Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Some stuff I'm paying attention to this week:
Drag marks on the seabed were discovered following damage to the Estlink 2 undersea power cable, which connects Finland and Estonia. This provides further evidence of sabotage.
Chinese is facing a human metapneumovirus outbreak, with authorities ramping up detection and response protocols
Palestine: a year in review.
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov shared Moscow's opposition to the deployment of Western peacekeeping forces in Ukraine
The IDF reports 891 casualties since Hamas' October 7 attack. Compare with the upwards of 40K dead Gazans.
Pakistan attacked some positions of the TTP in Afghanistan, leading to the Afghan Taliban hitting several points in Pakistan.
Iran to hold nuclear talks with France, Britain and Germany on January 13
Israel announced increase in propaganda budget by USD 150M to combat Gaza narrative
Israeli Report to UN Exposes Hamas Torture, Sexual Abuse of Hostages, Including Children
Israeli raid shuts last major hospital in north Gaza
Yemen's Houthis claim to have shot down 13th MQ-9 Reaper drone
China calls for withdrawal of U.S. missile system from the Philippines
Himalayan megadam gives China power to turn off taps in India
Leaked documents reveal that Russia has prepared target lists for over 160 sites in Japan and South Korea in the event of a major war, dating back to 2013-2014. The plans, which focus on military engagements in the Asia-Pacific region, highlight Russia's intentions to use non-nuclear cruise missiles to disrupt military operations and include both military and civilian infrastructure targets. Among the military sites are command headquarters and radar installations, while civilian targets include power plants and major transportation infrastructures like tunnels and bridges. The documents indicate that of the 160 targets, 82 are military installations, with the remainder being civilian infrastructure.
Taiwanese fighter who served in Ukraine says island unprepared for Chinese invasion
The US and Japan issued their first guidelines for extended deterrence, which outline the potential use of U.S. nuclear weapons in response to threats from China and North Korea. Final authorization remains with the US president. Seems more like something to calm Japan's nerves than anything else
The Chinese navy and Coast Guard conducted a maritime blockade drill in the Miyako Strait, a strategic waterway near Japanese territory where U.S. forces are stationed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has directed the government and Sberbank to collaborate with China on AI, aiming to bolster Russia's capabilities, particularly military ones, like autonomous combat systems, in the face of Western sanctions.
"The people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family. No one can sever our family bonds, and no one can stop the historical trend of national reunification," Xi said in a speech televised on China's state broadcaster CCTV.
Chinese-Russian air co-operation in the Artic has Norad's 'full attention'
Russia threatens more nuclear tests as World War 3 fears intensify. Russia ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 2000, but has since withdrawn from the agreement
Russia will abandon moratorium on deploying short- and medium range milliles
Russia angry that state media blocked on Telegram in the EU
'We are waging an existential war': M23's Bertrand Bisimwa on DRC conflict
Delaware officials investigate possible bird flu outbreak after dozens of snow geese test positive. Small microcosm of how H5N1 is playing out
Sweden is planning to secure additional land for cemeteries in anticipation of potential war casualties,
Also, Scott Alexander also gave some thanks to me and my group at the end of this post on H5N1, :)-
While doing so, remember that the 40K number is provided by Hamas, which is extremely motivated to inflate the number and is known to lie about pretty much everything. There's absolutely no possibility of independent verification of these numbers, so they can not be compared with verified and documented numbers like IDF casualties. Here: https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/HJS-Questionable-Counting-%E2%80%93-Hamas-Report-web.pdf is some analysis of the Hamas numbers. Again, it is probably impossible to know the real numbers. IDF estimates they killed about 17 thousands Hamas (and whatever smaller fractions there are, like Islamic Jihad or PFLP) operatives. Probably not a very accurate number either as I doubt they bothered to search and identify every single killed combatant. Beyond that, I am not sure how can one make any supportable numbers.
In the Iraq War documents, incident reports of the US army detail the deaths of 100k Iraqis at the hands of their own forces, of which about two thirds are civilian. These deaths, further, go above what other attempts at documenting war deaths reported, and they provide the most conservative estimate as they only include deaths drawn up in incident reports (i.e. if a helicopter launched a missile at a building and killed a bunch of people, this wouldn't find its way into incident reports, which are based on individual soldier reports of their interactions with the Iraqi public, nor would deaths caused by the chaos and privations of occupation), which are also likely to be biased by the soldiers reporting them.
The lessons learned from this I would say apply to the Israeli military operations. There is likely to be a far greater actual number of deaths than what's reported, as well as a huge number of civilian deaths relative to combatant, perhaps in the area of 2:1 at best, in all likelihood far worse.
That would be true if "reported" number were the number that matches the known casualties. Nobody in Hamas is interested in reporting anything like that. Thus, actual numbers bear no relation to what Hamas is reporting - it could be much less, it could be much more, Hamas reported numbers are just propagandist exercises. Sure, they can't report 1 millions people died from an airstrike on a single house, so they have some constraints on their reporting, but if they say 47 people died, nobody is going to contradict them. "Actual" isn't even seen in the vicinity of it.
This is a completely baseless assumption. IDF takes a lot of precautions to allow civilians to evacuate before engaging in certain areas. These efforts are well documented. They do not avoid casualties completely, and sometimes there's just no possibility of it - like having an active fight with Hamas striking from the midst of civilian population (there are numerous instances of rocket launches from "humanitarian zones" - it makes sense, if IDF says they won't strike certain area, that's exactly where you want to deploy your most precious resources, doing otherwise would be stupid) or high-value target is located in the presence of their family, etc. So yes, of course there are civilian casualties, and a lot of casualties (since Hamas is an irregular military) for which their status is impossible to determine, but numbers like "far worse than 2:1" are completely baseless. US army btw is much less sensitive to civilian casualties in overseas conflicts than the IDF - for the simple reason they can pretty much always get away with it.
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