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Russia's actions towards Ukraine are strengthening NATO
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on Russian escalation of Ukraine strengthening NATO, omicron and the end of COVID-19, and on the most recent military coup in West Africa — Burkina Faso:
How will Russian escalation of Ukraine strengthen NATO?
Well, NATO over the last 10, 20 years even was increasingly beset by problems. You had the US unilateralism focused more on Asia. You had the old mission of defending against the Russians less relevant. The French wanting strategic autonomy. Macron leaning into that. Now, of course, Merkel's gone, too. But the proximate reality in danger of the Russians invading Ukraine, actually, as much as the Europeans are more dependent on the Russians for their economy and their gas, they're also more concerned about Russia in terms of national security. That has driven a lot of coordination, including announcements of a lot more troops and material from being sent by NATO states to Ukraine and also to defend NATO borders, like in the Baltic states as well as Bulgaria and Romania. I would argue that what Putin's been doing so far has had no impact greater than bolstering NATO, and it's one of the reasons why I'm skeptical that a full-on invasion is something that Putin has in the cards because that would frankly do more than anything else out there to make NATO, focused on Russia, a serious and going concern.
Is omicron the end of the COVID-19 nightmare?
If you put it that way, I guess I would say yes. I think it's the end of the nightmare, because the people that have been living with the nightmare, primarily in the developed world, so many are going to be getting omicron and that's going to create a lot more natural immunity, plus most of those populations are already vaccinated. A lot of them are boosted and we've got all these therapeutics. I think that going forward, after omicron is done in relatively short order, this just feels like a very different virus for most of the countries that have been back and forth, back and forth with lockdowns. With the poorest countries in the world, very young populations, they've been living with the virus from day one. They don't have the vaccines in most. They've had to deal with it. In the case of China, that's the big question everyone knows I've been focusing on, but they're going to continue with these lockdowns, and so it hasn't been a nightmare per se, but it is going to be an economically very significant issue this year. But it's a little different than the way the question was phrased, so that's how I'll answer it.
Another coup is happening in West Africa. What's happening in Burkina Faso and in the region?
Yeah, it's the third coup in the region that we've seen in Mali and Guinea and now in Burkina Faso. It's this new organization that no one's heard of until yesterday that basically said it's military, the government in Burkina Faso was not doing a great job of maintaining stability and security in the country, and there've been growing attacks and influence of local Islamist extremists. That's a problem in all the countries that we've seen these military coups in recent months and, as a consequence, the Democratic elected government is no more. Former French colony, United States not doing an awful lot about it, China does most of the trade with them, but they're not engaged particularly either. So, as a consequence, it makes news and it moves on, and that's where we are.
Boris Johnson's days are numbered as UK PM; Blinken, Biden, Putin & Ukraine
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week, discussing Boris Johnson's tenuous status as UK PM, US Secretary of State Blinken's visit to Ukraine, and the volcano eruption in Tonga:
Will Boris Johnson resign?
It certainly looks that way. He's hanging on by his fingernails. He's losing members of Parliament. He's giving shambolic media interviews. In fact, I think the only people that don't want him to resign at this point is the Labour Party leadership, because they think the longer he holds on, the better it is for the UK opposition. But no, he certainly looks like he's going. The only question is how quickly. Is it within a matter of weeks or is it after local elections in May? But feel pretty confident that the days of Boris Johnson are numbered.
It's interesting you ask about Ukraine because, of course, you need to make progress not just with the Russians, but also the Ukrainians, because publicly they've been pushing the Americans and others very hard to offer them NATO membership, a membership action plan, none of which is forthcoming and furthermore, they don't look like much of a democracy when they're engaged in charges that look very made up, calling the former president a traitor for cutting a deal on coal to try to keep Ukraine economically functioning with members of the occupied territories of former Ukraine. But in any case, I think that the big question here is whether or not there's any room for negotiation with the Russians. There, I don't think Blinken is a breakthrough. Blinken could get the maneuver for an additional Putin-Biden conversation and there, I think it's not over. I think there still is an opportunity. So I'm not someone who believes that war is in any means inevitable here and also keep in mind that the Americans are not going to defend the Ukrainians directly in terms of defense. So the likelihood that this explodes in a maximal way is still pretty limited.
What do we know about Tonga's volcano eruption?
Well, we knew when we saw Tonga in the news that it probably wasn't going to be anything good. It's a volcano. It's a major tsunami, warnings of more. The good news is it's not in any way climate change related. Most natural disasters these days are. And also, Tonga only has a total population of 100,000. The bad news is they're at risk and three of them apparently dead and they need help and they need water and they need humanitarian support and it's hard to get there. And any of you that had vacations planned for Tonga in the coming months, I think those have been dashed.
Europe matches US travel restrictions; Ukrainian president asks for US support
Carl Bildt, former Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Sweden, shares his perspective from Europe:
With the EU having achieved 70% vaccination of the adult population, why are new travel restrictions being proposed?
Well, it's with the US, because the US has restrictions against Europeans. And with the EU now having more vaccinations than the United States has, this is sort of a signal to the US that perhaps we should look at this again.
What is President Zelensky of Ukraine aiming at when he visits the White House?
I think he primarily will want to be reassured that he has this solid support of the United States for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, and that President Biden is prepared to step up and stand up to the pressure that I think is going to be intensified from President Putin of Russia. So, it's a reassurance operation, highly necessary these days.
What We're Watching: Polish state of emergency, Ukraine-US meeting, South African nuclear power, Russia's troll
Poland weighs state of emergency: Poland is weighing whether to declare a state of emergency as thousands of immigrants continue to flood its border with Belarus. The order, which would be invoked for the first time since Communist rule, would allow the government to restrict people's movements in certain regions for 30 days. Poland, along with Latvia and Lithuania, has accused Belarus' strongman President Alexander Lukashenko of facilitating illegal border crossings, particularly for Iraqi migrants, as retribution for EU sanctions on Belarus. Indeed, there's even evidence that Belarusian troops physically pushed migrants to enter EU territory. Poland has registered more than 3,000 attempted crossings this month alone, and has responded by beefing up its border security, including erecting barbed wire fences. There are reports that Minsk is now planning on sending migrants from Morocco and Pakistan, which has absorbed the lion's share of Afghan refugees to date. Knowing that the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015 caused deep fissures within the 27-member bloc, is Lukashenko now trying to weaponize the Afghan refugee crisis to sow divisions within the EU just as the bloc is already concerned about another refugee crisis?
Zelensky at the White House: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky will meet with US President Joe Biden at the White House on Wednesday. After navigating a very testy relationship with former President Trump, the Ukrainian leader is surely pleased that there's a new man in charge in Washington. Indeed, Zelensky is likely to find a kindred spirit in President Biden on issues including energy security and Russia. Biden, for his part, has echoed Kyiv's strong opposition to the construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, saying that the project would allow an already-brazen Kremlin to weaponize gas exports in order to harm Ukraine. So what does Zelensky want? He may ask Biden for more military assistance as a bulwark against the Kremlin, and is likely to again bring up the issue of Ukraine joining NATO, having recently grown increasingly angry at Western allies for excluding Kyiv from the club. More economic support from Washington could also be on Zelensky's agenda, but when Biden headed the Ukraine portfolio as Obama's VP, he said that Kyiv needed to tackle corruption and implement reforms in order to unlock more US assistance.
South Africa's nuclear dilemma: In a bid to address its rolling power outages, South Africa wants more nuclear energy. But the government's recent decision to double its nuclear generation capacity has been met with strong criticism from the country's energy experts, who say that the government should opt for investment in renewables like solar or wind, which can be installed more quickly and are less costly. On the one hand, nuclear plants generally require a high upfront investment, have cost overruns, and can take years to get up and running, not to mention the risk of another Fukushima. On the other hand, however, they produce almost zero direct carbon dioxide emissions, and nuclear power is reliable — exactly what the country needs to fix its spotty electricity problem. Regardless, the move is quite a flip-flop for President Cyril Ramaphosa, who just two years ago scrapped his predecessor Jacob Zuma's deal for Russia to build South Africa's second nuclear plant because it was, you guessed it, too expensive.
What We're Ignoring:
Russia's troll: Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov wins this week's chutzpah awards for warning that the West was seeking to undermine Russia's upcoming elections. From September 17-19, races will be held for the State Duma as well as dozens of regional parliaments. "We have only one answer to all these attempts. We are guided primarily and exclusively by the will of our citizens, the will of our people," Lavrov said about those in the West (presumably referring to the US and EU) seeking to sow doubt in Russia's electoral outcomes.That's a bit thick, coming from the top diplomat of a country that both Americans and Europeans have caught red-handed trying to meddle in their elections.