South Korea.
What’s the signal? One can only glean at the surface level domestically, but the militaristic rhetoric seems to be preparing North Koreans for hard times to continue. The state will need to continue allocating scarce resources to protect itself from its enemies, South Korea and the United States, rather than develop the country.
Jeremy Chan, a senior analyst covering North Korea for Eurasia Group, says Kim may have one eye on elections in each country as well.
“By the end of this year, Kim could be looking at an incoming President Trump, who loves exchanging love letters and potentially could be sold on a deal that actually doesn't include denuclearization; maybe something like a nuclear freeze,” Chan said. “There's light at the end of the tunnel a bit for Kim strategically from where he stands.”
South Korea’s legislative elections in April have unpopular President Yoon Suk-yeol, a North Korea hawk, fighting an uphill battle against the opposition Democratic Party, but if Pyongyang wanted to help his dovish opponents, harsh rhetoric and artillery drills would seem counterproductive.
“If you parse Kim's remarks, he's not personalizing this to Yoon or even to the conservatives,” said Chan, explaining that Kim is threatening South Korea itself, and considers leaders from all its parties to be illegitimate.
Is Kim preparing for war? Some experts are worried he is, as Robert L. Carlin and Siegfried S. Hecker laid out last week in 38North, a specialist outlet on North Korea affairs.
It’s impossible to know Kim’s intentions, and even though the US and South Korea are all but guaranteed to destroy North Korea in an open war (but likely at a brutal cost in civilian lives), Yoon is not ignoring the possibility.
After the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, Yoon ordered the military to beef up its reconnaissance – despite Pyongyang’s annoyance – and last month, he told troops deployed on the DMZ that if fired upon, they should “take retaliatory steps” first and ask questions later.
Hard Numbers: Republicans tune out debate, US moon lander faces trouble, Indian court revisits 2002 violence, Kim Jong Un skips the big 4-0, German soccer legend dies, Argentina’s big bill
51: The GOP’s fifth presidential debate is being held Wednesday night on CNN, but a key demographic isn’t tuning in. According to a new Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll, 51% of Republicans don’t plan to watch, reflecting just how strong a lead former President Donald Trump – who’s expected to skip the event (again!) – has in the race toward the nomination. Apart from Trump, only Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley have qualified to take part.
50: Houston, we have a problem … The US launched its first lunar lander in over 50 years on Monday, but it may not reach its destination. The Peregrine spacecraft, a robotic lander built by the Pittsburgh-based aerospace company Astrobotic, successfully took off from Cape Canaveral, but the company says that issues likely caused by the propulsion system are threatening “the ability of the spacecraft to soft land on the moon.”
11: India’s Supreme Court on Monday restored life prison sentences for 11 men convicted of raping a pregnant woman in 2002 during Hindu-Muslim religious violence in the state of Gujarat. The men, who were released from prison in 2022, must now surrender to authorities within two weeks. PM Narendra Modi was the top elected official in Gujarat back then, and he has faced criticism over his actions during the 2002 sectarian riots, which saw over 1,000 people, mostly Muslim, killed.
40: Kim Jong Un turned 40 on Monday. The nuke-obsessed Supreme Leader is believed to have been born on Jan. 8, 1984, though North Korea has not officially confirmed this. While his father and grandfather often held lavish parties for themselves, Kim opted not to throw a birthday bash.
78: Franz Beckenbauer, perhaps the most famous German soccer player of all time, died Sunday at the age of 78. Beckenbauer, a defender, was one of just three men in history to win the World Cup as both a player and a manager – he’s joined only by Brazil's Mario Zagallo, who passed away on Friday at 92, and Didier Deschamps, 55, of France.
5 billion: Argentina has until Jan. 10 to scrounge up $5 billion in collateral for the $16 billion it owes the private shareholders of state energy company YFP. Argentina is expected to miss the deadline – despite President Javier Milei pledging to break the country’s defaulting habit – at which point the shareholders would be forced to assert their rights by seizing Argentine assets. This could be anything: In 2012, Argentina lost a tall-masted naval ship to a hedge fund that seized it as an asset when it was docked in Ghana.
Putin, MBS, and Kim Jong-Un review this winter's films
The three dictators give thumbs up or down to the holiday season's biggest blockbusters!
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Hard Numbers: North Korean arms to Russia, terror in Brussels, Meloni eyes tax cuts, pro-Russian Georgian politicking, Palestinian-American boy murdered
1,000: White House officials say North Korea has sent up to 1,000 shipping containers of “equipment and munitions” to Russia recently. Satellite images purportedly show clear evidence of Russian ships linked to military transport networks collecting the cargo – signs that Pyongyang is aiding Moscow’s war efforts.
2: Two Swedish nationals were killed in a shooting in Brussels on Monday. The attack in the Belgian capital took place during the Belgium-Sweden Euro 2024 qualifier soccer match, and play was subsequently halted. The gunman, who is believed to have been Tunisian, posted a video on social media claiming to have waged the attack in the name of God. He was shot dead by police late Monday.
24 billion: Italian PM Giorgia Meloni aims to cut taxes and boost public sector incomes next year, and her cabinet approved a budget on Monday to spend 24 billion euros ($25.3 billion) to make it happen. Meloni needs to boost growth and consumption quickly, before next June’s European Parliament elections, which could test her coalition government.
100: The Constitutional Court of Georgia found the country's pro-western President Salome Zourabichvili guilty on Monday of breaching the constitution by conducting visits with European leaders and lobbying for her country's membership of the European Union without government consent. While her opponents in the ruling Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia are unlikely to get the 100 votes they need to remove her, the president – who constitutionally represents the country in foreign relations – is expected to face intense pressure to resign, perhaps paving a route for a pro-Russian leader to take the helm.
26: As we’ve mentioned, the war in the Middle East has sparked an uptick in hate crimes around the globe. One of the latest victims was six-year-old Palestinian-American Wadea Al-Fayoume, from the Chicago area, who was stabbed 26 times on Saturday and died from his injuries. His mother was also stabbed and remains in hospital, and police have charged the suspect with murder and hate crimes.Kim Jon Un: Swiftie
EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE: Kim Jong Un extracts big concessions from Putin in closed-door meeting.
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Is the Middle East becoming the "new Europe”?
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
First, will there be long-term regional consequences following the devastating Moroccan earthquake?
I hopefully I think the answer to that is, no. I mean, the response from the government was relatively, it wasn't immediate. And it wasn't great to begin with, in part, because the king, I guess, was in Paris. And it's very vertical. Nothing happens without the king. But now they're moving. There's a lot of international humanitarian aid going in. And as devastating as it is in terms of human lives, the ability to keep Marrakech going is pretty high. Even the IMF annual meeting in a few weeks’ time should still be there. So on balance, I think this is one where the consequences are borne by all of the families, but not on Morocco more broadly.
Secondly, is the Middle East on its way to becoming “the new Europe,” as Mohammed bin Salman recently said?
Yeah, no, I wouldn't go that far. But certainly, Mohammed bin Salman has done more in terms of reform and dramatic transformation of his country, and yes, with some downside, than anyone could have imagined before he came in. That's why he's so incredibly popular among the young people in Saudi Arabia, and certainly, it's why he's attracting a lot more attention to the region, including capital investment from a lot of different places.
And finally, Kim Jong Un is traveling to meet Putin. How concerned is the West?
Should be concerned in part because that's the only person out there that really supports Putin right now. It's like Belarus, it's North Korea, it's Iran, it's rogue states that the Americans and the Europeans cannot contain or constrain. And that's a serious problem.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you real soon.
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