February 10, 2023: Global News Roundup
Curiouser and curiouser—Pipeline sabotage, foiled peace talks, a covert drone attack, and the ‘Great Balloon Panic of 2023’
The Global News Roundup collects news stories from entirely international (non-US) media sources on variety of pressing global issues and events.
“American journalist says US Navy planted explosives under Nord Stream 2 in June 2022.” So read the headline of an article that popped up on Russian state media on Wednesday morning, referring to the explosions last September that destroyed the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines running between Russia and Germany. The article from TASS continued:
US Navy divers, under the cover of the Baltops exercise, planted explosive devices beneath Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline last June, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said in an article published on Wednesday. [Hersh’s piece is here.]
According to him, the decision on the operation was made personally by US President Joe Biden after nine months of discussions with administration officials dealing with national security: US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, and others.
Russian officials, who have been accusing Sweden for months of stonewalling them on the investigation into the explosions, said on Wednesday that the “US has questions to answer over its role” and then on Thursday that “there will be consequences for the US”. US officials claimed Hersh's account was "utterly false and complete fiction". The United Nations—which hosted Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters this week, at Russia’s invitation, to hear his ideas on peace in Ukraine—said they are unable to verify Hersh’s report. In response to questions from TASS on Thursday Hersh said, “I've already had [US] senators call me up and I say to them, I can't help you it’s your problem, not mine.” Hersh also said he would not be visiting Russia.
I’m especially interested in what Germany’s response will be, if any, given that the Nord Stream explosions so seriously constrained Germany’s foreign policy independence. To this point, Russia Today quoted a key passage from Hersch’s article about the strategic intent behind the US’s alleged covert action: “As long as Europe remained dependent on the pipelines for cheap natural gas, Washington was afraid that countries like Germany would be reluctant to supply Ukraine with the money and weapons it needed to defeat Russia.” While Hersh’s story is rapidly whipping around the international press, I’ve yet to see an official German or NATO response. The map below shows the paths of the two Nord Stream pipelines between Russia and Germany and can be viewed in the original here.
(Image: Map of Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, from wermac.org, here.)
The pipeline revelations follow closely on the heels of public comments last week by Naftali Bennett, Israel’s former Prime Minster who stepped down in summer 2022. Bennett revealed that Ukraine’s “Western backers” interfered with peace negotiations he conducted last spring, which were poised to result in some kind of settlement: “I think there was a legitimate decision by the West to keep striking [Russian President Vladimir] Putin… I mean the more aggressive approach. Responding to a question about whether the US and its allies ‘blocked’ the peace process between Moscow and Kyiv, Bennett continued, “Basically, yes. They blocked it…I claim there was a good chance of reaching a ceasefire. But I’m not claiming it was the right thing.” Similar news from back in September reported specifically about former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s efforts to undermine peace negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv, and Bennett’s recent comments confirmed that Johnson “adopted the aggressive line”.
In similarly curious and possibly related news, last week Iran accused Israel of using a drone in an attempted attack on a military installation in Isfahan, lodged a formal complaint with the United Nations, and threatened retaliation. It was rumored following the attack that Israel may have been acting at the behest of the US, trying to prevent Iranian weapons shipments to Russia. The US denied involvement, with officials telling the New York Times on January 30th that Mossad had carried out the attack to further Israel’s own security interests and not at the behest of the US. A very similar article appeared in the Wall Street Journal the same day. I found both of them through the Times of Israel. The day after the NYT and WSJ stories ran, current Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu (reelected to serve a 6th term this past November and well known for his hawkish security stance) did an interview on CNN, part of which is actually cited in Iran’s recent complaint to the UN, in which Netanyahu neither confirmed nor denied Israel’s involvement with the covert attack: “He stated that Israel has been ‘taking action against certain weapons development’ and added that ‘I never talk about specific operations… and every time some explosion takes place in the Middle East, Israel is blamed or given responsibility – sometimes we are sometimes we’re not’”, read Iran’s February 1 letter to the President of the UN Security Council and the UN Secretary General.
It seems that the usual guardrails that have in the past helped diffuse this kind of explosive situation—with the US and Russia pressuring Israel and Iran, respectively, not to escalate—are absent right now. In fact, the US and Israel conducted their largest-ever joint military exercises shortly before the drone incident. And, then, right after the drone incident, US Secretary of State Blinken visited Israel and used his visit to, among other things, pressure Israel to take a firmer stand with Ukraine against Russia by linking the war in Europe to their concerns about Iran: “Tehran’s deepening ties with Moscow and the sophisticated weaponry they are exchanging, are among the many reasons that we raised with Israel the importance of providing support for all of Ukraine’s needs,” Blinken said, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported on Monday that Iran’s “ghost fleet”—ships used to carry Iranian oil in contravention of longstanding US sanctions—is shifting into carrying Russian oil. It was further reported on Tuesday that Iran unveiled “what it said was a vast military facility built "hundreds of meters" beneath a mountain”, used to store missiles and fighter jets, some of them reported to be of Russian origin. Al-Monitor went on to note that an “Iranian state TV report said the air base was the country's "message" to that very joint drill from "the unchallenged air force power in the region”, suggesting that Iran’s public display was a response to the joint US-Israel drills held late last month. Just this past Wednesday, Israeli media reported that Iran displayed a ballistic missile with “Death to Israel” painted on it in Hebrew.
Also this week, the US cancelled Secretary of State Blinken’s planned trip to China to meet President Xi, following a bizarre incident involving a large balloon spotted floating over Montana. China claimed it was a meteorological balloon that accidentally traversed into US airspace, while the US claimed that it was a surveillance balloon designed for spying and that the incident was a “deliberate and unlawful action” intended to violate US sovereignty. This past Friday, the US military shot down the balloon over the ocean off the coast of North Carolina with a missile fired from an F-22 fighter jet, drawing approval, condemnation, and also mockery, including one commentator in AsiaTimes who referred to the “Great Balloon Panic of 2023”. The cartoon below was drawn by Brazilian political cartoonist Carlos Latuff and circulated in Chinese state media this week.
(Image: “US overreacts by shooting down Chinese weather balloon.” Cartoon: Carlos Latuff. From the Global Times, here.)
However, President Biden’s State of the Union address clarified that the balloon incident is no laughing matter, at least not for the US: “I am committed to work with China where it can advance American interests and benefit the world. But make no mistake: as we made clear last week, if China’s threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And we did.” The Financial Times characterized Biden as “feisty” during the Tuesday night address, not least with his “off-the-cuff” comment about Chinese President Xi: “Name me a world leader who’d change places with Xi Jinping — name me one, name me one!” For its part, the Chinese government is demanding that the US return the balloon debris, and also filed a formal complaint with the US embassy over the “US attack on a Chinese civilian unmanned airship by military force.” Chinese state media is framing the episode in terms of domestic partisanship, indicating that Biden is unable to contain “hawkish and conservative internal forces”.
In recent days the balloon story has only grown more outlandish. There were reports of balloons that apparently traversed US airspace in the past but were missed by defense forces because of an “awareness gap”, reports of other balloons elsewhere around the world (e.g., see here and here about balloons sighted in Korea and Latin America), and then still other reports which cited US officials stating that the Chinese balloon is part of a vast surveillance network built over the past several years that spans five continents. One commentator asked on Monday, “Why did China send a balloon?”, and then answered, “That’s what great powers do, so get used to it.”
Things I’m keeping an eye on:
1. Humanitarian catastrophe in Turkey and Syria: The tragedy unfolding in the region since a massive earthquake hit earlier this week continues to grow more dire (e.g. here and here), with many people still trapped in the rubble and casualties currently estimated at over 20,000 people.
2. The US Fed: I got dizzy following the markets over the past two weeks as investors tried to gauge whether Chairman Jerome Powell was feeling “hawkish” or “dovish” about future interest rate changes, with markets making big moves in both directions depending on the day’s expectations around a Fed “pivot”. (Many investors are excited about the possibility of recession because it likely means a more “dovish” central bank outlook, falling interest rates, and thus more cheap credit; this counterintuitive financial logic is sometimes referred to sardonically as a “bad news is good news” dynamic). But what I found most interesting was a cautionary note from the IMF, published the day after the US Fed decided to slow the pace of rate increases with a more modest 0.25% hike, and on the back of “dovish” commentary from the Bank of Canada. The IMF warned central bankers about capitulating to the financial sector too soon: “Central banks must therefore be resolute in their fight against inflation and ensure policy remains appropriately tight long enough to durably bring inflation back to target.” Among the IMF’s key concerns is that if rates are cut too soon, inflation could resurge with a vengeance and lead to a “de-anchoring” of household inflation expectations, perhaps resulting in spiraling hyperinflation that is exceedingly difficult to control. See also this article from the IMF from last May for more information.
3. North Korea: A confidential United Nations report viewed this week by journalists at Reuters noted that “North Korea stole more cryptocurrency assets in 2022 than in any other year and targeted the networks of foreign aerospace and defense companies”. North Korea is increasingly in the spotlight over its relationship with Russia, including recent Western accusations that it’s supplying the Russian military. A couple of weeks ago, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un stated that it would “stand in the same trench” as Russia against the US.
4. The EIU released its annual report with 2022’s Democracy Index rankings. “Only 8% reside in a “full democracy”, compared with 8.9% in 2015, before the US was demoted from a “full democracy” to a “flawed democracy” in 2016. More than one-third of the world’s population live under authoritarian rule (36.9%), with a large share of them being in China and Russia”, says the report on page 3. The map of the world below depicts countries by index score and government regime type.
