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An F/A-18 Hornet approaches the flight deck of aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt as USS McFaul trails behind, October 30, 2001. Theodore Roosevelt and its carrier airwing are conducting missions in support of operation Enduring Freedom.
Hard Numbers: US friendly fire downs F/A-18, Russia guns down prisoners, US court rules on Pegasus spyware case, China goes after Canadian activists
2: Two US Navy pilots were forced to eject from their F/A-18 fighter over the Red Sea on Sunday during a “friendly fire” incident when a US warship targeted their plane with a missile. Both pilots survived the ejection but one sustained minor injuries, and it is not immediately clear why the ship, which was on station to shoot down Houthi missiles launched from Yemen, fired upon the aircraft.
127: Russian forces have summarily executed at least 127 Ukrainian troops this year according to prosecutors investigating these war crimes. The figures is an immense spike — officials counted just 20 summary executions of prisoners of war in 2022 and 2023 combined — suggesting an alarming shift in Russian doctrine.
1,400: A US court on Friday ruled that Israeli cyber-intelligence firm NSO Group was liable for hacking the devices of 1,400 WhatsApp users using the secretive software known as Pegasus, in violation of US cybersecurity laws. Pegasus has been implicated in hacks on dissidents by authoritarian governments around the world, and has been on a US blacklist since 2021.
20: Beijing announced Sunday it was taking punitive action against twenty people and two Canadian institutions advocating on behalf of the human rights of Tibetan and Uyghur minorities in China. The measures include asset freezes, bans on entry to China, and seizure of any real estate in the PRC. They come just weeks after Canada also announced sanctions on Chinese officials accused of human rights abuses.People carry Venezuela's national flag to protest the election results that awarded Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro a third term, in Maracaibo, Venezuela, on July 30, 2024.
US declares Edmundo González rightful winner of Venezuela election
Based on exit polls from around 90% of the votes from last Sunday's election, opposition leaders say González beat Maduro by a large margin, and international pressure is building against Maduro. On Thursday, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia called on Caracas to release detailed tallies of the vote, and the European Union has said it would not recognize Maduro’s claimed victory without independent certification of the election results.
Still, the US announcement is unlikely to change anything on the streets of Venezuela, where protesters have been demanding Maduro to accept defeat. Demonstrations, which have led to violent clashes with authorities and hundreds of arrests this week, are ongoing.
But Washington's move is likely to spur on the protesters. President Joe Biden, meanwhile, is mulling whether to reintroduce sanctions against Venezuela, despite it being a critical source of oil.FILE PHOTO: The International Criminal Court building is seen in The Hague, Netherlands, January 16, 2019.
Hard Numbers: ICC Sanctions, Legislative deadlock, Fading free speech, Attacks on health workers, Mexico campaign tragedy
37: At least 37 members of the House of Representatives are co-sponsoring a bill that would sanction prosecutors and staff at the International Criminal Court involved in applying for arrest warrants against senior Israeli leaders. The bill was introduced by a Republican member, but the Biden administration has expressed support. The president called the warrant applications “outrageous,” and Secretary of State Antony Blinken promised to work with Congress on the issue.
0.37: If the above bill does pass, it would be remarkable because just 0.37% of all the bills introduced in the 118th Congress have become laws. That passage rate is the lowest since the 1990-1991 Congress, during which Newt Gingrich executed his first government shutdown.
53: A sharp rise in restrictions on free speech and expression globally left 53% of all humans unable to speak freely last year, up from 34% in 2022, according to Article 19, an advocacy group. The big culprits? Crackdowns in India, home to the world’s largest population, and a deterioration of freedoms in Ethiopia, Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Mongolia. It’s not all bad news though: Article 19 specifically praised Brazil’s progress on freedom of expression after former President Jair Bolsonaro left power.
2,500: Researchers at Safeguarding Health in Conflict, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations, recorded over 2,500 attacks on healthcare workers who struggled to look after patients in conflict zones in 2023, a 25% increase from 2022. Researchers attributed the jump to new wars in Gaza and Sudan while older wars in places like Ukraine and Myanmar continue unabated.
9: A stage at a campaign rally collapsed in high winds in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, last night, killing at least nine people, including a child. Scores more were injured at the event featuring presidential long-shot candidate Jorge Álvarez Máynez. The country is in campaign mode ahead of the June 2 presidential, state, and municipal elections. Máynez has suspended upcoming events in response to the tragedy.
Why the US-China relationship is more stable than you might think
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week. US Secretary of State Tony Blinken in the Middle East right now. But he just came from China, Beijing and Shanghai, and the US-China relationship is what I'm thinking about. Want to give you a state of play.
It continues to be better managed and more stable than we've seen in a long time. Now, not clear that would necessarily be the case, given the number of issues and places where we have friction between these two countries. Just over the course of the last couple weeks, you've got President Biden, putting new tariffs on Chinese steel, opening a new investigation into Chinese shipbuilding. You've got this anti TikTok policy that's coming down from US Congress. You've got $2 billion in additional military aid for Taiwan from the United States. You've also got lots of criticism from the Americans on ongoing Chinese support, dual use technologies for the Russians, allowing them to better fight the war in Ukraine.
Given all of that, is the relationship starting to become much more confrontational? And the answer is not really. It's true that the Chinese foreign minister said that the Americans need to choose between having a relationship of containment and a relationship of partnership, and it's certainly true that the Americans would rather have it both ways. They want to have partnership in areas where it suits the Americans, and containment in areas where it suits the Americans. The Americans getting away with more than that than other countries can because the US is the most powerful country in the world and ultimately the Chinese need Americans more than Americans need China. Still, there's a lot of interdependence, and there is an ability to push back. How much is China actually doing that? And the answer is there's been very little direct Chinese tit for tat, despite all of the policies I just mentioned. It is true that overnight, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that there would be resolute and forceful measures if the supplemental support for Taiwan, which is a red line for the Chinese, is signed and Taiwanese assistance from the US moves ahead, and I suspect that means we're going to see some more sanctions from China against US defense contractors.
That is largely symbolic. It is a tit for tat. But on all the other policies I've mentioned that the Americans have just brought against China, we've seen Chinese focus on making their country and their economy more resilient against American efforts to contain, but not hitting the Americans back, not calibrated, moves of sanctions or reciprocal investigations. In fact, the Chinese have been pretty stable.
Also. We saw that Xi Jinping still met with Secretary of State Blinken directly, a meeting that would be very easy for the Chinese government to take down, and historically certainly wouldn't have been present if there had been a lot of tension in the relationship. They chose not to do that. And in fact, Blinken went to a record store, you know, he plays guitar and sings, and he's into music. And the coverage from the Chinese state media of that trip was very humanizing, was very friendly, frankly, better coverage of a US secretary of state than I've seen at any point since Xi Jinping has been in power. That's something it's very easy for the Chinese government to put their thumb on the scale if they want to show that they're unhappy with where the US relationship is. I think about Obama and the town hall, that he wanted to put together and the Chinese unwilling to give him the kind of coverage that the Americans at the time had wanted. You know, this is a lesser official from the US and is still getting, frankly, tremendous treatment from the Chinese government. I think that matters a lot.
Having said all of that, this is a relationship that is becoming more challenging to manage. And that's true because in the United States, whether you're Democrat or Republican, one of the very few things you can agree on in foreign policy is that there is a benefit in going after China. So the policy from the US is not just about Biden making decisions himself, but it's also about members of Congress. It's about governors. It's about the media. All of whom are taking their own shots. And they're not coordinated. Where from China, if Xi Jinping wants it, everyone basically rose in the same direction. Now, there are lots of American corporations and banks that are sending their CEOs, making trips with China right now. And there's much more people to people engagement between the two countries, something that Chinese officials are strongly focused on.
There's a lot more communication and cooperation on things like climate, as well as in response to America's fentanyl crisis, where the Chinese are shutting down the labs, the companies that have been exporting the precursor chemicals. Those things matter. They are engaged. There's also a lot of willingness of the United States, at the highest level, to provide more information to China, just on what the Americans are seeing happening around a confrontation in the Middle East that China would like to see a cease-fire for, so would the Americans at this point. And also, the Chinese don't have a lot of high level diplomats and a lot of ability to collect information that the Americans do. And when high level Americans are talking to their Chinese counterparts about the Middle East, the Chinese are very much in taking notes mode and appreciating that they're getting that information from the US.
So overall, I continue to see a lot of high level engagement that is very constructive. But coming against a relationship that has virtually no trust and where the baseline of conflict is going to pop up in a lot of different ways and a lot of different places around the world. Over time it's going to be harder to maintain that stable floor on US-China relations. But for now, I think we're likely to continue to see it, at least until elections in November.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.
U.S. Representative George Santos (R-NY) chats with his State of the Union guest and members of his staff as they prepare for the evening in Santos’s office on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. February 7, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Santos chargesheet grows, Niger kicks out UN rep, GOP voters question McCarthy ouster, China reaps oil windfall
44,000: US Rep. George Santos (R-NY) — already under scrutiny for lying about his background — allegedly stole more than $44,000 from campaign donors by using their identities and credit card information, according to a new 23-count indictment. Santos is also alleged to have lied to the Federal Elections Commission by claiming he loaned his campaign $500,000 at a time when he only had around $8,000 in the bank.
72: The military junta in Niger ordered UN resident coordinator Louise Aubin to leave the country within 72 hours, following expulsions of France’s ambassador and military missions. Mali and Burkina Faso similarly soured on the UN and expelled French forces following their own coups.
25: Just 25% of Republicans support the move by a small group of far-right Republicans in the House of Representatives to remove former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) last month, according to an AP-NORC poll. Around 30% say it was the wrong move, and the lion’s share of the party, 43%, is unsure.
10 billion: Chinese oil importers have saved about $10 billion this year thanks to access to heavily discounted oil from Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, all subject to US-led sanctions. The relatively cheaper energy has been a rare boon for Beijing amid China’s economic crisis.
A graph comparing Venezuela's GDP per capita with the average price of crude oil.
The Graphic Truth: Economic turmoil in Venezuela
Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves but a combination of corruption, mismanagement, and tough US sanctions since the Maduro regime came to power in 2013 has meant that the petrostate has failed to benefit from its vast reserves of liquid gold.
While high oil prices under the Chavez regime in the early 2000s gave a boost to Venezuela’s middle class, US sanctions first imposed in 2006 – and significantly ramped up under the Obama and Trump administrations – have cut Caracas off from US financial systems.
Economic hardship is rife, with a staggering 50% of people living in extreme poverty. Pervasive hopelessness has also led to one of the worst migrant crises in the world.
In a bid to offset a global energy crisis in 2022 as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Biden administration began lifting some sanctions on the Venezuelan oil sector. So how are things faring? We look at GDP per capita and corresponding oil prices since 1999.Commercial vessels wait to pass the Bosphorus strait during a misty morning in Istanbul, Turkey, October 31, 2022.
Hard Numbers: Grain deal extension woes, FRB rescued, loose Libyan uranium, global coke binge
120 or 60: Although the Black Sea grain deal will almost certainly get extended before it expires Saturday, Russia and Turkey are tussling over how long that extension should be. Ankara — backed by Ukraine and the UN — wants to prolong the agreement for another 120 days, while Moscow is insisting on 60 days, presumably to pressure the West to lift sanctions against certain Russian payment systems.
30 billion: Asian and European stock markets on Friday saw gains hours after a group of 11 big US banks swooped in to rescue First Republic Bank, an embattled regional lender. The banks injected $30 billion into FRB to shore up confidence in the US banking system following the recent collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
2.3: A warlord has recovered an estimated 2.3 metric tons of uranium ore that had gone missing in eastern Libya. The uranium was probably left over from the late dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s defunct nuclear weapons program.
35: Global cocaine production surged by a whopping 35% in 2020-2021, according to a new UN report. One of the main reasons is that drug cartels have taken over coca-cultivating areas of Colombia previously run by the FARC and are competing to churn out more powder for Americans and Europeans to snort.Russian reservists recruited during the partial mobilisation of troops.
Hard Numbers: Russian casualties, Australian hackers, British sanctions, Michigan’s political shift
100,000: The Pentagon says Russia has suffered 100,000 casualties in the war in Ukraine. This comes as the Kremlin has started retreating from the Ukrainian city of Kherson amid a series of military setbacks. At home, Vladimir Putin is coming under increasing pressure from nationalists who say the war effort has been a failure.
9.7 million: After stealing the medical data of 9.7 million Australians, hackers have begun releasing information on which patients have received abortion care after Medibank, one of Australia’s largest private insurance providers, refused to pay a $10 million ransom. PM Anthony Albanese, meanwhile, called the hackers “scumbugs.”
18 billion: The British government has frozen £18 billion ($21 billion) of assets held by Russian oligarchs and other high-flying officials, making Russia the UK’s most sanctioned nation, overtaking Libya and Iran. The British capital has been colloquially dubbed Londongrad due to the high concentration of Russian wealth in the city.
40: There are lots of interesting takeaways from US midterms, and the outcome in Michigan is one of them. For the first time in 40 years, the Great Lake State’s House and Senate will have Democratic majorities. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who was subject to a kidnapping attempt in 2020, made abortion access central to her campaign and cruised to reelection.