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Russia meets with Hamas in bid to exploit global chaos
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Why does Israel's ground invasion of Gaza feel so secretive?
Well, I mean, partially, it's because it's really hard to get information from on the ground. It's not like you've got a lot of journalists or international media that are covering it. The infrastructure is horrible and getting blown up every day, and also because the internet hasn't been working. And because you can't trust any of the local institutions to provide good information because it comes out of Hamas. But leaving that aside, between satellite photos and some eight organizations, the level of brutality and the civilian casualties are still becoming, they're coming through loud and clear, and I'm deeply concerned about the knock-on impact of that for the region, for Israel, for Palestinians, for everybody.
Why is Russia meeting with senior Hamas officials?
Well, because Russia's increasingly less an ally of China and more a rogue that is decoupled from the advanced industrial democracies. And so their closest friends on the global stage are Iran and North Korea, where they get military support, as well as an organization like Hamas, which of course, has become a proxy for Iran. And the Russians are not interested in a stable global order that they have more influence over, that's China's perspective. Russia's more interested in more chaos. The West actively losing influence everywhere in the world, irrespective of whether the markets work or don't. And Russia taking advantage of that chaos and existing in those vacuums, that is a bad thing for the global order.
Could Netanyahu be forced to resign during the war?
Look, anything is possible if you were to get, for example, some members of the Likud party or his coalition partners to flip, but in the middle of a war, that is incredibly unlikely. Israel, of course, has been very, very divided in part because of Netanyahu and what we've seen over the past months in domestic judicial reform and the response to that. But now that they have faced the worst violence that Jews have faced since the Holocaust, everyone has come together and they're focused on fighting that war, that is a unified war cabinet. And I think you'll be very hard-pressed to see an effort to make any major political moves internally in Israel until that war has played out for at least a matter of months. And I do think that's what we're looking at.
Finally, happy Halloween. What's your costume?
None of your business. I'm not even sure I'm wearing one. I might, I don't know. But I will tell you that Moose does enjoy dressing up on Halloween. And if I can find it, he will probably wear his Count Dracula costume because it's small and furry, and he seems to like it. So I mean, why not? It's better than a treat for the dog, and it keeps him alive for longer.
- What We’re Watching: Russian annexation fears, Russia-Israel drama, Mali breaks from France ›
- What We’re Watching: Ukraine latest, Israel blocks arms to Kyiv ›
- Will Israel be forced to choose between Russia and Ukraine? ›
- Israel, Iran, and the metastasizing war in Ukraine ›
- US compared to Russia after tanking UN resolution on Gaza ›
- Israel-Hamas war: Biden's second foreign policy crisis ›
Putin hosts Kim Jong Un at arms summit
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here kicking off your week with a Quick Take from London, as you can see.
And Kim Jong Un is now in Russia, Vladivostok, on his armored personal train. People always love to talk about the fact that the train is armored. I guess that's to ensure that if you try to take it out, you're going to have to try really, really hard to meet with Vladimir Putin.
This is their big annual conference that before Kim Jong Un was announced, it was the president of Laos who was the most exciting participant. In other words, Putin is really scraping the bottom of the barrel to find high level leaders that will engage with him publicly. And that, of course, is not only an indication of how the war is not going for Putin, but also the fact that he is increasingly a rogue state from the perspective of the United States and its advanced industrial allies.
In the near-term, his ability to continue to fight this war continues to be real. His economy is still performing comparatively better than the Americans or others would have expected, given all the sanctions. But in the medium-term, the fact that he has to go to the North Koreans for weapons, the fact that the Chinese, the Emiratis, others refused to provide him with military support, when the Americans say, “If you do, there's going to be hell to pay.” Well, the only countries left that will work with the Russians aren't the ones that are already fully sanctioned by the United States and Europe. It's other rogue states. It's Belarus, it's Syria, it's Iran. And that, of course, means that a constellation of rogues, they act in ways that are credibly disruptive and irresponsible on the global stage. These are the countries that engage in asymmetric warfare, the countries that engage in human trafficking, in drug traffickin, the countries that are willing to engage in proxy warfare and support radicals in other countries around the world, and Russia now becoming the most powerful of the world's rogue states, should give us pause long-term in the geopolitical stability of the world.
I think about before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the cyberattacks that had been occurring from Russian criminals against the United States, for example. And the Americans told the Russians, “You've got to stop that or we're going to hit you hard.” The Russians did stop it. They actually pulled back on it. Would they do that in this environment? I think that's highly unlikely. In other words, I think we're going to see from Russia over the coming years the kind of activities towards the West that we've seen from Iran over the past years towards countries in the Middle East and ironically, happening just at the time that the Iranians are becoming a more normalized actor by opening relations with the Saudis, with the Emiratis, and with others.
Fascinating times geopolitically in the world, but dangerous times as well. That's it for me. Thank you. All.
Ian Bremmer: Why Rogue Russia was predicted as Eurasia Group's 2023's top risk
Evan Solomon: Risk number one in 2023, rogue Russia. Tell us why, Ian.
Ian Bremmer: Well, look at how unhappy Putin looks in that graphic, first of all, I mean, that drives a risk just by itself. Look, this is the biggest misjudgment made by any leader on the global stage since we've been covering this stuff in the 90s. Unfortunately for Putin, he has no way to claw back anything like his life pre-status quo ante in February 24th. I mean, at least the Cuban missile crisis you talk about there's this incredible chance of Armageddon and then both sides stepped back, and they were able to do business as usual. That can't happen, right? Putin, he's destroyed his military. He's got an economic position, a country which is being forcibly decoupled from the West, that's not coming back. NATO's expanding. Ukraine is now going to be the best trained, best armed, most effective intelligence, best army in Europe facing Russia. All of that is happening while Putin is failing at every one of his war aims.
So, what's going to happen in 2023? Well, first, Putin is going to fail on the ground in Ukraine, and it might be worse than that, Ukraine, for him, Ukraine might be able to retake a lot of the land in counter offensives that the Russians have taken, maybe even threatening to retake Crimea. Russia will increasingly not even be in a position to punish the Ukrainians the way they have in the last couple months because Ukrainian air defenses will get a lot more effective, especially when the Patriot missile system is stood up. So, what can the Russians do unless the country's going to give up? Unless they're going to simply sort of surrender, which I don't expect.
And so, the outcome is likely to be that Putin's going to escalate. An escalation means that the war is increasingly going to hit NATO, asymmetric attacks, cyber, fiber, pipeline, disinformation, espionage. In other words, rogue Russia is going to look to NATO the way rogue Iran has looked to the Middle East. Russia will become the most powerful rogue state that the world has ever experienced.
Prigozhin's exit shakes Putin's regime
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and quite a weekend.
We have just gotten through an unprecedented turn of events challenging President Putin in a way that he has not since he's taken power in that country. Mr. Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, built up directly by President Putin, he is solely responsible for Prigozhin's success and power and wealth, and then essentially declaring war against the Kremlin, moving his forces to within dozens of kilometers of Moscow. And then, at the last moment, "cutting a deal" brokered by Belarus's President Aleksandr Lukashenko. He is today still, to the best of our knowledge, a free man. But for how long? It's hard to imagine that's sustainable.
This is a man who has done a lot of fighting for the Russians on the ground in Ukraine, sending his troops into a meat grinder, as it's been referred to in Bakhmut, some of the only territorial gains that the Russians have had in the last six months. Lionized for that by Russian state media on billboards across the country over the past months, but also increasingly insubordinate, both in his public willingness to go after the Ministry of Defense, the forces, the command structure on the ground, and, in particular, Minister of Defense, Sergei Shoigu. And then, over the last week, when Shoigu said that all Wagner forces and all paramilitary forces had to sign direct contracts with the Ministry of Defense, in other words, they'd be rolling up to their authority. And Prigozhin said no and then Putin directly said, reiterating that order, "Have to sign. Those orders have to become conscripted under contract under Shoigu."
Prigozhin again said no. Put him in an impossible situation. He was essentially dead man walking if he was going to say no. And he said no. Of course, he wasn't in much better of a situation if he said yes, because then those troops no longer report to him, and that is his power base. So he ended up turning around from Ukraine and sending his troops first into Rostov uncontested, head seat of the Southern Military District where the command center for the Ukrainian offensive has been for the Russians. And then up towards Moscow. So that explains why he did it, but much harder to explain why he suddenly backed down and why he's still alive today. Why he backed down I think has more to do with the fact that he didn't have any support inside the Kremlin. I mean, while this was all going on, there were no defections among Russia's military leadership. There were no defections inside the government. There were no defections among Russia's key oligarchs.
Prigozhin is not only a creation of Putin, but is also outside the power structure. So inside the power structure, you don't have a lot of people saying, "I'm with him. I'm with stupid." And so he marches towards Moscow in an utter move of desperation but doesn't have the ability to beat the forces, or doesn't think he does, that are loyal directly to Putin and are accountable directly to Putin defending Moscow. And so then when he is offered a deal, he takes the deal. But I mean, anyone that believes that a deal offered by Putin after this level of personal challenge and embarrassment to the Russian President. People have been assassinated and jailed for a lot less in what they do to the all powerful, or previously all powerful Russian President.
So why is he still alive? And there I think it's a matter of timing. It's the fact that the Russian government has been fighting against this Ukrainian counter offensive, and if they were to have a fight against Wagner right now, and keep in mind the Ukrainian counter offensive hasn't gone very well, but most of the troops aren't involved yet, they have 11 plus trained and equipped divisions, trained by the US, by the UK and allies, only two and a half of them are already involved in the fighting, which means that Putin knew a lot more was coming. And if Wagner's not available, and the Chechen Kadyrov group, another paramilitary that has declared full loyalty to the Ministry of Defense, was pulling back to fight against Wagner and the MOD forces are going to need to be used for that as well.
Suddenly, the Ukrainians might have a clear ability to retake all the territory. So this was the worst possible time for Putin to go to war against Wagner. And perhaps that is the best explanation for why it is that they cut a deal. But the deal that was cut is not a deal that can't be broken. And, of course, now that the Wagner Group, their headquarters have been raided, it has been announced that all of their forces are going to sign direct contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. Prigozhin is, at least we believe, either headed to or in Belarus, probably in Belarus. Not a sovereign state. Intelligence, military, really under the control of Russia, just as Lukashenko primarily is. And so that means if Putin wants to take him out, it's more a matter of time than it is a matter of capability.
And I personally can't imagine that he's going to be with us for all that much longer. But a lot of damage has been done. The fact that around the world everyone has seen that when Putin has been challenged and challenged hard that the Russian forces did not stand up to the Wagner forces until they got close to Moscow. And they also showed that, at the last moment, Putin didn't use his forces against him, but instead let him walk away. That's a weakness for Putin internally that is being seen by the Russian people. It's being seen by Russian military elites and others. It's also being seen by other countries around the world.
The Chinese, supposed to be Russia's best friend, they didn't provide any military support for Putin when he was at his moment of greatest need. The Kazakhs, Russia sent over 2,000 paramilitary forces, parachutists, and others into Kazakhstan over a year ago before the Ukraine war was launched, because a coup occurred against President Tokayev. He really appreciated that support. He's there today because of that support. His willingness to support Putin, he said it was an internal Russian matter. So I mean, you look around the world right now, we have a very strong NATO, we have enormous support from NATO into Ukraine, and we have Russia pretty isolated on the global stage.
That's good for the Ukrainians, there's no question, and it's good for NATO's strategy, but it also increasingly gives Putin no outs. Someone considered a war criminal internationally and someone that now has been tested in a way he never expected to be by his own loyal former chef, the caterer, Prigozhin, who at least for now is in Belarus. This story is not close to over. Russia's stability is now a significant question in a way that it really was not just 72 hours ago, and I'm sure we're going to be talking about it quite a bit.
You go back to January this year. Our top risks as we look forward over the course of every year in terms of likelihood, imminence, and impact, number one, and not even close in any other risk that we've seen over the course of the 25 years that we've had Eurasia Group, was the idea of a rogue Russia. A Russia that increasingly has been decoupled from, isolated from, the advanced industrial economies of the world, and is acting out of a sense of risk acceptance and impunity. That rogue Russia risk has gone up significantly over the weekend.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.
- Former Russian intelligence officer: Prigozhin's threat to Putin is “ludicrous” ›
- Prigozhin’s meltdown ›
- The man with his own army ›
- Prigozhin marches on Moscow: What we know, and what to watch ›
- What the war in Ukraine looks like inside Russia - GZERO Media ›
- Don't count Yevgeny Prigozhin out - GZERO Media ›
Ian Bremmer: US support for Ukraine vs fear of Russian escalation
Rogue Russia is Eurasia Group's #1 top geopolitical risk for 2023. But what does that mean if you're Ukraine?
For Ian Bremmer, so far Ukraine and NATO have been very aligned on their goals. But that might change in the future if Ukraine's demands threaten unity between the US and its allies, he said in a GZERO Live conversation about Eurasia Group's Top Risks 2023 report.
The West will continue supporting Kyiv. But the last thing America wants is to risk giving the Ukrainians too much or too fast that it'll risk an escalation that could lead to nuclear war.
At the end of the day, Bremmer suggests, what Ukraine might find reasonable to ask for might not be reasonable for the US to provide.
Read Eurasia Group's Top Risks 2023 report here.
Watch the full live conversation: Top Risks 2023: A rogue Russia and autocrats threatening the world
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- Will Putin drop a nuke on Ukraine? ›
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- War in Ukraine looms large as world leaders meet at the United Nations - GZERO Media ›
- Why neither NATO nor Russia wants to escalate war in Ukraine - GZERO Media ›
Top Risks 2023: A rogue Russia and autocrats threatening the world
What should the world fear more: an increasingly unhinged Vladimir Putin or an unbound Xi Jinping? Will most of the global economy enter a recession next year? And what happens when autocrats master the use of artificial intelligence to undermine democracy around the planet? Eurasia Group experts share their view on the top 10 geopolitical risks for 2023 in this livestream conversation.
Participants:
- Ian Bremmer, President and Founder, Eurasia Group and GZERO Media
- Cliff Kupchan, Chairman, Eurasia Group
- Anna Ashton, Director, China Corporate Affairs and US-China, Eurasia Group
- Franck Gbaguidi, Senior Analyst, Climate, Energy & Resources, Eurasia Group
- Rob Kahn, Managing Director, Global Macro-Geoeconomics , Eurasia Group
- Evan Solomon, Publisher, GZERO Media (moderator)
Eurasia Group’s Top Risks for 2023
Every January, Eurasia Group, our parent company, produces a report with its forecast for the Top 10 Risks for the world in the year ahead. Its authors are EG President Ian Bremmer and EG Chairman Cliff Kupchan.
Disclaimer: Your Signal author has contributed to these Top Risks reports for the past 18 years.
Here are (very) brief summaries of the 10 most important risks that will preoccupy world leaders, business decision-makers, and the rest of us in 2023, according to Bremmer and Kupchan. You can read the full report here.
1. Rogue Russia
A cornered Russia will turn from a global player into the world’s most dangerous rogue state, posing a serious and pervasive danger to Europe, the US, and beyond. Bogged down in Ukraine, with little to lose from further isolation and Western retaliation, and facing intense domestic pressure to show strength, Russia will turn to asymmetric warfare against the West to inflict damage through a thousand “paper cuts” rather than through overt aggression that requires military and economic power Russia no longer has.
Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling will escalate. Kremlin-affiliated hackers will ramp up increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks on Western firms, governments, and infrastructure. Russia will intensify its offensive against Western elections by systematically supporting and funding disinformation and extremism. Attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure will continue.
In short, Rogue Russia is a threat to global security, Western political systems, the cybersphere, and food security. Not to mention every Ukrainian civilian.
2. Maximum Xi
Xi Jinping now has a command of China’s political system unrivaled since Mao with (very) few limits on his ability to advance his statist and nationalist policy agenda. But with no dissenting voices to challenge his views, his ability to make big long-term mistakes is also unrivaled. That’s a massive global challenge given China’s outsized role in the world economy.
EG sees risks in three areas this year, all stemming from Maximum Xi. The ill effects of centralized decision-making on public health will continue with COVID’s spread. Xi’s drive for state control of China’s economy will produce arbitrary decisions, policy volatility, and heightened uncertainty for a country already weakened by two years of extreme Covid controls. Finally, Xi’s nationalist views and assertive foreign policy will increasingly provoke resistance from the West and China’s Asian neighbors.
3. Weapons of mass disruption
Recent advances represent a step change in the potential for artificial intelligence to manipulate people and disrupt society. 2023 will be a tipping point for this trend, helping autocrats undermine democracy abroad and stifle dissent at home, and enabling demagogues and populists within democracies to weaponize AI for narrow political gain at the expense of democracy and civil society.
4. Inflation shockwaves
The global inflation shock that began in the United States in 2021 and took hold worldwide in 2022 will have powerful economic and political ripple effects in 2023.
5. Iran in a corner
Facing convulsions at home while lashing out abroad, this year will feature new confrontations between the Islamic Republic and the West.
6. Energy crunch
A combination of geopolitics, economics, and production factors will create much tighter energy market conditions, particularly in the second half of 2023.
7. Arrested global development
Citizens of developing countries will become more vulnerable as the COVID fallout, the continuing Russia-Ukraine war, and global inflation push human development gains into reverse.
8. Divided States of America
The U.S. remains the most politically polarized and dysfunctional of the world’s advanced industrial democracies, and extreme policy divergences between red and blue states will make it harder for U.S. and foreign companies to treat the United States as a single coherent market.
9. Tik Tok boom
Larger numbers of Generation Z, the first generation with no experience of life without the internet, will organize online to reshape corporate and public policy, disrupting companies and politics.
10. Water stress
This year, water stress will become a global and systemic challenge.
Red Herrings: the risks that Eurasia Group believes are overrated.
- Western support for Ukraine will not fade in 2023.
- The EU will remain remarkably unified on priority challenges.
- There will be no security crisis over Taiwan in 2023.
- Domestic challenges in both countries will keep US-China tech war tensions in check.