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America’s adversaries are looking to exploit the transition period between the Biden and Trump Administrations, China has a fateful choice to make about its own role in the world, and the biggest challenge for US foreign policy might have more to do with clean energy than hard power, according to outgoing US National security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
Sullivan, speaking with Ian Bremmer before a live audience at 92Y in New York on Tuesday as part of a special episode of our nationally-syndicated television show GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, shared his views on key US foreign policy issues at what he said was “a huge, plastic moment of turbulence and transition” in global politics.
A few highlights:
On the transition to Trump. Despite huge differences of opinion about policy, he said, Team Biden has been working hard to ensure that with Team Trump everyone is “singing from the same song sheet” on key risks, in particular the prospect of a weakened Iran accelerating its nuclear program.
The unexpectedly swift collapse of the Assad regime, he said, is a moment of “promise but also profound risk” in which the US must work both with its Kurdish allies in the country as well as with other outside powers to ensure that the country doesn’t become a power vacuum and a haven for international terrorism.
A “just peace” in Ukraine should be “up to the Ukrainians.” He said he hoped Trump will “continue to provide Ukraine with the defensive capacity so that Ukraine's in the best possible position on the battlefield, which will put them in a better position at the negotiating table.”
Russia is more beat up than it looks. High inflation, unsustainable spending, and staggering combat losses in Ukraine are taking a toll, he said. “The conventional wisdom from a few months ago was ‘Russia's got it made in the shade economically, they can do this indefinitely’ – I don't think the economic signals we're seeing right now bear that out.”
China has a big choice to make. Does it want to slip deeper into an axis of reactionary powers like Russia, Iran, and North Korea, or does it want to assume a more constructive global role, even as it competes with the US? “The world,” he said, “should put the onus on China to make the right choice.”
What worries him most? “The one thing that makes me nervous,” he said, “is the need for us to deploy clean energy rapidly enough to power the computing power necessary to stay at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence.”
For more of the conversation: including what Sullivan learned from spending hundreds of hours with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, why he thinks Joe Biden’s foreign policy planted seeds that will bear fruit “for a generation”, and how an American invasion of Canada might compare with Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, keep an eye out for Ian’s GZERO newsletter, dropping later today.
And to catch the whole interview: tune in to GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airing on PBS-affiliates nationwide starting Friday. More info here.
Protesters gather at the venue of the 29th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, dubbed COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Nov. 16, 2024, calling for developed countries to take responsibility for the greenhouse gasses they have emitted.
Aftermarathon sessions and deep divisions, COP29 concluded in Baku, Azerbaijan, with a commitment of $300 billion in annual assistance by 2035 to help poorer nations cope with climate change. That’s up from today’s pledges of $100 billion a year. Twenty-three contributors will kick in the funds, including the UK, US, Japan, and countries in the EU. Recipients include countries in Africa and South America, as well as a host of small island states.
While some delegates applauded the deal, many developing nations branded it a “betrayal.” Indian delegate Chandni Raina called it “an optical illusion.” “This will not address the enormity of the challenge,” she said. Meanwhile, low-lying nations like the Marshall Islands acknowledged that the deal is a “start” but ultimately insufficient.
While the agreement also lays groundwork for next year’s COP30 in Brazil, big questions remain. Will wealthy nations deliver on their pledges? How will the funds be divided? What can developing nations do if it isn’t enough?
The urgency is real. 2024 is expected to be the hottest year ever (the second record year in a row), with global emissions still rising. The world is currently on track for temperature increases of up to 3.1 C (5.6 F) by the end of the century, according to the 2024 UN Emissions Gap report.
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
North Korea ratified a major defense treaty with Russia. What do both sides hope to gain?
Well, the North Koreans really want mutual defense. They are helping the Russians out in their time of need, sending a whole bunch of troops, things that the North Koreans have in surplus and don't really value and the Russians can really use right now. And they would love to see Russian troops in North Korea. They'd love to see that appear as mutual defense and give the North Koreans a lot more leverage so they are not forced to be supplicants in Beijing, and they can also be more assertive versus South Korea, Japan, and others. This is a major escalation in this war and a big problem geopolitically.
The Russians, of course, are just looking for more troops, more ammunition, more ability to fight, and they are in a much, much stronger position to get terms that they want from the United States and from the Ukrainians. Especially now that the US has elected somebody that says he really, really wants to end the war. Putin will be like, "Okay, but here are the things that I need if you want me to end the war." Trump's incented to give him a lot more of those than almost anybody in NATO right now.
Japan's PM survived a rare parliamentary vote. How will he tackle the country's sluggish economy?
Well, he is saying that he's going to do a lot more stimulus, and so basically blow out the budget. Exactly, not where he has been historically. Japan's economy is pretty flat. Interest rates are close to zero, though they've been pushing them up a bit, historically surprising, recently. It's not like companies are all itching to get into Japan. Their demography is falling apart, and most people are pushing their production elsewhere, so including Japanese companies. So it's a real challenge, and Ishiba is going to be there maybe for a year. This is a very weak LDP coalition government.
What do I expect to come from COP29, the new climate summit happening in Baku?
Well, the Americans are attending with their knees cut off because Trump is going to be president in a couple months and he will pull the Americans out of the Paris Climate Accord once again. The trajectory on post-carbon investment and the prices coming down at scale for the Americans and for everyone in the world is already way too well-developed to pull back, and that's a good thing. But the US is going to be focused more on additional permitting and for oil and gas and production increases. Even beyond the record levels that they are right now under the Biden administration. They'll go further.
And so it's really, the Americans are going to be pretty marginalized at this summit, and the Chinese are driving the bus. They're producing a lot more coal, of course, but at the same time, they're also producing a hell of a lot more post-carbon renewables at global levels. In other words, China's doing at global scale what Texas is doing in the United States. And that is making them much more important as decision-makers.
A person takes photos of the waves as Typhoon Krathon approaches in Kaohsiung, Taiwan October 2, 2024.
2: At least two people are dead in Taiwan, and 70 injured, from weather attributed to Typhoon Krathon, which is expected to make landfall on the densely populated west coast of the Island on Thursday. Thousands have been evacuated from areas at risk of floods or landslides. One elderly man fell off a ladder while pruning a tree near his house in preparation for the storm, and another crashed into fallen rocks while driving. Western Taiwan is usually sheltered from major storms by its east coast mountain ranges and Taipei has put 40,000 troops on standby for expected rescue operations.
2: Two high-profile Beninese political figures were arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of plotting a coup against President Patrice Talon, allegedly having attempted to bribe the head of the Republican Guard. Benin is one of the most stable democracies in West Africa — even the communist dictatorship that ruled 1975-1990 handed over power peacefully — and was not previously believed to be at risk of extralegal regime change.
40: Vietnamese media reported Wednesday that some Vietnamese fishermen were severely injured in a clash near the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea after around 40 foreign sailors boarded their vessels and beat the crews with iron bats on Sunday. The hull numbers of the alleged aggressors correspond with local Chinese maritime patrols, and Beijing confirmed an operation against Vietnamese fishermen near the Paracels but denied Hanoi’s version of events.
80: A long-forgotten US bomb dating back to World War II buried deep beneath a taxiway at Japan’s Miyazaki Airport suddenly exploded on Wednesday, causing a large crater and the cancellation of at least 80 flights. No one was harmed, thankfully, though hundreds of unexploded US bombs remain buried in Japan and are sometimes dug up during construction projects.Hard Numbers: Geoglyph spotting, AI revenue surge, CAPTCHAS solved, ByteDance’s chip hoard, Helene’s chip damage
A drone view shows an ancient geoglyph depicting a tree at the Nazca Lines archaeological area in Nazca, Peru, January 18, 2024.
303: Archaeologists have discovered 303 giant symbols carved into Peru’s Nazca Desert, thanks to artificial intelligence. The famous and mysterious Nazca geoglyphs are giant drawings in the ground, easily visible from high up — some are nearly 2,000 years old. The research team, led by Japan’s Yamagata University with help from IBM’s Watson Research Center, trained an AI model on existing geoglyphs to identify potentially undiscovered symbols.
11: AI companies are making money more quickly than previous waves of hyped-up software companies, according to a new data analysis from the payments company Stripe. It found that it took only 11 months for the top 100 highest-grossing privately held AI companies to make $1 million in annualized revenue as opposed to software-as-a-service companies in 2018, which took 15 months to hit that mark.
100: AI bots are now smart enough to solve 100% of those pesky traffic-image CAPTCHA — the ones put it in place to make sure you’re, you know, human. Thankfully, those images, known as Google’s ReCAPTCHA v2, are no longer industry standard. The newest version, reCAPTCHA v3, is an “invisible” test that tries to prove humanity based on how you interact with a given web page.
100,000: ByteDance reportedly has ordered 100,000 Ascend 910B chips from Huawei to aid the training of a new AI model. TikTok’s parent company also depends on Nvidia chips and Microsoft cloud services, but the new model will be mostly trained with chips from Huawei, a fellow Chinese tech giant. A ByteDance spokesperson refuted the report from Reuters, saying, “The entire premise here is wrong. No new model is being developed.”
70: Hurricane Helene has ravaged North Carolina, including a small town called Spruce Pine, which is home to 70% of the naturally occurring high-purity quartz. This kind of quartz is critical to the global semiconductor trade — used for crucibles, containers that can hold high-temperature materials, and other parts of chips themselves. The two companies there, Quartz Corp and Unimin, have temporarily halted operations — if they can’t get back up and running soon, delays could afflict the global chip supply chain.
Hard Numbers: UK buries coal, Austria’s far right surges, Le Pen faces trial, UN extends but doesn’t expand Haiti mission, Russia spends more on guns (less on butter)
A 'coal is dead' placard is seen during the demonstration. Activists from Friends Of The Earth and other environmental groups gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice as the legal challenge to the Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria begins.
142: After 142 years, the UK government closed the country’s last coal-fired power plant on Monday night. Coal power was a critical factor in the British-born Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, but it wasn’t until 1882 that the British opened the first public coal power plant. The closure is part of the government’s plan to generate 100% of Great Britain’s energy from renewable sources by 2030. Our favorite British coal story? How coal pollution changed the color of the Peppered Moths of Manchester.
29.2: Austria’s Freedom Party became the first far-right party to win an election in the country since World War II, after taking 29.2% of the vote in Sunday’s election by appealing to Austrians worried about immigration, inflation, and the Ukraine war. But it’s a familiar story in Europe these days: A far-right party takes a plurality of the vote, only to find that it lacks an obvious coalition partner to form a government. The incumbent Austrian People’s Party has said it will only work with the Freedom Party if party boss Herbert Kickl renounces any cabinet position. That’s a tough sell – Kickl says he wants to be chancellor.
9: Meanwhile, elsewhere in European right-wing news, Marine Le Pen, the former leader and top candidate of France’s National Rally party, began a nine-week trial in which she and two dozen other party officials are accused of misusing EU funds by using them to pay party staff for political work. Le Pen says the payments were legitimate. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison, fines of several million euros, and possibly being deemed ineligible to run for office. She is considered a top contender in the 2027 presidential election.
1: The UN Security council agreed unanimously on Monday to authorize the UN-backed security force in Haiti for one more year. But a US proposal to make the mission – currently a Kenya-led volunteer force – into a formal UN peacekeeping operation was blocked by Russia and China, which said the current force needs more time to find its footing. Haiti, for its part, has called for a peacekeeping operation as the Kenyan-led force struggles to subdue the powerful gangs that have taken control over vast swathes of the capital.
25: Russia will boost defense spending by 25% next year, as Vladimir Putin doubles down both on his invasion of Ukraine and on the deeper militarization of the economy at home. Social spending, meanwhile, is set to fall by nearly 20%. Heavy spending on defense has helped to insulate Russia’s economy from the effects of Western sanctions, with GDP growing 3.6% last year and forecasters predicting a similar outcome this year. How secure is Putin? Read our recent piece on the endless ends of the Russian president.Hard Numbers: Helene hits hard, Zuckerberg enters the big leagues, US strikes Islamic State in Syria, Majority of Argentines live in poverty
Homes are leveled in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Horseshoe Beach, Florida, U.S., September 27, 2024.
90: At least 90 people across the southeastern United States are dead in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which made landfall as a category 4 storm on Thursday. The high winds and storm surge destroyed an unknown number of homes and caused power outages for millions. The White House declared major disasters in Florida and North Carolina, allowing federal emergency management resources to flow to those states.
201 billion: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly amassed a net worth of $201 billion, making him the fourth wealthiest person in the world after Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bernard Arnault, whose assets all surpass $200 billion. For context, if you made $10,000 an hour, every hour for the last 2,024 years, you would still fall short of the mark with $177 billion.
37: US Central Command said Sunday that it had killed 37 Islamic State-linked operatives in two separate strikes in Syria this month. The first strike, on Sept. 16, killed 28 militants at an IS training ground in central Syria, while the second killed nine IS-affiliated militants in the northwest last Tuesday.
52.9: According to new government data, more than half of Argentines – a whopping 52.9% – lived below the poverty line during the first half of the year, the highest level in two decades. That’s up from 41.7% in the last half of 2023, with a 237% annual inflation rate driving much of the increase. President Javier Milei has managed to bring inflation somewhat more under control, but he is making unlikely promises to bring the rate down to 18% by the end of 2025.