Munich Security Conference, Biden Visits Poland, Israel’s Judiciary Overhaul, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, world leaders discuss global security in Munich. President Biden visits Poland. And, Israel's domestic crisis over a planned judicial overhaul continues to heat up. It's February 16th, 2023 in time for the world next week. I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins. So Bob, let's start in Europe. This weekend, world leaders will land in Germany to attend the fifty-ninth Munich Security Conference. This is Davos for National Security Nerds. The U.S. delegation was going to be headed up by Vice President, Kamala Harris and Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, and the Munich Conference has seen some really dramatic moments in the past. In 2007, Vladimir Putin gave that speech in which he declared that U.S. global leadership was creating, "A world of one master and one sovereign." And he attacked NATO expansion demanding to know, "Against whom is this directed? Are you guys the boss of me?" So this year's conference will certainly focus on Ukraine as the one year anniversary of the Russian invasion approaches. But what else should we be expecting?

MCMAHON:
Well, for one thing, Russian officials are not invited. That's a first. Last year they didn't come because the heat was getting pretty intense over what looked to be a planned invasion of Ukraine, which in fact was an invasion. But this year they're actually formally not invited. The hosts of the Munich Security Conference invited Russian opposition figures. So Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former chess master Garry Kasparov and the wife of Alexei Navalny are going to be there, or plan to be there, but no Russian officials and Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister, has been a fixture of Munich for years. But they just said, given Russia's negation of a Ukrainian state, they just couldn't abide by that nor could they abide by inviting Iranian officials given the crackdown over the ongoing but limited protests over women's rights and other rights writ large in Iran. So you have this winnowing down a little bit of what Munich has always been, which is a forum for all parties on various world fronts to come together and talk about things.

And as you said, Putin used it as a major salvo to indicate where he was going and he followed through on it. The year after his 2007 salvo, he sent troops into Georgia and there was this whole series of other instances we can point to that basically mapped out what he was saying in Munich in 2007.

So let's bring it up to this year. It is still a very big event, a very important trans-Atlantic moment. I think one of these zeitgeist moments, to use a German term, for the transatlantic alliance, and it's about... The organizers have called it an important moment to deal with what they call autocratic revisionism and they use some English play on words to try to loop audiences in. But there's going to be all sorts of sessions taking place at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel, a very nice, cozy, somewhat cramped venue in the heart of Munich where not only would will there be a number of events, but a number of opportunities for incidental hallway conversations, shall we say, because it is going to be loaded with leaders including China's foreign minister.

And one of the biggest anticipated aspects of this Carla, is the potential for a sit down by U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken and Wang Yi, Chinese top diplomat Wang Yi, and so that's going to be closely watched. You have U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris there. You typically have members of Congress and important congressional committees attending this, and you have all sorts of other leaders, German leaders obviously, but really a whole host of leaders. French President Macron I believe is going to be attending.

So as we speak Carla, things are getting very buzzy in Munich and it really is going to be a moment to see where are we going with this? Is this going to be a stiffening of global postures and actions over this war and over other things like what the conference has called this growing revisionism by authoritarian powers. And that's really framing the world as into two major camps of the rules-based international order supported by democratic governments or the autocratic camp that is gaming the order and trying to tear it down.

ROBBINS:
So I've always found it really fascinating that this takes place in Germany because the Germans are so profoundly ambivalent about their national security leadership role. We've been trying to jolly them into spending more money and jolly them into taking more responsibility. Olaf Scholz is going to be there as well and has been dragged into, although he's made more of a commitment than Angela Merkel ever did on spending money. So there's a talk that they may roll out the first German national security strategy. Do you think that's going to happen?

MCMAHON:
That would be a very important and interesting gesture, Carla. I think there's an even chance that it will, because of, let's use another German word Zeitenwende. This is a big turning point for German foreign policy. Scholz, while still being a cautious individual as chancellor, certainly more cautious than his own foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, who's been very much more outspoken about the need to support vigorously Ukraine and its defense. Still in all, I think there has been sea change to use a hackneyed English slang.

ROBBINS:
How do you say that in German?

MCMAHON:
In German, yes. Yeah, we can turn this into a little German phrase session, Carla, or have a little phrase book on our show notes page. But I would suggest readers take a look at the Foreign Affairs piece penned by Olaf Scholz about what the Zeitenwende means. But Germany is seemingly really stepping up in terms of what it's willing to do to support Ukraine. There's been, as we discussed previously, the Leopard tanks provisioned to Ukraine is going to happen, as well as other meaningful armaments. As well as Germany's own national security spending, which they've now committed more strongly to spending the 2 percent of GDP on defense, which has been a NATO requirement for years that Germany has not measured up to. So I think all of that indicates that this would be a ripe moment for such a release of that strategy. So let's keep our eyes peeled on that as well as on many other things, Carla.

ROBBINS:
So as you said, Wang Yi's going to be there. Tony Blinken is going to be there. Tony Blinken didn't go to China because of the balloon incident. Another question that we obviously don't know the answer to, but do you expect them to perhaps find a cozy spot and have the talks or begin the talks that they didn't have because of the balloon incident?

MCMAHON:
That seems to be what is intended by both sides, I might add. And I think there's a desire to really dial this down even while balloon fever continues to build at least domestically in the U.S. And I should say that China has had its own response to balloon what they see as an overreaction by the U.S. We'll talk a lot more about balloon a little bit later in the podcast, but I think there are many other issues that the U.S. and China need to and must discuss as we talked about in our setup podcast a couple of weeks ago, and that includes Taiwan. And so it's really dialing things down but also establishing fruitful context between the two countries that have been going speedily in the opposite direction.

ROBBINS:
And that's probably what makes conferences like this not just an opportunity for Putin to rail and to show us where he's going as well, but there are also these opportunities when things get really intense for... We're not saying that, "We're going to restore the Blinken visit, we're still really peeved, but oh my God, look we're in the same place." 

MCMAHON:
Exactly.

ROBBINS:
"That's a good time for us to sit down and talk."

MCMAHON:
And the Munich organizers would love nothing better than to have that signal come out of this because they do want to see this as a place for dialogue. We should also note, a few years after the famous Putin speech, Russia and the U.S. announced at the Munich Conference, a New START Treaty was going to be signed by the two sides to further reduce nuclear armaments, which is very important. That treaty is looking... Things are looking kind of tenuous on the nuclear disarmament front right now. However, there has been space opened up at places like Munich for that. And so again, it's another reason why we talk about this conference every year on the podcast and another reason why us wonks are going to be looking at it over the weekend to see what what's emerging from the Bayerischer Hof.

ROBBINS:
I love the way you say that.

MCMAHON:
It's a nice hotel too, I don't know if you've ever been there. It was a lot of fun to go to events there when I used to live in Munich, but I digress. Carla, I'd like to stay in Europe though.

ROBBINS:
Me too. I want to stay in Europe. Yes.

MCMAHON:
Let's go a little bit east though, because not only will there be a high level U.S. delegation in Munich, but the President of the United States Joe Biden is going to be going to Poland on Monday, which is celebrated as President's Day in the United States. He's going to meet with the Polish President Andrzej Duda and obviously discussing U.S.-Polish cooperation, but really teeing up questions of the NATO alliance and its support for Ukraine.

Poland is a frontline country in all sorts of ways, including accepting the highest number of refugees to date. I believe that's still the case and providing, provisioning, supporting, sheltering them and so forth. And so I'm wondering though why you think President Biden has chosen Poland to be the venue to deliver such remarks.

ROBBINS:
So this is going to be a very quick trip and it is commemorating a very grim anniversary, one year anniversary here of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And this is a recognition of the fact that the Poles are the fiercest, other than the Balts, they're fiercely committed to this fight against Russia. And they have done something which they haven't done for any other refugees. 10 million of them passed through Poland and about a million and a half of them have stayed and they're not treating them like second class citizens. They're doing a pretty extraordinary job here. And I'd like to note here, that for a country that was fast becoming an outcast in Europe for its authoritarian politics, which have not gone away, they're packing the court, suppressing the media. Ukraine has done a lot to restore Poland into the West's good graces, they are about as dowdy an ally as the United States could ask for in this fight and that's why he's going there and I don't think we're going to hear any of the finger wagging about the other concerns while he's there.

So what's Biden going to do? He'll give a rousing speech and likely be what people in Washington like to call deliverables, probably announcement of some more economic and military aid, discussion of more efforts to squeeze Russia. And there's going to be a lot of buzz, at least those of us in the media, about whether Biden's going to use this trip to visit Ukraine. No one's saying for security reasons, but if I had to bet the White House is going to be eager to try to pull this one off, both for the psychic benefits for the Ukrainians and the good video they'll get for campaign commercials as the President gets ready to announce his reelection bid. 

The fact is, Bob, that all the other cool kids have gone. We have that wonderful meme of Boris Johnson going walking around Kiev and shaking everybody's hand, and Pelosi went and Blinken went and Austin went, and even Biden's wife made a quick drop by. And he's even been mocked by the Russians and some Republicans for not showing up so far. Unfairly, because let's face it, transporting an American President into and out of a war zone where we don't have thousands of American troops to secure the ground, is not easy and we'll certainly put a strain on Ukrainian resources. So watch this space. 

So that's going to dominate the airwaves. Unfortunately we're all going to say, "Is he going to go? Isn't he going to go?" But the real issues right now are how much more can Biden and all of NATO do to prepare Ukraine for the coming spring offensive. Already done an enormous amount. The U.S. has provided some 30 billion worth of arms since the war started, but Ukraine is still going to need a lot more money, more weapons, more ammunitions. I looked up the number. It's burning through artillery shells, just for example, just artillery shells at an incredible rate. Ukrainian troops are firing as many as 10,000 a day and that's far faster than even U.S. and European contractors can replace them. And Zelensky's latest demand, which has certainly come up and we'll see whether, if Biden doesn't go, whether Zelensky shows up in Poland, he always shows up. His latest demand is for F-16 fighters. Biden has said no, but Zelensky has been a master at getting to yes.

MCMAHON:
That is a really good framing of this, both in terms of the movement of leaders in and around Poland as well as what's at stake for Ukraine. And you're right, I think one of the big questions of the moment is, are we going to see a ramped up effort on the scale of something we haven't seen for decades, in terms of armaments and armaments that are going to protect Ukraine? Are we going to have an "Ich bin ein Berliner" moment by President Biden in his speech in Poland. Sorry to use German again or what as what some had said was flawed German by President Kennedy back in the day.

But, it's again a historic moment. And we should note that President Trump made a much ballyhooed trip to Poland as well. Trump who's a fan of Vladimir Putin as we all know, but still in all saw the importance of Poland and its role. And the Poles, throughout their somewhat decline as you mentioned into illiberal practices, continued to maintain a strong front against Russia. Unlike Hungary where the leader there, Orban, has been still somewhat cozy with Russian leaders. The Poles are not, and so this is a frontline in many ways, and as a NATO state, really significant. I don't think my betting would be that we don't see Biden go beyond the Polish border, but we still see significant gesture from him there.

ROBBINS:
That Trump visit, he gave a very rousing speech. It was really much a blood and soil speech. It was not a freedom speech.

MCMAHON:
That's a good point.

ROBBINS:
And that was very disturbing. There was no mention of human rights. It was a very disturbing speech at a period of time when the world was very concerned about the rising authoritarianism in Poland and when the EU was tearing its hair out about Poland. And as I recall, and I could be wrong about this, I recall, I think during the press conference, it was one of the many times that Trump went out of his way to say he didn't believe the intelligence community on anything. It was quite an exciting trip to Poland. Maybe Biden will have an exciting trip, I hope a more positive one than that one was.

MCMAHON:
And that continues to reverberate in some chambers of the Republican party in terms of how it charts its foreign policy. There's much more of a vigorous support for staying tough against China than against Russia, seemingly from the new class of Republicans have come into the House in particular. But there's also, I must say there are many Republicans who are staunchly in favor of supporting Ukraine and keeping support at a high level and holding Biden up to his own commitments there. On so many levels, it's going to be a very interesting trip.

ROBBINS:
It is interesting though because while I think that Biden has done an extraordinary job of holding the alliance together because not everyone is Poland or the Balts, and yes, Scholz has agreed to the Leopards, but he's had to drag a lot of other countries in NATO, including Germany ahead, step by step on this. There are fundamental disagreements about strategy that are just bubbling beneath the surface, including between the United States and NATO. Questions, not just over what arms Ukraine needs, but the pace it should get them. Whether to flood the zone and hope to win fast as the Brits are pushing or hold things in reserve for what could be a very drawn out slog, which is what the Pentagon thinks. Whether Zelensky should keep pushing to try to retake Crimea, which the Pentagon doesn't think is such a great idea. They don't think they're going to be able to do it.

There are lots of fundamental strategy questions. Ultimately the Ukrainians are going to have to make the decisions themselves, but we also control the spigot of what they can fight with. And if you look at the coverage, it seems every day, and this just shows you, I'm going to use a hackneyed phrase, the fog of war. One day everybody's touting that the Russians are going to be able to hold out because they've got 300,000 there, they're going to send another a hundred thousand in. They're just having extraordinary staying power because they just have so many people and they don't care how many die. And then the next day you have a story that says, "Look at all the Russians who are dying. They don't know how to fight." 

And so it's very hard to predict what's happening, but there are beneath the surface, I don't think it's going to crack the alliance. I don't think it's going to crack American commitment to Zelensky, but they're pretty fundamental disagreements about how this spring offensive should be fought.

MCMAHON:
And it's going to be that much more difficult to make decisions as what appears to be another return to a bloody campaign and where you're going to see the Russians doubling down on attacks on so-called soft targets and things across Ukraine. And it's going to be really tough because I think they are going to show they're in this for the long run and they continue to doubt that the U.S. and the West are going to maintain that support.

Carla, I'm going to move across to another theater of rising passions and that is Israel. Last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came back into power at the end of the year and at the time put together a coalition that marks Israel's most right wing government ever. He has since moved to reduce the power of Israel's high courts and for weeks now, tens of thousands of Israelis have been protesting outside the Knesset against judiciary changes that are proposed. So why has this plan triggered such strong public ire in Israel?

ROBBINS:
So the nearly perennial Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is pushing forward a series of so-called reforms that would gut the judicial system and do away with any checks and balances on the power of the ruling party and the prime minister because that's what they have. They basically know they've got a ruling party, they've got a prime minister, and the only thing that counterbalances it there, is the courts. So that's why they're worried. People believe in checks and balances, the way we do. 

Their proposed changes would allow a simple majority in parliament, the Knesset, to override Supreme Court rulings, including those that strike down laws that it finds inconsistent with what Israel calls its basic laws, which is its quasi constitution. The changes would also reduce judicial oversight of administrative decisions including ministerial appointments. And as far as everyone can tell, that's aimed directly... This is really like a particular peanut vendor thing, the court's decision to bar the leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party from serving as interior and health minister due to his recent conviction on tax fraud.

And it should be noted that BiBi himself is on trial right now on corruption charges and if convicted would likely appeal to that same supreme court that he is trying to discipline to a simple majority of the Knesset. Now, there are fundamental ideological disagreements with the court. They call it an activist court. Sounds like the way we talk here, but we have a system that's really, fundamentally built on checks and balances. And if they rip this away, I truly believe that Israeli democracy and many other people believe that Israeli democracy, is at threat. More than a hundred thousand people protested, which is a large number in Israel in front of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, on Monday chanting "Disgrace." and "Israel is not a dictatorship."

Things have gotten so fraught there that Israel's President Herzog, and this position is symbolic, but it has a huge amount of moral authority, warned that the country is, and I'm going to read the quote, "On the brink of a social and constitutional collapse," and he called on BiBi and his government to halt the legislation and begin talks with the opposition and the head of Supreme Court on judicial reforms. Bibi's been typically in everybody's face, he accused the opposition of derailing the country into anarchy. But I think Herzog's comments and the size of this last protest seem to have shaken people just a little bit in Bibi's camp. And on Wednesday, they announced they were postponing the first votes, it takes three rounds to approve these changes, until next week, but they're still insisting they're not backing down or interested in any form of review or compromise.

MCMAHON:
And we should also note that Israel does not have a constitution, unlike a number of other countries, other major democracies. And so a move such as this is unprecedented, but it's not necessarily counter to any constitution, which is one of the things that's I think empowering some of those behind it. But I just can't stop coming back to the fact that Israel has tried so many times in recent years to form coalitions of many different mixtures, including the first ever involved Arab politicians, Carla. Couldn't make it work. And what happened at the end of last year was this move to the right in which Prime Minister Netanyahu did something that hadn't been seen before. He pulled in these far right parties that had come out with very injurious language and some would say racist language about country's minorities and so forth and is trying to make it work. And it begs the question, has the country moved to the right in a way that would support such a move? Or are we seeing something where there's such divisions that Israel is going to be going into a real crisis?

ROBBINS:
Well, I think the polling shows that people don't support, the majority of Israelis don't support these reforms that... I can't even use the word reform, it sticks in my throat. These changes that would, I believe, gut checks and balances and I believe pose a fundamental threat to Israeli democracy. There are a lot of reasons why we back Israel so strongly to the tune of billions of dollars a year and one which I think is really legitimate for all of the disagreements we've had with them over settlements and many, many things, and I believe personally, just horrifying treatment mistreatment of the Palestinians. But it is, for all of those flaws, a democracy in a region without democracies and this is a huge threat to it. I don't believe that the Israeli public, which also doesn't support the peace process, they don't want these changes. Now that said, there is a strong hard right in Israel that has long resented the courts and the court's efforts to place limits on settlement activities.

And the ultra-Orthodox, which now has a very, very strong voice in this coalition, has been repeatedly angered at court decisions, opposing exemptions on conscriptions for the ultra-Orthodox, having separate buses for women. And the court has said time and again, this is not who we are, but there are also people including Bibi's, former attorney general who suggest he's trying to hijack the Supreme Court for his own interest because of this corruption thing. His former attorney general, Mandelblit, told this Israeli TV Channel 12, that he's backing these changes, changes which he opposed before when they proposed because, "He wants to bring about a situation in which his trial does not come to an end in a proper manner." So I don't think the Israeli public, including a lot of people who used to be in Bibi's camp, agree with these changes.

MCMAHON:
So we watch very carefully what plays out next week or continues to play out, including possibility next week of parliament taking some action.

ROBBINS:
And the other thing, this is creating a huge amount of anxiety among American Jewish supporters of Israel. American presidents rarely publicly criticize Israel, and Biden's been a huge supporter of Israel over the years, and he gave a brief statement to the Times in which he said that, "the genius of American democracy and Israeli democracy is that they're both built on strong institutions on checks and balances and on an independent judiciary." Intervening inside of Israeli politics is, for an American president, is an extraordinary thing to do. And even though it's a very measured tone, and Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, who is a hugely fierce supporter of Israel, and has said nothing about these proposed reforms once again, a term that I shiver when I use. He hasn't said anything about this, but he's supposed to lead a congressional delegation, a delegation of Senate Democrats to Israel next week. So we should watch that space as well. Is Chuck going there to give an unalloyed support to Bibi or is he going there to warn him that Israel is in really serious danger of losing support?

MCMAHON:
All right, so yet another place on the world where we need to watch the heat map getting hotter.

ROBBINS:
So Bob, it's time to pivot and discuss our audience Figure of the Week, which listeners can vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at cfr_org's Instagram story. And this week, Bob, our audience selected "U.S. jets down four objects in eight days." So Bob, as Scully and Mulder would ask, "Is the truth out there?"

MCMAHON:
I'm glad you started with that kind of question, Carla, because I would say, let me note, two things are off the bat. There is no alien invasion taking place-

ROBBINS:
That you know of.

MCMAHON:
That I know of-

ROBBINS:
Or that you'll admit to.

MCMAHON:
And that certainly that I will admit to. And Roswell has not seen any uptick in activity either, Roswell, New Mexico, but also what appears to be a growing sense is that there is not a Chinese flooding of the American skies with spy apparatus. The initial balloon frenzy was kicked off by a Chinese vehicle, and we should say the Chinese have called it a weather balloon that was blown off course. U.S. officials would say, no way, this is a spy balloon. But U.S. officials have been quoted increasingly, including in an interesting Washington Post report this week, that it's very possible that the spy balloon was set off to cover parts of the Pacific and take a look at U.S. naval installations and other things in a different part of the Pacific, and then did, in fact, get inadvertently altered by weather patterns, by what were sharp weather patterns that coincided with this mission and that found itself over continental U.S.

And then looking a gift horse in the mouth, the Chinese decided, "Hey, let's check out what's going on in Montana and NORAD." And that's where things got unraveled further, the U.S. had to shoot this down at that point, according to both domestic demands and its concern over what was there. So it did over coastal area, nobody was injured. The Chinese are insisting that the shot down vehicle be returned. I'm not sure if that's going to happen anytime soon.

ROBBINS:
I don't think so.

MCMAHON:
And so we have this balloon incident, as many have pointed out, many experts on U.S.- China relations, both sides spy on each other all the time in many different ways. This one was just seen as so brazen and so clumsy on the Chinese side. And what was the biggest concern was that both sides showed they have a very crummy way of dealing with crisis management, which is to say they don't have a good mechanism. Apparently Secretary of Defense Austin had tried to call the hotline to China to say they were shooting this down and nobody answered on the Chinese side. There was public messaging going on in both sides. There was the cancellation of the very important touted Blinken visit because of this incident. And then since then we had the phenomenon of smaller unidentified objects being shot down over Canada and continental U.S., and they still don't know what they are.

In fact, I'll quote Defense Secretary Austin as saying that "No one has claimed ownership of the three small balloon-like objects that were shot down over North America," and that they were cited because there was recent adjustments on U.S. radars that allowed them to analyze the skies differently and take in slower moving objects like a balloon, that might not have been taken in previously. Again, the big picture here is can the U.S. and China move beyond this and everybody acknowledge that there is spying going on, but that there are rules of the game that both sides should adhere to.

ROBBINS:
So I want to go back to whether the truth is out there. No, actually it turns out it's really crowded up there. You know the National Weather Service said that each year that they alone released 60,000 high flying balloons and they go much, much further up than any of these four objects and apparently don't pose any threat to civilian aircraft. But that's a lot of them.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, if anything, we've learned a lot more about balloons and balloon science than we ever thought we knew, Carla.

ROBBINS:
But there's also something else here, which is the political phenomenon of this, which is we tend to get crazy tunes when these things happen. And as you said, countries spy and there is some reporting out there. The Washington Post, I think, reported this yesterday that Biden may give a speech on Balloon Gate. Has anyone called Balloon Gate yet?

MCMAHON:
You were the first.

ROBBINS:
Oh my God, I'm sorry. I will have to pay for that sin. And one hopes if he does that, that he's going to do it to cool everybody down, to let a little air out of the... No, sorry.

MCMAHON:
You couldn't resist.

ROBBINS:
I couldn't resist that one because let's face it, countries spy, and this does show, as you said, the potential for crises to escalate. But for God's sake, they were spying and we had a lot of potential ways in which we can get into a conflict with the Chinese, and spy balloon isn't one that I personally take particularly seriously, but I think this shows more than anything else exactly how fraught the relationship is. And I do find that very scary, and the other thing of course is that Congress is pushing it and we've had these outraged resolutions and I hope that Biden chills everybody out.

MCMAHON:
He has in a lot of ways carried on Trump administration policies towards China in terms of tariffs and stiff posturing and so forth, while at the same time trying to indicate that he's willing to create some sort of what they call guardrails for the relationship and try to dial down the temperature. But this didn't help, back to what we said about the Munich conference, if there's a corridor conversation or something a little bit longer between Secretary of State Blinken and leading Chinese diplomat Wang Yi, then that I think is to the positive.

But there are a number of people in the US national security establishments, certainly Republicans in Congress and some Democrats who say China is the number one security challenge for the United States. And even if we don't count the balloon, even before that incident even happened, if this was the case. We should note, our colleague Josh Kurlantzick has a new book out talking about all the ways China is trying to influence publics around the world, including in the U.S., including in things like U.S. local elections even. So there is a Chinese strategic approach to trying to influence the world that is worth looking and worth studying and worth being concerned about. But by the same token, this kind of balloon frenzy I don't think is helpful.

ROBBINS:
And I do think this whole question about why they would, if they intentionally sent a balloon over continental U.S. just before Tony Blinken was taking off to go to China, that looks more like a mess up than anything else. And yes, the Chinese are malign and have their efforts fare from TikTok to everything else that they're trying to do out there, all the influence in Africa and Latin America and all of that, but maybe they are not as well organized as we think they are.

MCMAHON:
Well, on that note, that wraps up our look at The World Next Week. Here are some other stories to keep an eye on. World Pride 2023 takes place in Sydney, Australia. African Union Summit is convened in Ethiopia. And, Bangladesh holds its presidential election.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a review while you're at it. We appreciate the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode, as well as the transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on cfr.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, the Director of podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Sinet Adous for her research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Miguel Herrero and licensed under Creative Commons. This is Carla Robbins saying so long and try to keep those balloons out of the upper atmosphere.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye and be careful out there.