This brief starts with a short announcement. As you may have noticed the brief has been away for a few weeks now. This is due to some internal circumstances, and we have had to make some changes. From now on the brief will be bi-weekly as opposed to weekly and as a result will be slightly longer.
This brief is a special one as we have a few weeks of news to cover. A word to sum up the news of November is conflict. Conflict is occurring in Europe and looming in SE Asia.
Courtesy of (left to right) ABC News, The Independent and CNBC
Instability is popping up in cities across Europe as talks of lockdowns begin amongst new Covid fears.
Riots have been particularly troublesome in Holland, Austria, Switzerland, and Croatia, where the protestors are angry with the restrictions on freedom imposed by lockdown measures. The widespread nature of these protests has been linked to the increasing online presence of anti-establishment movements, a trend now synonymous with conversations on protesting.
Poland and Belarus have been at loggerheads after an increase in numbers of people attempting to cross the border into Belarus’ neighbours.
Courtesy of Euractiv
The influx of immigration to these EU countries has been blamed by the EU on Belarus’ autocratic president, Lukashenko. The EU say Lukashenko is inviting migration (mainly from the Middle East) to apply pressure on the EU as retaliation against their placing sanctions on Belarus. They placed sanctions in 2020 due to Lukashenko’s violent suppression of protests.
Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission stated “This is a hybrid attack. Not a migration crisis” summarizing the EU’s stance that Lukashenko is weaponizing immigration against the EU.
Lukashenko denies this charge, telling a BBC journalist “show me where I said ‘come to our country.’” He instead blames the EU’s sanctions for taking away funding for refugees and border services.
Around 13 have died in this standoff so far with the Poland-Belarus border starting to look eerily like the frontline of Ukraine’s conflict with Russian separatists. This is perhaps not a coincidence, some suspect that the Poland-Belarus dispute, like the Ukraine conflict, is an attempt by Russia and its allies to pressure and antagonize Europe. This suspicion is supported by Russia’s bolstering of military presence on its Ukrainian, Polish, Belarusian and Lithuanian borders.
China’s government airs increasingly explicit intention of seizing Taiwan either through political or military means. XI Jinping stated recently that China “will not rule out the use of force” in taking Taiwan.
A Chinese propaganda poster from 1967. Courtesy of The Times
Taiwan is a strong ally with the west and has been a beacon of democracy in the Chinese speaking world. It has been said for a while now that Taiwan presents the most realistic threat of a China-USA conflict.
Chinese threats towards Taiwan are nothing new, this newest batch however comes at a time when China’s military might has begun to match the USA’s. Supporters of Taiwan's sovereignty fear that the USA and its allies would be much more hesitant to join a conflict with China than they were in the 50s concerning South Korea.
Anyway, now for some news not related to a modern-day cold war.
Russia launched space-born missile tests... Never mind.
Unfortunately, the “new Cold War” has been somewhat of a theme in the last few weeks. Russia tested a satellite targeting missile system last week that was seen as endangering ISS astronauts.
Hopefully the theme for the next few weeks is “calming down”. I have my doubts.
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