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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi upon his arrival in Cairo.
What We’re Watching: MBS on tour, Lithuania vs. Russia, Spain’s moderate swing
MBS makes BFFs ahead of Biden visit
With barely a month until his controversial summit with President Joe Biden, the Saudi crown prince is on a regional tour this week to show that he’s hardly the “pariah” that America’s president once promised to make him. In Jordan, Mohammed bin Salman will look to patch up a monarchy-to-monarchy relationship that became strained last year over allegations of Saudi involvement in a plot to overthrow King Abdullah II. The Jordanians hope MBS’s visit leads to a resumption of lavish Saudi financial support. In Egypt, Crown Prince Mohammed will be highlighting Riyadh’s tight relationship with the Arab world’s most populous country. Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi enjoys strong backing from the Saudis, who have gifted or invested billions of dollars in Egypt in recent years. But the most significant stop on MBS’s tour will be in Turkey, where always-dicey relations between the regional rivals nearly broke off entirely over the Saudi government’s 2018 murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. But with Turkey looking for financial help to right a listing economy, and MBS looking to shore up ties with a mercurial member of NATO, it seems that bygones are bygones.
Kaliningrad set to be next flashpoint?
Leaders of NATO countries have taken extraordinary steps to ensure that Russia’s war against Ukraine doesn’t extend into NATO territory. So far, they’ve been successful. But the Russian government says it’s furious that Lithuania – a former Soviet Republic that’s now a NATO and EU member – is blocking Russian goods shipments to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave set between Lithuania and Poland that’s hundreds of miles away from the rest of Russia. Kaliningrad, home to about 1 million people, is a strategically important spot. It’s home to Russia’s Baltic Fleet headquarters and, though Russia denies it, there may also be nuclear-capable Iskander missiles stored there. Lithuania is now blocking rail supplies from Russian territory to Kaliningrad, which Russia claims is a violation of international law. Lithuania says it’s simply enforcing an EU ban on the transport through EU territory of a range of Russian products, from heavy machinery to luxury goods. If Lithuania keeps it up, Russia would be forced to ship the equipment to Kaliningrad’s port on the Baltic Sea. But Moscow warns that Lithuania will face “serious” consequences unless it allows the trains to pass. The EU has backed Lithuania’s refusal to resume the rail shipments, so it’s up to President Vladimir Putin to decide how high tensions will rise.
Spain swings to the center
In late 2018, an election in the southern region of Andalucía upended Spain's politics after Vox became the first far-right party to win representation since the late 1970s. Vox later exploded nationwide and is now the third-largest force in parliament. But on Sunday, another vote in the same bellwether region, Spain's largest and most-populated, saw the traditional center-right People’s Party secure an outright majority for the first time, while Vox fell short of expectations. What's more, the ruling center-left PSOE party, which until recently dominated Andalusian politics, got its worst result ever there. The PP has been riding high in the polls since it picked the moderate Alberto Núñez Feijóo to lead the party following a messy internal crisis, and now its odds of returning to national power in 18 months are looking good. Amid an increasingly polarized political environment and rising inflation, Feijóo is pitching himself as an anti-populist nerd to voters fed up with parties that won’t talk to each other, and as a pair of safe hands to manage the economy in turbulent times. Will making Spanish politics boring again take him all the way to La Moncloa?
War in Ukraine sets energy transition in "hyperdrive"
GZERO Media caught up with Microsoft's Chief Environmental Officer Lucas Joppa at the World Economic Forum in Davos to discuss ways to keep nations focused on climate change amid the converging crises of war and pandemic.
Tony Maciulis: When you have these very immediate and acute crises happening concurrently like pandemic and now of course the war in Ukraine, has it been a challenge to keep the focus on climate change?
Lucas Joppa: I would say yes and no. It's a challenge because obviously these are crises in and of themselves and they need to be dealt with and focused on. But on the other hand, I think that these crises, what they've done is they've really shown society that we have things that are going to happen to us. And if we know that they are coming, it would behoove us to do something about them now to prepare for it now. The biggest thing that we have coming for us is the impacts of a rapidly changing global climate system. It's front and center of our minds. We know we have to get out and do something about it. And so on the one hand, yes, we're focusing on these crises, but it hasn't shifted focus off of climate either.
Tony Maciulis: One thing that the war in Ukraine has certainly done is make some countries like Lithuania, for example, rethink their dependence on Russian gas. To what extent do you think the war has an opportunity to change the way countries think about energy in general? And will it in some way hasten a shift toward alternative energies?
Lucas Joppa: Well, it's really put everybody's thinking about the energy transition in hyperdrive. It has forced people to start thinking about the future of energy in a way that they hadn't had to before. We are at a critical juncture where people can choose a more clean, just, equitable future from an energy perspective or double down on the energy sources of the past. I think we know what a mistake that latter option would be. And so I'm just really excited about the fact that people are getting out there really thinking through and starting to put in place the infrastructure investments that they're going to need to pull off that net zero carbon transition.
Tony Maciulis: We last spoke to you, of course, in Glasgow for COP26. That's more than six months ago. What kind of progress has been made since then? And are you optimistic that by the time we get to Sharm el-Sheikh, there'll be something tangible to show?
Lucas Joppa: Well, I think that the world has been occupied with dealing with some of these crises that are in front of them. But I think that, especially with the energy crisis in Europe, there is actually a lot of progress, a lot of unexpected progress in a clean energy transition. And so that's fantastic. I think as we go from Scotland to Egypt, from COP26 to COP27, you're going to see a significant shift from not just focusing on mitigation from a climate perspective, but also adaptation and helping to build a more just and equitable future. And so I think that that's going to be an incredibly important addition to the conversation that the world's been having over the past decade or so.
Tony Maciulis: When you say adaptation, explain what that means exactly.
Lucas Joppa: Well, adaptation simply recognizes that climate change isn't something that's going to happen into the future. Climate change is something that's already happening today. And no matter how quickly we achieve a net zero economy, there are going to be human impacts of climate that have changed. And so we need to be able to help people adapt to that. We need to be able to shift our energy, our agriculture, and our other socioeconomic systems to help people adjust to the changing climates that we know are going to come. Whether that's a 1.5 degree celsius temperature increase, a two degree celsius increase, or something in between. We know that that temperature increase is going to lead to changes for human society and it behooves us to start focusing now on how we're going to help people adjust to those climactic changes.
Tony Maciulis: So one thing that you hear as a solution out there when it comes to adaptation is, okay, the temperatures are getting hotter. So we have to rely on more coolants, more air conditioning, right? How do you adapt to climate change without creating a bigger carbon emission problem?
Lucas Joppa: Well, that is the question. You can either adapt to climate change by making it worse or you can adapt to climate change by making it better. I mean, even if you just think about the built environment, the built environment is one of the largest sources of emissions across all sectors. And why is that? Well, it's because we've never been all that efficient with the way that we build, the way that we design, site, build, and then operate these buildings all around us. And so we know there are incredibly simple things, whether it's just the directional facing that we put buildings, the insulation and the energy efficiency that we build into these buildings. I think all of that is stuff that we can start doing now. It's not rocket science. We've known how to do it. But really it just sharpens the focus on making sure that all of this is coming together in a way that, as you said, adapts people to the changing climates, but does so in a way that also hastens our net zero transition as opposed to postpones it.
Tony Maciulis: And finally, here we are in Davos as the world economic forum is now in day two. Obviously climate and energy are on the agenda, but what are you hoping to hear and see? And what do you think would be a great result to have come out of this?
Lucas Joppa: Well, I think, A, it's fantastic to see that climate and sustainability remains as a top priority on the world economic forum agenda. That's fantastic. And now we really need to see the organizations, whether that's public, private sector that are here really start moving the conversation from pledges, which was really a focus of Davos in 2020, people pledging the progress that they were going to make. We need to move from the pledges to actually the progress that we need to make. And so seeing people really doubling down on their commitments, seeing people really doubling down on operationalizing and executing against their commitments, that's going to be critical.
Unpacking Lithuania's energy independence strategy
Over the past two years, Lithuania's economy was hit hard first by COVID, then by the Belarusian migrant crisis, and finally high energy prices late last year.
But now it's proving more resilient than others to the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Why? Mostly because they prepared for it, Lithuania's Finance Minister Gintarė Skaistė tells Eurasia Group's Shari Friedman in a GlobalStage conversation.
Indeed, the Baltic nation recently grabbed headlines when it became the first EU member state to stop buying Russian oil and natural gas.
But the Lithuanians started the process seven years ago, soon after Russia annexed Crimea.
How did Lithuania do it? Skaistė explains they put a lot of effort into achieving energy independence from Russia, for instance by investing in LNG terminals and connecting to the Nordic countries and Poland.
"Today we have the fruits of … of this prudent policy in the energy sector."
What's more, Skaistė says Lithuania's energy strategy has facilitated the country's transition to renewables and helped lower overall energy consumption.
Watch more of this Global Stage event: Live from Washington, DC: Financing the Future
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Is global economic inequality getting worse?
Yes, said the majority of respondents in a recent GZERO poll.
What's happening in Ukraine has undone much of the momentum for narrowing the equality gap created during the pandemic, said Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media, during a Global Stage livestream conversation hosted by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft. The event was held on site at the headquarters of the World Bank in Washington, DC , and was moderated by Jeanna Smialek, Federal Reserve reporter at The New York Times. The war has aggravated pre-existing problems like high inflation and supply chain disruptions. A cease-fire would help end all this, but don't count on it.
This week the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are holding their annual spring meetings. The conflict is top and center on the agenda, as is financial assistance to first help Ukraine keep the lights on and someday rebuild when the Russians leave.
"We're working on that," World Bank President David Malpass said upon joining the discussion just minutes after meeting Ukrainian officials. Beyond the conflict itself, Malpass is now more broadly concerned about the global economic slowdown and whether central banks have the tools for a soft landing after raising interest rates to fight inflation.
One country that's successfully stood up to the Russian threat is Lithuania, whose Finance Minister Gintarė Skaistė talked about her country's long-term energy independence strategy. Lithuania recently became the first EU member state to completely wean itself off Russian fossil fuels.
And what about the ripple effects from the conflict in other parts of the world, like food security? This is a big deal in countries in the Middle East and North Africa that rely heavily on Russian and Ukrainian wheat imports like Egypt.
Rania Al-Mashat, Egyptian minister for international cooperation, explained how her country diversified its food imports to soften the impact of such disruptions.
Later this year, Egypt is hosting the COP27 climate summit. But even more importantly, right before that meeting there will be a G20 summit in Indonesia — and Russia's invited.
What'll happen? Will the US and its allies walk out of rooms when the Russians show up? The G20 consensus has been fragmented, said Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati. Indeed it has, added Bremmer, who believes the war in Ukraine is "ripping up the fabric of geopolitics" for years to come.
Finally, Vickie Robinson, head of Microsoft's Airband Initiative to expand broadband access throughout the developing world, shared her perspective about how getting more people online will help achieve global equality.
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Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro gives a thumbs-up while lying in bed surrounded by medical personnel, in this still image obtained from social media. January 5, 2022.
Hard Numbers: Bolsonaro discharged, Taiwan buys Lithuanian rum, Niger mayor busted with coke, Rocket Man does it again
2: Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro was discharged two days after being admitted to a hospital with an intestinal obstruction. Bolsonaro's latest health problem is related to when he was stabbed while campaigning in 2018, which also caused him to develop chronic hiccups months ago.
20,000: A Taiwanese distillery bought 20,000 bottles of Lithuanian rum bound for China, after learning that Chinese customs might block the shipment to punish Lithuania for allowing Taiwan to open a de-facto embassy in Vilnius. The company is enticing Taiwanese consumers to purchase the booze by sharing tips on rum cocktails and rum-infused cooking.
440: A small-town mayor in northern Niger was arrested after 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of pure cocaine were found in his vehicle. Drug seizures are on a recent upswing in West Africa, which narcos use as a transit point on the way to lucrative markets in Europe.
62: North Korea conducted on Wednesday its 62nd ballistic missile test in a decade, by firing a projectile — which Pyongyang says was hypersonic — that landed in the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. During his 10 years as North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong Un has blasted three times as many missiles as his dad, and six times as many as his grandfather.
NATO’s role as a deterrent is still critically important to the US
In his New York Times op-ed, Stephen Wertheim says that Americans should "want no part" in NATO. It's a provocative argument, but misses the mark, according to Ian Bremmer, who breaks out the Red Pen with Eurasia Group analyst Charles Dunst to argue that now is not the time for the US to back out of NATO.
Joe Biden this week is wrapping up his first trip abroad as President of the United States. Reasonably successful week, brought him to the G7, EU, face-to-face with Vladimir Putin. He also attended a meeting that brought NATO heads of state together for the first time since December 2019. Former President Donald Trump was no fan of NATO, though saying it was obsolete was the one thing he admitted he was wrong about in foreign policy as president, so kind of interesting. But Biden's strong support for the organization was a welcome change for the military alliance.
Not everyone out there is happy about a warm embrace from the US of NATO. Historian Stephen Wertheim just wrote a piece in The New York Times entitled "Sorry, Liberals. But You Really Shouldn't Love NATO." It's a provocative argument and we think it misses the mark in a few important ways. So we're taking out the Red Pen.
Let's start at the beginning. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was founded back in 1949 in the wake of World War II. It was largely a response to the Soviet Union. Its mission was to protect European democracies, both diplomatically and, if necessary, with military force. Many people have challenged the existence and the point of NATO since the Soviet collapse back in '91, not just Wertheim, but we take issue with some of the arguments that are presented here.
Number one, Wertheim argues that NATO's existence risks great power war, I quote, "that the US should avoid like the plague." Does NATO really bring that risk though? On the contrary, we'd say it's helped to prevent a great power conflict by deterring Russian attacks on its members for decades and still now. Even Putin has said, as president, that only an insane person can imagine that Russia would suddenly attack NATO. That feels like a deterrent effect to me. Keep in mind that Article 5 of NATO, the pledge that an attack on one member nation is an attack on all, has actually only been invoked once, by the United States, after 9/11.
Next, Wertheim contends that "the Biden administration now faces a stark choice, commit to fight for Ukraine, creating a serious risk of war with Russia, or admit that NATO expansion has come to an overdue end." Wait, what? Neither Obama nor Trump actually faced such a "stark choice." Biden can continue bolstering Ukraine's defenses, Obama didn't want to do that, Trump did, work to lower the temperature with Russia and back NATO. This is frustrating to Ukraine's president who wants full membership and during the NATO summit tried tweeting that Ukraine was really, really, really about to become a member, and he got precisely nowhere. It's not actually an either/or.
Wertheim also writes that "Europe is stable and affluent far removed from its warring past." Meaning, of course, that it no longer needs a military alliance with the US or US involvement in it for protection. But remember, when Russia attacked Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine six years later, just a few weeks ago, Russia was massing troops on Ukraine's border. No one thinks Russia wants to overrun the continent with tanks as Wertheim suggests. But how about threatening Europeans with cyberattacks, with nerve agents on their individual citizens? These concerns are real, they cannot easily be dispensed with.
Finally, Wertheim concludes that if the United States doesn't trust the Europeans to defend themselves then it "truly intends to dominate the world in perpetuity." Number one, that's wildly overstated given the role and impact and power of China globally. But to talk just about the North Atlantic frame, supporting European allies who want help from the United States, by the way, as is very clear from the NATO summit itself, is not the same as wanting to dominate the world. Indeed, the United States wants Europe to take a bigger stake in its own defense to allow America to shift more of its attention to China. And Wertheim's argument ignores the fact that Europe still trusts the United States, even if not as much as it has historically and wants the US to contribute to the continent security through NATO. In fact, the Alliance expanded precisely because Eastern and Central European and Baltic countries like Lithuania and Estonia wanted a guarantee against Russian military aggression. NATO has served its purpose on that front.
In a meeting this week with NATO's secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, President Biden affirmed the US commitment saying of the Alliance, "If there weren't one, we'd have to invent one." Well, there is one, and I grant you NATO needs a bit of reinvention. But should the US back out completely? Sorry, Stephen Wertheim, but not right now.
That's your Red Pen. Hope you found it useful. See you again soon. In the meantime, stay safe and avoid fewer people.
Putin's next move won't be a Baltic invasion that could unify NATO
Russian President Vladimir Putin needs a way to boost his popularity at home, but is he likely to launch a military campaign targeting the Baltic states, as Russian studies expert Leon Aron argues in a recent Politico op-ed? Ian Bremmer and Eurasia Group analysts Alex Brideau and Zachary Witlin take out the Red Pen to break down why a Baltic invasion is unlikely to be on Putin's agenda.
Today we're taking a look at a recent op-ed from Politico, penned by Russian studies scholar Leon Aron of AEI.
And the title asks a provocative question, "Could Putin launch another invasion?" Aron links the current political moment in Russia, big protests, struggling economy, and Putin's own thirst for power and popularity, with the factors that led to Russia's incursion into Ukraine and annexation of Crimea in 2014. He lays out the possibility that Russia could make military moves yet again, potentially against Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania, the three Baltic states that all happen to be members of both the European Union and NATO.
Some context: This has been quite a week for US/Russia relations. President Biden in an interview with ABC News agreed with an assertion that Vladimir Putin is a "killer," I think he called him "soulless," too. And Russia responded by recalling their ambassador to the United States. All this comes as the American intelligence community released a report this week claiming that Russia had launched yet another campaign in the 2020 election to undermine Biden.
So a logical question would be: What is Putin's next move? Could he wage yet another military campaign?
Now, as with many of the pieces that we look at, some points Aron makes are right on the money. Yes, Putin did gain a lot of popularity after the operation in Crimea, especially. And yes, NATO faces real issues; Turkey is barely an ally these days, countries are slow rolling in terms of spending cash that they're promised, the French are talking about strategic autonomy, and yes, Putin always seems to have a surprise or two up his sleeve. But we are completely not convinced by the argument that an invasion of the Balts may be on its way.
So let's take out the Red Pen.
First, Aron writes that Putin's interventions, especially in Ukraine "worked," driving a "Crimean consensus" that victory in war overshadows troubles at home.
Sure, the Crimea intervention "worked" for Putin. Until it didn't. Putin has had to downplay military involvement in Ukraine of late to avoid a backlash from a Russian public that cares primarily about domestic issues still, like pensions, for example. And let's not forget that getting involved in Libya, in Syria, even in Nagorno-Karabakh didn't yield any real popularity bump of note for Putin.
Next, Aron writes that "we tend to repeat what worked." That is, Putin reached for the military lever before when he faced trouble, so he might do so again.
Well, Putin's decision making doesn't occur in a vacuum. Every past intervention was driven by national interest and foreign policy goals. Does Putin care about Putin? Of course. But Putin can't be sure that cooking up a foreign war would help matters it home. In fact, it might actually make them worse.
Finally, Aron says that Putin may consider a "fast and victorious poke at NATO's eastern flank," targeting the Baltic states and breaking NATO.
An attack on the Balts may be fast or it may be victorious, but probably not both. And Putin knows this. Western leaders are conflicted about the alliance, but an assault on full-fledged NATO State and EU members is exactly the kind of provocation that could awaken it. Putin understands this. He hardly wants to bring the alliance together as it's eroding. Low-cost efforts to steadily undermine legitimacy and grabbing targets of opportunity when available, that is much more Putin's speed.
Putin certainly seems to want to be president for life and probably is going to end up running for a fifth term, though a lot can happen in three years. Military moves that diminish his popularity or lead to further widespread protest, never mind bring together his adversaries, that is a strong NYET for now tovarishchey.
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Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius on Lithuania, Belarus, NATO & Trump
Protests and violence continue to escalate in Belarus as pro-democracy demonstrators demand the resignation of President Alexander Lukashenko, whose landslide reelection in August is widely viewed as illegitimate. GZERO Media spoke to Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius of neighboring Lithuania, a nation that has become a staunch ally of the opposition movement in Belarus and is providing refuge to Lukashenko's main challenger Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.
In a conversation with GZERO's Tony Maciulis, Linkevičius offered support for the protesters, saying, "They're still in the streets, still protesting, although they are really intimidated, beaten, raped, tortured, put into the custody. They're still so courageous and trying to fight for their right to choose, basically, and asking just to have normal elections and to elect their leadership."
Of Tikhanovskaya, Linkevičius explained the reasons why his nation offered the opposition leader a safe haven and what life has been like for her since fleeing Belarus, which he describes as "a difficult situation."
Linkevičius also called on the international community to take the ongoing unrest in Belarus seriously and to become more actively involved. "Sanctions is the least we can do," he said. "We also should support civil society, free media, those victims of repressions, to find funds to support them." Multilateral organizations "should do more," he said, "But, as usual, sometimes we are not capable to react on time and that's a pity."
Later in the conversation, Linkevičius discussed COVID-19 response in his nation and across Europe as the number of new cases continues to climb. The Foreign Minister also offered well wishes to President Trump who is in treatment for COVID-19 infection, and said Trump's diagnosis was a reminder of how serious and global the virus is.
In reflecting on the years of US diplomacy since President Trump took office, Linkevičius said it is "not the best time for multilateralism," climate action or free trade, but he praised the current US administration for "visible and tangible participation in the security of our region."