Tag: Russia

2023’s most important election: Turkey

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For Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, next month’s election is of massive historical significance.
It falls 100 years after the foundation of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s secular republic and, if Erdoğan wins, he will be empowered to put even more of his stamp on the trajectory of a geostrategic heavyweight of 85 million people. The fear in the West is that he will see this as his moment to push toward an increasingly religiously conservative model, characterized by regional confrontationalism, with greater political powers centered around himself.
The election will weigh heavily on security in Europe and the Middle East. Who is elected stands to define: Turkey’s role in the NATO alliance; its relationship with the U.S., the EU and Russia; migration policy; Ankara’s role in the war in Ukraine; and how it handles tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The May 14 vote is expected to be the most hotly contested race in Erdoğan’s 20-year rule — as the country grapples with years of economic mismanagement and the fallout from a devastating earthquake.
He will face an opposition aligned behind Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, nicknamed the “Turkish Gandhi,” who is promising big changes. Polls suggest Kılıçdaroğlu has eked out a lead, but Erdoğan is a hardened election campaigner, with the full might of the state and its institutions at his back.
“There will be a change from an authoritarian single-man rule, towards a kind of a teamwork, which is a much more democratic process,” Ünal Çeviköz, chief foreign policy adviser to Kılıçdaroğlu told POLITICO. “Kılıçdaroğlu will be the maestro of that team.”
Here are the key foreign policy topics in play in the vote:
EU and Turkish accession talks
Turkey’s opposition is confident it can unfreeze European Union accession talks — at a standstill since 2018 over the country’s democratic backsliding — by introducing liberalizing reforms in terms of rule of law, media freedoms and depoliticization of the judiciary.
The opposition camp also promises to implement European Court of Human Rights decisions calling for the release of two of Erdoğan’s best-known jailed opponents: the co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party Selahattin Demirtaş and human rights defender Osman Kavala.
“This will simply give the message to all our allies, and all the European countries, that Turkey is back on track to democracy,” Çeviköz said.
Even under a new administration, however, the task of reopening the talks on Turkey’s EU accession is tricky.
Turkey’s opposition is aligned behind Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, nicknamed the “Turkish Gandhi” | Burak Kara/Getty Images
Anti-Western feeling in Turkey is very strong across the political spectrum, argued Wolfango Piccoli, co-founder of risk analysis company Teneo.
“Foreign policy will depend on the coherence of the coalition,” he said. “This is a coalition of parties who have nothing in common apart from the desire to get rid of Erdoğan. They’ve got a very different agenda, and this will have an impact in foreign policy.”
“The relationship is largely comatose, and has been for some time, so, they will keep it on life support,” he said, adding that any new government would have so many internal problems to deal with that its primary focus would be domestic.
Europe also seems unprepared to handle a new Turkey, with a group of countries — most prominently France and Austria — being particularly opposed to the idea of rekindling ties.
“They are used to the idea of a non-aligned Turkey, that has departed from EU norms and values and is doing its own course,” said Aslı Aydıntaşbaş a visiting fellow at Brookings. “If the opposition forms a government, it will seek a European identity and we don’t know Europe’s answer to that; whether it could be accession or a new security framework that includes Turkey.”
“Obviously the erosion of trust has been mutual,” said former Turkish diplomat Sinan Ülgen, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Europe think tank, arguing that despite reticence about Turkish accession, there are other areas where a complementary and mutually beneficiary framework could be built, like the customs union, visa liberalization, cooperation on climate, security and defense, and the migration agreement.
The opposition will indeed seek to revisit the 2016 agreement with the EU on migration, Çeviköz said.
“Our migration policy has to be coordinated with the EU,” he said. “Many countries in Europe see Turkey as a kind of a pool, where migrants coming from the east can be contained and this is something that Turkey, of course cannot accept,” he said but added. “This doesn’t mean that Turkey should open its borders and make the migrants flow into Europe. But we need to coordinate and develop a common migration policy.”
NATO and the US
After initially imposing a veto, Turkey finally gave the green light to Finland’s NATO membership on March 30.
But the opposition is also pledging to go further and end the Turkish veto on Sweden, saying that this would be possible by the alliance’s annual gathering on July 11. “If you carry your bilateral problems into a multilateral organization, such as NATO, then you are creating a kind of a polarization with all the other members of NATO with your country,” Çeviköz said.
A protester pushes a cart with a RRecep Tayyip Erdoğan doll during an anti-NATO and anti-Turkey demonstration in Sweden | Jonas Gratzer/Getty Images
A reelected Erdoğan could also feel sufficiently empowered to let Sweden in, many insiders argue. NATO allies did, after all, play a significant role in earthquake aid. Turkish presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın says that the door is not closed to Sweden, but insists the onus is on Stockholm to determine how things proceed.
Turkey’s military relationship with the U.S. soured sharply in 2019 when Ankara purchased the Russian-made S-400 missile system, a move the U.S. said would put NATO aircraft flying over Turkey at risk. In response, the U.S. kicked Ankara out of the F-35 jet fighter program and slapped sanctions on the Turkish defense industry.
A meeting in late March between Kılıçdaroğlu and the U.S. Ambassador to Ankara Jeff Flake infuriated Erdoğan, who saw it as an intervention in the elections and pledged to “close the door” to the U.S. envoy. “We need to teach the United States a lesson in this elections,” the irate president told voters.
In its policy platform, the opposition makes a clear reference to its desire to return to the F-35 program.
Russia and the war in Ukraine
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Turkey presented itself as a middleman. It continues to supply weapons — most significantly Bayraktar drones — to Ukraine, while refusing to sanction Russia. It has also brokered a U.N. deal that allows Ukrainian grain exports to pass through the blockaded Black Sea.
Highlighting his strategic high-wire act on Russia, after green-lighting Finland’s NATO accession and hinting Sweden could also follow, Erdoğan is now suggesting that Turkey could be the first NATO member to host Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Maybe there is a possibility” that Putin may travel to Turkey on April 27 for the inauguration of the country’s first nuclear power reactor built by Russian state nuclear energy company Rosatom, he said.
Çeviköz said that under Kılıçdaroğlu’s leadership, Turkey would be willing to continue to act as a mediator and extend the grain deal, but would place more stress on Ankara’s status as a NATO member.
“We will simply emphasize the fact that Turkey is a member of NATO, and in our discussions with Russia, we will certainly look for a relationship among equals, but we will also remind Russia that Turkey is a member of NATO,” he said.
Turkey’s relationship with Russia has become very much driven by the relationship between Putin and Erdoğan and this needs to change, Ülgen argued.
Turkey brokered a U.N. deal that allows Ukrainian grain exports to pass through the blockaded Black Sea | Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images
“No other Turkish leader would have the same type of relationship with Putin, it would be more distant,” he said. “It does not mean that Turkey would align itself with the sanctions; it would not. But nonetheless, the relationship would be more transparent.”
Syria and migration
The role of Turkey in Syria is highly dependent on how it can address the issue of Syrians living in Turkey, the opposition says.
Turkey hosts some 4 million Syrians and many Turks, battling a major cost-of-living crisis, are becoming increasingly hostile. Kılıçdaroğlu has pledged to create opportunities and the conditions for the voluntary return of Syrians.
“Our approach would be to rehabilitate the Syrian economy and to create the conditions for voluntary returns,” Çeviköz said, adding that this would require an international burden-sharing, but also establishing dialogue with Damascus.
Erdoğan is also trying to establish a rapprochement with Syria but Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says he will only meet the Turkish president when Ankara is ready to completely withdraw its military from northern Syria.
“A new Turkish government will be more eager to essentially shake hands with Assad,” said Ülgen. “But this will remain a thorny issue because there will be conditions attached on the side of Syria to this normalization.”
However, Piccoli from Teneo said voluntary returns of Syrians was “wishful thinking.”
“These are Syrians who have been living in Turkey for more than 10 years, their children have been going to school in Turkey from day one. So, the pledges of sending them back voluntarily, it is very questionable to what extent they can be implemented.”
Greece and the East Med
Turkey has stepped up its aggressive rhetoric against Greece in recent months, with the Erdoğan even warning that a missile could strike Athens.
But the prompt reaction by the Greek government and the Greek community to the recent devastating earthquakes in Turkey and a visit by the Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias created a new backdrop for bilateral relations.
A Turkish drill ship before it leaves for gas exploration | Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images
Dendias, along with his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, announced that Turkey would vote for Greece in its campaign for a non-permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council for 2025-26 and that Greece would support the Turkish candidacy for the General Secretariat of the International Maritime Organization.
In another sign of a thaw, Greek Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos and Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi visited Turkey this month, with Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar saying he hoped that the Mediterranean and Aegean would be a “sea of friendship” between the two countries. Akar said he expected a moratorium with Greece in military and airforce exercises in the Aegean Sea between June 15 and September 15.
“Both countries are going to have elections, and probably they will have the elections on the same day. So, this will open a new horizon in front of both countries,” Çeviköz said.
“The rapprochement between Turkey and Greece in their bilateral problems [in the Aegean], will facilitate the coordination in addressing the other problems in the eastern Mediterranean, which is a more multilateral format,” he said. Disputes over maritime borders and energy exploration, for example, are common.
As far as Cyprus is concerned, Çeviköz said that it is important for Athens and Ankara not to intervene into the domestic politics of Cyprus and the “two peoples on the island should be given an opportunity to look at their problems bilaterally.”
However, analysts argue that Greece, Cyprus and the EastMed are fundamental for Turkey’s foreign policy and not much will change with another government. The difference will be more one of style.
“The approach to manage those differences will change very much. So, we will not hear aggressive rhetoric like: ‘We will come over one night,’” said Ülgen. “We’ll go back to a more mature, more diplomatic style of managing differences and disputes.”
“The NATO framework will be important, and the U.S. would have to do more in terms of re-establishing the sense of balance in the Aegean,” said Aydıntaşbaş. But, she argued, “you just cannot normalize your relations with Europe or the U.S., unless you’re willing to take that step with Greece.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

April 11, 2023
UK’s Truss warns of Western ‘weakness’ over China in wake of Macron visit

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LONDON — Former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss will take a not-so-subtle swipe at Emmanuel Macron over his attempt to build bridges with Beijing.
In a Wednesday morning speech to the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, D.C. Truss will argue that too many in the West have “appeased and accommodated” authoritarian regimes in China and Russia.
And she will say it is a “sign of weakness” for Western leaders to visit China and ask premier Xi Jinping for his support in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — just days after Macron’s own high-profile trip there.
While Truss — who left office after just six weeks as crisis-hit U.K. prime minister — will not mention Macron by name, her comments follow an interview with POLITICO in which the French president said Europe should resist pressure to become “America’s followers.”
Macron said: “The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction.”
Macron has already been criticized for those comments by the IPAC group of China-skeptic lawmakers, which said Monday his remarks were “ill-judged.”
And Truss — who had a frosty relationship with Macron during her brief stint in office last year — will use her speech to urge a more aggressive stance toward both China and Russia.
“We’ve seen Vladimir Putin launching an unprovoked attack on a free and democratic neighbor, we see the Chinese building up their armaments and their arsenal and menacing the free and democratic Taiwan,” Truss will say according to pre-released remarks. “Too many in the West have appeased and accommodated these regimes.”

She will add: “Western leaders visiting President Xi to ask for his support in ending the war is a mistake — and it is a sign of weakness. Instead our energies should go into taking more measures to support Taiwan. We need to make sure Taiwan is able to defend itself.”
Relations between Macron and Truss’ successor Rishi Sunak have been notably warmer. The pair hailed a “new chapter” in U.K.-France ties in March, after concluding a deal on cross-Channel migration.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

April 11, 2023
Europe’s eastern half claps back at Macron: We need the US

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Stop driving Europe away from the United States, dismayed central and eastern European officials fumed on Tuesday as French President Emmanuel Macron’s comments continued to ripple across the Continent.
Macron jolted allies in the EU’s eastern half after a visit to China last week when he cautioned the Continent against getting pulled into a U.S.-China dispute over Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own, imploring his neighbors to avoid becoming Washington and Beijing’s “vassals.”
The comments rattled those near the EU’s eastern edge, who have historically favored closer ties with the Americans — especially on defense — and pushed for a hasher approach to Beijing.

“Instead of building strategic autonomy from the United States, I propose a strategic partnership with the United States,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said Tuesday before flying off to the U.S., of all places, for a three-day visit.
Privately, diplomats were even franker.
“We cannot understand [Macron’s] position on transatlantic relations during these very challenging times,” said one diplomat from an Eastern European country, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely express themselves. “We, as the EU, should be united. Unfortunately, this visit and French remarks following it are not helpful.”
The reactions reflect the long-simmering divisions within Europe over how to best defend itself. Macron has long argued for Europe to become more autonomous economically and militarily — a push many in Central and Eastern Europe fear could alienate a valuable U.S. helping keep Russia at bay, even if they support boosting the EU’s ability to act independently.
“In the current world of geopolitical shifts, and especially in the face of Russia’s war against Ukraine, it is obvious that democracies have to work closer together than ever before,” said another senior diplomat from Eastern Europe. “We should be all reminded of the wisdom of the first U.S ambassador to France Benjamin Franklin who rightly remarked that either we stick together or we will be hanged separately.”
Macron, a third senior diplomat from the same region huffed, was freelancing yet again: “It is not the first time that Macron has expressed views that are his own and do not represent the EU’s position.”
Walking into controversy
In his interview, Macron touched on a tense subject within Europe: how it should balance itself against the superpower fight between the U.S. and China.
The French president encouraged Europe to chart its own course, cautioning that Europe faces a “great risk” if it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy.”
Macron said he wants Europe to become a “third pole” to counterbalance China and the U.S. in the long term | Pool photo by Jacques Witt/AFP via Getty Images
It’s a stance that has many adherents within Europe — and has even worked its way into official EU policy as officials work to slowly ensure the Continent’s supply lines aren’t fully yoked to China and others on everything from weapons to electric vehicles.
Macron said he wants Europe to become a “third pole” to counterbalance China and the U.S. in the long term. An imminent conflict between Being and Washington, he argued, would put that goal at risk.
Yet out east, officials lamented that the French leader was simply treating the U.S. and China as if they were essentially the same in a global power play.
The comments, the second diplomat said, were “both ill-timed and inappropriate to put both the United States and China on a par and suggest that the EU should keep strategic distance to both of them.”
A Central European diplomat flatly dismissed Macron’s stance as “pretty outrageous,” while another official from the same region chalked it up to an attempt “to distract from other problems and show that France is bigger than what it is” — a reference to the protests roiling France amid Macron’s pension reforms.
The frustration in Central and Eastern Europe stems in part from a feeling that the French president has never made clear who would replace Washington in Europe — especially if Russia expands its war beyond Ukraine, said Kristi Raik, head of the foreign policy program at the International Centre for Defence and Security, a think tank in Estonia, a country of about 1.3 million people that borders Russia.
It’s an emotional point for Europe’s eastern half, where memories of the Soviet era linger.
“We hear Macron talking about European strategic autonomy, and somehow just being completely silent about the issue, which has become so clear in Ukraine, that actually European security and defense depends very strongly on the U.S.,” Raik said.
Raik noted, of course, that European countries, most notably Germany, are scrambling to update their militaries. France has also pledged large increases in its defense budgets.
But these changes, she cautioned, will take a “very long time.”
If Macron “wants to be serious in showing that he really aims at a Europe that is capable of defending itself,” Raik argued, “he also should be showing that France is willing to do much more to defend Europe vis-à-vis Russia.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

April 11, 2023
Russian soldiers are ‘beasts,’ Zelenskyy says over beheading video

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday condemned Russians forces as “beasts” over the execution of a Ukrainian soldier, who appeared to be beheaded while still alive in a video published on social media.
Zelenskyy’s reaction comes as Kyiv is ramping up diplomatic pressure over Moscow’s presence in international forums ranging from the U.N. Security Council to the Olympics.
“There is something that no one in the world can ignore: how easily these beasts kill,” the Ukrainian president said in a video posted on Twitter.
“This video, the execution of a Ukrainian captive, the world must see it,” he added. “This is a video of Russia as it is, what kind of creatures they are, there are no people for them: a son, a brother, a husband, someone’s child.”
In recent days, two videos have appeared. One supposedly filmed by Wagner group mercenaries shows the bodies of two Ukrainian soldiers, whose heads and hands were cut off, and appeared on pro-Russian social channels. Another — seeming shot in the summer — shows a Russian use a knife to sever the head of Ukrainian prisoner, who appears to be pleading with his killer.
Ukrainian social media and street conversations are charged with anger and pain as people discuss yet more potential evidence of a Russian war crime in Ukraine. Officials from the Defense Ministry of Ukraine asked people not to share the video to spare the feelings of the relatives of the soldier, who might recognize him on the video. Other soldiers, tweeting from the frontline express grief and anger.
“Each of us could and can be in the place of that guy whose head was cut off by the Russians,” Vitaly Ovcharenko, a Ukrainian serviceman from Donbas, tweeted.
And Yaryna Chornohuz, Ukrainian marine and combat medic currently serving near the frontline town of Bakhmut, claimed the Russians posted the decapitation video to trigger a feeling of defenselessness, and helplessness in the face of evil. She saw it as a sign of cowardice.

“It is important not to become like the enemy who commits atrocities, because that is what they are counting on. The enemy expects that we will also cut off heads, and they will feed it to their zombie population. Such videos are spread on purpose with this goal, to raise the degree of severity and take advantage of it,” Chornohuz said in a post.
POLITICO was not able to independently verify the videos.
Last month, another video showed a Ukrainian soldier saying “Slava Ukraini” (Glory to Ukraine) shortly before being executed by Russian troops.
Zelenskyy called on world leaders to act, saying “action [was] required now.”
“This is is not an accident, this is not an episode. This was the case before,” the Ukrainian president added.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba also reacted to the execution video, saying Russia, which is currently presiding over the United Nations Security Council, “must be kicked out of Ukraine and the UN, and be held accountable for [its] crimes.
Slovakia’s prime minister, Eduard Heger, also strongly condemned the execution, saying that the video shows Russia has “no legal or human limits in evil doing,” calling the beheading “ISIS style” and adding that this will be punished and not forgotten.
Ukrainian authorities have called for the creation of a special tribunal to rule over war crimes committed by Russian forces since the launch of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has already started an investigation into this alleged war crime. “We will find these non-humans. If necessary, we will get them wherever they are: from underground or from the other world. But they will definitely be punished for what they have done,” SBU Head Vasyl Malyuk said in a statement.
Moscow has denied committing war crimes in Ukraine — in spite of numerous reports showing otherwise, as well as the issuance of an arrest warrant last month against President Vladimir Putin over the forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.
“We are not going to forget anything. Nor are we going to forgive the murderers,” Zelenskyy said in his video address Wednesday.
Wilhelmine Preussen contributed reporting.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

April 11, 2023
Germany aims to ‘set the record straight’ on China after Macron’s Taiwan comments

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BERLIN — German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is heading to China to represent Berlin, but she’ll likely have more explaining to do about Paris in the wake of French President Emmanuel Macron’s explosive comments on Taiwan.
As Baerbock embarked on her two-day visit Wednesday evening, officials in Berlin were eager to stress that Germany and the EU care about Taiwan and stability in the region, arguing it’s mainly China that must contribute to de-escalation by refraining from aggressive military maneuvers close to the island nation.
Baerbock’s trip comes amid international backlash against Macron’s comments in an interview with POLITICO, arguing Europe should avoid becoming America’s follower, including on the matter of Taiwan’s security. Although German government spokespeople refused to comment directly on the French president’s remarks, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry specifically called out Beijing when expressing “great concern” over the situation in the Taiwan Strait.
“We expect all parties in the region to contribute to peace. That applies equally to the People’s Republic of China,” the spokesperson said, adding: “And it seems to us that actions such as military threatening gestures are counter to that goal and, in fact, increase the risk of unintended military clashes.”
Nils Schmid, the foreign policy spokesperson for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), said he expects Baerbock to “set the record straight” during her trip to China, which will involve meetings with Beijing’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang, Vice President Han Zheng and top diplomat Wang Yi.
“We clearly defined in the [government] coalition agreement that we need a changed China policy because China has changed. The chancellor made that clear during his visit. Above all, Scholz also issued clear warnings about Taiwan during his visit [last year],” Schmid wrote in a tweet. “I assume that Foreign Minister Baerbock will repeat exactly that and thus set the record straight and make a clarification after Macron’s botched visit.”
Berlin traditionally has been much more in sync with the U.S. on foreign and security policy than France has, which is why many politicians and officials in the German capital reacted with horror to Macron’s comments. The French president said Europe should not take its “cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” suggesting the EU stood between the two sides, rather than being aligned with its longtime democratic partners in Washington.
Macron gave the impression to some in the U.S. that Europeans see Beijing and Washington as “equidistant” from Brussels in terms of values and as allies, said SPD foreign policy lawmaker Metin Hakverdi, who is currently on a parliamentary visit to the U.S.

“That was foolish,” Hakverdi told POLITICO, adding that “Macron potentially damaged the peaceful status quo around Taiwan” by giving “the public impression that Europe has no particular interest in the conflict over Taiwan.
“The issue of Taiwan is not an internal matter for the People’s Republic of China. Anything else would virtually invite Beijing to attack Taiwan,” Hakverdi added. “I am confident that our foreign minister will make that clear during her trip to Asia — both to Beijing and to our Asian partners.”
Katja Leikert from the main German opposition party, the center-right CDU, criticized Macron’s comments as “extremely short-sighted,” and added: “Should China decide to strike Taiwan militarily, either by invading it or by starting a maritime blockade, this would have significant political and economic repercussions for us. We cannot just wish that away.
“What we actually need to do right now is strengthen our defense against aggressive measures from Beijing,” Leikert said.
For Berlin, Macron’s comments also come at a particularly bad moment for transatlantic ties. The German government is keen to mend cracks in its relationship with Washington that have emerged over the controversial benefits for U.S. businesses under Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Europe hopes to reach an agreement so that its own companies may also be eligible for these subsidies.
Macron’s comments “will not help in renegotiations on the Inflation Reduction Act, nor will they help Joe Biden in the election campaign against populist Republican candidates,” said the SPD’s Hakverdi.
The German foreign ministry spokesperson was quick to stress that both France and Germany were involved in shaping a joint EU-China policy | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
The German foreign ministry spokesperson was quick to stress that both France and Germany were involved in shaping a joint EU-China policy, which was also done in cooperation “with our transatlantic partner.”
During her trip to China, Baerbock plans to raise the situation in the Taiwan Strait; Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine; the human rights situation in China; as well as the fight against climate crisis, the spokesperson said.
Baerbock’s foreign ministry is also currently drafting Germany’s first China strategy. A draft of this seen by POLITICO last year vowed to take a much harder line toward Beijing. Baerbock and her Green party are at the forefront of pushing such a tougher position, while Scholz has long preferred a softer approach.
Incidentally, however, the German government said Wednesday it is reassessing whether to potentially take a firmer stance and ban Chinese state company Cosco from going through with a highly controversial move to buy parts of a Hamburg port terminal.
Scholz had strongly pushed for the port deal ahead of his own trip to Beijing last year, but the future of the transaction is now in doubt after German security authorities classified the terminal as “critical infrastructure.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

April 11, 2023
Poland’s Morawiecki plays Europe’s anti-Macron in Washington

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There’s an Emmanuel Macron-shaped shadow hovering over this week’s U.S. visit by Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
In contrast to the French president — who in an interview with POLITICO tried to put some distance between the U.S. and Europe in any future confrontation with China over Taiwan and called for strengthening the Continent’s “strategic autonomy” — the Polish leader is underlining the critical importance of the alliance between America and Europe, not least because his country is one of Kyiv’s strongest allies in the war with Russia.
“Instead of building strategic autonomy from the United States, I propose a strategic partnership with the United States,” he said before flying to Washington.

In the U.S. capital, Morawiecki continued with his under-the-table kicks at the French president.
“I see no alternative, and we are absolutely on the same wavelength here, to building an even closer alliance with the Americans. If countries to the west of Poland understand this less, it is probably because of historical circumstances,” he said on Tuesday in Washington.
Unlike France, which has spent decades bristling at Europe’s reliance on the U.S. for its security, Poland is one of the Continent’s keenest American allies. Warsaw has pushed hard for years for U.S. troops to be stationed on its territory, and many of its recent arms contracts have gone to American companies. It signed a $1.4 billion deal earlier this year to buy a second batch of Abrams tanks, and has also agreed to spend $4.6 billion on advanced F-35 fighter jets.
“I am glad that this proposal for an even deeper strategic partnership is something that finds such fertile ground here in the United States, because we know that there are various concepts formulated by others in Europe, concepts that create more threats, more question marks, more unknowns,” Morawiecki said. “Poland is trying to maintain the most commonsense policy based on a close alliance with the United States within the framework of the European Union, and this is the best path for Poland.”
Fast friends
Poland has become one of Ukraine’s most important allies, and access to its roads, railways and airports is crucial in funneling weapons, ammunition and other aid to Ukraine.
That’s helped shift perceptions of Poland — seen before the war as an increasingly marginal member of the Western club thanks to its issues with violating the rule of law, into a key country of the NATO alliance.
Warsaw also sees the Russian attack on Ukraine as justifying its long-held suspicion of its historical foe, and it hasn’t been shy in pointing the finger at Paris and Berlin for being wrong about the threat posed by the Kremlin.
“Old Europe believed in an agreement with Russia, and old Europe failed,” Morawiecki said in a joint news conference with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris. “But there is a new Europe — Europe that remembers what Russian communism was. And Poland is the leader of this new Europe.”
That’s why Macron’s comments have been seized on by Warsaw.
According to Poland’s PM Mateusz Morawiecki, Emmanuel Macron’s talks of distancing the EU from America “threatens to break up” the block | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
“I absolutely don’t agree with President Macron. We believe that more America is needed in Europe … We want more cooperation with the U.S. on a partnership basis,” Marcin Przydacz, a foreign policy adviser to Polish President Andrzej Duda, told Poland’s Radio Zet, adding that the strategic autonomy idea pushed by Macron “has the goal of cutting links between Europe and the United States.”
While Poland is keen on European countries hitting NATO’s goal of spending at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense — a target that only seven alliance members, including Poland, but not France and Germany, are meeting — and has no problem with them building up military industries, it doesn’t want to weaken ties with the U.S., said Sławomir Dębski, head of the state-financed Polish Institute of International Affairs.
He warned that Macron’s talks of distancing Europe from America in the event of a conflict with China “threatens to break up the EU, which is against the interests not only of Poland, but also of most European countries.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

April 11, 2023
China must act against rising global hunger, new WFP boss McCain says

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BRUSSELS — China and other powerful countries need to step up to help steer the world away from a potentially “catastrophic” hunger crisis this year, the new head of the United Nations’ World Food Programme said.
Cindy McCain, an American diplomat and the widow of the late U.S. Senator John McCain, also told POLITICO that the EU and U.S. should see world hunger as a national security issue due to its impact on migration. She furthermore accused Russia of using hunger as a “weapon of war” by hindering exports of Ukrainian grain.
McCain, formerly the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. food agencies, took the helm of the WFP on April 5 and begins her five-year term at a time of increasing world hunger. The number of people facing food insecurity around the world rose to a record 345 million at the end of last year, up from 282 million in 2021, according to the WFP’s figures, as Russia’s war in Ukraine deepened a food crisis driven by climate change, COVID-19 and other conflicts.

This year could be worse still, McCain warned, with the Horn of Africa experiencing its worst drought in 40 years and Haiti facing a sharp rise in food insecurity, among other factors. “2023 is going to be catastrophic if we don’t get to work and raise the money that we need,” she said. “We need a hell of a lot more than we used to.”
Non-Western countries, which have traditionally contributed much less to the WFP, need to step up to meet the shortfall, McCain said, pointing specifically to China and oil-rich Gulf Arab countries. China contributed just $11 million to WFP funds last year, compared to $7.2 billion donated by the U.S.
“There are some countries that have just basically not participated or participated in a very low fashion. I’d like to encourage our Middle Eastern friends to step up to the plate a little more; I’d like to encourage China to step up to the plate a little more,” said McCain. “Every region, every country needs to step up funding.”
Her entreaty may fall on deaf ears, however, given rising geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China. The WFP’s last six executive directors have been American, dating back to 1992, and Beijing may prefer to distribute aid through its own channels. Last summer, for example, China shipped food aid directly to the Horn of Africa following a drought there.
National security
Countries hesitant to throw more money into food aid should think about the alternative, McCain said, particularly those in Europe that are likely to bear the brunt of any new wave of migration from Africa and the Middle East.
“Food security is a national security issue,” she said. “No refugee wants to leave their home country, but they’re forced to because they don’t have enough food, and they can’t feed their families. So it comes down to if you want a stable world, food is a major player in this.”
The WFP is already having to make brutal decisions despite raking in a record $14.2 billion last year — more than double what it raised in 2017. In February, for instance, it said a funding shortfall was forcing it to cut food rations for Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh.
The problem is compounded by surging costs following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, which sent already-high food prices soaring further, as grain and oilseed exports through Ukraine’s Black Sea ports plunged from more than 5 million metric tons a month to zero.
A U.N.-brokered deal allowing Ukrainian grain exports to pass through Russia’s blockades in the Black Sea has brought some reprieve, but Moscow’s repeated threats to withdraw from the agreement have kept prices volatile.
Moscow claims that “hidden” Western sanctions are hindering its fertilizer and foods exports and causing hunger in the Global South | Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images
The deal, initially brokered in July last year, was extended for 120 days last month; Russia, however, agreed to extend its side of the Black Sea grain initiative only for 60 days. Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov threatened, once again, to halt Moscow’s participation in the initiative unless obstacles to its own fertilizer and food exports are addressed.
Moscow claims that “hidden” Western sanctions — those targeting Russia’s fertilizer oligarchs and its main agricultural bank, as well as others excluding Russian banks from the international SWIFT payments system — are hindering its fertilizer and foods exports and causing hunger in the Global South.
Ukraine and its Western allies have countered that Russia is deliberately holding up inspections for ships heading to and from its Black Sea ports, creating a backlog of Ukraine-bound vessels off the Turkish coast and inflating prices.
These delayed food cargoes are hindering the WFP’s ability to respond to humanitarian crises, said McCain, who did not hold back on the issue.
“Let’s be very clear, there are no sanctions on [Russian] fertilizer,” she said. “It is not sanctioned and never has been sanctioned.”
Russia is “using hunger as a weapon of war,” said McCain. “it’s unconscionable that a country would do that — any country, not just Russia.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

April 11, 2023
Japan prime minister vows to boost G7 security after smoke bomb attack

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Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he would increase security at G7 meetings taking place in his country, a day after a man threw a smoke bomb at him at a campaign event.
Kishida was campaigning Saturday ahead of next week’s by-elections for the Japanese parliament when an explosive device was hurled toward him. Footage on Twitter appeared to show a bodyguard kicking a smoke bomb away from the prime minister and bundling him away, after the device landed near them. A 24-year-old man was arrested at the scene.
Japan will host the leaders of the Group of Seven most industrialized nations at a summit in Hiroshima next month.
On Sunday, speaking after emerging unscathed from the smoke bomb incident, CNN quoted Kishida as saying: “Japan as a whole must strive to provide maximum security during the dates of the summit and other gatherings of dignitaries from around the world.”
G7 foreign ministers are meeting Sunday for a three-day conference in Karuizawa, where they are expected to discuss China’s aggression toward Taiwan, Russia’s war in Ukraine, and North Korea’s missile testing. G7 climate ministers, meanwhile, are completing a two-day meeting in Sapporo.
The Kishida incident had eerie echoes of the shocking assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last July.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

April 11, 2023

Ukraine’s bumper grain exports rile allies in eastern EU

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Ukraine’s farmers played an iconic role in the first weeks of Russia’s invasion, towing away abandoned enemy tanks with their tractors.

Now, though, their prodigious grain output is causing some of Ukraine’s staunchest allies to waver, as disrupted shipments are redirected onto neighboring markets.

The most striking is Poland, which has played a leading role so far in supporting Ukraine, acting as the main transit hub for Western weaponry and sending plenty of its own. But grain shipments in the other direction have irked Polish farmers who are being undercut — just months before a national election where the rural vote will be crucial.

Diplomats are floundering. After a planned Friday meeting between the Polish and Ukrainian agriculture ministers was postponed, the Polish government on Saturday announced a ban on imports of farm products from Ukraine. Hungary late Saturday said it would do the same.

Ukraine is among the world’s top exporters of wheat and other grains, which are ordinarily shipped to markets as distant as Egypt and Pakistan. Russia’s invasion last year disrupted the main Black Sea export route, and a United Nations-brokered deal to lift the blockade has been only partially effective. In consequence, Ukrainian produce has been diverted to bordering EU countries: Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

At first, those governments supported EU plans to shift the surplus grain. But instead of transiting seamlessly onto global markets, the supply glut has depressed prices in Europe. Farmers have risen up in protest, and Polish Agriculture Minister Henryk Kowalczyk was forced out earlier this month.

Now, governments’ focus has shifted to restricting Ukrainian imports to protect their own markets. After hosting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Warsaw in early April, Polish President Andrzej Duda said resolving the import glut was “a matter of introducing additional restrictions.”

The following day, Poland suspended imports of Ukrainian grain, saying the idea had come from Kyiv. On Saturday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, after an emergency cabinet meeting, said the import ban would cover grain and certain other farm products and would include products intended for other countries. A few hours later, the Hungarian government announced similar measures. Both countries said the bans would last until the end of June.

The European Commission is seeking further information on the import restrictions from Warsaw and Budapest “to be able to assess the measures,” according to a statement on Sunday. “Trade policy is of EU exclusive competence and, therefore, unilateral actions are not acceptable,” it said.

While the EU’s free-trade agreement with Ukraine prevents governments from introducing tariffs, they still have plenty of tools available to disrupt shipments.

Neighboring countries and nearby Bulgaria have stepped up sanitary checks on Ukrainian grain, arguing they are doing so to protect the health of their own citizens. They have also requested financial support from Brussels and have already received more than €50 million from the EU’s agricultural crisis reserve, with more money on the way.

Restrictions could do further harm to Ukraine’s battered economy, and by extension its war effort. The economy has shrunk by 29.1 percent since the invasion, according to statistics released this month, and agricultural exports are an important source of revenue.

Cracks in the alliance

The trade tensions sit at odds with these countries’ political position on Ukraine, which — with the exception of Hungary — has been strongly supportive. Poland has taken in millions of Ukrainian refugees, while weapons and ammunition flow in the opposite direction; Romania has helped transport millions of tons of Ukrainian corn and wheat.

GettyImages 1480160064 — Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Poland’s Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki | Omar Marques/Getty Images

Some Western European governments, which had to be goaded by Poland and others into sending heavy weaponry to Kyiv, are quick to point out the change in direction.

“Curious to see that some of these countries are [always] asking for more on sanctions, more on ammunition, etc. But when it affects them, they turn to Brussels begging for financial support,” said one diplomat from a Western country, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Some EU countries also oppose the import restrictions for economic reasons. For instance, Spain and the Netherlands are some of the biggest recipients of Ukrainian grain, which they use to supply their livestock industries.

Politically, though, the Central and Eastern European governments have limited room for maneuver. Poland and Slovakia are both heading into general elections later this year. Bulgaria has had a caretaker government since last year. Romania’s agriculture minister has faced calls to resign, including from a compatriot former EU agriculture commissioner.

And farmers are a strong constituency. Poland’s right-wing Law & Justice (PiS) party won the last general election in 2019 thanks in large part to rural voters. The Ukrainian grain issue has already cost a Polish agriculture minister his job; the government as a whole will have to tread carefully to avoid the same fate.

This article has been updated.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

April 11, 2023

G7 vows more effort on renewables but sets no coal phaseout deadline

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The Group of Seven richest countries set higher 2030 targets for generating renewable energy, amid an energy crisis provoked by Russia’s war on Ukraine, but they set no deadline to phase out coal-fired power plants.

At a meeting hosted by Japan, ministers from Japan, the U.S., Canada, Italy, France, Germany and the U.K. reaffirmed their commitment to reach zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century, and said they aimed to collectively increase solar power capacity by 1 terawatt and offshore wind by 150 gigawatts by the end of this decade.

“The G7 contributes to expanding renewable energy globally and bringing down costs by strengthening capacity including through a collective increase in offshore wind capacity … and a collective increase of solar …,” the energy and environment ministers said in a 36-page communiqué issued after the two-day meeting.

“In the midst of an unprecedented energy crisis, it’s important to come up with measures to tackle climate change and promote energy security at the same time,” Japanese industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura told a news conference, according to Reuters.

The ministers’ statement also condemned Russia’s “illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked” invasion of Ukraine and its “devastating” impact on the environment. The ministers vowed to support a green recovery and reconstruction in Ukraine.

They also published a five-point plan for securing access to critical raw materials that will be crucial for the green transition.

Before the meeting, Japan was facing criticism from green groups over its push to keep the door open to continued investments in natural gas, a fossil fuel. The final agreed text said such investments “can be appropriate” to deal with the crisis if they are consistent with climate objectives.

The ministers’ meeting in the northern city of Sapporo comes just over a month before a G7 leaders’ summit in Hiroshima.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

April 11, 2023

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