What Was Hamas Thinking? | 'Terrorist' Designations for Houthis | Emerging Narrative About Renewables Gets It Wrong, and more

Javier Milei’s Next Challenge: Governing Argentina  (Oliver Stuenkel, Foreign Policy)
The radical libertarian candidate Javier Milei surfed an anti-establishment wave to comfortably win Argentina’s highly polarized presidential runoff on Nov. 19 with 55.7 percent of the votes. He will take over a country battered by the worst economic crisis in two decades, rising poverty levels and one of the highest inflation rates in the world. His opponent Sergio Massa, currently minister of the economy, obtained the most votes in the first round, but the country’s catastrophic economic situation was like a millstone around Massa’s neck during a runoff in which the majority of voters wanted change. Massa’s defeat was so decisive that he may not even have a mandate to lead the reconstruction of Peronism, a movement that has governed Argentina for 28 of the last 40 years.
Milei holds many extreme views. He believes climate change is a socialist hoax and that the mob violence of Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. and Jan. 8, 2023 in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, had nothing to do with former U.S. and Brazilian Presidents Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, respectively. Many of his proposals are highly controversial, such as closing Argentina’s central bank and dollarizing the economy; privatizing education; eliminating all gun laws; criminalizing abortion; legalizing the sale of human organs; and downgrading diplomatic ties to countries such as Brazil and China, Argentina’s two major trading partners.
At first glance, Milei has a powerful mandate for implementing these ideas and transforming Argentina; after all, he won more votes than any candidate since 1983. The president-elect also proposes to radically reduce the size of the state, which doubled under Peronist governments over the past two decades. The day after his triumph, Milei confirmed his intent to privatize the majority state-owned energy company YPF, national news agency Telám, national radio station LRA Radio Nacional, and publicly owned television network TV Pública. “Everything that can be in the hands of the private sector will be in the hands of the private sector,” Milei said during a radio interview. He argued that there was no space for gradual reforms; instead, he said “drastic” measures were needed.
Yet Milei’s mandate for change—and his capacity to deliver it—may be smaller than it appears. In fact, the far-right libertarian may be, at least initially, one of the weakest Argentine presidents in decades. Given that only 30 percent of voters supported Milei in the election’s first round, it is safe to assume the president-elect received numerous votes in the runoff from people who do not support some of his most radical proposals and voted for him because they considered Massa even less palatable, especially in the economic realm.
More importantly, however, Milei—just like Trump and Bolsonaro before him—triumphed with a message of radical change without executive experience. He also lacks an established party structure and a large pool of allied technocrats he can appoint to key positions in his administration. Both Trump and Bolsonaro had to rely on experienced and more moderate bureaucrats to govern, many of whom considered themselves the “adults in the room” and often operated behind the scenes to tame some of their respective presidents’ most extreme impulses. The fact that most mainstream economists believe Milei’s plan for dollarizing Argentina’s economy is unworkable may strengthen attempts to kick some of his more radical ideas down the road.

What Hamas Promises, Iranians Know Too Well  (Roya Hakakian, The Atlantic)
Both Hamas and the Iranian regime are at war with the West and, as such, with all the laws devised in the West, including the laws of war. The most brutal of the Islamic Republic’s anti-riot thugs do not come to the scene of demonstrations dressed in the uniforms of the police or the Revolutionary Guard Corps. They come as what the protesters call “civilian dressers,” just as Hamas terrorists have done throughout this war to blend in with the public. Both use ambulances to penetrate the ranks of their opponents, to snatch prisoners, or to get away from hostile crowds. They share not a secret manual but a playbook of the lawless, in which nothing is forbidden if it advances the cause of the “righteous,” among whom Tehran and Hamas count themselves.
And yet, what Iran’s regime has done for more than four decades to create a new crop of zealots in its own image has backfired. Iran’s younger generations show a moral clarity that other nations in the region, and even the throngs on the streets of London and New York, do not demonstrate with regard to Hamas’s malevolent program. If Iranians have always been distinct from their predominantly Arab neighbors by virtue of race, religion, and language, now they are distinct in a new way: They are the only people in the region among whom such a large number reject the call for Israel’s destruction. Even a host on one of Iran’s official television broadcasts had to make this admission last week: “The people of Iran have been the greatest supporters of the Zionist regime in the world and by a large margin.”

US Reviewing Possible ‘Terrorist’ Designations for Houthis  (Jonathan Landay and Steve Holland, Reuters)
The United States is reviewing “potential terrorist designations” for Yemen’s Houthi rebel group in response to its seizure of a cargo ship, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Tuesday. Kirby’s comment was significant because one of the Biden administration’s first acts after taking office in January 2021 was revoking terrorist designations of the Houthis over fears the sanctions they carried could worsen Yemen’s humanitarian crisis. The Iran-backed Houthis, who have been sending drones and long-range missiles at Israel in solidarity with Hamas, seized the Galaxy Leader cargo ship on Sunday in the southern Red Sea, describing it as Israeli-owned. Kirby called the Houthis’ seizure of the vessel a “flagrant violation of international law” in which “Iran is complicit.” “In light of this, we have begun a review of potential terrorist designations and we will be considering other options as well with our allies and partners as well,” Kirby said at a White House press briefing. He called for the immediate release of the ship and its international crew. The Bahamas-flagged car carrier is chartered by Japan’s Nippon Yusen. It is owned by a firm registered under Isle of Man-headquartered Ray Car Carriers, which is a unit of Tel Aviv-incorporated Ray Shipping, according to LSEG data.

What an Emerging Narrative About Renewables Gets Wrong  (Jeff Opperman, Foreign Policy)
As floods, fires, and heatwaves surge to unprecedented levels, the need for ambitious climate action has never been greater. And with renewable energy projects and electric vehicles sales also surging, the path toward a solution has never been clearer.
However, a new narrative has emerged that threatens to derail progress toward that solution: a growing belief that a rapid transition to a renewable energy system—the very heart of the global plan to stabilize our climate—will itself inflict serious damage to the planet.
National and local media now frequently feature stories of conflict about the land required for wind and solar projects. Articles highlight how the renewable transition will trigger dramatic increases in mining for various metals, prompting essays that question whether electric vehicles are really any better for Mother Earth than our traditional fossil-burning ones (for example, “will your electric car save the world or wreck it?”).
While all development entails tradeoffs, and striving to minimize impacts to communities and nature is critical as we build out renewable energy systems, is it really true that the clean energy transition will harm the planet? That narrative could dilute commitment and delay progress right when leaders need to be doubling down on climate commitments at the 2023 U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP28, starting in just a few days. Let’s cut through the noise and see if we can arrive at some useful truths.

Why North Korea May Use Nuclear Weapons First, and Why Current US Policy Toward Pyongyang Is Unsustainable  (Robert E. Kelly, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
North Korea has large incentives to use a tactical nuclear weapon—or several of them—early in another conflict on the Korean peninsula. Deciding how to respond to this is probably the most important contemporary debate inside the US-South Korea alliance.
A negotiated bargain that controls North Korean weapons of mass destruction would, of course, be the ideal way to avoid such a conflict, but any such deal seems highly unlikely. The most likely window for a breakthrough came during the overlapping “dovish” presidencies of American President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-In. But it has closed. For a brief moment, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un faced the most negotiation-interested leaders in the history of his country’s primary geopolitical opponents – the US and South Korea. Trump particularly was a unique American president regarding North Korea – willing to meet Kim repeatedly without preconditions.
Tragically, Kim missed this Trump-Moon opportunity in 2018-2020. He offered only one deal to Trump, and it was so balance-negative for the allies that Trump had to reject it. So the North Korea debate in the democratic world—particularly in South Korea, the United States, and Japan—has reverted to traditional, hawkish approaches. If North Korea will not bargain—or, more specifically, if it will only propose lopsided deals—then the allies must consider military responses to the possibility of North Korean first-use.
There are three reasons that North Korea will likely use nuclear weapons first if war erupts on the Korean peninsula: Operationally, Pyongyang will face an intense “use-it-or-lose-it” dilemma regarding its weapons of mass destruction as soon as a war starts. Strategically, its conventional military is quite inferior to the forces ranged against it. And grand strategically, any serious conflict between the two Koreas will quickly become existential for the North.