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naraburns  nihil supernum  4mo ago (text post)   1211 thread views

Transnational Thursday for December 21, 2023

After thirty weeks as @Soriek's passion project, Transnational Thursday is getting added to the auto-post bot. But it hasn't been added to the bot yet, I think, so I'm posting it this week, with apologies to anyone whose plans I've mussed!

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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Yemen and the Red Sea

The Houthis have kept up their fight against Israel and managed to actually inconvenience everyone. Consistent attacks in the Red Sea have made merchant ships cautious about the shipping route, and have even encouraged vessels to take vastly longer routes all the way around the African coast. The costs for everything being shipped have, unfortunately, risen accordingly for consumers:

Keuhne+Nagel, a global logistics giant, said Wednesday that 103 container ships have diverted around Africa, a figure it expects to increase. Some oil tanker owners have also insisted on options in their charters to avoid the southern Red Sea, while BP Plc and Equinor ASA have also shied away from the area.

The combined market capitalization of the firms within the Solactive Global Shipping Index rose to almost $190 billion on Wednesday. On Dec. 12 it stood at $166.2 billion.

It isn’t entirely obvious that this is really going to boost profits for shipping companies however:

For shipping owners, the development both gives and takes away: Clients will be forced to pay up for higher rates, but shippers will also have to absorb higher fuel costs. Tanker and liquid petroleum gas shippers look best placed since capacity utilization is tight and trouble at another major canal—the one in Panama—has already given them a huge boost in bargaining power.

Brent oil prices rose around 1% on Tuesday, according to Refinitiv data. Shares of A.P. Moller-Maersk, a top global container shipper, were down over 3%. Shares of Dorian LPG, a major LPG shipper, were up nearly 2%.

The United States has of course taken this very seriously and vowed to protect any ships that need to move through the Suez canal, and have quickly assembled a multinational force to try to combat the situation:

On Monday, the Pentagon said it was establishing a security operation to protect seaborne traffic from ballistic missiles and drone attacks launched by the Houthi groups in Yemen. The effort, called Operation Prosperity Guardian, will include the U.K., Bahrain, France, Norway and other countries.

US warships have already been sent in, but so far it doesn’t seem to have arrested the trend of merchant vessels diverting their routes, so maybe it isn’t enough security for them. On the other hand, energy markets have not responded drastically, largely due to existing surpluses muting the urgency of the situation somewhat:

Oil and refined-product flows have more than halved from September levels, according to commodities-data firm Kpler. LNG traders and shipbrokers said Wednesday that more tankers carrying the supercooled fuel were diverting to avoid the Red Sea…

But thus far the response of energy markets to the disruption has been muted compared with dramatic moves in prices sparked by some other past outbreaks of violence in the Middle East.

Benchmark Brent crude futures edged up 1.3%, surpassing $80 a barrel for the first time since late November and extending gains over the past week to 8%. Natural-gas futures rose 1.9% in the U.S. to $2.54 per million British thermal units, and 3.8% in northwest Europe to 33.80 euros a megawatt-hour…

One reason for the muted response to the dramatic situation, say traders and analysts, is that crude and gas markets happen to be swimming in surplus supplies, dulling the effect of longer journey times. The U.S., Guyana and Brazil are all pumping record volumes of oil, the International Energy Agency said this month, while Iranian exports of crude have surged this year.

And although more than 8% of the world’s oil supplies have shuttled through the Red Sea on average so far this year, the stretch of water is less of a chokepoint than the Strait of Hormuz to the east. The attacks have clustered around Bab el-Mandeb, at the southern end of the Red Sea.

I heard France, Italy, and Spain are refusing US leadership for the mission/not taking part?

Yeah I saw that too. There are a bunch of complaints and issues people have been promulgating. Can't say how credible they are, I'm not a shipping guy:

For instance: https://twitter.com/johnkonrad/status/1737956292436615453#m

Or in a more comic format: https://twitter.com/revolutionaryem/status/1738393106024677882#m

I heard Russian and presumably Chinese ships remain untouched by the Houthis, they're all on the same side.

Time to take a page out of the Golden Age of Piracy playbook and start flying Russian and Chinese flags for that leg of the journey.

Egypt & Ethiopia

I’ve covered previously here the ongoing negotiations between Ethiopia and Egypt over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Nile. If it kicks into action it will provide electricity for all of Ethiopia and even allow them to become a net energy exporter. However, Egypt sees it as an existential threat to their already precarious water access (the Nile actually runs south to north, I believe the only major river to do so [edit: not actually so]). Sudan has vacillated between both sides over the years and is currently too burdened with the war to prioritize these negotiations.

Unfortunately, they have now had the final in a series of talks that have stretched over four months, and the two sides have reached no deal (realistically, what middle ground does lie between their positions?) The dam is already producing energy and Ethiopia has said they are going to continue to ramp up energy use with or without Egypt on board. Egypt has said in the past they are willing to take extreme action if this happens, though it’s unclear what is exactly in their power to do. Sudan has previously said that it will not allow Egyptians to move troops overland in Sudan or to fly planes through Sudanese air space to attack Egypt. In fairness Sudan has limited ability to enforce anything at the moment but Egypt is probably not crazy enough to functionally invade their next door neighbor (and essentially ally on this particular issue). It’s unclear as well what the US will do, being allies with both countries and heavily invested in regional stability but also tied up with multiple other conflicts.

For these and other dam negotiations, I'm a bit unclear as to why the impact is so significant.

Isn't it possible for the upstream half of the dam to build up the water necessary to produce electricity, but still provide almost identical downstream flow once this occurs? I understand that the requirement to produce electricity according to demand bumps up against this, and nothing in engineering is as trivial as a layman believes it, but wouldn't it be worth the investment for buffer energy storage to let agriculture and other downstream concerns continue to function?

(the Nile actually runs south to north, I believe the only major river to do so)

St. Lawrence river (the drain of the Great Lakes), plus the Siberian rivers Ob/Yenisei/Lena. All have higher discharge than the Nile.

Thanks, TIL.

I wonder if Egypt might try closing off Ethiopian access to Suez as a countermeasure, they've played that card before in various wars. That's the only non-military hold they have over Ethiopia I can think of. China is Ethiopia's biggest trading partner but they do trade with some European countries, plus the US.

Serbia

I previously covered the Serbian Progressive Party being forced to call snap elections after popular discontent with two mass shootings. SNP undertook a mass gun buyback in response to the shooting in hopes of shoring up support, and either it worked really well, or the election was shady, or what. Either way, they did fine. They hasn’t restored their pre-2022 supermajority, and their coalition partner the socialist party lost half their seats, but the SNS still handily breezed by the opposition parties (they even won in Belgrade), leaving Aleksander Vucic safely maintaining his decade plus hold on the country (currently he is in the technically symbolic Presidential role rather than Prime Minister, but in reality he is still the leader of the party):

[Vucic’s] Serbian Progressive Party, or SNS, won 47% of the vote, according to a near-final count.

Opposition parties under the Serbia Against Violence (SPN) banner were well behind with around 23%.

But they claimed electoral fraud favouring the government, and called a protest for Monday evening.

If confirmed, the results will likely mean the SNS has won more than half of the 250 seats in the National Assembly…

In a statement, SPN claimed electoral fraud. The coalition said: "More than 40,000 non-residents were brought to Belgrade"... The International Election Observation Mission said in a statement that "serious irregularities, including vote-buying and ballot box stuffing were observed"...

Local observers reported various irregularities on Sunday, including voters being bussed in from Bosnia-Herzegovina to vote in Belgrade.

The CRTA observer mission gave details of attempted ballot-rigging in a number of polling stations.

Significant protests happened on Monday, and the international response has been skeptical:

Stefan Schennach, a member of the Austrian Parliament and the head of the Council of Europe’s election observers, addressed the cameras. Not mincing his words, he said it had not been a fair election: “The victory in Belgrade was stolen from the opposition.” A report by observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) followed, spelling out several irregularities.

The next strike to Vucic’s hopes came from across the Atlantic. On Tuesday, United States Department of State spokesman Matthew Miller asked Serbia to investigate the irregularities, urging it to “work with the OSCE to address these concerns that have been raised”.

Meanwhile, the only international leaders to congratulate Vucic on his party’s victory were fellow strongmen: Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Azerbaijan’s Ilhan Aliyev. Even the Serbian president’s nominal allies whom he often proudly claims as personal friends, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, had lower-ranking officials send the congratulations.

The big question now is what will happen with Kosovo. Tensions have been high, but Serbia does want to join the European Union, and the EU sure isn’t going to be thrilled with a dodgy election keeping a quasi-autocrat in power; there will be a lot of pressure to continue the halting normalization process with Kosovo.

Japan

The funding scandal contains to rage on. Prime Minister Kishida has fired four top ministers, all from the Shinzo Abe faction of the Liberal Democratic Party, including:

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno; Economy and Industry Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura; Agriculture Minister Ichiro Miyashita; and Internal Affairs Minister Junji Suzuki. All have emerged as the alleged recipients of suspected kickbacks of unreported fundraising proceeds. But of course it’s not over. Prosecutors have now raided LDP party offices:

Investigators from the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors’ Office searched the offices of two LPD factions associated with former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and former secretary-general Toshihiro Nikai, local media reported on Tuesday.

Prosecutors are investigating allegations that party officials failed to declare a combined 600 million yen ($4.18m) in fundraising proceeds, directing money to faction-run slush funds…

Kishida’s cabinet reshuffle, however, has done little to boost his flagging approval.

In an opinion poll published by the Mainichi newspaper on Sunday, 79 of respondents said they disapproved of the government – the highest figure since the poll began in 1947.

In other major Japan news, you’ve probably heard that US Steel, once the largest corporation in the world, is now being purchased by Nippon Steel for $55 a share. This may be less of a major deal than it sounds due to US Steel’s diminished status these days, though it certainly feels like it matters for symbolic reasons.

That $14.1 billion sale price, while a 40% premium from where US Steel’s stock closed Friday before the deal was announced, makes it a minor leaguer in today’s economy. The nation’s tech powerhouses - Apple, Google’s parent Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Nvidia - trade at a valuation of more than $1 trillion each. US Steel, even at the sale price, is valued less than 0.5% of the value of Apple, and less than 2% of the value of Tesla.

Its revenue last year of $21 billion is roughly what Walmart brings in every two weeks. Or to put it another way, it’s just over half of the annual sales that Apple receives just from its wearable products, primarily its headphones.

France

Macron has wiggled his way through yet another thorny legislative boondoggle with significant pushback. This time it’s an immigration bill that his own (left wing) Prime Minister, admitted was at least partially unconstitutional. A quick overview:

The controversial new rules – including migration quotas, making it harder for immigrants' children to become French citizens, and delaying migrants' access to welfare benefits – were added to the bill to win the support of right-wing lawmakers for its passage.

The bill makes it easier to expel illegal migrants, while watering down plans to loosen curbs over residency permits for workers in labour-deprived sectors.

Specifically, some of the bill’s measures that restricted welfare access to immigrants seemed to have been taken from or inspired by Macron’s historic opposition party, Le Pen’s National Rally:

A key part of the bill would now see social security benefits for foreigners conditional on being in France for at least five years, or 30 months for those who have jobs, echoing some of the National Rally’s longtime campaign lines.

The bill passed with a dominant majority…with the support of National Rally, while a quarter of his coalition voted against it. The optics aren’t great and Macron is ironically being accused by both by the left and the right of capitulating to the French right. Macron’s Health Minister Aurélien Rousseau has already resigned in protest, and he may not be the last.

the government now faces a shattered coalition in parliament. The debates and compromises have left Macron’s allies badly bruised, with 27 MPs belonging to his centrist coalition voting against the latest version of the legislation…

Speculation is swelling that he might soon undertake a reshuffle including a change of prime minister to re-energize his government.

Separately, France and Germany claim to have a deal in sight to salvage negotiations over the European Union’s new spending rules:

The so-called Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) was put on hold at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to allow governments to increase spending in the wake of the worst recession since World War II. As it gets reintroduced, the European Commission proposed a reform because of concerns that the rules were too inflexible and unenforceable.

The overhaul is designed to offer more gradual and tailored spending cuts for countries exceeding the EU’s threshold of 3 percent deficit-to-GDP and 60 percent debt-to-GDP. That’s pleased countries such as Italy and France that have run up big debts and are struggling to gain control of their annual deficits ― the difference between how much governments spend and bring in ― but dismayed stricter capitals like Berlin who wanted tougher and more uniform targets.

Under the compromise highly indebted countries would have to keep their annual deficits at about 1.5 percent of GDP and reduce debt by at least 1 percent of their GDP every year….

Paris and Rome were particularly concerned about Germany's insistence on tougher targets because they are two of nine governments whose deficits are above the 3 percent limit. The Commission is expected to slap these countries with its sanctions mechanism ― known as the excessive deficit procedure (EDP) ― in spring 2024.

Chile

Chile held their referendum on a new constitution prepared by the conservatives and rejected it by 56%. The comes two years after the country agreed they wanted to replace their dictator-era constitution, and a little more than a year after they rejected a constitution prepared by left wingers. At this point no one is happy with what they have, but they don’t see eye-to-eye enough to agree on something new.

Polls show Chileans are more concerned about security and a struggling economy rather than drafting a new constitution. Sunday's vote was also seen as a bellwether for the country's right-wing ahead of the 2025 election, but now texts from both political aisles have been widely rejected, leaving the outcome of the race uncertain.

The first proposed text was drafted by leftist legislators and focused on social, gender, Indigenous and environmental rights while the second reinforced the country's free-market policies and emphasized property and religious rights, while potentially restricting access to abortion.

The second rewrite was dominated by the right-wing Republican party, led by Jose Antonio Kast, who lost against leftist President Gabriel Boric during the last election.

President Boric has said they will not try again, and maybe it really is for the best to leave this chapter behind. He has now said he will focus on taxes and pension reforms.

What do "liberal" and "conservative" mean in current-day Chile? Is the difference mostly down to economic policy?

There are definitely economic differences but maybe less so than in the past; the growing cleavages nowadays are social/political.

For much of the 2000s the Chilean left standard bearer was actually the Socialist Party (the one that was suspended during the right wing dictatorship) and their successive party/coalitions, which have quickly slid into a tiny minority. The current President Gabriel Boric founded his own party, Social Convergence, which does contain elements / prior parties focused on socialist economics but is more about left wing social politics, such as gender equality, indigenous rights, LGBT rights, and environmentalism. During the election commenters were surprised how little he leaned (beyond rhetoric) into actual economically populist policies despite there being a pretty high demand for them (Chile had just come out of big protests over living costs that began with a hike in train fares). He did try nationalize lithium ion but probably knew that was impossible without the constitution being amended. He's also tried (and failed) to advance better labor laws, healthcare, and pension reform, so the economic differences between the parties are there and genuine.

The conservatives (actually called the Republican party) are all in on free market economics, but are also much farther to the right politically than previous conservative opposition. They're pretty much the reverse of all the stuff Boric is into, they make a lot of hay out of opposing immigration, gay marriage, indigenous rights, abortion, yadda yadda. Their leader Antonio Kast, the runner up against Boric, is a pretty open Pinochet apologist.

Interesting, thank you! Much more similarity to American CW than I would've expected. Even down to both sides being right of center economically.

No problem! It is in ways surprisingly similar at times to the US, though I do think it's still fair to call SC center-left / left rather than center-right economically (though the Socialist Party may well disagree). Ironically while the two parties' divisions are largest socially, it probably was mostly the poor economy and persistent inflation that lost the left the last legislative elections. Chileans have used up some of their patience on politicians putting exciting hot button stuff over bread and butter issues, a lesson for the conservatives after their failed attempt at a constitution as well.

That's probably for the best. Whatever it's flaws the current constitution is good enough that it hasn't stopped them from becoming one of safest and richest countries on the continent. There's no guarantee you could say that about whatever would replace it.

At this point no one is happy with what they have, but they don’t see eye-to-eye enough to agree on something new.

If this doesn't sum up the era we live in, I don't know what does.

Something that is in even the slightest way different from all the other eras would probably be better.

Democratic Republic of Congo

The Congolese election has kicked off between incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi and like two dozen other dudes, though the most likely opposition candidate is the ex-Governor of the mineral rich Katanga province. Tshisekedi’s own ascension in 2019 was the DRC’s first peaceful transition of power so their democratic process is of course still fragile. Already things look pretty sketchy, whether due malfeasance or just the general chaos of the country:

Some 44 million people — almost half the population — were expected to vote, but many, including several million displaced by conflict in the vast country’s east, could struggle to cast ballots. The fighting prevented 1.5 million people from registering to vote…

A major concern is that ink on cards has smudged. That means voters could be turned away. In addition, the voter registration list hasn’t been properly audited.

Three hours after polls opened, over 31% of polling stations in main cities and towns were yet to open, with voting machines faulty in 45% of stations, according to Bishop Donatien Nshole, spokesman of the National Episcopal Conference of Congo and the Church of Christ in Congo observer mission, basing the figures on reports of around a fifth of its large network.

One polling station in the capital received voting devices less than two hours before polls were meant to close. Thousands of stations, particularly in remote areas, still might not have needed materials.

Results are predicted to take about a week to come out, so hopefully I should have them for you in the next Transnational Thursday. Most likely Tshisekedi will remain in power.

Guatemala

A follow up to last week’s post about the top prosecutor in Guatemala, ordered by the Attorney General, declaring Bernardo Arévalo election victory invalid. Guatemala’s Constitutional Court has rejected the order and urged Congress to secure Arévalo’s inauguration (only about three weeks away now).

The attorney general’s office, resorting to a whole series of court cases, is trying to delegitimize the results of the Guatemalan runoff on August 20, when the progressive Arévalo won the elections with 58% of the vote. The victory of the Semilla Movement delivered a forceful citizen message against the corruption and impunity that prevails in Guatemala, specifically against the so-called “pact of the corrupt,” made up of a group of politicians, members of the military, businesspeople and individuals linked to drug trafficking who have co-opted most of the state institutions since 2019, when they managed to kick out the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a United Nations body that dismantled more than 200 corrupt structures.

Armenia and Azerbaijan

Diplomatic normalization between the two fractious countries seems to be continuing, with both Armenia and Azerbaijan agreeing to their first ever prisoner exchange. They are also discussing withdrawing their respective troops from the border and are continuing to hold peace talks.

I was distracted lately by other events and did not follow Karabach matters that much, but do I understand it right that there wasn't a major fallout from this beyond Armenian population moving to the mainland Armenia? No mass casualties, no genocide attempts, the casualty numbers are relatively low. Pashinyan seems to be OK with taking the L and putting the matter to rest, and despite some protests, his position seems to be shared by the majority in Armenia - even if they are understandably not happy about it, they are willing, at least for now, to let it go. And if Aliev is content to not escalate it further, e.g. by cutting through Armenian territory to Nakhichivan, the matter could actually get settled?

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