Poland Shows That Autocracy Is Not Inevitable | The Roots and Consequences of Hamas' Strategy | Is South America a New Persian Gulf?, and more

The Real Dividing Line in Israel-Palestine  (Slavo Zizek, Project Syndicate)
While Hamas’s outrageous acts of terrorism should be condemned unconditionally, one must not confuse what is really at issue in the Holy Land. The choice is not one hardline faction or the other; it is between the fundamentalists on both sides and all those who still believe in the possibility of peaceful co-existence.

The Roots and Consequences of Hamas’ Strategy  (Daniel Sobelman, National Interest)
That the current war in the Gaza Strip poses a clear existential threat to Hamas and potentially to the entire Palestinian cause is abundantly clear. But the current conflict, Israel’s pronounced intent to wipe Hamas off the face of the earth, even if this means a months-long war, will have profound long-term implications for any actor with a stake in the postwar balance of power and regional order in the Middle East. Israel’s purpose and identity as a viable country for and protector of the Jewish people are at stake. But the vital interests of the entire Iranian camp in the Middle East—the self-described “axis of resistance,” of which Hamas has become a key member in recent years, are also hanging in the balance. 
Spearheaded by Iran—its primary supplier of military hardware, know-how, and technology—the “axis of resistance” mainly consists of the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Gaza Strip, Syria, Yemen’s Houthi rebel movement Ansar Allah, and multiple Iran-backed Shiite groups in Iraq. Together, they have gained critical mass as a coordinated and synchronized strategic community. In recent years, these actors have become a regional bloc, thinking in geopolitical terms and sharing the aspiration for an anti-Western regional order in what Iran calls “West Asia.” 
In addition to their quest to defeat Israel and Western powers from the Middle East, “resistance” actors from Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran share a similar strategic concept. In essence, the basic underlying logic of the strategy of “resistance” accepts that superior actors such as Israel, the United States, and Saudi Arabia will always be able to visit immense civilian pain on their countries. However, although these actors exhibit severe civilian vulnerability, their military apparatuses, command-and-control systems, and continued conventional second-strike capability remain secure. This is precisely the logic behind the reliance of the “axis of resistance” on vast stockpiles of stand-off weapons such as rockets, precision-guided missiles, long-range attack drones, and shore-to-sea missiles.

Is South America a New Persian Gulf?  (Alex Elnagdy, National Interest)
Like internal combustion engines and oil, Electric Vehicle (EV) lithium-ion batteries are “driving demand for batteries and related critical minerals,” according to the International Energy Agency. The market cap for critical minerals grew from $160 billion in 2018 to $320 billion in 2022, primarily due to an increase in EV sales that rose from 2 million to over 10 million during the same period. Road transportation has long been the backbone of oil demand globally, and now, the same relationship is unfolding for critical minerals. And like oil shocks, even if felt by manufacturers before consumers, Americans will be more vulnerable to critical mineral price spikes as our vehicles and grids modernize.
The countries the United States needs to prioritize to head off exponentially growing lithium battery demand depend on the battery composition the United States ultimately bets on. Lithium leads the battery race because it is the metal with the greatest energy-to-weight ratio. Within these batteries, there is competition between Nickel-Manganese-Cobalt (NMC) and Lithium-Iron-Phosphate (LFP) cathodes. Both use lithium to store and release electricity. LFP just uses more common materials—and more lithium—to complete the circuit through your device. Moreover, NMC provides higher energy storage for the greater driving range in cars, but LFP is cheaper, safer, and quickly closing the energy storage gap with NMC.
While both NMC and LFP are commercially viable options, they are not equal in terms of U.S. national security. NMC batteries depend on China’s near-monopoly over Congolese cobalt and trade sway over Indonesian nickel, the two largest global reserves and productions of their respective minerals. And China has a history of using critical mineral exports as leverage. Because LFP batteries could sooner achieve independence from China, the United States understands their strategic value, hence the planned public-private installation of the first LFP cathode facility in the United States and a national goal to eliminate cobalt and nickel in batteries by 2030. Engineering toward LFP would still require the United States to invest in the lithium processing and battery manufacturing that China presently dominates, which can be addressed with enough time and investment through domestic and multilateral industrial policies—easier said than done. However, sourcing enough lithium to meet domestic demand calls for the tried-and-true bilateral approach.
Just as it was in the United States’ interest to secure a better relationship with Saudi Arabia in 1945 to ensure a constant flow of oil, it is now in the United States’ interest to establish the stable relationships necessary to underpin lithium imports upon which U.S. national and economic security rely. Securing the majority of domestic battery demand will require the United States to leverage the 54 percent percent of proven world reserves of lithium underneath the “lithium triangle” between Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia and the 24 percent of global reserves in Australia. Mexico is also weighing in by seeking a lithium association with Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile—evoking comparisons to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. In exchange, Latin America wants trade agreements and financing to industrialize and recover from a legacy of “foreign harassment,” as Bolivian President Luis Arce puts it.

Robert Fico Isn’t the Next Viktor Orban  (Dariusz Kalan, Foreign Policy)
On Sept. 30, many Slovaks went to sleep having presumed that the country would be led by perhaps the most progressive government in its modern history. The next morning, however, they woke up to an alternate universe with a new winner, Robert Fico: a scandal-battered political veteran, who, in a number of ways, has risen like a phoenix from the ashes.
The triumph of Fico, the leader of Smer-SD, a social democratic party, and Slovakia’s longest-serving prime minister (2006-2010 and 2012-2018),is all the more impressive as he has done little to distance himself from his past deeds that pushed not only his party but the entire country to perhaps the darkest place it’s been in its modern history. Almost six years ago, he was swept away by a wave of public anger inspired by the massive protests that erupted after the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova. Now, symbolically, Fico’s close collaborators—Robert Kalinak and Tibor Gaspar, whose behavior as interior minister and police chief, respectively, at the time of Kuciak’s murder was under scrutiny—entered parliament with one of the best results in this election.
This crime—committed on Fico’s watch and ordered by a local millionaire, his former neighbor—shed light on the way he ruled the country. The image of Smer-SD emerged as a hermetic and highly opaque clique that grabbed control of major institutions in the country, including in justice and police, rewarded loyalists by distributing public assets, and was influenced from behind the scenes by shady businessmen (some with ties to organized crime) who operated with impunity.
This is, of course, a recipe that both Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Polish ruling party head Jaroslaw Kaczynski have long been successfully implementing in Hungary and Poland, respectively, on a much larger scale. For instance, Fico never attempted to turn the public broadcaster into a hard-line propaganda mouthpiece or use it to discredit opponents, as his two neighbors have. Nor did he try to create a homogenous nationalist-ideological umbrella for his appetite for power. Nor did he make the West a favorite attack target, being a rather quiet but loyal EU and NATO member. In a nutshell, the main headache for Slovakia under Fico was corruption and clientelism, not authoritarianism.
His attitude toward Russia is also far more complex than Orban’s indiscriminate support.

India Isn’t Signing Up for China’s New World Order  (Michael Schuman, The Atlantic)
The Chinese leader Xi Jinping welcomed delegations from across the developing world to Beijing today to celebrate his pet project, the Belt and Road Initiative. The forum, the third of its kind, is meant to display China’s influence in the global South and show that Washington’s efforts to isolate and pressure Beijing can’t succeed: China simply has too many friends.
But one very important person was absent. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government have steadfastly refused to join Xi’s infrastructure-building program and have promoted alternatives instead. Just last month, Modi and U.S. President Joe Biden announced a joint project to connect India to Europe through the Middle East by rail and ship.
Modi’s absence from the Belt and Road forum is a sign that the rivalry between the United States and China is not the only one shaping global affairs. Another, between India and China, may have geopolitical consequences that are equally important. At stake are the shape of the global South and its role in international governance. Whose vision prevails—Xi’s or Modi’s—will help determine the future of the world order and American global power.
Xi’s goal is to build a bloc of supporters in the global South that he can use to expand Chinese influence and challenge American primacy. But New Delhi is not much more eager than Washington to usher in a China-centric world system. Modi has therefore intensified his diplomacy in the global South, so that India can serve as a counterweight to China.

China Invested $1 Trillion to Gain Global Influence. Can That Go On?  (Keith Bradsher, New York Times)
China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, founded the Belt and Road Initiative a decade ago to use the country’s economic might to enlarge its geopolitical heft and counter the influence of the United States and other industrialized democracies.
China has since disbursed close to $1 trillion to mostly developing countries, largely in loans, to build power plants, roads, airports, telecommunications networks and other infrastructure. Mr. Xi has used China’s cash and infrastructure expertise to tie together countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America and parts of Eastern and Southern Europe.
Belt and Road has established for China a role in global development rivaling that of the United States and the World Bank. But for all the influence it has brought Beijing, the initiative has contributed to unaffordable levels of debt for dozens of poor countries. China also directed contracts to its own companies and in some cases built expensive, subpar projects that have not spurred economic growth.
Now, as representatives from many of the nearly 150 Belt and Road countries assemble in Beijing this week for a summit, the initiative is changing shape. China’s role has shifted from being the world’s largest bilateral lender to also its largest debt collector.