Transcript
MCMAHON:
In the coming week, France intensifies a push for humanitarian aid and a cease-fire in Lebanon, Japan holds a snap general election, and Georgia hits the polls with the country divided over pro-Russian or EU sentiments. It’s October 24th, 2024 in time for The World Next Week. I’m Bob McMahon.
ROBBINS:
And I’m Carla Anne Robbins.
MCMAHON:
Carla, let’s get going with Lebanon where the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah continues. Now, this is a country seen as a quasi-failed state by some, and its government is ill-equipped, to say the least, to help with the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by Israel’s ground offensive in southern Lebanon and stepped up bombing campaign in the south and other places. Hezbollah continues to send rockets into Israel as well. U.S. Secretary of State Blinken was in Tel Aviv to try to revive peace negotiations this week and briefly had to take shelter during a Hezbollah rocket attack. France’s President Emmanuel Macron has been outspoken in calling for a cease-fire and humanitarian aid to Lebanon and even an end to arms exports to Israel. He’s hosting an international conference as we were sitting down for this podcast that was supposed to be in support of Lebanon. Can France make a difference or push things forward in that way?
ROBBINS:
Well, Lebanon certainly needs all of the help it can get. There are some debate about the numbers here as there always are in the midst of a war, but the UN estimate is around 600 thousand people are displaced within the country. Another 400 thousand have fled across the border into Syria. And as you said, its government, such as it is, is barely functional. It hasn’t had a president for two years. It’s been effectively bankrupt since the financial collapse of 2019 and 2020 and its military is only in slightly better shape. And why that matters is because any potential deal to end the war will need the Lebanese army. Despite its conditions, it’s still the most trusted institution in the country. They’re going to need them to help establish a security zone along the border with Israel along potentially with these UN peacekeepers that are there and unfortunately can’t do anything.
So far, Hezbollah, which operates as a state within a state, and its benefactor, Iran, are driving all the action. The most Macron’s conference was likely to produce—and it’s not to be dismissed—is desperately needed cash because Lebanon really needs money. France had a target of a half a billion euros or about $540 million. By the end of Thursday, France’s foreign minister announced that they’d received pledges—and keep in mind, pledges aren’t money—but pledges of $800 million in humanitarian aid and another $200 million for Lebanon’s security forces. That money was $300 million from the U.S., more than 100 million from France, and nearly the same from Germany. I think they’ll probably ante up that money. Now, it’s a lot of money, but Lebanon needs so much more.
There was never really a chance that this meeting was going to produce a diplomatic breakthrough because, except for the French, who have been part of cease-fire efforts in Lebanon, none of the other key players were there. Israel wasn’t there. Hezbollah didn’t have any representatives at the table. Iran wasn’t there. Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who is in the region, he sent an aide to represent the U.S., so not really a place for diplomatic negotiations. That said, the hope has been, since the death of both Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, that there’s potentially a new path for a wider cease-fire deal. But U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein was in Beirut earlier this week, and he warned that the situation there had “escalated out of control,” so not a reassuring delegation from a negotiator.
MCMAHON:
Yeah, it is hard to see things getting better before they deteriorate further, frankly. As you say, the escalation continues. It’s not clear what Hezbollah’s strength is. I think that’s going to be an interesting point. We’re in the process of preparing a leadership chart graphic for our website and the number of Hezbollah leaders eliminated by Israel is staggering, but that’s the number of ones we know and we don’t know what we don’t know. That will be very interesting to see who steps in, by many accounts. Despite the really heavy blow Hezbollah has taken, it is still a potent force and certainly, if there was any sort of ground combat going on, is expected to be still potent, but that’s maybe what we can see.
ROBBINS:
And potent and well-armed force.
MCMAHON:
And well-armed, extremely well-armed, again, thanks to Iran. And then the other thing that everybody’s waiting for, although it’s been a little bit sidelined, is in what fashion is Israel going to hit Iran in retaliation for the salvo of missiles that hit Israel not that long ago and that has been threatened and appears to be imminent, but we just don’t know what’s going to happen on that front. But to what extent will that then trigger a new round of reprisals or will things calm down? Back to your original point, though, is Hezbollah going to be weakened enough that it does not hold its previous position in Lebanon and then Lebanon is able to assert itself as a state with its security forces in the forefront? That seems to be the crucial aspect of all this. Those security forces can get proper aid to patrol their borders to police within and then maybe things can be rebuilding, but it just seems like a real flight of fancy to think they can do that anytime soon.
ROBBINS:
And Hezbollah, of course, is a political party. It’s a social welfare organization. It’s all of these things that, really, I think-
MCMAHON:
Lebanon is fractured into Shia factions where Hezbollah held sway and that’s a considerable faction. It’s got Christian, it’s got Sunni. That’s always what comes back to with Lebanon. I guess France having its long-standing ties to Lebanon feels like it can play a role.
ROBBINS:
And then there’s the question of what do they want. I mean, that border—Hezbollah’s incredibly well-armed and certainly, infinitely well-armed than Hamas was—but there’s been UN Security Council resolutions there forever and certainly since the 2006 last invasion, last major war, but they never lived up to…The Lebanese army couldn’t impose the deal. Hezbollah was along that border there. Nobody could put order there, but it was reasonably calm, comparatively calm, until this. Hezbollah began this throwing rockets at Israel “in solidarity” with Hamas and what was going on in Gaza. Up until now, and we haven’t heard a lot from them, they’ve insisted that they’re going to keep doing it until there’s some sort of a deal in Gaza. This seems to be linked. Whether they’re going to change their position with their leadership, we really don’t know.
Blinken said today, he was in Riyadh, that negotiators were going to resume talks in coming days in Doha, but everybody’s also warning they don’t know whether Hamas is really willing to talk. They were also floating this idea that there might be a mini, mini deal in which maybe there would be a very short cease-fire in exchange for a limited number of prisoners and hostages. This great expectation that cutting off the head of Hamas and cutting off the head of Hezbollah—at least that round of leadership—was going to change things in a big way, so far, not. Meanwhile, the war goes on, lots of people die, and both Gaza and increasingly Lebanon are being turned into rubble.
Bob, let’s take our conversation to Japan. This Sunday, October 27th, the Japanese will vote in an earlier than expected general election. We talked before about the change such as it is in leadership there and have a newly sworn in prime minister, Ishiba Shigeru. He hopes to strengthen his and his party, the LDP’s legitimacy, after a year of really damaging party scandals. The LDP has held nearly uninterrupted power since 1955, but there seems to be growing support for opposition parties. Is the LDP finally in trouble and does Ishiba know what he’s doing in calling these elections?
MCMAHON:
That’s the big question in the moment. There are certainly indications from recent reporting and polling and veteran political observers in Japan that they could be a hung parliament coming up. Ishiba has said that a goal for his governing coalition, which is LDP, and this party known as Komeito, would be to win a simple majority of 233 seats. There’s 465 seats in parliament. That would be a drop of almost fifty from what the two parties had held in the chamber that was just dissolved because of this scandal that you mentioned. Scandal is still very much there. Ishiba has been contrite and has said he wants to move on.
This is a moment for the country heading into a new direction and has tried to lay out the very important agenda that he’s trying to accomplish because behind this is LDP, and he, at the helm as a former defense minister, has spoken about trying to beef up the country’s defense budget. He wants there to be the capability of responding to attacks, to basically change the country’s constitution to allow more military activity than it has been allowed while still saying the country’s largely pacifist. We should note there was a recent Nobel Prize awarded to an anti-nuclear group in Japan as a sort of reinforcing that strong feeling of the country not being a wielder or user of nuclear weaponry.
ROBBINS:
Even though they’re sitting on a pile of plutonium.
MCMAHON:
Yes, and had been a strong user of nuclear power until the Fukushima disaster of 2011. This is a country that is possibly at a tipping point. We could be seeing—very unusual for Japan, but as we’re seeing more increasingly usual in Europe—a sort of splintering into coalitions potentially if LDP does not get the level of seats that it needs to rule in this block with Komeito. The main opposition group is the Constitutional Democratic Party or CDP, but they are seen by a number of observers as kind of ineffectual and not really capable of rallying any sort of effective opposition bloc that could challenge the longstanding LDP dominance, even with the scandal. It’s not clear what we’re going to see coming out of this weekend in terms of Ishiba having a mandate or Japan having a stalled situation at a really important time, not only in the security realm, but economically there’s a real funk and real concern over rising living costs in this country, which is still one of the world’s largest economies.
ROBBINS:
I know we tend to put things in terms of our own self-interest, but let’s face it, we’re really close to the American election and we have a pretty big choice between outward looking and inward looking. Are the Japanese grappling with that outward versus inward looking, like so many other countries are? And has the U.S. election come up in any of these discussions?
MCMAHON:
On the latter, I have not seen that, although it has been acknowledged whoever emerges as Japanese leaders is going to face a really tough challenge if Donald Trump is elected, because Abe Shinzo was especially skillful. Because of his particular gifts as a politician and a diplomat, frankly, he was able to strike, let’s say, a workable relationship with Donald Trump, who, as we’ve said many times, has a transactional approach to even the closest U.S. allies.
Japan is facing a challenge regardless of who emerges as the next leader. But in terms of their worldview, I think it does devolve more to the internal workings in terms of how much are some of these newer politicians—there’s a lot of younger politicians, a lot more women that are running for these open seats—how much do they see the country governing itself and what might change the compact within government and citizens versus how they would be handling themselves in the rest of the world?
I do think this issue of constitutional change was one that was driven by Abe Shinzo and is an LDP priority, so that is one that could be affected. It could be just shelved for the time being, even while Japan is concerned about what’s going on in North Korea, shall we say, and has just come from a period where it has reached remarkable new level of understanding, let’s say, with South Korea, which had very rocky relationships dating back to World War II era. I don’t think, to answer your question, Carla, we’re looking at a major sea change, but in the LDP being out of the scene is a change and it’s a change across the board for Japan. I do think, at the very least, Japan in which there’s some instability in terms of the government not having a clear cut program at a time when the U.S. is going through its own possible leadership change. That’s a recipe for some real concern because these are two bedrock countries in the so-called Western alliance.
ROBBINS:
The Chinese are probably sitting back and rubbing their hands.
MCMAHON:
Carla, let’s stick with the election theme and give a preview of the upcoming vote in Georgia.
ROBBINS:
And not in the state of Georgia.
MCMAHON:
This is not the state of Georgia, which has its own election concerns and controversies. This Saturday, Georgia will hold a parliamentary election. Earlier this year, we saw the ruling pro-Russia Georgian Dream party pass a controversial Foreign Agents Law that was clearly, in part, targeted at trying to stop the pro-democratic support that the democracy-minded parties—or the Western-aligned parties, shall we say—were getting support from. Many believe Georgian Dream’s continuation power will strengthen authoritarianism and in all hopes of EU accession, even though Georgian Dreams has said it is in favor of EU accession, but it’s in favor also of a Hungary model of EU membership. Is there a chance that the pro-EU democratic leaning parties will prevail or not?
ROBBINS:
I think the first thing here is to remember that post-Soviet Georgia has a history of democratic leaders turning into authoritarians. We really want to be careful not to overdo this forces of light versus forces of darkness narratives in Georgia.
MCMAHON:
Yes, that’s true.
ROBBINS:
But there’s no question about the different aspirations of Georgian voters. There’s one camp that is championing Georgia’s future in Europe and the ideals of free speech and free elections. In the other camp, there’s the supporters of the Georgian Dream party and they have a much more populist, nativist, and increasingly pro-Russian future for Georgia. It’s true that the Georgian Dream party started out as a pro-Europe party. I don’t think they’re a pro-Europe party anymore. Certainly, what we’ve seen from the current government—which is led by this Ivanishvili, who is this billionaire leader—he’s described the EU as “the global war party” and claims that it’s pushing Georgia into a conflict with Russia. That doesn’t sound to me like a guy who really wants to get into the EU.
As you noted in June, the government adopted this so-called foreign agents law for NGOs and media. They even overwrote a veto by its pro-European president. This law requires civil society organizations, including newspapers, human rights groups, anyone that’s receiving more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad—and a lot of them get funding from abroad. They have to register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power.” That’s a clear attempt and we’ve seen this in a lot of places. We’ve seen it in Egypt, we’ve seen it in Russia, we’ve seen it in a lot of places. It’s a clear attempt to stigmatize and suppress opposition voices.
Now, the ruling party is pushing a Russian-style legislation targeting so-called LGBTQ+ propaganda. And if this were to go through, same-sex marriages wouldn’t be registered; only “heterosexuals” would be allowed to adopt children—this is really horrifying; changing gender would be outlawed; even references to LGBTQ+ people would be erased from public spaces; nothing could be taught in schools that recognizes different ways of loving and marrying. This is not a democratic vision for the future of Georgia. The EU and the U.S. have been so concerned that Brussels has put Georgia’s accession to the EU on hold and funding from the U.S. and EU have been frozen since the law was passed in July of 2024.
Interestingly enough, pursuing membership into the EU is actually written into Georgia’s 2018 constitution. I went and looked it up. It says, the state constitutional body shall take all necessary measure to ensure Georgia’s full integration into the EU and NATO, so this is a pretty big shift for them in a reasonably short period of time. Tens of thousands of Georgians marched on the street recently. Opinion polls say that people overwhelmingly want this, but there are candidates from four opposition parties. A lot of analysts are warning that that may confuse people. We’ll just have to see how the vote turns out.
MCMAHON:
Yeah. We use the term polarized society so often. It’s a bit of a broken record at this point, but we’re looking at a country which has become polarized, that these demonstrations are large, they are real, and the pro-Russian elements in the country are also real. My one experience visiting Georgia, it was interesting. It was fascinating. First of all, it’s in a remarkable country and culturally rich, and it was interesting also to see it’s still pretty poor. They could really use—and there’s a keen desire to have—the infrastructure boosting potential that the EU gives it in terms of funding. Some of the newer facilities that we saw funded there were either funded by EU projects, EU-related projects, or by the country’s billionaire power behind the throne, Bidzina Ivanishvili. You would point to some new structure or some new facility and somebody would say, “Oh, that was Ivanishvili’s,” or, “Oh, that? The EU gave us that.” This is part of what’s at stake.
ROBBINS:
The idea that an individual versus the entire EU, which is sort of an extraordinary thing.
MCMAHON:
Exactly. A very rich individual by many, many magnitudes richer than anybody else in the country and any other even institution who’s aligned with Russia and who made a lot of his fortune in Russia. It’s really important. It’s also a country that has a deep, long history with its Orthodox Church, has many conservative elements, but also it permeates many things. I mean, the country’s extremely proud of its both religious and musical tradition, which is all integrated into the church. So many incredible monasteries and churches, UNESCO-listed places, and yet there’s this attempt to align it with Russia or with forces that are against LGBTQ issues, for example, makes this a really difficult time for a lot of Georgians who really want to be part of the Western-aligned block and see malign influence from Russia.
It is also a place, by the way, where many Russians fled to after the invasion of Ukraine. It’s just a place they feel comfortable in and can function in, ironically enough in that these are Russians who did not want to be aligned with the war and can function in Georgia. And yet part of the country is seeing its future aligned with Russia. It’s happening at the same time that we’re coming out of a Moldovan election and razor-thin majority voted in favor of EU alignment. There’s still a runoff to take place with its president who’s pro-EU, who is running against a pro-Russian figure. It’s not clear whether she’s going to emerge ahead or not. That election is the same week as the U.S. elections. There’s just a lot at stake in the region and we don’t want to get caught up in the black-white, Russia versus West thing, but that’s going to be the narrative.
ROBBINS:
Well, I think the Moldovan election also just shows you it’s really hard to figure out what happened there. This referendum was a much milder commitment than the one that Georgians made six years ago. The reference was whether they were going to declare the future membership in the EU was a strategic direction in their constitution, much less definitive than the one that the Georgians themselves adapted. As you said, the way the vote came out was much lower than all the polling. It was only 50.39 percent.
Now what is going on there? Are people rethinking their commitment to Europe or is something else going on there? The Moldovan government believes that this is the result of a huge amount of money and disinformation pouring in, hybrid warfare—that’s what the EU is describing it. The police there have charged a billionaire who’s sitting in Russia, claim that they’re pouring lots of money in buying votes. They’re reporting all sorts of disinformation. And interestingly, one of the themes there is that if you hew too closely to the West, you’re going to end up like Ukraine. And if you want peace and if you want stability, the best thing you can do is be neutral.
That certainly is the argument of the gentleman who only got 26 percent of the vote but who was running against the pro-West current president in the runoff. But Ukraine really hangs over a lot of this. In the Russian warning, “You don’t want to go the way of Ukraine. The best thing you can do is just…” How many people are buying this? How much of this is Russian disinformation? And how much of this is just the realignment we’re seeing in the rise of populism? We don’t know. We’re just going to have to see how that vote turns out.
MCMAHON:
Yeah. Another thing worth pointing out in addition to that is the Russian military sort of overtones here. Moldova has a breakaway region called Transnistria where there are Russian troops based that is a pro-Russian entity. Its status has been unresolved since basically the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Georgia has two breakaway regions that are under the sway of Russia as well that had previously constituted almost 20 percent of Georgian territory, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. There was a Russian invasion from South Ossetia in 2008 that sent a real clear signal to the Georgians to watch out on their pro-Western tilt and their provocations against Russia at the time, which is-
ROBBINS:
Right after their invitation.
MCMAHON:
Right after their invitation. Yeah, we’re entering into a new phase with these two countries where it’s a very big Russian military overtones.
ROBBINS:
Well, the Russians are bullies. There’s no question about that.
Bob, it’s time to discuss our audience figure of the week. This is the figure listeners vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org’s Instagram story. This week they selected, “China and India Reach Border Deal.” China and India have clashed over this border since the 1960s. What caused them to make a deal? Do we think the deal’s going to last? Is this the result of the BRICS meeting that we were talking about, a positive outcome of this, do the Russians get any credit for this?
MCMAHON:
I don’t know if I’d go that far on the Russian side, but I do think the BRICS meeting…I think they were moving towards this and provided a moment for Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to come together and speak and formally indicate their thaw. It’s the first time in more than five years that they had formal talks. They’ve had informal talks, but these were formal talks they had on the sidelines of BRICS summit. Certainly Russia, by hosting the summit, sure tried to facilitate that and it was in their interest to do so. It has very good relations with both countries, which is another interesting international curio that’s worth watching. But I think it was an extremely interesting, somewhat unexpected to outside eyes deal that was reached because this is a border where—to those who might recall it— back in June 2020, there was a nasty incident where basically hand-to-hand with heavy implements combat that resulted in deaths on both sides and a real chill in relations and suspension of commerce and diplomatic interactions and so forth.
And now they’ve come out and said, and details are still to come and those are going to be really important to watch. But this line of actual control, which is more than 2,100 miles, so it’s incredibly big border that has involved a great deal of concern on both sides in terms of patrolling it and so forth, they’re now saying they will jointly patrol contested areas along this border. These were what you would call confidence building measures because both sides have been building things like roads seen as the run-up to seizing more territory or bringing in more military materiel and so forth to be able to beef up their presence and create facts on the ground for what they claim to be their place. It’s still a long road ahead for them to get into any process where they can actually mark out an agreed upon border, but it’s still very important.
There were a number of troops that had been diverted there at a time when these countries have concerns that they would rather be focusing on elsewhere. China, certainly South China Sea, for example, India and Pakistan as always, and they don’t want to get caught up into any sort of simmering military threats on this gigantic border. I think it was a chance to use this BRICS meeting where they’re both champions of the Global South and have-
ROBBINS:
Allegedly.
MCMAHON:
…really invested a lot into this movement, which is still yet to see some tangible outcrops as we discussed last week. But still in all, I think it was important symbolically. Watch the fine print on terms of what they do agree on or whether they do carry forward some more formal steps, but it was seen as a really big step for these two countries.
ROBBINS:
I was feeling better that maybe this would stabilize at least one border until you said that one of the reasons they agreed on this is because they wanted to focus on other places where they were making mischief. India wanted to focus on its conflict potentially with its other nuclear armed neighbor, and the Chinese wanted to focus on bullying everybody in the South China Sea. I had that brief moment in which I thought, “Yes, at least one border had less likely for a confrontation until…”
MCMAHON:
Sorry to be a fly in the ointment, Carla. That’s our look at the world next week, brick by brick. Here’s some other stories to keep an eye on: the year of elections marches on with votes held in Kiribati, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Uruguay, Botswana, and Uzbekistan; and India celebrates Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights.
ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast platform and leave us a review while you’re at it. We appreciate the feedback. If you’d like to reach out, please email us at [email protected]. The publications mentioned in this episode as well as a transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on cfr.org. And please also note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the host, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.
Today’s program was produced by Ester Fang—Ester, welcome back—with director of podcasting, Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Helena Kopans-Johnson, Colette Yamashita Holcomb, and Kenadee Mangus for their research assistance. Our theme music is provided by—he’s everywhere—Markus Zakaria. This is Carla Robbins saying so long.
MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye and please be careful out there.
