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World roundup: August 1 2023
Stories from Saudi Arabia, Niger, Haiti, and elsewhere
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TODAY IN HISTORY
August 1, 1798: The Battle of the Nile
August 1, 1927: The Nanchang Uprising marks the start of the Chinese Civil War. In a direct response to the Shanghai Massacre of April 12, in which Kuomintang forces purged Chinese Communist Party members from their ranks (and killed thousands of them, though the casualty figures are disputed), a CCP army captured Nanchang, home of the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Nationalist Party. This was one of several CCP uprisings around the country. Realizing they couldn’t hold the city against a counterattack, the CCP withdrew on August 5 and undertook what became known as the “Little Long March” south to Guangdong province. China’s People’s Liberation Army dates its founding to this uprising.
In today’s global news:
Worldometer is tracking COVID-19 cases and fatalities.
The New York Times is tracking global vaccine distribution.
Armed gunmen attacked a military convoy in Syria’s Hama province overnight, killing at least five soldiers and wounding another four. At least nine of the attackers, who were almost certainly Islamic State fighters, were also killed or wounded according to local media.
Militants attacked a group of fighters from the Southern Armed Forces, one of several militias aligned with Yemen’s Southern Transitional Council, in Abyan province on Tuesday morning, killing at least five people. There’s been no claim of responsibility but consensus appears to be that this was an al-Qaeda operation.
The Saudi government, meanwhile, has decided to sock another $1.2 billion into the notional Yemeni government’s bank account. Their aim, according to the AP, is “to help stabilize Yemeni food prices, address the country’s budget deficit and support salary payments.” Leaving aside the likelihood that a large portion of this money is going to wind up in the pockets of various senior Yemeni officials rather than being put toward any of those purposes, one wonders why the Saudis didn’t think to do this before they decided to spend seven-ish years pulverizing most of Yemen. Maybe an improvement in Yemenis’ material conditions would have forestalled the war altogether. Don’t mind me, just thinking out loud.
A Palestinian man allegedly opened fire on a crowd of people in the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim on Tuesday, wounding six people before being shot and killed by a police officer. Hamas issued a statement praising the shooter but did not take responsibility for his actions.
The Biden administration appears to have resumed its pursuit of normalizing Saudi-Israeli relations. But Laura Rozen reports that the Saudis are asking for something—a binding US-Saudi defense treaty—that they know they can’t get in order to avoid dealing with the normalization issue:
But several regional security experts say the United States is unlikely to extend the Saudi kingdom such a treaty-type security guarantee; some further suggest that Saudi Arabia does not expect it to, and is “asking for the moon” essentially as a stalling technique, as the Middle East Institute’s Firas Maksad put it.
“I have the sense that there’s unrealistic expectations on both sides,” Maksad said on a virtual panel on prospects for Israel Saudi normalization hosted by the Center for the National Interest on Thursday (July 27). “And the reason for that is that this process right now, and where we are in the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and the Saudis, is driven by narrow political interests and agendas and timelines rather than the political reality on the ground.”
“This is not something that the Saudis can flip the switch and deliver on without some concrete steps from the Israeli side,” Maksad said. “And we all know where Israeli politics are right now. …[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu risks his coalition if he is to attempt anything of significance towards the Palestinians, and the Palestinians themselves are in disarray…This new push for normalization, because…the U.S. administration would like to deliver before next year is I feel divorced from the political reality on the Israeli/Palestinian side.”
“The Saudis don't want to say ‘no’….so their response is to…[say], ‘Okay, fine, we're willing to entertain this, but…we want an alliance or we want an Article V defense commitment,’” Maksad continued. “And those are all….unrealistic, given the political context here in the U.S., particularly on the Hill, where Saudi Arabia remains deeply unpopular.”
The Iranian government announced on Tuesday that the country is effectively closing for business on Wednesday and Thursday due to extreme heat. Banks, schools, and government offices will be closed out of concern for possible heat exhaustion. Temperatures in Tehran are currently exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit (around 37.8 Celsius), and the southern city of Ahvaz hit 122 degrees (50 Celsius) on Tuesday.
Gunmen attacked a polio vaccination team outside the Pakistani city of Quetta on Tuesday, killing two police officers assigned as security. There’s been no claim of responsibility but the nature of the target strongly suggests the attackers were Islamists of some variety, either Pakistani Taliban (TTP) or Islamic State. Speaking of IS, that group has claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed at least 56 people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Sunday. That death toll has risen steadily since the attack and may rise still further. The target was a rally held by Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazl), a hardline Islamist party that (officially, at least) rejects violence. IS cited the party’s support for “democracy” as the justification for the bombing.
The Biden administration on Tuesday blacklisted 20 Maldivian citizens and 29 companies over alleged ties to Islamic State. One of the individuals is in Maldivian custody over his alleged role in the attempted assassination of former President Mohamed Nasheed in 2021.
Myanmar’s ruling junta extended its current state of emergency for at least another six months on Monday, officially putting the kibosh on elections that had been scheduled for sometime this month. The junta hadn’t made any obvious preparations for elections so this only formalizes what was already pretty apparent. The country’s security situation is not exactly conducive to voting at present, with the junta struggling to subdue ethnic and anti-coup rebels in multiple regions.
At least two people were killed and five more wounded on Tuesday when “seven hooded individuals” boarded a public bus in Dakar and threw a Molotov cocktail at passengers. This may have been a simple robbery or random act of violence, but it took place amid renewed political tension after Senegalese authorities brought new charges against opposition leader Ousmane Sonko over the weekend. Sonko was convicted a few weeks ago of the relatively minor charge of corrupting youth, but these new charges include heavyweight allegations that he’s conspired to commit terrorism and attempted to orchestrate an insurrection. Sonko has been taken into custody and his Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics, and Fraternity party has been dissolved, sparking major protests by its supporters. At least two people have died in unclear circumstances amid demonstrations in Ziguinchor, where Sonko serves as mayor, and that may just be the beginning.
Niger’s new military junta has begun to round into shape, as former presidential guard commander Abdourahamane Tiani (previously known as “Omar Tchiani” before he corrected everyone) declared himself Niger’s head of state in a televised address on Friday. Tiani cited Niger’s deteriorating security situation as the reason for his decision to oust former President Mohamed Bazoum using language that, after similar coups in Burkina Faso and Mali over the past three years, sounds more like boilerplate jargon than a real grievance. A still circulating rumor suggests Bazoum was about to fire Tiani and that, more than any real or perceived security crisis, may have been the main motivator behind the coup.
Leaders of the Economic Community of West African States decided on Sunday to impose sanctions against the members of Niger’s junta while giving them a week to remove themselves from power and restore Bazoum’s government. ECOWAS is threatening to undertake a military intervention akin to the one the group made in The Gambia in 2017. You’ll note that ECOWAS did not intervene to restore the former governments of either Burkina Faso or Mali after those coups, and to put it bluntly that’s because neither of those countries would be as easy to invade as The Gambia. The threat of an invasion rings hollow in this case as well, if for no other reason than that ECOWAS just doesn’t function cohesively enough to pull it off. You should also note that both the Burkinabé and Malian juntas have threatened to support Tiani’s junta militarily, raising the specter of a full blown regional war should ECOWAS decide to invade.
Internationally, the French government has already begun evacuating its civilians (and other European Union nationals) from Niger. That could suggest some sort of military intervention is forthcoming. On the other hand it could also simply suggest that Paris knows how this story will unfold (with Burkina Faso and Mali as models) and is trying to get its people out ahead of any expected anti-French violence. Indeed it may already be too late for that, as a group of junta supporters mobbed the French embassy in Niamey over the weekend. The US government is threatening aid cuts, but still won’t call what happened last week a “coup” because of the automatic aid cuts that designation would trigger. The US military has around 1100 personnel stationed in Niger on various surveillance and counter-terrorism missions.
Ukrainian officials are accusing Russia of having orchestrated the coup. There is no evidence of this, but if you still view the Wagner Group as a Russian asset then you’ve undoubtedly noticed that Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin praised the coup plotters over the weekend and offered his firm’s services. Mali’s junta has embraced Wagner’s counter-insurgency assistance, which has had no measurable effect on Mali’s insurgency other than to increase the frequency of human rights violations, while the Burkinabé junta has at least so far kept Wagner at arm’s length. Finally, the coup does not appear to have caused any immediate problems in terms of the global supply of uranium, of which Niger provides around 5 percent. Long term, however, there could be some impact in this regard.
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
Unspecified gunmen attacked a village in the northern CAR’s Bamingui-Bangoran prefecture on Monday, killing at least 13 civilians. AFP is describing the attackers as “rebels” but as far as I can tell there’s no specific indication as to their identity.
The Icelandic government on Tuesday suspended work at its Moscow embassy. This was a decision Icelandic officials announced back in June, citing the, well, everything that’s happened in Russia’s relationship with most of the rest of Europe since the invasion of Ukraine began. They noted on Tuesday that they were not cutting off relations with Russia and would resume embassy operations as soon as circumstances dictate. Iceland is the first European country to take this step and could in theory wind up being a trendsetter.
Ukrainian officials claimed on Monday that their forces had recaptured some 15 square kilometers of territory in their counteroffensive over the previous week. That puts them at over 200 square kilometers seized since the counteroffensive began in June. On Tuesday, Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko announced via Telegram that security forces had prevented “an enemy saboteur-reconnaissance group” from crossing into Ukraine’s Chernihiv oblast. Apparently four people tried to enter Ukraine from Russia but were driven back. Russian officials, meanwhile, are claiming that they foiled an overnight Ukrainian sea drone attack on military and civilian ships in the Black Sea. The Ukrainians are denying that they targeted any civilian ships but haven’t entirely denied that they attempted some kind of attack.
The Saudi government will reportedly host a round of Ukrainian “peace talks” later this week. I put “peace talks” in quotes because this event will not actually involve any peace talks since one of the two belligerents, namely Russia, will not be invited. Attendees will instead discuss Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s peace proposal. The aim isn’t really to advance a peace agenda so much as it is to convince the Saudis that Ukraine and its Western backers are taking them seriously as geopolitical actors, with the hope of bringing them a bit closer to the Ukrainian point of view on the war. A few other “non-aligned” governments, like Brazil and India, will likely also attend and be wooed by Kyiv and company.
The Polish government on Tuesday deployed military units to the country’s eastern border after accusing the Belarusian military of violating Polish airspace. According to the Poles, Belarusian military helicopters crossed over into Poland before returning to Belarus. Belarusian officials denied that any airspace violation took place. Tensions between the two countries are already high because of the Wagner Group’s relocation to Belarus, something that Polish officials regard as a threat. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has gleefully tweaked Warsaw over Wagner’s presence in his country, contributing to the unpleasantness.
Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto suggested in an interview published on Sunday that the Italian government is looking for a way to quit China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Italy joined the BRI in 2019 and remains its only European participant. Crosetto described that decision as “atrocious” in the interview and complained that the result has been lopsided, increasing Chinese exports to Italy without boosting Italian exports to China.
Costa Rican authorities are reportedly investigating President Rodrigo Chaves and several other government officials on allegations of influence peddling. The case is rooted in a claim by a Costa Rican businessman that members of Chaves’ cabinet interfered with his divorce because they had a favorable disposition toward his now ex-wife. Chaves was already under investigation for allegedly using an official trip to Europe as justification for making a personal trip to Latvia, his wife’s home country.
A long-rumored multinational intervention in Haiti looks like it may actually become a reality, with the Biden administration reportedly set to introduce a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing the mission in the coming days. The breakthrough came over the weekend, when Kenyan Foreign Minister Alfred Mutua declared that his country was prepared to lead the operation and to provide some 1000 Kenyan police officers to help support and train Haitian personnel. US officials have been pushing for an intervention but have been looking for another country to take the official lead, having failed to convince Canada to do it. Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry has been requesting an intervention for months, but despite Haiti’s dire internal security situation it’s unclear how the Haitian population feels about this plan given their equally dire past experiences with foreign interventions. The reputation Kenyan police have for brutality may add to Haitian concerns.
Finally, in light of the new Oppenheimer film, TomDispatch’s William Hartung takes a look at the robust industry that’s grown up around the US nuclear weapons program:
The Manhattan Project Oppenheimer directed was one of the largest public works efforts ever undertaken in American history. Though the Oppenheimer film focuses on Los Alamos, it quickly came to include far-flung facilities across the United States. At its peak, the project would employ 130,000 workers — as many as in the entire U.S. auto industry at the time.
According to nuclear expert Stephen Schwartz, author of Atomic Audit, the seminal work on the financing of U.S. nuclear weapons programs, through the end of 1945 the Manhattan Project cost nearly $38 billion in today’s dollars, while helping spawn an enterprise that has since cost taxpayers an almost unimaginable $12 trillion for nuclear weapons and related programs. And the costs never end. The Nobel prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) reports that the U.S. spent $43.7 billion on nuclear weapons last year alone, and a new Congressional Budget Office report suggests that another $756 billion will go into those deadly armaments in the next decade.
Private contractors now run the nuclear warhead complex and build nuclear delivery vehicles. They range from Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin to lesser-known firms like BWX Technologies and Jacobs Engineering, all of which split billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon (for the production of nuclear delivery vehicles) and the Department of Energy (for nuclear warheads). To keep the gravy train running — ideally, in perpetuity — those contractors also spend millions lobbying decision-makers. Even universities have gotten into the act. Both the University of California and Texas A&M are part of the consortium that runs the Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory.
The American warhead complex is a vast enterprise with major facilities in California, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. And nuclear-armed submarines, bombers, and missiles are produced or based in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Louisiana, North Dakota, Montana, Virginia, Washington state, and Wyoming. Add in nuclear subcontractors and most states host at least some nuclear-weapons-related activities.
And such beneficiaries of the nuclear weapons industry are far from silent when it comes to debating the future of nuclear spending and policy-making.
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