WORLD ROUNDUPSweden to Call in Military to Help Crack Down on Gangs | Pakistan Nuclear Weapons, 2023 | Can Europe Survive Trump 2.0?, and more
· What Does Nagorno-Karabakh’s Fall Mean for Great Power Influence?
Washington and Moscow care a lot about some post-Soviet conflicts—but are largely ignoring others
· Europe’s China Electric Vehicle Probe Risks Collateral Damage
German carmakers are most exposed to any possible Chinese retaliation, while France is more relaxed.
· Can Europe Survive Trump 2.0?
The Continent could face a US president who toyed with quitting NATO and pledged to strike a ‘peace deal’ with Russia
· Pakistan Nuclear Weapons, 2023
Pakistan continues to gradually expand its nuclear arsenal with more warheads, more delivery systems, and a growing fissile material production industry
· Xi Jinping’s Death Wish
The Chinese leader’s obsession with Taiwan is an unpredictable influence on great power politics
· Sweden to Call in Military to Help Crack Down on Gangs
Government looking for ways to stem growing gang violence in the country
· This Summer Previewed the Security Threats of Climate Change: The U.S. Needs to Do More
Extreme weather events during this past summer have highlighted the immediate danger of climate change to not only individuals, but also global security
What Does Nagorno-Karabakh’s Fall Mean for Great Power Influence? (Emma Ashford and Matthew Kroenig, Foreign Policy)
Nagorno-Karabakh is another formerly frozen conflict in the Caucasus region and the site of a major 2020 war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan recaptured most of the ethnically Armenian enclave in 2020 and has been slowly strangling the remaining residents by restricting food and supplies. Now Baku claims to have captured the whole area, and there’s a mass exodus of Armenian speakers. It sounds as if most of those leaving are terrified that if they remain, they’ll be killed—the Azerbaijani government will not offer guarantees about their safety.
The ability of U.S. policymakers to shape outcomes here is very slim, and when they do try, they mostly mess it up—see then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit a few years back. The 2020 war was ended only through Russian mediation. But it doesn’t speak well of U.S. foreign policy that all the principles U.S. officials claim are overridingly important elsewhere just don’t seem to apply in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Europe’s China Electric Vehicle Probe Risks Collateral Damage (Joshua Posaner et al., Politico)
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who has the greatest green industrial policy of them all?
The opening of an EU investigation into imports of Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) has exposed a fundamental European rift over the right course for Europe’s industrial strategy. Is Gallic autonomie stratégique the right way to go? Or the Teutonic reflex to maximize trade surpluses über alles?
And it has revealed a depressing truth for Europe Inc: Beijing has just done it better, faster.
In firing up its trade defense machinery, Europe is being forced to gaze back at its own clean car game and reflect on the fact that the prime victim of its anti-subsidy probe could end up being Germany’s export-led economy — and its carmakers that are heavily invested in, and exposed to, China.
Can Europe Survive Trump 2.0? (Nicholas Vinocur and Christopher Piltz, Politico.eu)
Here’s something the European mind can’t fully comprehend: Come November 2024, Donald Trump may be headed back into the White House.
It’s a nightmare scenario for Europeans who bore the brunt of the former U.S. president’s antagonism during his four years in office and hoped to never have to think about him again. (Cont.)
