June 1: The ‘circle back’ edition
In which, we update you on the many stories we’ve been tracking over the last quarter: elections, war, rumors of war, and an expanding slate of GOP presidential candidates.
This one’s on the house! Free subscribers get access to the full newsletter this week. Hope you enjoy it!
Circle back: Africa’s wars
Readers of this newsletter know I’ve been tracking conflicts in Africa for a while. Going back to late 2021, I wrote a Deep File noting that the continent’s many conflicts, economic growth, and Chinese interest would (or, at least, should) draw more focused attention from the US.
Despite barely resolved (and likely not finished) conflict in Ethiopia, ongoing fighting in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and several other countries, the Biden administration continues to take a myopic view of the continent. This week, the focus was on South Africa’s allegedly cozy relationship with Russia, sanctions on Sudan’s warring parties, and threats of sanctions on Uganda in response to legislation deemed homophobic.
For all intents and purposes, it appears as though Africa remains far down the priority list of an administration that is more focused on (read, “distracted by”) Russia than China, and sees the global South as a place in which it can make high-handed demands about sovereign legislation. This is not how you lead or influence. So long as the US continues with such a non-strategy, the nations of Africa will continue to grow immune to US diplomatic influence even as they grow more economically wealthy. While the “decline” of the West is by most measures a myth, the degree to which it is a perceptual reality is because of these self-inflicted diplomatic wounds.
Circle back: Latent violence on the political left
I prefer to keep this newsletter’s focus on international issues, and big picture economic and political issues domestically, leaving the issues of the culture wars to podcasters, clickbait hounds, and cable news. However, events of this year, particularly the Nashville school shooting in March and the post-Hodges campaign of domestic terrorism against crisis pregnancy centers and other pro-life groups has drawn my attention more and more to culture war issues in the US as exerting an increasing influence on economic and political events.
The Bud Light and Target quasi boycotts that resulted in the real loss of billions of dollars to those companies ahead of Pride Month is a case in point. With Target’s losses eclipsing $10 billion dollars, the company had to pivot to a less provocative stance on Pride products, which put the retailer in the crosshairs (literal and figurative) not of Christian-nationalist-ultra-MAGA-white-supremacist domestic terrorists - the boogeyman of the Biden administration - but of leftist activists supportive of LGBT causes. The Bud Light and Target stories haven’t moved the needle on corporate responses to Pride Month (yet), but in this year of tight wallets and declining finances for many Americans, companies really seem to be stuck in pickle, threading the needle (to mix metaphors) of avoiding damaging customer loss from the middle-right while keeping the militant Left from putting a target on them.
The culture wars in America, at this stage, are not about Left vs. Right anymore, and probably haven’t been for at least a couple of years. Rather, the culture wars have morphed into identity wars where disagreement amounts to “rhetorical violence” and acting on disagreement peaceably by refusing to do business at a major retailer amounts to “literally terrorism”. This indicates a very healthy civil society, and particularly on the Left, the latent rage and violence seems to be building in all sorts of ways, helped along by a presidential administration that continues to demonize one side of the debate while not reigning in the other in its public statements.
Circle back/Called it!: Shattering the debt ceiling
With Speaker McCarthy and President Biden doing a high wire dance on debt ceiling negotiations over the last couple of weeks, they appear to have hammered out a stop deal that did what “good” compromises do: avoided a disaster while allowing the authors to claim victory and the radicals in both their parties declaring a disaster. For very different reasons, the GOP Freedom caucus and the Democratic left wing both vowed to stop the deal from ever getting out of the House, but McCarthy demonstrated more control over his party than he’s often given credit for and delivered an affirmative House vote, that has sent the debt ceiling deal to the Senate, which should handily pass before being signed by the President.
In other words, crisis averted (for now), but both sides had to give something they didn’t want to. Republicans had to agree to some kind of increase to the debt ceiling, while Democrats had to pare back some of their more exorbitant spending plans (though conservative critics argue not nearly enough).
Circle back: Erdogan, Erdo-won
A lot can change in a month when it comes to electoral politics. A month ago, Turkey President Reccip Erdogan was in a dead heat with a united opposition. That opposition started to splinter after Erdogan managed to hold on in the first round of voting to force a runoff.
Last week’s runoff election resulted in Erdogan once again declaring victory and the Turkish lira taking a tumble in value.
The almost immediate economic reaction to Erdogan’s victory indicates that few seem to believe much will change in Turkey for the good, economically or politically. In other words, the opposition couldn’t really present an affirmative vision of the future, and voters concluded, “better the devil you know that the devil you don’t.”
Erdogan has now sat atop the power pile in Turkey for two decades. As he starts his third decade of rule, ongoing concerns over Turkey’s economic and democratic health, along with NATO-related strains on US-Turkey relations will continue to dog Erdogan and his legacy. He has dreams of reviving the Ottoman Empire, but did he bargain for reviving the “sick man of Europe”?
Circle back: The GOP field gets bigger
New, and familiar, names jumped back into the GOP primary field over the last week, with Mike Pence and Chris Christie joining the field of contenders. The field now includes one former president (Trump), one vice president (Pence), four former governors (Haley, Hutchison, DeSantis, and Christie), one Senator (Scott), and one businessman (Ramaswamy).
It's early going, but already a diverse field with a lot of depth in terms of executive experience, age, background, etc. There’s really only two main contenders here and that’s Trump and DeSantis, but given the experience of others it should make for some interesting debates.
Field notes
After Italy’s lurch to the right, election watchers in Europe are now watching a similar development in Spain. Stay tuned.
The war in Ukraine appears to be expanding the battlespace into Russia as both capital cities are getting hit by drone attacks.