Hello Virgo season….Happy birthday Adam and Angela! I may or may not do a newsletter next week…. it is truly the dog days! I will not do a newsletter on September 4, mainly because I’ll be away most of that week, but also because September 3 is my birthday, and, well, doing a newsletter….
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This Week in the World.....
On my radar...
Though the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) expired on Monday, (not that it really mattered), and even though Trump has threatened an economic “D-Day” on Iran, this week’s big story is in Asia, in the Koreas.
The Koreas
The US and South Korea were gearing up to start annual military exercises on Monday when Trump called for them to be “substantially reduced,” noting that they are “totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful.” Sigh—and not just because of his improper capitalization.
Why is Trump doing this?
Joyce Lee and Heejin Kim report that “Trump’s objectives…appeared to be to pressure Seoul over the pace of its promised US investments under a trade deal, shift attention away from US challenges in Iran and reopen diplomacy with Pyongyang.” (Reuters)
Leaving the trade deal aside, let’s pick up on the other two points, which is where my thoughts immediately went.
With Iran not only not going well but unwilling to end hostilities, Trump is desperate for a foreign policy win. If someone was briefing him about what was happening in the week ahead, casually mentioning these exercises, he might have glommed onto the fantasy that North Korea might be the place to score a point.
Exhibit A: He referenced his “very good” relationship with the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, in a Social Truth post.
Exhibit B: Park Ji-Won wrote back in June that a captionless photo Trump posted of him and Kim back in June led analysts to believe that North Korea would soon be back on the US agenda. (Korea Times)
Indeed, Trump has said he will meet Kim later this fall, most likely in November, when he plans to be in China for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting. For his part, Kim has been lukewarm about Trump’s announcement and a possible meeting. That’s probably because his bargaining position is stronger today than it was in 2019, as Dasi Yoon points out. North Korea is working with Russia in its fight against Ukraine, gaining experience on the battlefield along with Russia’s military partnership. It has China on its side. (WSJ) 🎁🔗
Meanwhile, China’s foreign minister was in South Korea this week, urging South Korea not to “take sides”—that is, not to align itself with the US. It might not have a choice.
Before winding up this section, I wanted to flag this fascinating piece about how South Korea has given up on its requirement for North Korea to denuclearize as a criteria for talks. Christine Ahn, Youngmi Cho, and Thania Paffenholz argue that Trump should reverse its previous insistence that North Korea abandon nuclear weapons and, instead, seize this opportunity and push for engagement. (Foreign Policy) 🎁🔗
Ukraine elections
While Ukrainians battle Russia for their very survival, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is battling his own political drama. This week, the former defense minister he dismissed, Mikhaylo Fedorov, called for elections.
Ukraine last had elections in 2019, when the country elected Zelensky for a five-year term. He should have been up for re-election in 2024—IF (1) the country hadn’t declared martial law (2) because of Russia’s war. Under martial law, elections are suspended. Fedorov, who is enormously popular, particularly among young people (and probably hoping to ride that popularity to power), said that Ukraine “must not let Putin decide when Ukrainians can choose their government.”
Fair point, says Olga Aivazovska, but wartime elections are not the answer. Millions of Ukrainians are displaced, soldiers are fighting, and Russian bombardment—not to mention cyber attacks—could produce low turnout. She says that Ukraine should instead prepare the way for elections, not hold them. (Kyiv Independent)
Bringing in my own experience in Bosnia. Elections require the right conditions in order to underpin a democracy. Elections, in and of themselves, are not democracy. In fact, they can lead to the unraveling of it. The US, then under the Clinton administration, rushed Bosnians to vote, barely a year after the Dayton Peace Accords were signed. The result: the nationalist won, cementing the continued ethnic rivalries between the three ethnic groups. Here’s my piece about it in 2014. (Washington Post)
US
Don’t feel bad about what you owe on your credit card. It’s probably wayyyy less than what the US owes. (At least, I hope it is…) The US debt passed $40 trillion this week. That forced bond yields (interest rate) to rise, which is not a good thing. Hence, why there was a huge bond sell off earlier this week. Interruptrr in-house “bond” girl, Stacey Vanek Smith explains how this works and why the Treasury Department’s move to buy bonds solved the problem—for now. (NPR)
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been mouthing off about the International Criminal Court (ICC) recently, calling the body a “sham” and accusing it of overreach. This week the US sanctioned two ICC officials, ICC president Tomoko Akane and Abdoulaye Seye, a senior lawyer. Kanae Doi says this is a “naked attempt to shield American and Israeli officials implicated in serious crimes from justice.” (Human Rights Watch)
Africa
There are now over 5,000 confirmed cases of Ebola and 2,420 deaths, according to the CDC.
As predicted, Hakainde Hichilema won Zambia’s elections. As I noted last week there was controversy around the burial of his predecessor. It is still unclear how that will be resolved. In the meantime, the opposition leader, Brian Mundubile, has said he will challenge the results, given the number of arrests leading up to the vote and accusation of electoral interference. It doesn’t help that Zambian security forces raided Mundubile’s house on Thursday morning, where they shot and killed a former cabinet official. Michelle Gavin discusses the “messy election.” (CFR)
Liberia has agreed to take 1200 third party deportees from the US. In return, it is receiving $5 million. That puts each person around $4,166. (Life is indeed cheap.) This move, Robtel Neajai Pailey says, goes against the very principle under which Liberia was founded—a refuge from US racism. (Al Jazeera)
Americas
Trump reached an agreement with Canada on tariffs, pulling back his threat to slap a 50 percent levy on Canadian goods. But don’t call it TACO (Trump always chickens out), say Megan Messerly, Daniel Desrochers, and Ari Hawkins. It forced a negotiation on talks that have been stalled for more than a year. (Politico)
Meanwhile, the NYT ran a piece this week about how the State Department is weaponizing visas to the US. While that’s not surprising, what caught my eye this week is that it has revoked the visa of Mexican politician Andrés Manuel López Beltrán — son of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is viewed as a possible future presidential candidate. Jordana Timerman lays it out under “regional relations.” (Latin America Daily Brief)
On that note, Brazil’s October election campaign formally kicked off this week. I’ll circle back to this in September.
Middle East
Tell me Benjamin Netanyahu is worried about the October elections without telling me that Benjamin Netanyahu is worried about the October elections. This week, Israel bombed an airbase in Syria, claiming to prevent a Turkish military build up in the country. That prompted a quick response from Trump’s man in Ankara, Tom Barrack, who chided the IDF for baiting the Turks into a confrontation. For what it’s worth, the Turks will work to avoid getting into any confrontation with Israel. YET, a point Nadia Al-Faour makes is worth considering: Will Israel use Syria as the arena to play out an Israeli-Turkish competition, in which prevents Syria from “rebuilding itself as a functioning military and political state.” (Eurasia Review)
Meanwhile, over in the West Bank, The Economist believes that Netanyahu and his far right government are goading, through settler violence, the Palestinians into another intifada—just before the October 27 elections. Expect things to get worse here. (The Economist) 🎁🔗
One of the people that is enabling Netanyahu is Jared Kushner. He’s been conducting Kissinger-like “shuttle diplomacy”—meeting with Hamas and Netanyahu this week. Heather Digby Parton says that while Kushner probably welcomes the comparison to the former Nixon secretary of state and national security advisor, he’s no Henry Kissinger. I honestly don’t know if that’s better or worse. This week, he said that Hamas needed to follow through on their commitment to disarm, which they have signaled they would, even if no one believes them. He then added, “everyone will see that they’re not genuine about peace, and then Israel will have a lot more support from the US and others to go and finish the job.” (Salon) WOW.
Israel has launched an investigation into the killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab in 2024. Israeli soldiers fired upon a car she was in when she died. Rajab’s family has called for an inquiry into the deaths of all children in Gaza, something the international community should be doing, writes Romona Wadi. (Middle East Monitor)
Though not much has changed on the US-Iran war front, this piece caught my eye. Julia Curlee and Ariane Tabatabai argue that the war is unlikely to “end cleanly,” in part because Washington and Tehran still disagree over what an acceptable end looks like. The US wants Iran to give up control over the Strait of Hormuz and constrain its nuclear program. Complicating matters are Israel and Iran-linked groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis, which have interests of their own and could sabotage any agreement—even if Washington and Tehran reach one. (Lawfare)
Europe
Iceland will vote on whether to open accession talks with the European Union on August 29. Accession talks were suspended a decade ago, writes Katharina Kroll, who lays out the truly divided vote on whether to join Brussels or not. (DW)
Russian drones have veered into EU airspace, intentionally or not. As the Russian war on Ukraine continues, Brussels needs a coordinated strategy to deal with this issue, writes Ulrike Franke—coordination being key. (European Council on Foreign Relations)
Would love to know what you think, or what I got wrong or left out— here’s my email.
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