"How France's far right is outmaneuvering Macron."
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Russ Roberts (https://trendsingeopolitics.blogspot.com).
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June 19, 2024 |
Hello, everyone. Today at WPR, we’re covering the far right in France and women’s rights in India. |
But first, here’s our take on today’s top story: |
Russia-North Korea: Russian President Vladimir Putin has wrapped up a visit to Pyongyang, where he signed a new agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that includes a mutual defense clause “in the event of aggression against one of the parties.” The visit marks Putin’s second summit with Kim in less than a year. (The Guardian) |
Our Take: Putin’s visit to North Korea, his first in 24 years, marks another step in the evolution of the bilateral relationship that began soon after Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Still, it carries different significance for each side. |
For Russia, Putin’s visit underscores the country’s greatest geopolitical weakness: diplomatic isolation. Since invading Ukraine, Russia has only been able to maintain substantive partnerships with a handful of states, and other than China, none of the others—Belarus, Iran and, of course, North Korea—have significant influence in the international order. That Russia, long one of the world’s leading arms exporters, has been forced to purchase artillery, but also missiles and drones, from the latter two further highlights how the war in Ukraine has affected its global standing. |
At the same time, though, the fact that Putin is making this trip, which also includes a stop in Vietnam, is a sign that the West has not been able to fully isolate him, and that Russia continues to carry some enduring relevance in the global order. It’s worth noting, too, that Russia maintains solid ties with a number of the major powers in the Global South, like Brazil, India and South Africa, among others. |
For North Korea, this summit is a testament to Kim’s success at overcoming a robust regime of sanctions in order to develop North Korea’s defense capabilities, to the point that it is not only a weapons manufacturer, but now also an exporter supplying Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. Indeed, Moscow’s interest in upgrading the partnership—Kim even called it an “alliance”—in large part stems from North Korea’s ability to serve as a force multiplier for Russia’s defense industrial base, which has been pushed into overdrive over the past two years. |
The economic aspects of the partnership, which Putin also promised to bolster during his visit, could prove equally and perhaps even more important to North Korea’s efforts to break out of its own international isolation. Combined with a signed mutual defense agreement with Russia in hand, North Korea will surely feel even more emboldened than it already had, altering the configuration of its standoff with South Korea, the U.S. and the West. |
To be sure, that mutual defense clause, the details of which were not made public, almost certainly comes with a fair amount of wiggle room. Putin used the term “mutual assistance,” language that is vague enough to allow for anything from an outright military alliance to arms deliveries. And it’s telling that the two sides signed this agreement less than a week after the U.S. and Ukraine made a show of signing their own bilateral security cooperation agreement at the annual G7 summit. |
Still, when a state commits itself in writing to aiding in the defense of another, it marks a significant elevation of their bilateral relationship. Russia’s partnership with North Korea may seem like a mere marriage of convenience, but it still has important implications for the global security order. |
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When trying to predict what French President Emmanuel Macron might do next, a safe bet is to assume that he will opt for the most audacious course of action. So while his announcement of snap parliamentary elections sent shockwaves across the French political landscape, it should have surprised no one. |
The battle lines that Macron has already drawn against rivals on the left and right for the upcoming vote, the first round of which will take place on June 30, echo themes that were crucial to his victories in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections. |
Yet this time, Macron faces opponents that have learned to counter the daring gambits that have characterized his political style, columnist Alexander Clarkson writes. |
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Despite the shock of his party not winning an outright majority in India’s just-concluded parliamentary elections, PM Narendra Modi was sworn in for a third consecutive term on June 9. |
A significant highlight of Modi’s second term as PM was India’s G20 presidency from December 2022 to November 2023, during which New Delhi emphasized “women-led development” as part of its agenda at the helm of the group. |
However, Modi’s record on gender equality and women’s empowerment in his first two terms has been far from encouraging, Aishwarya Bhuta writes. |
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In 2021, Oregon became the first U.S. state to decriminalize personal possession of illicit drugs. The Canadian province of British Columbia followed suit in 2023, the first step in what was meant to be a new path for that country. |
Both have now reversed course. As Benoît Gomis writes in a recent briefing, the reversal has far-reaching implications for people who use drugs in those jurisdictions and drug policy worldwide. |
This week’s question: Should Oregon and British Columbia have recriminalized personal possession of illicit drugs? |
We’ll select one person from those who answer the question to receive a free month of full access to WPR. |
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Philippine VP Sara Duterte—the daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte—resigned from the Cabinet of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Wednesday amid a long-anticipated collapse of their alliance. Despite significant political differences, the Philippines’ two most-powerful political families teamed up ahead of Marcos’ successful bid for the presidency in 2022. |
The feud is in part due to the Duterte family’s resentment over being marginalized in decision-making. But as Richard Javad Heydarian wrote in February, it also reflects the fault lines of the new Cold War brewing in the region, with Marcos expanding security cooperation with Manila’s traditional Western allies and the Dutertes positioning themselves as China’s best hope in the Philippines. |
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Dan Gertler, an Israeli billionaire sanctioned by Washington over alleged corruption, is set to receive $300 million as part of a proposed deal between the U.S. and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The controversial proposal would lift restrictions on the Israeli tycoon’s access to the U.S. banking system if he sells his remaining mining interests in Congo. |
When the U.S. launched its Global Magnitsky Sanctions program in 2017, meant to target human rights abusers and kleptocrats around the world, Gertler was in the very first list of sanctioned entities. What followed seemed straight out of the pages of a political thriller, as Gertler allegedly attempted to evade sanctions through a complex money-laundering network that stretched across several continents, while hiring high-profile lawyers to lobby the U.S. government on his behalf to remove them altogether. Sophie Neiman traced Gertler’s rise, fall and attempted resurrection in this reported in-depth article from April 2021. |
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During a U.N. Security Council meeting yesterday, Sudan accused the UAE of fueling the civil war in Sudan by supplying a rival paramilitary force with weapons. Read more about the UAE’s counterproductive meddling in the war in Sudan in this briefing by Elfadil Ibrahim from February. |
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Swedish lawmakers adopted a controversial defense deal with the U.S. on Tuesday, amid concerns about the deployment of nuclear weapons and permanent U.S. bases in the country. The move comes just months after Sweden joined NATO, ending two centuries of military non-alliance. As Frida Ghitis wrote in January, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed the Nordic countries to deepen their security ties to the United States. |
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Welcome to my geopolitics blog site. This is a Hawaii Island news site focusing on geopolitical news, analysis, information, and commentary. I will cite a variety of sources, ranging from all sides of the political spectrum.