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French President Emmanuel Macron and China’s President Xi Jinping gesture during a press conference in Beijing.
Most of the world prefers not to choose
As the US-China rivalry deepens, many countries – including close US allies – have made it clear that they don’t want to be forced to choose between the world’s two largest economies. They are engaging in an increasingly delicate dance to try and maintain constructive relations with both.
This tricky balancing act has been particularly hard for European heavyweights, like Germany and France, that share values and many interests with Washington, but also benefit greatly from economic integration with China.
While France’s Emmanuel Macron has taken a more combative approach, saying recently that it would be “a trap for Europe” to get embroiled in crises “that aren’t ours,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz vigorously defended a recent trip to Beijing with a host of German business leaders, writing that “we don’t want to decouple from China.” (It’s no wonder that Berlin won't roll over on this issue considering that German exports to China have tripled since 2000.)
And what about countries in the Global South that are being wooed by both the US and China? Many countries across South America, Africa, and Central and South Asia benefit from loans and infrastructure investment under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative but also rely on the US for security guarantees and aid. Since Beijing expanded its Belt and Road Initiative to Latin America in 2017, the US has tried to warn that it is a Trojan Horse aimed at increasing China’s regional clout, but Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, and others have still tried to play both sides.
For now, this approach seems to be working, but if tensions over Taiwan ratchet up, it could get harder for US allies to continue fence-sitting.
President Volodymyr Zelensky is greeted by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as he arrives Britain.
What We’re Watching: Zelensky and the jets, Pakistan targets TTP militants
Zelensky to British lawmakers: “Give us wings”
President Volodymyr Zelensky embarked on a whirlwind tour on Wednesday, leaving Ukraine for just the second time since Russia’s war began almost a year ago. Making a surprise stop in the UK, Zelensky met with PM Rishi Sunak and King Charles III and charmed British lawmakers at an address in the House of Commons. While the build-up to the trip was shrouded in secrecy, Zelensky was upfront about why he was there, imploring parliament to send Ukraine fighter jets: “We have freedom. Give us wings to protect it,” he said. Some analysts have suggested that Zelensky is moving too fast and isn’t reading the room properly: After all, it was just a few weeks ago that western countries finally agreed to send him battle tanks, and that came only after months of handwringing and negotiations. Sunak, for his part, said he is still considering the request but confirmed that the UK will help train Ukrainian pilots to use NATO-standard jets. Zelensky then headed to Paris, where he made a similar plea to President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, followed by a stop in Brussels where he addressed the European Parliament. Crucially, the US has not committed to sending fighter jets, and given that Washington and Brussels have been in lockstep on supporting Ukraine, this might determine how the Europeans respond for now. Indeed, Poland, one of Ukraine's strongest allies, said it would only move on the request "within the entire formation of NATO."
Pakistan vs. its homegrown Taliban
On Wednesday, Pakistani security forces launched an early morning raid on a suspected terrorist hideout that killed 12 Pakistani Taliban insurgents. This is the latest deadly violence in an ongoing firefight between the Pakistani security services and the homegrown jihadis of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a militant group allied with, but separate from, Afghanistan’s Taliban. Since the US-led NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the reestablishment of Taliban rule there has given new life to their allies inside Pakistan, who have demanded stricter enforcement of Islamic law and a reduced Pakistani military presence in the border region the group uses to trade and travel between the two countries. After 15 years of insurgency, the TTP and the government reached a ceasefire agreement. That deal broke down last November as militants resumed attacks on Pakistani soldiers and police. Then last week, Pakistani officials blamed the TTP for a suicide bombing at a mosque that killed more than 100 people, and this raid is the first major security response. The TTP denies involvement in the mosque bombing.
The Crimea problem
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here. And a Quick Take to start off your week. Just back from Davos in New York City, rainy and cold, and Russia, Ukraine is once again in the headlines. It is closing in on a year since the invasion started on February 24th, or for those of you really keeping accurate score, closing in on a decade since the Russians illegally annexed Crimea and sent their little green men in Southeast Ukraine. The Russians and Ukrainians certainly feel like they've been fighting for a decade, but the West recognized it much more recently. Since February 24th, and certainly very clear to me over the last week, we have seen almost consistent escalation from all sides involved, from, of course, the Ukrainians in trying to throw everything they can at getting the Russians out of the territory, at the Russians, from bringing more troops into the field and attacking civilians and broadening their efforts to in inflict pain upon the Ukrainians as their land war has met with significant challenge.
And in terms of NATO and the level of support that they're prepared to provide the Ukrainian military, the big fight right now and over the weekend has been about heavy tanks. And will the German government in particular, remember the formerly kind of pacifist German government that now said they've had this turning point, the Zeitenwende, where they're going to spend much more on their own defense and willing to provide military support directly for Ukraine - a massive shift in the orientation of that country and how they think about national security. Will they provide heavy Leopard tanks to the Ukrainians? The Polish government, which has a lot of these German Leopards want to, but they need German approval. The United States says they want the Germans to give that approval. And have fights with the Germans about this issue over the course of the last week.
Germany says, only if the Americans provide their own Abrams tanks to the Ukrainians, which doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense. They run on jet fuel. They're far too heavy for a lot of Ukrainian bridges. They're very challenging to service. It would be hard to get them into the field, take more time. And for all of those reasons, the Leopards are the ones to send. And now just in the past hours, it looks like the German foreign minister, Baerbock, who comes from a different party of the Green Party than the social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and is more hawkish both on Russia and more broadly on China issues, and the rest, is pushing to say that they won't get in the way of the Polish government in providing these leverage. So it looks like these heavy tanks are going to make their way to the Ukrainians in relatively short order, a major escalation in terms of offensive capabilities that Ukrainians will have to retake their territory.
Now, I have to say, I don't feel strongly about whether or not heavy tanks should go to Ukraine, or should I say I do feel strongly, but I feel strongly that we're not discussing the fact that this change in policy has happened without a lot of debate. And what I mean by that is over the course of the past six, eight weeks, we're seeing significant increases in the military capabilities that are going to be provided to Ukraine. Defensive capabilities like Patriot missiles, offensive capabilities like heavy tanks and heavy artillery. Even three months ago, the United States and NATO leadership were saying no to those systems that they were considered too dangerous and too, so you have to ask yourself the question, what's changed? And the answer is nothing strategically, more that time has passed and the Ukrainians keep fighting, and the alliance is completely strong together.
Many countries are pushing on for a more aggressive amount of support in addition to the Ukrainian government itself. Here, I'm thinking about Poland, all three BRIC states and all of the Nordics and the US wants NATO to stay together once the coalition stays together. And as time passes, increasingly is willing to say, well, okay, let's do the next little thing and okay, let's do the next little thing. Now that may well be a smart thing to do, but you'd like it to be based on a considered policy reasoning, A as to what's the best way to bring about the end of the war that would be acceptable to the Americans, the Europeans, nato, and minimize unnecessary risks as opposed to, well, it's just the next thing to do, even though you were opposed to it a few months ago. There's no question that it's good in the sense that all of this gives Ukraine a better shot at retaking the land that has been illegally stolen from them.
But I do worry that this policy process is not being well considered. And I, of course, that makes you wonder where all of this is going to end up. I will say, I mean, I met with the entire Ukraine delegation in Davos, a bunch of ministers, a bunch of mayors, a lot of MPs, deputy prime Minister, all that kind of thing. They were 100% aligned in their policy demands that they need to retake all of their land, including Crimea. And I get it, it is theirs. Russia recognized their territorial integrity over all of that territory. They illegally annex Crimea. They illegally invaded big swaths of the rest of Ukraine. But I also want to say that Crimea, where I've spent time personally, is majority ethnic Russian in that regard. It is different from every other part of Ukraine. Almost none of them want to live under Ukrainian rule.
And that was true before the warts. True. Now, there is a long-term pre existing military lease on Sevastopol, a base that the Russians had and occupied when Ukraine was independent. If Ukraine were to try to retake Crimea, they'd have massive fighting on the ground from the local population, and they'd be fighting against a Russian base that is very serious and well defended, in which the Russians previously had legal right to, again, that right, would've been abrogated after the Russians, illegal annex Crimea. But I'm just trying to talk about what I think is going to happen here. And also, Crimea had local rule, local Russian rule couldn't make their own foreign policy, but they had their own local elections, their own local parliament. They elected their own local MPs. Flying on top of the c Crimean parliament was a tricolor flag that looked like the Russian flag.
The stripes were different, but that was the orientation as opposed to a Ukrainian flag. My point is that Crimea is a serious matter. No one should recognize it as Russian territory, but it needs to be a matter for negotiation. It should not be, in my view, a matter of military reoccupation because the impact of that, the realistic impact of that in terms of escalation of the war, both of Russia on Ukraine as well as on NATO more broadly, would be very severe indeed. Now, I spent a fair amount of time in Davos talking to a lot of those more hawkish policy makers from the Baltics and the frontline states from Poland, the Polish president, others, about their position. And so my good friend, for example, and I'll say this because we had a VI video that went public with him, Alexander Stubb, who's the former Prime Minister Finland, incredibly smart, very outspoken on these issues.
And he said that, yeah, yeah, he absolutely believes that the Ukrainians should be able to retake Crimea militarily. But you could tell that that was a performative statement being made to align him with the other hawks and align him with the Ukrainian government, which he believes is the correct moral position to have, but that he doesn't think it's actually going to happen. And you're not really sure if he thinks it's actually a good idea. I think that the position, and you increasingly see this in the United States is that, well, Ukraine probably can't take Crimea. And given that, what's the harm in providing support and cover for the morally right position in the war? And then you can always negotiate away from it when both sides end up frozen in terms of their ability to continue the fighting. And I get that. But as the Ukrainians continue to get far more military capabilities and support their ability to retake some of Crimea and or cut off Russian ability to resupply, Crimea goes up.
And with that, the likelihood that Russian escalation, God forbid the use of weapons of mass destruction against the Ukrainians or the likelihood of this proxy war that NATO is fighting against Russia. And that is how the Russians see it with all of these advanced weapons that are being set offensive weapons that the Ukrainians are of course using to defend themselves and retake the land against Russia, that the Russians are increasingly going to engage in asymmetric war against NATO. And you've seen increasingly a number of disturbing data points in that direction. For example, these divers that were found by Polish police that were checking out critical infrastructure, and for whatever reason the Polish government let them go when they had no business being there, the blowing up of a pipeline at border region between two of the Baltic states, Latvia and Lithuania, the intelligence on Russian operatives providing financial support to try to get hard write Spanish radicals to kill members of the Spanish government.
I mean, these are the signs of the beginning of a broader proxy war between Russia and NATO itself. And surely some of that is the Russians wanting to posture and send that message. But some of it is the reality that the war itself continues to escalate over the last year. And as that occurs, and as the Russians are losing in Ukraine, they're likely to take the war more broadly. Now, I'm not suggesting any of this means that the West shouldn't continue to provide support for Ukraine. Again, I see the Russian invasion of Ukraine as completely illegal. The war crimes being perpetrated against the Ukrainians every day, and I certainly understand why the Ukrainians are pushing for every bit of support they can possibly get. I simply think that given the implications, it is very important that the West is making these decisions in a thoughtful and considered way and not just doing it because it's the next thing to do, and that at least right now doesn't appear to be the case. So that's my view on where we are right now on the Russia Ukraine War. We're going to continue to be talking about this, monitoring it, and I'm sure living it over the course of the coming months. And indeed, probably years for me, I'll talk to y'all.
Europe’s tough decisions: Russia, China, and EU unity
Winter is coming and for Europe, a bleak winter it may be.
The escalating Russia/Ukraine war has united European support to Kyiv’s cause, but it’s also brought a plethora of economic, political, and social challenges. Inflation, a sinking Euro, and the possibility of an energy crisis brings to question just how long Europe’s support for Ukraine will last?
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer speaks with German diplomat Christoph Heusgen, who served as his country’s ambassador to the United Nations and is now chairman of the Munich Security Conference.
His take on the war in Ukraine? Vladimir Putin grossly miscalculated Ukrainian resolve and the war is going badly for the Russians.
Even so, Putin is determined to see the war through, committing crimes against humanity along the way. On Germany’s relationship with China, Heusgen questions Olaf Scholz’s meeting with Xi Jinping, voicing concerns about the danger of entering a relationship with a country known to use economic leverage for political gain.
This interview was featured in a GZERO World episode: Europe’s tough decisions: Russia, China, and EU unity
Why no one approved of Olaf Scholz’s trip to China
Why did German leader Olaf Scholz decide to make a solo trip to Beijing earlier this month? It's a question that many Germans, even within his own administration, are asking. GZERO's Alex Kliment takes a closer look.
Watch the GZERO World episode: Europe’s tough decisions: Russia, China, and EU unity
Europe’s tough decisions: Russia, China, and EU unity
Winter is coming and for Europe, a bleak winter it may be.
The escalating Russia/Ukraine war has united European support to Kyiv’s cause, but it’s also brought a plethora of economic, political, and social challenges. Inflation, a sinking Euro, and the possibility of an energy crisis brings to question just how long Europe’s support for Ukraine will last?
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer speaks with German diplomat Christoph Heusgen, who served as his country’s ambassador to the United Nations and is now chairman of the Munich Security Conference.
His take on the war in Ukraine? Vladimir Putin grossly miscalculated Ukrainian resolve and the war is going badly for the Russians. Even so, Putin is determined to see the war through, committing crimes against humanity along the way.
On Germany’s relationship with China, Heusgen questions Olaf Scholz’s meeting with Xi Jinping, voicing concerns about the danger of entering a relationship with a country known to use economic leverage for political gain.
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German Chancellor Scholz's controversial China trip
It was the right move, but was it the right time? That’s how German diplomat Christoph Heusgen describes Chancellor Olaf Scholz's decision to visit Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing today, along with a delegation of German business leaders. Heusgen spoke to Ian Bremmer in an upcoming episode of GZERO World.
Heusgen and Bremmer discuss the many questions swirling around this visit, including that, at a moment when European nations are already trying to wean themselves off of an energy dependency with Russia, is it really the right time to strengthen business ties with China?
That said, Heusgen acknowledges that a strong and healthy relationship with Beijing will be critical for Europe's growth in the years ahead. He only wonders why Scholz didn't take French President Emmanuel Macron up on his invitation to visit Beijing together.
Full GZERO interview coming soon at gzeromedia.com and on US public television.
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A supporter of Pakistan's former PM Imran Khan in Karachi gestures following the shooting incident on his long march in Wazirabad.
What We're Watching: Pakistan’s former PM shot, Olaf goes to Beijing
Imran Khan survives assassination attempt
Pakistan’s former PM Imran Khan — aka “Kaptaan” for his cricket accolades and lead-from-the-front style of populist politics — survived an assassination attempt on Thursday during his “Long March” to Islamabad. Khan was shot in the leg as his truck-driven stage rolled through the central Pakistani city of Wazirabad, and he was rushed to a hospital in Lahore, where he was eventually declared stable. Eight other members of his entourage were also injured, and one party worker was killed. At least one alleged gunman was challenged and apprehended by a brave bystander. “He was misleading people and I couldn’t take it,” the suspect said in a leaked confession to police. “I tried to kill only him.” Meanwhile, Khan’s party accused PM Shehbaz Sharif's government of plotting the attack and threatened protests nationwide if they weren’t removed from power. As if on cue, widespread protests kicked off against military and government officials. Khan, who was removed from office last April, has been demanding snap elections, but so far he’s been ignored. Despite his party sweeping by-elections, mass rallies, and his summoning of unprecedented support against the military, the political establishment hasn’t blinked. Will this attack force their hand?