Proliferation of ‘middle powers’ will shape 21st-century geopolitical order: WEF panel

Special Proliferation of ‘middle powers’ will shape 21st-century geopolitical order: WEF panel
Founder and Chair of the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia Dino Patti Djalal. (Screengrab/YouTube)
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Updated 18 January 2024
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Proliferation of ‘middle powers’ will shape 21st-century geopolitical order: WEF panel

Proliferation of ‘middle powers’ will shape 21st-century geopolitical order: WEF panel
  • Dino Patti Djalal said that the end of the Cold War had led to a ‘proliferation’ of so-called middle-power countries in both the Global South and the Global North
  • ‘Europe must grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems’: Austrian minister

LONDON: A proliferation of “middle powers” will provide the driving force in shaping the 21st-century geopolitical order, according to a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Dino Patti Djalal, founder and chair of the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia, said the end of the Cold War had led to a “proliferation” of so-called middle-power countries in both the Global South and the Global North.

“These countries have the ambition, the resources and the size to play a great role in the global order, and are building relations among one another to achieve this,” he told attendees.

“Furthermore, you’re seeing their significant influence in defining and shaping regional architecture.

“Take Southeast Asia — do you think it’s shaped by the US? No, it’s shaped by the likes of ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and the East Asia Summit.”

Exemplifying the powers in this region, Djalal pointed to Indonesia and Vietnam, but noted the importance of cross-over between middle powers in spheres of influence.

“Australia and India … are two middle powers from the Global South but also from the West,” he said.

“They’re making significant strides in elevating the relationship they have between one another, and I think we can expect to see this trend continuing.”

While the panel could not reach consensus on what a middle power is, they agreed that they exist on a spectrum and lack military capacity to touch any point on the globe.

Among those constituting this proliferating class are Austria, Australia, Canada, South Korea and Japan in what typically constitutes the Global North, with Global South middle powers including Argentina, Brazil, India and Indonesia.

Ethiopian Foreign Minister Demeke Mekonnen Hassen concurred with Djalal over the importance of new regional and international organizations.

Together with Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Ethiopia became one of the new countries acceding the BRICS economic alliance. Hassen told the panel that it offered Ethiopia an opportunity to build new partnerships.

“From our point of view, BRICS can help us increase the number of effective, multilateral partnerships we have,” he said.

“Africa is a rising continent with a huge population and emergent economies. It’s a dynamic set of markets but, as is the case globally, Africa has its own set of challenges, and it needs to be ready to compete in this landscape.”

In commenting on its accession to BRICS, Hassen appeared to indicate that Ethiopia had grown disenchanted by the opportunities afforded through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Karoline Edtstadler, Austria’s federal minister for the EU, appeared cognisant that Western powers had alienated elements of the Global South.

“Austria sees itself as a bridge-builder, and it’s important that we come together and negotiate rather than take the moral high ground and give countries the middle finger,” she said.

“Europe must grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, and rather recognize that the world’s problems are Europe’s problems too. We must show strength through our capacity to care for others.”

Graham Allison, Douglas Dillon professor of government at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, shared the view that the post-Cold War era had led to a diffusion of power.

Noting the declining US share of global gross domestic product from around 50 percent at the end of the Second World War to 25 percent at the end of the Cold War, it now hovers at about a seventh of total GDP and, he said, comparable dips are true for other metrics of power.

“The world isn’t unipolar nor bipolar,” he added. “Multipolar has become the phrase, but it’s more complicated than this. What’s true is the desire for something beyond the first two.”

For Djalal, who described multilateralism as being in “bad shape,” upset by the war in Ukraine and geopolitical strife elsewhere, the establishment of different relations through different organizations such as BRICS offers a path beyond fragmentation.

“These new organizations aren’t fragmenting the world, they’re expanding the content, and the more middle powers you have that aren’t attached to big powers, the better,” he said.


Xi and Lula call for peace in Ukraine, ceasefire in Gaza

Xi and Lula call for peace in Ukraine, ceasefire in Gaza
Updated 29 sec ago
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Xi and Lula call for peace in Ukraine, ceasefire in Gaza

Xi and Lula call for peace in Ukraine, ceasefire in Gaza
  • China-Brazil roadmap for mediating peace has been endorsed by Russia — an ally of China — but rejected by Ukraine and its Western backers
  • Xi’s state visit to Brasilia showcased closer relations between the biggest economies in Asia and Latin America

BRASILIA: Chinese leader Xi Jinping urged “more voices” to end the Ukraine war and a ceasefire in Gaza, as he conducted a state visit to Brazil’s capital, Chinese state media said.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva echoed those points as he met with Xi in a red-carpet welcome in Brasilia, and stressed a joint roadmap for peace in Ukraine that they are proposing.
“In a world plagued by armed conflicts and political strife, China and Brazil put peace, diplomacy and dialogue first,” Lula said.
Xi said he wanted to see “more voices committed to peace to pave the way for a political solution to the Ukraine crisis,” the Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
He also called for “a ceasefire and an end to the war at an early date” in Gaza, the agency said.
On Ukraine, the China-Brazil roadmap for mediating peace has been endorsed by Russia — which is China’s ally — but rejected by Kyiv and its Western backers.
The Chinese president’s appeal for a halt to fighting in Gaza — where Israel is pressing an offensive against Hamas — echoed one he and the other G20 leaders made during a summit held Monday and Tuesday in Rio.
That summit’s joint statement called for a “comprehensive” ceasefire in both Gaza and Lebanon, where Israel is also waging an offensive against the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.
On Wednesday, the UN Security Council held a vote on a resolution calling for “an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza, but it was vetoed by Israel’s ally the United States.

Shrinking US influence
Xi’s state visit to Brasilia showcased closer relations between the biggest economies in Asia and Latin America, which analysts said also reflected shrinking US influence.
The two leaders signed 35 cooperation accords on areas including agriculture, trade, technology and environmental protection.
Xi said China-Brazil relations “are at their best in history” and the two countries are now “reliable friends,” according to Xinhua.
Lula said he believed the growing Brazil-China ties “will exceed all expectations and pave the way for a new phase of bilateral relations.”
He added that he looked forward to welcoming Xi to Brazil again next July for a BRICS summit.
The Chinese leader figured prominently at the G20 summit, and at an APEC one held last week in Peru — in contrast with outgoing US President Joe Biden, who cut a spectral figure.
Fellow leaders looked past Biden, politically, to the coming US presidency of Donald Trump, which starts January 20.
“Xi Jinping is clearly looking to fill the vacuum that will come following the election of Trump, who does not value multilateralism,” Oliver Stuenkel, an international relations expert at Brazil’s Getulio Vargas Foundation think tank, told AFP.

Brazil's balancing act

China is Brazil’s biggest trading partner, with two-way commerce exceeding $160 billion last year.
The South American agricultural power sends mainly soybeans and other primary commodities to China, while the Asian giant sells Brazil semiconductors, telephones, vehicles and medicines.
Since returning to power in early 2023, Lula has sought to balance efforts to improve ties with both China and the United States.
A visit to Beijing this year by Vice President Geraldo Alckmin was seen as paving the way for Brazil to potentially join China’s Belt and Road Initiative to stimulate trade — a central pillar of Xi’s bid to expand China’s clout overseas.
But there was no announcement in that direction during Xi’s visit. Instead both leaders spoke of finding “synergies” between that Chinese program and Brazil’s own infrastructure development program.
South American nations that have signed up to Beijing’s initiative include Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela.
One of the accords signed Wednesday was on Brazil opening its market to a Chinese satellite company, SpaceSail, that competes with Starlink, founded and run by South African-born US billionaire Elon Musk, which already covers remote Brazilian regions.
Musk has a turbulent history with Brazil, whose courts forced his social media platform X to comply with national laws against disinformation.
 


Zelensky says Crimea can only be restored to Ukraine through diplomacy

Zelensky says Crimea can only be restored to Ukraine through diplomacy
Updated 16 min 8 sec ago
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Zelensky says Crimea can only be restored to Ukraine through diplomacy

Zelensky says Crimea can only be restored to Ukraine through diplomacy
  • Zelensky tells Fox News his country could not afford to lose the number of lives that would be required to retake Crimea through military means
  • He has proposed a peace formula and a “victory plan” underpinned by the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine

KYIV: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged the Crimea peninsula, seized by Russia in 2014, would have to be restored to Ukrainian sovereignty through diplomacy.
Zelensky, interviewed by Fox News on a train in Ukraine and broadcast on Wednesday, said his country could not afford to lose the number of lives that would be required to retake Crimea through military means.
He again rejected any notion of ceding any territory already occupied by Moscow’s forces, saying Ukraine “cannot legally acknowledge any occupied territory of Ukraine as Russian.”
“I was already mentioning that we are ready to bring Crimea back diplomatically,” Zelensky told Fox News through an interpreter.
“We cannot spend dozens of thousands of our people so that they perish for the sake of Crimea coming back ... and still it’s not a fact that we can bring it back with the arms in our hands. We understand that Crimea can be brought back diplomatically.”

Russia seized and annexed Crimea in 2014 after a popular uprising prompted a Russia-friendly president to flee the country and Russian proxies seized swathes of territory in Ukraine’s east.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, its troops have captured about one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory and proclaimed the annexation of four provinces, though Moscow does not fully control any of them.
Zelensky has proposed a peace formula and a “victory plan” underpinned by the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. But his recent calls have stressed security guarantees for his country and an invitation to join NATO, a notion rejected out of hand by Moscow.


India’s Modi offers aid to Caribbean nations while meeting leaders in Guyana

India’s Modi offers aid to Caribbean nations while meeting leaders in Guyana
Updated 21 November 2024
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India’s Modi offers aid to Caribbean nations while meeting leaders in Guyana

India’s Modi offers aid to Caribbean nations while meeting leaders in Guyana
  • Modi’s visit marks the first time an Indian prime minister has come to Guyana since Indira Ghandi in 1968

GEORGETOWN, Guyana: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Wednesday he would share technology for combatting seaweed infestation with Caribbean nations, as he visited Guyana in the first such visit by an Indian leader in more than 50 years.
Guyana, a South American nation with many citizens of Indian origin, serves as headquarters for the 15-member Caribbean trade bloc known as Caricom, and Modi met with regional leaders Wednesday as part of the India-Caricom summit. They last met in 2019.
Modi arrived with promises to help the region in areas including health, energy and agriculture. He also announced more than 1,000 scholarships over the next five years for trade bloc nations, mobile hospitals for rural areas and drug-testing laboratories as well as river and sea ferries for marine transport.
But Caribbean leaders reserved their loudest applause when Modi announced that India had made tremendous progress in converting large quantities of sargassum into fertilizer and other economic uses as he urged the region to take advantage of his offer.
“We are willing to share this with all the countries,” he said, calling the seaweed invasion on beaches in the tourism-dependent region “a very big problem.”
Modi also was thinking of home. Noting Guyana’s growing importance as an oil-producing nation after vast quantities of oil and gas were discovered off its coast in 2015, he said: “Guyana will play an important role in India’s energy security.”
He added that his government also is willing to fully equip at least one government building in each of the trade bloc nations with a solar power system.
Speaking after meeting with Guyanese President Irfaan Ali, the country’s first Muslim leader, Modi promised to help Guyana and the region improve agriculture production, saying food security is important to island nations.
Trade between India and Guyana has strengthened in recent years, with India providing Guyana lines of credit for military passenger planes and funding to buy a fast river ferry that services far-flung jungle areas close to neighboring Venezuela.
Modi also noted that indentured laborers from India were brought to Guyana during the British colonial era and now make a significant contribution to the country. Nearly 40 percent of the population is East Indian.
Modi’s visit marks the first time an Indian prime minister has come to Guyana since Indira Ghandi in 1968.


US gathers allies to talk AI safety as Trump’s vow to undo Biden’s AI policy overshadows their work

US gathers allies to talk AI safety as Trump’s vow to undo Biden’s AI policy overshadows their work
Updated 21 November 2024
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US gathers allies to talk AI safety as Trump’s vow to undo Biden’s AI policy overshadows their work

US gathers allies to talk AI safety as Trump’s vow to undo Biden’s AI policy overshadows their work
  • Trump believes Biden’s executive order on AI safety "hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology”
  • US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo says AI safety is good for innovation, and tech industry groups are mostly pleased with the approach

SAN FRANCISCO, California: President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to repeal President Joe Biden’s signature artificial intelligence policy when he returns to the White House for a second term.
What that actually means for the future of AI technology remains to be seen. Among those who could use some clarity are the government scientists and AI experts from multiple countries gathering in San Francisco this week to deliberate on AI safety measures.
Hosted by the Biden administration, officials from a number of US allies — among them Australia, Canada, Japan, Kenya, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the 27-nation European Union — began meeting Wednesday in the California city that’s a commercial hub for AI development.
Their agenda addresses topics such as how to better detect and combat a flood of AI-generated deepfakes fueling fraud, harmful impersonation and sexual abuse.
It’s the first such meeting since world leaders agreed at an AI summit in South Korea in May to build a network of publicly backed safety institutes to advance research and testing of the technology.
“We have a choice,” said US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to the crowd of officials, academics and private-sector attendees on Wednesday. “We are the ones developing this technology. You are the ones developing this technology. We can decide what it looks like.”
Like other speakers, Raimondo addressed the opportunities and risks of AI — including “the possibility of human extinction” and asked why would we allow that?

US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo speaks at the convening of the International Network of AI Safety Institutes at the Golden Gate Club at the Presidio in San Francisco on Nov. 20, 2024. (AP)

“Why would we choose to allow AI to replace us? Why would we choose to allow the deployment of AI that will cause widespread unemployment and societal disruption that goes along with it? Why would we compromise our global security?” she said. “We shouldn’t. In fact, I would argue we have an obligation to keep our eyes at every step wide open to those risks and prevent them from happening. And let’s not let our ambition blind us and allow us to sleepwalk into our own undoing.”
Hong Yuen Poon, deputy secretary of Singapore’s Ministry of Digital Development and Information, said that a “helping-one-another mindset is important” between countries when it comes to AI safety, including with “developing countries which may not have the full resources” to study it.
Biden signed a sweeping AI executive order last year and this year formed the new AI Safety Institute at the National Institute for Standards and Technology, which is part of the Commerce Department.
Trump promised in his presidential campaign platform to “repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.”
But he hasn’t made clear what about the order he dislikes or what he’d do about the AI Safety Institute. Trump’s transition team didn’t respond to emails this week seeking comment.
Addressing concerns about slowing down innovation, Raimondo said she wanted to make it clear that the US AI Safety Institute is not a regulator and also “not in the business of stifling innovation.”
“But here’s the thing. Safety is good for innovation. Safety breeds trust. Trust speeds adoption. Adoption leads to more innovation,” she said.
Tech industry groups — backed by companies including Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft — are mostly pleased with the AI safety approach of Biden’s Commerce Department, which has focused on setting voluntary standards. They have pushed for Congress to preserve the new agency and codify its work into law.
Some experts expect the kind of technical work happening at an old military officers’ club at San Francisco’s Presidio National Park this week to proceed regardless of who’s in charge.
“There’s no reason to believe that we’ll be doing a 180 when it comes to the work of the AI Safety Institute,” said Heather West, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. Behind the rhetoric, she said there’s already been overlap.
Trump didn’t spend much time talking about AI during his four years as president, though in 2019 he became the first to sign an executive order about AI. It directed federal agencies to prioritize research and development in the field.
Before that, tech experts were pushing the Trump-era White House for a stronger AI strategy to match what other countries were pursuing. Trump in the waning weeks of his administration signed an executive order promoting the use of “trustworthy” AI in the federal government. Those policies carried over into the Biden administration.
All of that was before the 2022 debut of ChatGPT, which brought public fascination and worry about the possibilities of generative AI and helped spark a boom in AI-affiliated businesses. What’s also different this time is that tech mogul and Trump adviser Elon Musk has been picked to lead a government cost-cutting commission. Musk holds strong opinions about AI’s risks and grudges against some AI industry leaders, particularly ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which he has sued.
Raimondo and other officials sought to press home the idea that AI safety is not a partisan issue.
“And by the way, this room is bigger than politics. Politics is on everybody’s mind. I don’t want to talk about politics. I don’t care what political party you’re in, this is not in Republican interest or Democratic interest,” she said. “It’s frankly in no one’s interest anywhere in the world, in any political party, for AI to be dangerous, or for AI to in get the hands of malicious non-state actors that want to cause destruction and sow chaos.”
 


US Senate blocks bid to halt some Israel military sales

US Senate blocks bid to halt some Israel military sales
Updated 21 November 2024
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US Senate blocks bid to halt some Israel military sales

US Senate blocks bid to halt some Israel military sales
  • Seventy-nine of the 100 senators opposed a resolution that would have blocked sales of tank rounds to Israel, while 18 approved it and one voted present

WASHINGTON: The US Senate on Wednesday blocked legislation that would have halted the sale of some US weapons to Israel, which had been introduced out of concern about the human rights catastrophe faced by Palestinians in Gaza.
Seventy-nine of the 100 senators opposed a resolution that would have blocked sales of tank rounds to Israel, while 18 approved it and one voted present.
The Senate was to vote later on Wednesday on two other resolutions that would stop shipments of mortar rounds and a GPS guidance system for bombs.
All of the votes in favor of the measure came from the Democratic caucus, while “no” votes came from both Democrats and Republicans. The “resolutions of disapproval” were filed by Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, and co-sponsored by a handful of Democrats.
Strong bipartisan support for Israel meant the resolutions were unlikely to pass, but backers hoped significant support in the Senate would encourage Israel’s government and President Joe Biden’s administration to do more to protect civilians in Gaza.
Most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million people has been displaced and the enclave is at risk of famine, more than a year into Israel’s war against Hamas in the Palestinian enclave. Gaza health officials say more than 43,922 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive.
Sanders said the military aid to Israel violates US law barring weapons sales to human rights abusers. “We think that the United States government should obey the law. That’s number one,” he told a news conference on Tuesday ahead of the votes.
“And number two, from a moral perspective, all of us are appalled that the United States of America is complicit in the starvation and malnutrition of many, many thousands of children in Gaza,” he said.
Opponents said the resolutions were inappropriate as Israel faces threats from militant groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, and from arch-enemy Iran.
“Israel is surrounded by enemies dedicated to its annihilation,” the Senate’s Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said in a Senate speech before the votes.