This is part of Reason‘s 2025 summer travel issue. Click here to read the rest of the issue.
I crossed the U.S./Mexico border six times in a month in 2018, an economic refugee in my own way.
While the consumer price index indicates an overall U.S. inflation rate of around 85 percent since 2000, over that same period inflation in dental costs was more like 133 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
I needed some extensive and expensive dental work, and so I crossed borders seeking my own version of a better (in my case, more affordable) life, sometimes under the piercing gaze of the federales. I occasionally drove through U.S. border inspection, many dozens of miles from the border on Interstate 8, being ordered via signs to come to a stop while an agent glanced at my car without actually engaging me in any conversation or even making me turn off the vehicle.
Mexico could not have cared less about this border crossing back then; no one asked for your papers, por favor, as you strolled unimpeded from the parking lot on the U.S. side and entered Algodones from Winterhaven, California, at the Andrade border crossing. According to my Mexican dentist, nearly 13,000 tourists enter there on an average winter day. Algodones is a dental and optical retail paradise; the three blocks I walked to my dental destination were all storefronts selling those services, along with some pharmacies.
Reentering the U.S., however, required standing in a line that was always 45–60 minutes long. At the end you had to show a bored customs officer a passport and answer questions about what you had bought in Mexico. Such answers, at least from a white dude then in his late 40s, were casually believed. If you were driving a car back, you were likely to have a black-suited police officer walk a big menacing looking grey-black dog by your car as it waited in the long line to return to the land of high dental prices.
I was a day tourist in Algodones to replace a three-unit dental bridge first installed about 10 years earlier by a Los Angeles dentist. It had become uncemented about four years prior. I had paid American dentists to recement it three times, and finally it just broke and could no longer be reattached.
Anywhere near where I live in California, getting a new one made and installed would have cost around $5,000 then; I got out for $1,300 in Algodones, a fee (paid in U.S. dollars cash) that covered three visits, a deep cleaning, and a root canal in addition to making and installing the bridge.
In terms of bedside manner and the general attitude toward patient-doctor relations, I had an experience unlike any I’d had with an American dentist. I was treated in Mexico as a customer, not a ward. If they suggested work more elaborate or pricey than I felt like spending—and they did—the conversation ended with my demurral.
I’ve had American dentists straight up refuse to do any ameliorative work short of the more thorough and expensive suggestion they repeated to me incessantly to try to break down my resistance while I was sitting prone in their chair. Now, my desires don’t match those of all American patients, who according to some trend watchers in dentistry want more preventative, holistic, and membership-based work. I’m usually looking to solve an immediate issue that I physically perceive as a problem, and to do it with as little rigamarole and cost as I can. It’s great for me, and people like me, that the Algodones option is there. (Even prior to post-COVID inflation, 15 percent of Americans already said that cost kept them from dental care.)
There was one aspect of the experience I didn’t love. I’m a bit of a radiation hypochondriac, and they were very casual about shielding you with lead bibs when X-raying you; unless you insisted, they would not do it. While I cannot judge on a professional regulatory level, their general hygiene practices otherwise seemed to match those of a typical American dentist, and I certainly never felt any ill effects.
As far as my needs went, the work seems to be of long-term quality equal to the American work that cost more than four times as much. While I will never know if this is a fault of the Mexican work or an inevitability in any case, the teeth beneath the bridge six years down the line reached a state of rot that led to a gum and sinus infection, or so an American physician believed. So though the bridge was still solidly in place, I had it pulled to extract the husks of teeth underneath it. Nothing is forever. The very fact I had to have this work done in Mexico was because of the lack of permanence of the more than $4,000 bridge I had put in about a decade prior.
Over all fields, Americans are spending around $4 billion a year on foreign medical care, and that’s likely to grow by about 13 percent a year over the rest of the decade. Dentists themselves are complaining these days that their costs are outgrowing their revenue, and profits and access to hygienists are both being strained. The range of conditions that make dentistry so much more affordable in Mexico include some elements that an American of any income level might not want to be completely enveloped in, such as far lower wages for professionals and their associates, and cheaper overhead from an atmosphere of less prosperity and demand.
But that’s why it’s good to be able to take advantage of the elements that are better on either side of the border.
In April, Axiosreported that President Joe Biden was planning “to issue an executive order to dramatically limit the number of asylum-seekers who can cross the southern border” in an attempt to “stem illegal border crossings.” The Biden administration announced sweeping asylum restrictions in early June, but the move immediately drew backlash from both immigrant advocates and border hawks.
“The entry of any noncitizen into the United States across the southern border is hereby suspended and limited,” said Biden’s order. When border encounters between ports of entry hit a daily average of 2,500 over a seven-day period, migrants will be barred from seeking asylum unless they qualify for a narrow exception or request an appointment at a port of entry through an app (a glitchy and cumbersome process). Restrictions will lift 14 days after daily encounters between ports of entry fall below 1,500 per day on average over a seven-day period.
Border crossings have fallen recently, but it’s been years since they were as low as Biden’s order would demand for asylum processing to resume. And like many of Biden’s actions on the border, the order has satisfied basically nobody.
The International Refugee Assistance Project called it and other restrictive measures “a remarkable capitulation by the Biden administration to xenophobic politicians who thrive on fear-mongering and scapegoating immigrant communities.” Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum, said the action would be “only a Band-Aid without action from Congress.” Several Democratic lawmakers expressed similar concerns, and the American Civil Liberties Union has sued Biden over the order.
Restrictionists, meanwhile, criticized Biden’s intent and timing. “It’s window dressing,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) of the “weak” order. “Everybody knows that if he was concerned about the border, he would have done this a long time ago.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) claimed the order “is about the Biden administration trying to give themselves political cover” before the presidential election. “The executive order will still allow thousands of illegal aliens to come across the border per day. That’s absurd.”
The order will have a very real and negative impact on migrants. Border measures like this push sufficiently desperate migrants into more remote, dangerous, and deadly crossing corridors—or, for those who choose to wait for restrictions to lift, into tent cities along the border where they may experience rape, torture, or kidnapping.
Biden has embraced some effective policies at the border, including sponsorship programs that let private citizens welcome refugees and other migrants. Those initiatives have been successful in reducing unauthorized migration among eligible nationalities. That’s because they acknowledge a simple fact: Cracking down on migrants does nothing to address their demand for a safe immigration pathway and the opportunity to work.
The administration’s asylum restrictions deny that fact and will have unintended consequences, likely contribute to border chaos, and—most certain of all—fail to make anyone happy.
In this week’s TheReason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman scrutinize President Joe Biden’s executive order updating asylum restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border in response to illegal border crossings.
01:32—Biden’s new asylum restrictions
21:38—The prosecution of political opponents: former President Donald Trump, Hunter Biden, and Steve Bannon
Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.
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On the anniversary of Putin’s aggression, however, uncertainty and irritation were undisguised in Kyiv. Ukrainians wanted to know why Western sanctions on Russia are not working, and why Moscow keeps getting components for its missiles from Western companies. Why Ukrainians have to keep asking for weapons; and why the U.S. is not pushing through the crucial new aid package for Ukraine.
“We are very grateful for the support of the United States, but unfortunately, when I turn to the Democrats for support, they tell me to go to the Republicans. And the Republicans say to go to the Democrats,” Ukrainian MP Oleksandra Ustinova said at a separate Kyiv conference on Saturday. “We are grateful for the European support, but we cannot win without the USA. We need the supply of anti-aircraft defenses and continued assistance.”
“Why don’t you give us what we ask for? Our priorities are air defense and missiles. We need long-range missiles,” Ustinova added.
U.S. Congressman Jim Costa explained to the conference that Americans, and even members of Congress, still need to be educated on how the war in Ukraine affects them and why a Ukrainian victory is in America’s best interests.
“I believe that we must, and that is why we will decide on an additional aid package for Ukraine. It is difficult and unattractive. But I believe that over the next few weeks, the US response will be a beacon to protect our security and democratic values,” Costa said.
The West is afraid of Russia, Oleksiy Danilov, Ukraine’s security and defense council secretary, told the Saturday conference.
“The West does not know what to do with Russia and therefore it does not allow us to win. Russians constantly blackmail and intimidate the West. However, if you are afraid of a dog, it will bite you,” he said.
“And now you are losing not only to autocratic Russia but also to the rest of the autocracies in the world,” Danilov added.
After attending school in Finland and later the U.S., Belgium and the U.K., Stubb entered politics in 2004 as a member of the European Parliament. He hit the Finnish big time in 2008 when — to his own surprise — he was named foreign minister.
Praised by allies for his high-energy approach to politics, he was also criticized during his time in government for his occasionally hasty statements, and was forced to apologize after being accused of swearing at a meeting of the Nordic Council, a regional cooperation body.
During a difficult year as prime minister in 2014 he failed to reverse his NCP’s declining popularity, and lost a parliamentary election in 2015 amid an economic slump. After a subsequent spell as finance minister he quit Finnish politics in 2017, vowing never to return.
During the five-month presidential election campaign, observers say, Stubb earned the support of voters by demonstrating a calmer and more thoughtful demeanor during debates than had been his custom, and for being at pains to show respect for his rivals.
“However this election goes, it will be good for Finland,” he said in a debate with Haavisto earlier last week.
Stubb has said he intends to be a unifying force in Finnish society, something the country appears to need after a series of racism scandals involving government ministers and, more recently, strikes over work conditions and wages that paralyzed public services.
Britain is providing the executive an extra £3.3 billion to start patching holes in services and pay long-delayed wage hikes that just triggered the biggest public sector strike in Northern Ireland’s history. The trouble is, the head of Northern Ireland’s civil service, Jayne Brady, has already told the new leaders that these eye-watering sums are still too small to pay the required bills. The U.K. expects Stormont to raise regional taxes, something local leaders have been loath to do.
If anything can unite unionist and republican politicians, it’s their shared demand for the U.K. Treasury to keep sending more moolah — even though the British government already has committed to pay Northern Ireland over the odds into perpetuity at a new rate of £1.24 versus an equivalent £1 spent in England.
Money demands and spending priorities should underpin short-term stability at Stormont. But a U.K. general election looms within months and DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson wants to reverse his party’s losses to Sinn Féin. That could be complicated by the fact that he’s just compromised on Brexit trade rules in a fashion that distresses and confuses many within his own divided party, leaving him vulnerable.
To strengthen his leadership, Donaldson boosted pragmatic allies and sought to neuter less reasonable opponents in Saturday’s DUP moves at Stormont.
The assembly’s new non-partisan speaker will be DUP lawmaker Edwin Poots, who defeated Donaldson for the party leadership in 2021 only to be tossed out almost immediately.
That move puts Poots — who used his previous role as Stormont’s agriculture minister to block essential resources for the required post-Brexit checks at ports — into a new strait-jacket of neutrality.
Little-Pengelly, by contrast, is one of Donaldson’s most trusted lieutenants and a Stormont insider. He put her into his own assembly seat when, shortly after the 2022 election, Donaldson dumped it in favor of staying an MP in London.
While Stormont is never more than one crisis away from another collapse, for Saturday, peace reigned — and an Irish republican, committed to Northern Ireland’s eventual dissolution, is in charge of making the place work.
An Israeli attack on the Syrian capital of Damascus on Saturday destroyed a residential building where Iran-aligned paramilitary leaders were meeting.
Precision-targeted Israeli missiles destroyed a multi-story building in the western Damascus neighborhood of Mazzeh, Reuters reported. The structure was occupied by Iranian advisers assisting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s administration, according to the report.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based non-profit, said at least five people were killed in the missile attack.
An official of an Iran-aligned group in the region told the Associated Press that the building was used by officials of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and claimed that 10 people were either killed or wounded in the attack.
The lastest Israeli attack signifies yet another escalation of already heightened tensions in the region.
Israel has intensified its airstrikes against Palestinian targets, Lebanese operatives and Iran-linked targets in Syria following the October 7 attacks by Hamas. On December 25, an Israeli airstrike in Damascus killed Iranian general Seyed Razi Mousavi, a veteran of the Revolutionary Guard in Syria.
In recent weeks, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have been targeting commercial vessels in the Red Sea. Tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border have increased as a result of rockets fired from Syria into northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
TEL AVIV — As he tries to cling to power, Benjamin Netanyahu is being buffeted by contradictory demands over the direction of the war in Gaza. His war cabinet is increasingly urging a cease-fire deal to be struck with Hamas — to secure the return of Israeli hostages — while lawmakers in his own Likud party are pushing in the opposite direction and pressing for military operations to remain unrelenting.
Unable to square the circle, the Israeli leader appears to have chosen to postpone decisions about the direction of the war, but it is doubtful they can be delayed for much longer. A public groundswell is starting to build for military operations to be put on hold and for a cease-fire to be reached with Hamas for the release of more than a hundred Israelis still being held in Gaza.
There’s rising alarm about the captives’ treatment and the conditions they are enduring. Thousands of Israelis took to the streets over the weekend calling for the hostages to be prioritized over the military campaign. And in a television interview Thursday, a war cabinet minister, Gadi Eisenkot, a former and highly popular chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), warned the only way to save hostages in the near term is through a deal even if that comes at a high price.
Eisenkot, whose 25-year-old son and 19-year-old nephew died fighting in Gaza in December, also appeared to criticize Netanyahu’s management of the war with Hamas, suggesting the Israeli leadership is not telling the Israeli public the truth about the conflict and that talk of destroying Hamas is over-blown. A complete victory over the militant group is unrealistic, he said.
“Whoever speaks of the absolute defeat [of Hamas in Gaza] and of it no longer having the will or the capability [to harm Israel], is not speaking the truth. That is why we should not tell tall tales,” Eisenkot said.
Eisenkot also said elections should be held soon to restore public trust in the Israeli government following the devastating October 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas. Eisenkot is seen by some as a future prime minister candidate, favored by some even over Benny Gantz, a former defense minister. The two are leaders of the centrist National Unity Party and agreed to join Netanyahu’s war cabinet after October 7 as a demonstration of national solidarity.
The Eisenkot interview, broadcast by Israel’s Channel 12 News, was especially damaging as it was broadcast hours after Netanyahu rejected in a press conference the idea of holding elections in the middle of a war. Netanyahu said he could continue in power well into 2025. He vowed to “bring about a complete victory” over Hamas.
Netanyahu’s indecision is also infuriating his own lawmakers — they worry there is a lack of defined goals beyond the slogan of “destroying Hamas,” and fear the prime minister will cave to pressure for a cease-fire. And they complain about a throttling back of military operations, which has seen the IDF move away from large-scale ground operations and air strikes to conduct more targeted missions.
Tactical transition
Senior Israeli military officials first confirmed on January 8 the tactical transition, with military spokesman Daniel Hagari saying the IDF would reduce troop numbers in the Palestinian enclave and conduct “one-off raids there instead of maintaining wide-scale maneuvers.”
Described as Phase 3 in the military campaign, officials in briefings cast the transition as necessary to give reservists some rest for the long haul in a war they say will take months, and to return others to their jobs to help the country’s ailing economy. The officials also said some troops needed to be redeployed to Israel’s tense northern border, where Hezbollah attacks have prompted Israel to threaten a ground campaign in Lebanon.
But the reasons given for the adjustment are disputed by some Likud lawmakers, including by Danny Danon, a former U.S. envoy to the U.N. He and others view the shift more than anything as an effort to placate the Biden administration and European governments anxious about the civilian death toll in Gaza. And there’s mounting talk of a possible future party leadership challenge to Netanyahu.
“We hear a lot of declarations both from the prime minister and [Defense Minister] Yoav Gallant almost every day about how we’re going to eradicate and destroy Hamas. But when you look at what’s happening now, I’m not sure it’s going in that direction,” Danon told POLITICO in an exclusive interview. “If he will not win the war, then I’m sure there will be another leader from the right that will step in because that will be the time,” he added.
Danon has twice challenged Netanyahu for the party leadership, in 2007 and 2014, but waves off a question about whether he will again seek the party’s leadership, saying merely that Likud is growing uneasy. “I speak with a lot of people and I hear them. They demand victory,” he said. “He’s being tested. Netanyahu has done a lot for Israel over the years, but he will be remembered by the way he finishes the war.”
Danon said the only acceptable conclusion to the war is “either Hamas surrenders or it is destroyed.” Military pressure is what led to the release of some hostages in December, he said. “What has happened now is that we have changed the way we are conducting the operation because of the pressure coming from the U.S.,” he added.
With opinion polls suggesting Likud has lost a third of its electoral support since October 7, Danon suggested victory could restore the party’s fortunes as well as being necessary for the security of Israel. “We need to hit Hamas so hard they will not be able to come against us anymore,” he said, adding that prime ministers, including Netanyahu have too often pulled up short before and announced Israel has been made safe and its enemies have now been deterred only for attacks to resume. “You cannot play that game anymore,” he said.
Party unease
With Likud members becoming increasingly restless, Netanyahu is more and more focusing on trying to tamp down internal party dissent. “It is all about Likud at the moment,” said a senior Israeli official, who was granted anonymity to talk about a sensitive issue. The official acknowledged that talk of a party rebellion might be premature and that Likud critics would have to calculate that an attempt to oust Netanyahu could ultimately trigger early elections that would see Likud lose badly. Nonetheless, the Israeli leader is agitated about the unease within the ranks of a party that he molded over the years in his own image, stacking it with loyalists and promoting those who share his views.
Likud disapproval partly explains Netanyahu’s strong push back last week on Washington’s readout of a phone conversation between the Israeli leader and U.S. President Joe Biden — their first since December. Israeli officials on Saturday took issue with Biden’s remarks after the call in which he said a two-state solution may still be possible even while Netanyahu is in power. Biden told reporters some “types” of two-state solution may be acceptable to the Israeli premier, even though Netanyahu has frequently ruled out the notion of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Netanyahu’s office reiterated his rigid opposition in a statement sent to POLITICO following Biden’s take. “In his conversation with President Biden, Prime Minister Netanyahu reiterated his policy that after Hamas is destroyed Israel must retain security control over Gaza to ensure that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel, a requirement that contradicts the demand for Palestinian sovereignty,” his office said.
A two-state solution is anathema for the right-wing of the Likud party.
Western warplanes and guided missiles roared through the skies over Yemen in the early hours of Friday in a dramatic response to the worsening crisis engulfing the region, where the U.S. and its allies are facing a direct confrontation with Iranian-backed militants.
The strikes against Houthi fighters are a response to weeks of fighting in the Red Sea, where the group has attempted to attack or hijack dozens of civilian cargo ships and tankers in what it calls retribution for Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. Washington launched the massive aerial bombardment of the group’s military stores and drone launch sites in partnership with British forces, and with the support of a growing coalition that includes Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Canada, South Korea and Bahrain.
Tensions between Tehran and the West have boiled over in the weeks since its ally, Hamas, launched its October 7 attack on Israel, while Hezbollah, the military group that controls much of southern Lebanon, has stepped up rocket launches across the border. Along with Hamas and Hezbollah, the Houthis form part of the Iranian-led ‘Axis of Resistance’ opposed to both the U.S. and Israel.
Now, the prospect of a full-blown conflict in one of the most politically fragile and strategically important parts of the world is spooking security analysts and energy markets alike.
Escalation fears
Houthi leaders responded to the strikes, which saw American and British forces hit more than 60 targets in 16 locations, with characteristic bravado. They warned the U.S. and U.K. will “have to prepare to pay a heavy price and bear all the dire consequences” for what they called a “blatant aggression.”
“We will confront America, kneel it down, and burn its battleships and all its bases and everyone who cooperates with it, no matter what the cost,” threatened Abdulsalam Jahaf, a member of the group’s security council.
However, following the overnight operation, Camille Lons, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said there may now be “a period of calm because it may take Iran some time to replenish the Houthis stocks” before they are able to resume high-intensity attacks on Red Sea shipping. But, she cautioned, their motivation to continue to target shipping will likely be unaltered.
The Western strikes are “unlikely to immediately halt Houthi aggression,” agreed Jonathan Panikoff, a former U.S. national intelligence officer for the Near East. “That will almost certainly mean having to continue to respond to Houthi strikes, and potentially with increasing aggression.”
“The Houthis view themselves as having little to lose, emboldened militarily by Iranian provisions of support and confident the U.S. will not entertain a ground war,” he said.
Iran also upped the ante earlier this week by boarding and commandeering a Greek-operated oil tanker that was loaded with Iraqi crude destined for Turkey, intercepting it as it transited the Strait of Hormuz. The vessel, the St. Nikolas, was previously apprehended for violating sanctions on Iranian oil and its cargo was confiscated and sold off by the U.S. Treasury Department. Its Greek captain and crew of 18 Filipino nationals are now in Iranian custody, with the incident marking a sharp escalation in the threats facing maritime traffic.
Israeli connection
Washington and London are striving to distinguish their bid to deter the Houthis in the Red Sea from the war in Gaza, fearful that merging the two will hand Tehran a propaganda advantage in the Middle East. The Houthis and Iran are keen to accomplish the reverse.
The Houthi leadership claims its attacks on maritime traffic are aimed at pressuring Israel to halt its bombing of the Gaza Strip and it insists it is only targeting commercial vessels linked to Israel or destined to dock at the Israeli port of Eilat, a point contested by Western powers.
“The Houthis claim that their attacks on military and civilian vessels are somehow tied to the ongoing conflict in Gaza — that is completely baseless and illegitimate. The Houthis also claim to be targeting specifically Israeli-owned ships or ships bound for Israel. That is simply not true, they are firing indiscriminately on vessels with global ties,” a senior U.S. official briefing reporters in Washington said Friday.
Wider Near East crisis
The Red Sea isn’t the only hotspot where American and European forces and their allies are facing off against Iran and its partners.
In November, U.S. F-15 fighter jets hit a weapons storage facility in eastern Syria that the Pentagon says was used by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Shia militants it supports in the war-torn country. The response came after dozens of American troops were reportedly injured in attacks in Iraq and Syria linked back to Tehran.
Israel’s war with Hamas has also risked spreading, after a blast killed one of the militant group’s commanders in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, earlier in January. Hezbollah vowed a swift response and tensions have soared along the border between the two countries, with Israeli civilians evacuated from their homes in towns and villages close to the frontier.
All of that contributes to an increasingly volatile environment that has neighboring countries worried, said Christian Koch, director at the Saudi Arabia-based Gulf Research Center.
“There’s a lot at stake at the moment and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and others are extremely worried about further escalation and then being subject to retaliation,” he said. “Now, the danger of regional escalation has been heightened further, which could mean that Iran will get further involved in the conflict, and this is a dangerous spiral downwards.”
While long-planned efforts to normalize ties between the Saudis and Israel collapsed in the wake of the October 7 attack and the subsequent military response, Riyadh has pushed forward with a policy of de-escalation with the Houthis after a decade of violent conflict, and sought an almost unprecedented rapprochement with Iran.
“Saudi Arabia has had one objective, which is to prevent this from escalating into a wider regional war,” said Tobias Borck, an expert on Middle East security at the Royal United Services Institute. “It has attempted over the last few years to bring its intervention in the war in Yemen to a close, including through negotiations with the Houthis and actually from all we know from the outside, [they] are reasonably close to an agreement.”
The Western coalition is therefore a source of anxiety, rather than relief, for Gulf States.
“Saudi Arabia and UAE are staying out of this coalition because mainly they don’t want to have the Houthis attack them as they had been for years and years with cruise missiles,” said retired U.S. General Mark Kimmitt, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. However, American or European boots on the ground are unlikely to be necessary, he added, because “our capabilities these days to find, fix and attack even mobile missile launchers is pretty well refined.”
Far-reaching consequences
At the intersection of Europe and Asia, the Red Sea is a vital thoroughfare for energy and international trade. Maritime traffic through the region has already dropped by 20 percent, Rear Admiral Emmanuel Slaars, the joint commander of French forces in the region, told reporters on Thursday.
According to data published this week by the German IfW Kiel institute, global trade fell by 1.3 percent from November to December, with the Houthi attacks likely to have been a contributing factor.
The volume of containers in the Red Sea also plummeted and is currently almost 70 percent below usual, the institute said. In December, that caused freight costs and transportation time to rise and imports and exports from the EU to be “significantly lower” than in November.
In one indication of the impact on industrial supply chains, U.S. electric vehicle maker Tesla said Friday it would shut its factory in Germany for two weeks.
Around 12 percent of the world’s oil and 8 percent of its gas normally flow through the waterway, as well as hundreds of cargo ships. Oil prices climbed more than 2.5 percent following the strikes, fueling market concerns of the impact a wider conflict could have on oil supplies from the region, especially those being shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, linking the Persian Gulf with the Indian Ocean and the world’s most important oil chokepoint.
The Houthi attacks on the Red Sea, one of the world’s busiest waterways, have already caused major shipping companies, including oil giant BP, to halt shipments through the Red Sea, opting for a lengthy detour around the Cape of Good Hope instead.
According to Borck, the impact on energy prices has been limited so far but will depend on what happens next.
“We need to look for two actors’ actions here. One is the Houthis, how they respond, and the other one is, of course, looking at how Iran responds,” he said. While Tehran has the “nuclear option” of closing the Strait of Hormuz altogether, it’s unlikely to do so at this stage.
“I don’t think the Strait of Hormuz is next. I think there would be quite a few steps on the escalation ladder first,” he added.
But Simone Tagliapietra, an energy expert at Brussels’ Bruegel think tank, warned that a growing confrontation with Iran could lead to tougher enforcement of sanctions on its oil exports. The West has turned a blind eye to Tehran’s increasing sales to China in the wake of the war in Ukraine, which has relieved some pressure on global energy markets.
A crackdown, he believes, “could see global oil prices rising substantially, pushing inflation higher and further complicating the efforts of central banks to bring it under control.”
However, Saudi Arabia and the UAE could help compensate for such a move by ramping up their own production — provided they’re willing to risk the ire of Iran.
Gabriel Gavin reported from Yerevan, Armenia. Antonia Zimmermann from Brussels and Jamie Dettmer from Tel-Aviv.
Laura Kayali contributed reporting from Paris.
Gabriel Gavin, Antonia Zimmermann and Jamie Dettmer
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s brittle governing coalition isn’t anywhere near resolving its internal splits over how the Gaza Strip should be governed once Hamas has been crushed, and the situation is testing the patience of the country’s Western allies — including an increasingly exasperated United States.
Judging by an ill-tempered security Cabinet meeting last week, which was an exceptionally rowdy affair even by the rambunctious standards of Israel’s politics, Netanyahu’s coalition — widely judged as the most right-wing in the country’s history — is fraying. And the sharp differences over Gaza’s fate aren’t helping.
Ministers rounded on each other for much of the acrimonious meeting, with religious nationalists and hard-right leaders excoriating the Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces Herzi Halevi, and taking potshots at a proposal offered by Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.
Coming on the eve of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s arrival in Israel, where he’ll be pressing Netanyahu to start winding down military operations in Gaza and conform to U.S. expectations on the enclave’s postwar future, the brawl was especially poorly timed. It also augurs badly for any meeting of the minds on postwar Gaza governance between Israel and Washington — let alone with Israel’s Arab neighbors.
The sharp-tongued bickering was initially sparked by Halevi disclosing he’d set up an internal army inquiry headed by former defense officials, probing the failings of Israel’s security services before the October 7 attacks by Hamas.
Led by ministers Miri Regev, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition partners complained that holding an internal inquiry while fighting rages in Gaza is inappropriate and would distract from what should be the real focus — winning the war.
But their anger was largely concentrated on the inclusion of former Minister of Defense Shaul Mofaz — who oversaw the 2005 Israeli withdrawal from Gaza — in the inquiry team. They see Israel’s Gaza disengagement as the original sin that allowed Hamas to grow and become the force it has, able to launch attacks as devastating as the ones on October 7. They want the 2005 withdrawal reversed and Israel to annex part, or all, of Gaza, even discussing the possibility of Gazans “voluntarily” being resettled elsewhere — including the DR Congo.
This clash, which saw some defense officials walk out in protest, merely added fuel to the fire over Gallant’s proposal that Palestinians unaffiliated with Hamas administer the enclave after the war. Under Gallant’s plan, there would be no Israeli resettlement of Gaza — which infuriated religious nationalists like Smotrich — however, the IDF would retain military control on the borders, and have the right to mount military operations inside Gaza when deemed necessary.
“Gaza residents are Palestinian. Therefore, Palestinian bodies will be in charge, with the condition that there will be no hostile actions or threats against the State of Israel,” Gallant said last week. But for Smotrich, “Gallant’s ‘day after’ plan is a re-run of the ‘day before’ October 7.”
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich walks with soldiers during a visit to Kibbutz Kfar Aza near the border with the Gaza Strip | Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images
Scorned by the government’s hard right, the defense minister’s proposal is unlikely to cut it with the U.S. or with Israel’s Arab and Gulf neighbors either, as there would be no role for the Palestinian Authority (PA), which oversees the West Bank. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration wants Gaza to be handed over to what it calls a “revitalized” PA, although it hasn’t detailed exactly what that means or the necessary steps for such a revamp.
Netanyahu eventually broke up the Cabinet meeting after three hours of confrontational exchanges, insults and ministers swearing at each other, once again leaving Gaza’s postwar future unresolved in Israeli minds. And all this, just as the Biden administration redoubles its insistence on a serious and credible postwar plan that Arab nations can accept.
The disastrous meeting also prompted three key centrists in the wartime government — Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot and Yechiel Tropper of the National Unity government’s Blue and White faction — to skip a full meeting on Sunday, highlighting the growing tensions and coalition rifts.
Tropper linked his boycott to the right-wing ministers assailing Halevi. He told national broadcaster Kan that he didn’t know “how long we will be in the government; I only know that we entered for the good of the country and our exit will also be related to the good of the country.”
Gantz, a former defense minister and onetime chief of the General Staff, had led his centrists into Netanyahu’s government after October 7 for the sake of national unity. “There is a time for peace and a time for war. Now is a time for war,” he had said when accepting Netanyahu’s offer to join the war Cabinet.
But Gantz’s popularity has risen dramatically since then, and he’s now seen as Netanyahu’s most likely challenger. So, if he chose to bolt from the government, it would increase the likelihood of an early election — and that’s something anti-Netanyahu activists are starting to demand once more. Until very recently, there was little appetite for demonstrations, with small turnouts of around just a few dozen to a few hundred people. However, rallies over the weekend saw several thousand participating, with protesters taking to the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, calling for the prime minister’s removal.
So far, Netanyahu has been circumspect in outlining a postwar Gaza plan, mainly restricting himself to dismissing a role for the PA. And this has partly been due to his worry that disputes over Gaza’s postwar governance could prove fatal for his coalition. It looks like that may well turn out to be true.
On October 7, Hamas fighters launched a bloody attack against Israel, using paragliders, speedboats and underground tunnels to carry out an offensive that killed almost 1,200 people and saw hundreds more taken back to the Gaza Strip as prisoners.
Almost three months on, Israel’s massive military retaliation is reverberating around the region, with explosions in Lebanon and rebels from Yemen attacking shipping in the Red Sea. Meanwhile, Western countries are pumping military aid into Israel while deploying fleets to protect commercial shipping — risking confrontation with the Iranian navy.
That’s in line with a grim prediction made last year by Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, who said that Israel’s counteroffensive in Gaza meant an “expansion of the scope of the war has become inevitable,” and that further escalation across the Middle East should be expected.
What’s happening?
The Israel Defense Forces are still fighting fierce battles for control of the Gaza Strip in what officials say is a mission to destroy Hamas. Troops have already occupied much of the north of the 365-square-kilometer territory, home to around 2.3 million Palestinians, and are now stepping up their assault in the south.
Entire neighborhoods of densely-populated Gaza City have been levelled by intense Israeli shelling, rocket attacks and air strikes, rendering them uninhabitable. Although independent observers have been largely shut out, the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry claims more than 22,300 people have been killed, while the U.N. says 1.9 million people have been displaced.
On a visit to the front lines, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned that his country is in the fight for the long haul. “The feeling that we will stop soon is incorrect. Without a clear victory, we will not be able to live in the Middle East,” he said.
As the Gaza ground war intensifies, Hamas and its allies are increasingly looking to take the conflict to a far broader arena in order to put pressure on Israel.
According to Seth Frantzman, a regional analyst with the Jerusalem Post and adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, “Iran is certainly making a play here in terms of trying to isolate Israel [and] the U.S. and weaken U.S. influence, also showing that Israel doesn’t have the deterrence capabilities that it may have had in the past or at least thought it had.”
Northern front
On Tuesday a blast ripped through an office in Dahieh, a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut — 130 kilometers from the border with Israel. Hamas confirmed that one of its most senior leaders, Saleh al-Arouri, was killed in the strike.
Government officials in Jerusalem have refused to confirm Israeli forces were behind the killing, while simultaneously presenting it as a “surgical strike against the Hamas leadership” and insisting it was not an attack against Lebanon itself, despite a warning from Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati that the incident risked dragging his country into a wider regional war.
Tensions between Israel and Lebanon have spiked in recent weeks, with fighters loyal to Hezbollah, the Shia Islamist militant group that controls the south of the country, firing hundreds of rockets across the frontier. Along with Hamas, Hezbollah is part of the Iranian-led “Axis of Resistance” that aims to destroy the state of Israel.
In a statement released on Tuesday, Iran’s foreign ministry said the death of al-Arouri, the most senior Hamas official confirmed to have died since October 7, will only embolden resistance against Israel, not only in the Palestinian territories but also in the wider Middle East.
The Israel Defense Forces are still fighting fierce battles for control of the Gaza Strip in what officials say is a mission to destroy Hamas | Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images
“We’re talking about the death of a senior Hamas leader, not from Hezbollah or the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards. Is it Iran who’s going to respond? Hezbollah? Hamas with rockets? Or will there be no response, with the various players waiting for the next assassination?” asked Héloïse Fayet, a researcher at the French Institute for International Relations.
In a much-anticipated speech on Wednesday evening, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah condemned the killing but did not announce a military response.
Red Sea boils over
For months now, sailors navigating the narrow Bab-el-Mandeb Strait that links Europe to Asia have faced a growing threat of drone strikes, missile attacks and even hijackings by Iran-backed Houthi militants operating off the coast of Yemen.
The Houthi movement, a Shia militant group supported by Iran in the Yemeni civil war against Saudi Arabia and its local allies, insists it is only targeting shipping with links to Israel in a bid to pressure it to end the war in Gaza. However, the busy trade route from the Suez Canal through the Red Sea has seen dozens of commercial vessels targeted or delayed, forcing Western nations to intervene.
Over the weekend, the U.S. Navy said it had intercepted two anti-ship missiles and sunk three boats carrying Houthi fighters in what it said was a hijacking attempt against the Maersk Hangzhou, a container ship. Danish shipping giant Maersk said Tuesday that it would “pause all transits through the Red Sea until further notice,” following a number of other cargo liners; energy giant BP is also suspending travel through the region.
On Wednesday the Houthis targeted a CMA CGM Tage container ship bound for Israel, according to the group’s military spokesperson Yahya Sarea. “Any U.S. attack will not pass without a response or punishment,” he added.
“The sensible decision is one that the vast majority of shippers I think are now coming to, [which] is to transit through round the Cape of Good Hope,” said Marco Forgione, director general at the Institute of Export & International Trade. “But that in itself is not without heavy impact, it’s up to two weeks additional sailing time, adds over £1 million to the journey, and there are risks, particularly in West Africa, of piracy as well.”
However, John Stawpert, a senior manager at the International Chamber of Shipping, noted that while “there has been disruption” and an “understandable nervousness about transiting these routes … trade is continuing to flow.”
“A major contributory factor to that has been the presence of military assets committed to defending shipping from these attacks,” he said.
The impacts of the disruption, especially price hikes hitting consumers, will be seen “in the next couple of weeks,” according to Forgione. Oil and gas markets also risk taking a hit — the price of benchmark Brent crude rose by 3 percent to $78.22 a barrel on Wednesday. Almost 10 percent of the world’s oil and 7 percent of its gas flows through the Red Sea.
Western response
On Wednesday evening, the U.S., Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom issued an ultimatum calling the Houthi attacks “illegal, unacceptable, and profoundly destabilizing,” but with only vague threats of action.
“We call for the immediate end of these illegal attacks and release of unlawfully detained vessels and crews. The Houthis will bear the responsibility of the consequences should they continue to threaten lives, the global economy, and free flow of commerce in the region’s critical waterways,” the statement said.
The Houthi movement insists it is only targeting shipping with links to Israel in a bid to pressure it to end the war in Gaza | Houthi Movement via Getty Images
Despite the tepid language, the U.S. has already struck back at militants from Iranian-backed groups such as Kataeb Hezbollah in Iraq and Syria after they carried out drone attacks that injured U.S. personnel.
The assumption in London is that airstrikes against the Houthis — if it came to that — would be U.S.-led with the U.K. as a partner. Other nations might also chip in.
Two French officials said Paris is not considering air strikes. The country’s position is to stick to self-defense, and that hasn’t changed, one of them said. French Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu confirmed that assessment, saying on Tuesday that “we’re continuing to act in self-defense.”
“Would France, which is so proud of its third way and its position as a balancing power, be prepared to join an American-British coalition?” asked Fayet, the think tank researcher.
Iran looms large
Iran’s efforts to leverage its proxies in a below-the-radar battle against both Israel and the West appear to be well underway, and the conflict has already scuppered a long-awaited security deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
“Since 1979, Iran has been conducting asymmetrical proxy terrorism where they try to advance their foreign policy objectives while displacing the consequences, the counterpunches, onto someone else — usually Arabs,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of Washington’s Center on Military and Political Power. “An increasingly effective regional security architecture, of the kind the U.S. and Saudi Arabia are trying to build, is a nightmare for Iran which, like a bully on the playground, wants to keep all the other kids divided and distracted.”
Despite Iran’s fiery rhetoric, it has stopped short of declaring all-out war on its enemies or inflicting massive casualties on Western forces in the region — which experts say reflects the fact it would be outgunned in a conventional conflict.
“Neither Iran nor the U.S. nor Israel is ready for that big war,” said Alex Vatanka, director of the Middle East Institute’s Iran program. “Israel is a nuclear state, Iran is a nuclear threshold state — and the U.S. speaks for itself on this front.”
Israel might be betting on a long fight in Gaza, but Iran is trying to make the conflict a global one, he added. “Nobody wants a war, so both sides have been gambling on the long term, hoping to kill the other guy through a thousand cuts.”
Emilio Casalicchio contributed reporting.
Gabriel Gavin, Antonia Zimmermann and Laura Kayali
Polish farmers ended a blockade of a Poland-Ukraine border crossing after reaching an agreement with Warsaw that met their demands, defusing a dispute that had become an early test of the new government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Newly appointed Polish Agriculture Minister Czesław Siekierski signed the deal with Polish farmers blockading the Medyka-Shehyni border crossing with Ukraine late Saturday. The protest — which started over a month ago — was called off on December 24 following an agreement with the government, but it resumed on Wednesday amid farmers’ mistrust over the deal.
Farmers accused the new Polish government of failing to defend them against Ukrainian grain imports, but also demanded a series of financial support measures. Saturday’s deal finally implemented those financial demands — which include launching corn production subsidies, maintaining agricultural taxes at 2023 levels and increasing preferential liquidity loans — but didn’t include restrictions on Ukraine imports.
The measures “will be implemented after the legislative process is completed and acceptance by the European Commission is obtained,” the Polish Agriculture Ministry said.
Despite calling off the blockade, protesting farmers said that the “most important” demand now is “to limit the inflow of goods from Ukraine.” EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski told Polish media on Friday that he would demand an EU-wide restriction on items like sugar, eggs and poultry from Ukraine.
“These imports are growing in a way that threatens the competitiveness of the EU sector, including Polish poultry and sugar production,” he said. The Polish commissioner has already clashed with other members of the European Commission over full trade liberalization with Ukraine, which the EU executive is expected to recommend as early as next week.
“Ukraine is such a country that they just want to take, take, take, and give nothing back,” Roman Kondrów, one of the protest leaders, told POLITICO by phone on Thursday, warning about the risks of allowing the country to join the EU without restrictions.
In the meantime, Polish truckers are continuing to protest as they want the government to end an EU-Ukraine agreement that liberalized road transport rules in an effort to help the Ukrainian economy, crippled by the Russian invasion.
Underpinning the narratives of both groups are doomsday scenarios about the impact on Poland of Ukraine one day becoming a member of the EU. At a summit in December, EU leaders agreed to open accession talks with Ukraine.
Israel will allow ships from several European countries to deliver aid directly to war-torn Gaza, the country’s top diplomat said Sunday, as the Israeli military ramped up large-scale air attacks across central Gaza.
Ships from countries including France, Greece, the Netherlands and the U.K. can “immediately” start shipping aid packages via a proposed sea corridor that goes through Cyprus, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen told local radio on Sunday. The measure could mean a partial lifting of Israel’s naval blockade on Gaza, first imposed in 2007 after the Hamas militant group took control of the Palestinian enclave.
Under the plan, originally proposed by Nicosia last month, ships would travel to Cyprus for security checks before heading 370 kilometers to Gaza’s coast in a route that would avoid Egyptian or Israeli borders. Paris, Athens, Amsterdam and London have yet to officially comment on the plan, though the U.K. and Greece have previously indicated they would support the measure.
The announcement comes after the U.N. Security Council earlier this month demanded that Israel guarantee “immediate, safe and unhindered delivery of humanitarian assistance at scale” to the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, Israeli jets stepped up air strikes on Maghazi and Bureij in the center of Gaza on Sunday, killing at least 35 people, including former Religious Affairs Minister for the Palestinian Authority Youssef Salama, according to local media and hospital officials.
Israel has said it would keep fighting until it eliminates Hamas after the militant group launched a surprise attack on the country in early October, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 others hostage. Israel has said it has killed 8,000 Hamas fighters so far in its military offensive. Cohen said on Sunday that the “government bears responsibility” for failing to prevent the October 7 attack, and suggested an independent inquiry should be set up after the war.
Despite growing international pressure for a cease-fire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday said the war would continue for “many more months.” Israel argues that ending the conflict now would mean victory for Hamas, a stance shared by the Biden administration, which at the same time has urged Israel to do more to avoid harm to Palestinian civilians.
“We will not allow a situation in which two million people live there. If there are 100,000 to 200,000 Arabs living in Gaza, the discussion about the day after will be completely different,” Smotrich said. “They want to leave, they have been living in a ghetto and in suffering for 75 years,” he added.
Fearing a mass exodus, both Egypt and Jordan have refused to accept refugees from the embattled Gaza Strip. Netanyahu also said on Saturday that the border zone between the Gaza Strip and Egypt should be under Israel’s control.
Almost 22,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its military response, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, 70 percent of whom are women and children — while 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced.
Russia fired off a fresh barrage of strikes at Ukraine on New Year’s Eve, launching nearly 100 Shahed loitering munitions against cities across the country. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said their air defense forces had shot down 87 of the Iranian-made drones.
A 15-year-old boy was killed and seven people were wounded after debris from one of the drones that was downed hit a residential building in Odesa, the head of the regional administration said according to the Associated Press.
The latest holiday launch came on the heels of an air attack on Friday, during which the Ukrainian Air Force brought down 114 of 158 projectiles fired by Russia. Kyiv said Friday’s bombardment, the biggest of the war, had killed at least 45 people.
National unity took center stage during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s New Year address to the nation, though the president only referenced the war obliquely. He praised Russian troops — but did not mention Ukraine by name, nor did he make direct reference to the so-called special military operation, Kremlin-speak for the war in Ukraine.
“What united us and unites us is the fate of the Fatherland, a deep understanding of the highest significance of the historical stage through which Russia is passing,” Putin said to the nation. Putin said Russia would never retreat and there was no force that could divide Russians and stop the country’s development, the AP reported citing state media.
On Saturday, Ukrainian strikes against Belgorod, a Russian city approximately 35 kilometers from the border, killed at least two dozen and wounded more than 100, according to regional Russian authorities — but the attack did not feature in Putin’s four-minute video message.
In his midnight address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy marked 676 days of war by commending the resilience of Ukraine’s citizens and soldiers and highlighting Ukraine’s invitation to join the European Union.
“We do not know for certain what the new year will bring us,” Zelenskyy said, with Ukraine’s counteroffensive largely stalled and the increasing likelihood of stalemate across the front. “But this year we can add: whatever it brings, we will be stronger.”
Russia battered Kyiv and Kharkiv with missiles and drones overnight, killing at least four people and injuring 92 more, after President Vladimir Putin said he was “seething” and would “intensify attacks” on Ukraine.
“As a result of such a massive missile attack in the capital, unfortunately, there is destruction of residential buildings, damage to infrastructure. There are victims,” said Serhiy Popko, head of the Kyiv military administration.
“Since December 31st, Russian monsters have already fired 170 ‘Shahed’ drones and dozens of missiles of various types” at Ukraine, the country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on social media. “The absolute majority of them targeted civilian infrastructure. I am grateful to all of our partners who are helping us strengthen our air shield.”
Putin said on Monday that he was “seething” at strikes on the Russian city of Belgorod over the weekend that the Kremlin blamed on Kyiv, and vowed to “intensify strikes” on Ukraine.
“They want to a) intimidate us and b) create instability in our country,” Putin said during a New Year’s Day visit to a military hospital, according to the Kremlin’s readout of the president’s comments. “We will intensify the strikes,” he added, saying that “no crime — and this [the attack on Belgorod] is certainly a crime against the civilian population — will go unpunished.”
Russia blames Kyiv for the air attack on Belgorod, which killed at least 25 people and wounded more than 100, according to the Kremlin.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one woman from Kyiv’s Solom’yans’kyi district died and dozens more were injured.
In Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kharkiv, strikes killed at least one person and damaged civilian infrastructure.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said its air defenses had shot down all 35 of the Iranian-made drones Russia launched against several cities on Tuesday. But debris from the missiles hit several civilian facilities across the area, damaging gas pipelines and cutting off water and electricity in some areas, Klitschko said.
“It’s probably the biggest attack on Kyiv & [Ukraine] as a whole since the start of full-scale invasion. Urgent action in providing additional air defense capabilities needed,” said Ukrainian MP Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze in a post on social media.
BRUSSELS — Western leaders are grappling with how to handle two era-defining wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine. But there’s another issue, one far closer to home, that’s derailing governments in Europe and America: migration.
In recent days, U.S. President Joe Biden, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak all hit trouble amid intense domestic pressure to tackle immigration; all three emerged weakened as a result. The stakes are high as American, British and European voters head to the polls in 2024.
“There is a temptation to hunt for quick fixes,” said Rashmin Sagoo, director of the international law program at the Chatham House think tank in London. “But irregular migration is a hugely challenging issue. And solving it requires long-term policy thinking beyond national boundaries.”
With election campaigning already under way, long-term plans may be hard to find. Far-right, anti-migrant populists promising sharp answers are gaining support in many Western democracies, leaving mainstream parties to count the costs. Less than a month ago in the Netherlands, pragmatic Dutch centrists lost to an anti-migrant radical.
Who will be next?
Rishi Sunak, United Kingdom
In Britain, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is under pressure from members of his own ruling Conservative party who fear voters will punish them over the government’s failure to get a grip on migration.
U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak speaks during a press conference in Dover on June 5, 2023 in Dover, England | Pool photo by Yui Mok/WPA via Getty Images
Seven years ago, voters backed Brexit because euroskeptic campaigners promised to “Take Back Control” of the U.K.’s borders. Instead, the picture is now more chaotic than ever. The U.K. chalked up record net migration figures last month, and the government has failed so far to stop small boats packed with asylum seekers crossing the English Channel.
Sunak is now in the firing line. He made a pledge to “Stop the Boats” central to his premiership. In the process, he ignited a war in his already divided party about just how far Britain should go.
Under Sunak’s deal with Rwanda, the central African nation agreed to resettle asylum seekers who arrived on British shores in small boats. The PM says the policy will deter migrants from making sea crossings to the U.K. in the first place. But the plan was struck down by the Supreme Court in London, and Sunak’s Tories now can’t agree on what to do next.
Having survived what threatened to be a catastrophic rebellion in parliament on Tuesday, the British premier still faces a brutal battle in the legislature over his proposed Rwanda law early next year.
Time is running out for Sunak to find a fix. An election is expected next fall.
Emmanuel Macron, France
The French president suffered an unexpected body blow when the lower house of parliament rejected his flagship immigration bill this week.
French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris, on June 21, 2023 | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
After losing parliamentary elections last year, getting legislation through the National Assembly has been a fraught process for Macron. He has been forced to rely on votes from the right-wing Les Républicains party on more than one occasion.
Macron’s draft law on immigration was meant to please both the conservatives and the center-left with a carefully designed mix of repressive and liberal measures. But in a dramatic upset, the National Assembly, which is split between centrists, the left and the far right, voted against the legislation on day one of debates.
Now Macron is searching for a compromise. The government has tasked a joint committee of senators and MPs with seeking a deal. But it’s likely their text will be harsher than the initial draft, given that the Senate is dominated by the centre right — and this will be a problem for Macron’s left-leaning lawmakers.
If a compromise is not found, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally will be able to capitalize on Macron’s failure ahead of the European Parliament elections next June.
But even if the French president does manage to muddle through, the episode is likely to mark the end of his “neither left nor right” political offer. It also raises serious doubts about his ability to legislate on controversial topics.
Joe Biden, United States
The immigration crisis is one of the most vexing and longest-running domestic challenges for President Joe Biden. He came into office vowing to reverse the policies of his predecessor, Donald Trump, and build a “fair and humane” system, only to see Congress sit on his plan for comprehensive immigration reform.
U.S. President Joe Biden pauses as he gives a speech in Des Moines, Iowa on July 15, 2019 | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
The White House has seen a deluge of migrants at the nation’s southern border, strained by a decades-old system unable to handle modern migration patterns.
Ahead of next year’s presidential election, Republicans have seized on the issue. GOP state leaders have filed lawsuits against the administration and sent busloads of migrants to Democrat-led cities, while in Washington, Republicans in Congress have tied foreign aid to sweeping changes to border policy, putting the White House in a tight spot as Biden officials now consider a slate of policies they once forcefully rejected.
The political pressure has spilled into the other aisle. States and cities, particularly ones led by Democrats, are pressuring Washington leaders to do more in terms of providing additional federal aid and revamping southern border policies to limit the flow of asylum seekers into the United States.
New York City has had more than 150,000 new arrivals over the past year and a half — forcing cuts to new police recruits, cutting library hours and limiting sanitation duties. Similar problems are playing out in cities like Chicago, which had migrants sleeping in buses or police stations.
The pressure from Democrats is straining their relationship with the White House. New York City Mayor Eric Adams runs the largest city in the nation, but hasn’t spoken with Biden in nearly a year. “We just need help, and we’re not getting that help,” Adams told reporters Tuesday.
Olaf Scholz, Germany
Migration has been at the top of the political agenda in Germany for months, with asylum applications rising to their highest levels since the 2015 refugee crisis triggered by Syria’s civil war.
The latest influx has posed a daunting challenge to national and local governments alike, which have struggled to find housing and other services for the migrants, not to mention the necessary funds.
The inability to limit the number of refugees has put German Chancellor Olaf Scholz under immense pressure | Michele Tantussi/Getty Images
The inability — in a country that ranks among the most coveted destinations for asylum seekers — to limit the number of refugees has put German Chancellor Olaf Scholz under immense pressure. In the hope of stemming the flow, Germany recently reinstated border checks with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland, hoping to turn back the refugees before they hit German soil.
Even with border controls, refugee numbers remain high, which has been a boon to the far right. Germany’s anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party has reached record support in national polls.
Since overtaking Scholz’s Social Democrats in June, the AfD has widened its lead further, recording 22 percent in recent polls, second only to the center-right Christian Democrats.
The AfD is expected to sweep three state elections next September in eastern Germany, where support for the party and its reactionary anti-foreigner policies is particularly strong.
The center-right, meanwhile, is hardening its position on migration and turning its back on the open-border policies championed by former Chancellor Angela Merkel. Among the new priorities is a plan to follow the U.K.’s Rwanda model for processing refugees in third countries.
Karl Nehammer, Austria
Like Scholz, the Austrian leader’s approval ratings have taken a nosedive thanks to concerns over migration. Austria has taken steps to tighten controls at its southern and eastern borders.
Though the tactic has led to a drop in arrivals by asylum seekers, it also means Austria has effectively suspended the EU’s borderless travel regime, which has been a boon to the regional economy for decades.
Austria has effectively suspended the EU’s borderless travel regime, which has been a boon to the regional economy for decades | Thomas Kronsteiner/Getty Images
The far-right Freedom Party has had a commanding lead for more than a year, topping the ruling center-right in polls by 10 points. That puts the party in a position to win national elections scheduled for next fall, which would mark an unprecedented rightward tilt in a country whose politics have been dominated by the center since World War II.
Giorgia Meloni, Italy
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made her name in opposition, campaigning on a radical far-right agenda. Since winning power in last year’s election, she has shifted to more moderate positions on Ukraine and Europe.
Meloni now needs to appease her base on migration, a topic that has dominated Italian debate for years. Instead, however, she has been forced to grant visas to hundreds of thousands of legal migrants to cover labor shortages. Complicating matters, boat landings in Italy are up by about 50 per cent year-on-year despite some headline-grabbling policies and deals to stop arrivals.
While Meloni has ordered the construction of detention centers where migrants will be held pending repatriation, in reality local conditions in African countries and a lack of repatriation agreements present serious impediments.
Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni at a press conference on March 9, 2023 | Tiziana Fabi/AFP via Getty Images
Although she won the support of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen for her cause, a potential EU naval mission to block departures from Africa would risk breaching international law.
Meloni has tried other options, including a deal with Tunisia to help stop migrant smuggling, but the plan fell apart before it began. A deal with Albania to offshore some migrant detention centers also ran into trouble.
Now Meloni is in a bind. The migration issue has brought her into conflict with France and Germany as she attempts to create a reputation as a moderate conservative.
If she fails to get to grips with the issue, she is likely to lose political ground. Her coalition partner Matteo Salvini is known as a hardliner on migration, and while they’re officially allies for now, they will be rivals again later.
Geert Wilders, the Netherlands
The government of long-serving Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte was toppled over migration talks in July, after which he announced his exit from politics. In subsequent elections, in which different parties vied to fill Rutte’s void, far-right firebrand Geert Wilders secured a shock win. On election night he promised to curb the “asylum tsunami.”
Wilders is now seeking to prop up a center-right coalition with three other parties that have urged getting migration under control. One of them is Rutte’s old group, now led by Dilan Yeşilgöz.
Geert Wilders attends a meeting in the Dutch parliament with party leaders to discuss the formation of a coalition government, on November 24, 2023 | Carl Court/Getty Images
A former refugee, Yeşilgöz turned migration into one of the main topics of her campaign. She was criticized after the elections for paving the way for Wilders to win — not only by focusing on migration, but also by opening the door to potentially governing with Wilders.
Now, though, coalition talks are stuck, and it could take months to form a new cabinet. If Wilders, who clearly has a mandate from voters, can stitch a coalition together, the political trajectory of the Netherlands — generally known as a pragmatic nation — will shift significantly to the right. A crackdown on migration is as certain as anything can be.
Leo Varadkar, Ireland
Even in Ireland, an economically open country long used to exporting its own people worldwide, an immigration-friendly and pro-business government has been forced by rising anti-foreigner sentiment to introduce new migration deterrence measures that would have been unthinkable even a year ago.
Ireland’s hardening policies reflect both a chronic housing crisis and the growing reluctance of some property owners to keep providing state-funded emergency shelter in the wake of November riots in Dublin triggered by a North African immigrant’s stabbing of young schoolchildren.
A nation already housing more than 100,000 newcomers, mostly from Ukraine, Ireland has stopped guaranteeing housing to new asylum seekers if they are single men, chiefly from Nigeria, Algeria, Afghanistan, Georgia and Somalia, according to the most recent Department of Integration statistics.
Ireland has stopped guaranteeing housing to new asylum seekers if they are single men, chiefly from Nigeria, Algeria, Afghanistan, Georgia and Somalia | Jorge Guerrero/AFP via Getty Images
Even newly arrived families face an increasing risk of being kept in military-style tents despite winter temperatures.
Ukrainians, who since Russia’s 2022 invasion of their country have received much stronger welfare support than other refugees, will see that welcome mat partially retracted in draft legislation approved this week by the three-party coalition government of Prime Minister Leo Varadkar.
Once enacted by parliament next month, the law will limit new Ukrainian arrivals to three months of state-paid housing, while welfare payments – currently among the most generous in Europe for people fleeing Russia’s war – will be slashed for all those in state-paid housing.
Justin Trudeau, Canada
A pessimistic public mood dragged down by cost-of-living woes has made immigration a multidimensional challenge for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
A housing crunch felt across the country has cooled support for immigration, with people looking for scapegoats for affordability pains. The situation has fueled antipathy for Trudeau and his re-election campaign.
Trudeau has treated immigration as a multipurpose solution for Canada’s aging population and slowing economy. And while today’s record-high population growth reflects well on Canada’s reputation as a desirable place to relocate, political challenges linked to migration have arisen in unpredictable ways for Trudeau’s Liberals.
Political challenges linked to migration have arisen in unpredictable ways for Trudeau’s Liberals | Andrej Ivanov/AFP
Since Trudeau came to power eight years ago, at least 1.3 million people have immigrated to Canada, mostly from India, the Philippines, China and Syria. Handling diaspora politics — and foreign interference — has become more consequential, as seen by Trudeau’s clash with India and Canada’s recent break with Israel.
Canada will double its 40 million population in 25 years if the current growth rate holds, enlarging the political challenges of leading what Trudeau calls the world’s “first postnational state”.
Pedro Sánchez, Spain
Spain’s autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, in Northern Africa, are favored by migrants seeking to enter Europe from the south: Once they make it across the land border, the Continent can easily be accessed by ferry.
Transit via the land border that separates the European territory from Morocco is normally kept in check with security measures like high, razor-topped fences, with border control officers from both countries working together to keep undocumented migrants out.
Spain’s autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, in Northern Africa, are favored by migrants seeking to enter Europe | Pierre-Philippe Marcou/AFP
But in recent years authorities in Morocco have expressed displeasure with their Spanish counterparts by standing down their officers and allowing hundreds of migrants to pass, overwhelming border stations and forcing Spanish officers to repel the migrants, with scores dying in the process.
The headaches caused by these incidents are believed to be a major factor in Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s decision to change the Spanish government’s position on the disputed Western Sahara territory and express support for Rabat’s plan to formalize its nearly 50-year occupation of the area.
The pivot angered Sánchez’s leftist allies and worsened Spain’s relationship with Algeria, a long-standing champion of Western Saharan independence. But the measures have stopped the flow of migrants — for now.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece
Greece has been at the forefront of Europe’s migration crisis since 2015, when hundreds of thousands of people entered Europe via the Aegean islands. Migration and border security have been key issues in the country’s political debate.
Human rights organizations, as well as the European Parliament and the European Commission, have accused the Greek conservative government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis of illegal “pushbacks” of migrants who have made it to Greek territory — and of deporting migrants without due process. Greece’s government denies those accusations, arguing that independent investigations haven’t found any proof.
Mitsotakis insists that Greece follows a “tough but fair” policy, but the numerous in-depth investigations belie the moderate profile the conservative leader wants to maintain.
In June, a migrant boat sank in what some called “the worst tragedy ever” in the Mediterranean Sea. Hundreds lost their lives, refocusing Europe’s attention on the issue. Official investigations have yet to discover whether failures by Greek authorities contributed to the shipwreck, according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
In the meantime, Greece is in desperate need of thousands of workers to buttress the country’s understaffed agriculture, tourism and construction sectors. Despite pledges by the migration and agriculture ministers of imminent legislation bringing migrants to tackle the labor shortage, the government was forced to retreat amid pressure from within its own ranks.
Nikos Christodoulides, Cyprus
Cyprus is braced for an increase in migrant arrivals on its shores amid renewed conflict in the Middle East. Earlier in December, Greece sent humanitarian aid to the island to deal with an anticipated increase in flows.
Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides has called for extra EU funding for migration management, and is contending with a surge in violence against migrants in Cyprus. Analysts blame xenophobia, which has become mainstream in Cypriot politics and media, as well as state mismanagement of migration flows. Last year the country recorded the EU’s highest proportion of first-time asylum seekers relative to its population.
Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides has called for extra EU funding for migration management | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
Legal and staffing challenges have delayed efforts to create a deputy ministry for migration, deemed an important step in helping Cyprus to deal with the surge in arrivals.
The island’s geography — it’s close to both Lebanon and Turkey — makes it a prime target for migrants wanting to enter EU territory from the Middle East. Its complex history as a divided country also makes it harder to regulate migrant inflows.
Tim Ross, Annabelle Dickson, Clea Caulcutt, Myah Ward, Matthew Karnitschnig, Hannah Roberts, Pieter Haeck, Shawn Pogatchnik, Zi-Ann Lum, Aitor Hernández-Morales and Nektaria Stamouli
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow has “no interest” in attacking a NATO member and called U.S. President Joe Biden’s warning that Russia would do so if it wins the war in Ukraine “complete nonsense.”
Biden earlier this month warned that “if Putin takes Ukraine, he won’t stop there,” and will attack NATO countries resulting in “American troops fighting Russian troops.”
Putin said Biden’s words were just an attempt to support “mistaken policy” toward Russia and the war in Ukraine.
“It is complete nonsense — and I think President Biden understands that,” Putin said during an interview published Sunday by Rossiya state television.
“Russia has no reason, no interest — no geopolitical interest, neither economic, political nor military — to fight with NATO countries,” Putin said.
In the interview, Putin also warned of “problems” with Finland after the EU country joined NATO.
“Did we have any disputes with them? All disputes, including territorial ones in the mid-20th century, have long been solved,” Putin said. But “now there will be, because now we are going to create the Leningrad military district and concentrate certain military units there,” he said.
In mid-November, Finland began closing its 1,340-kilometer border with Russia, accusing Moscow of pushing asylum seekers, mostly from Africa and the Middle East, toward the Nordic country.
USA Today has published my article (coauthored with Cato Institute immigration policy expert David Bier) on how Biden’s border problems can be alleviated by expanding and more fully implementing the Administration’s own plans to make legal migration easier:
This would be a grave mistake. It would hurt asylum-seekers but won’t stop illegal migration. Biden already has the right plan for the border. He just hasn’t fully implemented it.
The best way to reduce pressure on the border from illegal migration is to make legal entry easier, and Biden’s 2023 immigration agenda included many of the necessary measures. Unfortunately, he hasn’t made them available widely enough, and this failure is leading to people entering illegally…..
The primary initiative is parole sponsorship, under which immigrants sponsored by Americans could receive authorization to enter legally straight from their home country and live and work in the United States for at least two years….
Biden’s plan achieved great initial success, simultaneously helping many thousands of people escape violence and repression and reducing disorder at the border…..
Even so, further progress was stymied because parole sponsorship was limited to migrants from just five countries: Ukraine, Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Participation from the Latin American nations (the “CHNV” countries) is capped at just 30,000 migrants a month from all four countries combined….
The backup option – applying for legal entry at the U.S.-Mexico border using the CBP One phone app – might have mitigated the fallout. But arbitrary caps and flawed agency procedures have ruined this option as well. Appointments are capped at 1,450 a day – though there were nearly 9,000 daily migrant encounters in September…..
The combination of horrific poverty and oppression in their home countries and labor shortages in the United States lead people seeking opportunity and freedom to enter illegally if there is no other way to do so…..
It’s the same dynamic by which alcohol prohibition led people to illegally obtain smuggled booze from the likes of Al Capone. Barring legal markets in much-wanted goods or services predictably creates vast black markets to which millions of people seek access. When Prohibition was abolished, alcohol smuggling and associated organized crime greatly diminished. Legalizing migration would have similar effects on the black market in immigration….
Expanding legal migration would also save more people from violence, poverty and oppression – and bolster the U.S. economy. Immigrants disproportionately contribute to American innovation and entrepreneurship, thereby greatly enhancing economic freedom, wealth and opportunity for native-born Americans as well…..
Biden should order the agencies to eliminate the arbitrary country limitations and numerical caps on parole sponsorship and CBP One. He should also allow migrants to book CBP appointments in their home countries many weeks in advance.
These options would eliminate the vast majority of illegal immigration, restoring order to a chaotic border.
This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.
LONDON — World leaders will touch down in Dubai next week for a climate change conference they’re billing yet again as the final off-ramp before catastrophe. But war, money squabbles and political headaches back home are already crowding the fate of the planet from the agenda.
The breakdown of the Earth’s climate has for decades been the most important yet somehow least urgent of global crises, shoved to one side the moment politicians face a seemingly more acute problem. Even in 2023 — almost certainly the most scorching year in recorded history, with temperatures spawning catastrophic floods, wildfires and heat waves across the globe — the climate effort faces a bewildering array of distractions, headwinds and dismal prospects.
“The plans to achieve net zero are increasingly under attack,” former U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, who set her country’s goal of reaching climate neutrality into law, told POLITICO.
The best outcome for the climate from the 13-day meeting, which is known as COP28 and opens Nov. 30, would be an unambiguous statement from almost 200 countries on how they intend to hasten their plans to cut fossil fuels, alongside new commitments from the richest nations on the planet to assist the poorest.
But the odds against that happening are rising. Instead, the U.S. and its European allies are still struggling to cement a fragile deal with developing countries about an international climate-aid fund that had been hailed as the historic accomplishment of last year’s summit. Meanwhile, a populist backlash against the costs of green policies has governments across Europe pulling back — a reverse wave that would become an American-led tsunami if Donald Trump recaptures the White House next year.
And across the developing world, the rise of energy and food prices stoked by the pandemic and the Ukraine war has caused inflation and debt to spiral, heightening the domestic pressure on climate-minded governments to spend their money on their most acute needs first.
Even U.S. President Joe Biden, whose 2022 climate law kicked off a boom of clean-energy projects in the U.S., has endorsed fossil fuel drilling and pipeline projects under pressure to ease voter unease about rising fuel costs.
Add to all that the newest Mideast war that began with Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
On the upside, investment in much of the green economy is also surging. Analysts are cautiously opining that China’s emissions may have begun to decline, several years ahead of Beijing’s schedule.And the Paris-based International Energy Agency projects that global fossil fuel demand could peak this decade, with coal use plummeting and oil and gas plateauing afterward. Spurring these trends is a competition among powers such as China, the United States, India and the European Union to build out and dominate clean-energy industries.
But the fossil fuel industry is betting against a global shift to green, instead investing its profits from the energy crisis into plans for long-term expansion of its core business.
The air of gloom among many supporters of global climate action is hard to miss, as is the sense that global warming will not be the sole topic on leaders’ minds when they huddle in back rooms.
“It’s getting away from us,” Tim Benton, director of the Chatham House environment and society center, said during a markedly downbeat discussion among climate experts at the think tank’s lodgings on St James’ Square in London earlier this month. “Where is the political space to drive the ambition that we need?”
Fog of war
The most acute distraction from global climate work is the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The conflagration is among many considerations the White House is weighing in Biden’s likely decision not to attend the summit, one senior administration official told POLITICO this month. Other leaders are also reconsidering their schedules, said one senior government official from a European country, who was granted anonymity to speak about the sensitive diplomacy of the conference.
The war is also likely to push its way onto the climate summit’s unofficial agenda: Leaders of big Western powers who are attending will spend at least some of their diplomatically precious face-time with Middle East leaders discussing — not climate — but the regional security situation, said two people familiar with the planning for COP28 who could not be named for similar reasons. According to a preliminary list circulated by the United Arab Emirates, Israeli President Isaac Herzog or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will attend the talks.
A threat even exists that the conference could be canceled or relocated, should a wider regional conflict develop, Benton said.
The UAE’s COP28 presidency isn’t talking about that, at least publicly. “We look forward to hosting a safe, inclusive COP beginning at the end of November,” said a spokesperson in an emailed statement. But the strained global relations have already thrown the location of next years’ COP29 talks into doubt because Russia has blocked any EU country from hosting the conference, which is due to be held in eastern or central Europe.
The upshot is that the bubble of global cooperation that landed the Paris climate agreement in 2015 has burst. “We have a lot of more divisive narratives now,” Laurence Tubiana, the European Climate Foundation CEO who was one of the drafters of the Paris deal, said at the same meeting at Chatham House.
The Ukraine war and tensions between the U.S. and China in particular have widened the gap between developed and developing countries, Benton told POLITICO in an email.
Now, “the Hamas-Israel war potentially creates significant new fault lines between the Arab world and many Western countries that are perceived to be more pro-Israeli,” he said. “The geopolitical tensions arising from the war could create leverage that enables petrostates (many of which are Muslim) to shore up the status quo.”
Add to that the as yet unknown impact on already high fossil fuel commodity prices, said Kalee Kreider, president of the Ridgely Walsh public affairs consultancy and a former adviser to U.S. Vice President Al Gore. “Volatility doesn’t usually help raise ambition.”
The Biden administration’s decisions to approve a tranche of new fossil fuel production and export projects will undermine U.S. diplomacy at COP28, said Ed Markey, a Democratic U.S. senator from Massachusetts.
“You can’t preach temperance from a barstool, and the United States is running a long tab,” he said.
U.N. climate talks veterans have seen this program before. “No year over the past three decades has been free of political, economic or health challenges,” said former U.N. climate chief Patricia Espinosa, who now heads the consulting firm onepoint5. “We simply can’t wait for the perfect conditions to address climate change. Time is a luxury we no longer have — if we ever did.”
The EU backlash
Before the Mideast’s newest shock to the global energy system, the war in Ukraine exposed Europe’s energy dependence on Russia — and initially galvanized the EU to accelerate efforts to roll out cleaner alternatives.
But in the past year, persistent inflation has worn away that zeal. Businesses and citizens worry about anything that might add to the financial strain, and this has frayed a consensus on climate change that had held for the past four years among left, center and center right parties across much of the 27-country bloc.
In recent months, conservative members of the European Parliament have attacked several EU green proposals as excessive, framing themselves as pragmatic environmentalists ahead of Europe-wide elections next year. Reinvigorated far-right parties across the bloc are also using the green agenda to attack more mainstream parties, a trend that is spooking the center.
Germany’s government was almost brought down this year by a law that sought to ban gas boilers — with the Greens-led economy ministry retreating to a compromise. In France, President Emmanuel Macron has joined a growing chorus agitating for a “regulatory pause” on green legislation.
If Europe’s struggles emerge at COP28, the ripple effect could be global, said Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at the Brussels-based Bruegel think tank.
The “EU has established itself as the global laboratory for climate neutrality,” he said. “But now it needs to deliver on the experiment, or the world (which is closely watching) will assume this just does not work. And that would be a disaster for all of us.”
U.K. retreats
The world is also watching the former EU member that stakes a claim to be the climate leader of the G7: the U.K.
London has prided itself on its green credentials ever since former Prime Minister May enacted a 2019 law calling for net zero by 2050 — making her the first leader of a major economy to do so.
According to May’s successor Boris Johnson, net zero was good for the planet, good for voters, good for the economy. But under current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the messaging has transformed. Net zero remains the target — but it comes with a “burden” on working people.
In a major speech this fall, Sunak rolled back plans to ban new petrol and diesel car sales by 2030, bringing the U.K. into line with the EU’s 2035 date. With half an eye on Germany’s travails, he said millions of households would be exempted from the gas boiler ban expected in 2035.
In making his arguments for a “pragmatic” approach to net zero, Sunak frequently draws on the talking points of net zero-skeptics. Why should the citizens of the U.K., which within its own borders produces just 1 percent of global emissions, “sacrifice even more than others?”
The danger, said one EU climate diplomat — granted anonymity to discuss domestic policy of an allied country — was that other countries around the COP28 negotiating table would hear that kind of rhetoric from a capital that had led the world — and repurpose it to make their own excuses.
Sunak’s predecessor May sees similar risks.
“Nearly a third of all global emissions originate from countries with territorial emissions of 1 per cent or less,” May said. “If we all slammed on the brakes, it would make our net zero aspirations impossible to achieve.”
Trump’s back
The U.S., the largest producer of industrial carbon pollution in modern history, has been a weathervane on climate depending on who controls its governing branches.
When Republicans regained control of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2022, it created a major drag on Biden’s promise to provide $11.4 billion in annual global climate finance by 2024.
Securing this money and much more, developing countries say, is vital to any progress on global climate goals at COP28. Last year, on the back of the pandemic and the energy price spike, global debt soared to a record $92 trillion. This cripples developing countries’ ability to build clean energy and defend themselves against — or recover from — hurricanes, floods, droughts and fires.
Even when the money is there, the politics can be challenging. Multibillion-dollar clean energy partnerships that the G7 has pursued to shift South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam and India off coal power are struggling to gain acceptance from the recipients.
Yet even more dire consequences await if Trump wins back the presidency next year.
A Trump victory would put the world’s largest economy a pen stroke away from quitting the Paris Agreement all over again — or, even more drastically, abandoning the entire international regime of climate pacts and summits. The thought is already sending a chill: Negotiations over a fund for poorer countries’ climate losses and damage, which Republicans oppose, include talks on how to make its language “change-of-government-proof” in light of a potential Trump victory, said Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for a bloc of island states.
More concretely for reining in planet-heating gases, Trump would be in position to approve legislation eliminating all or part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Biden’s signature climate law included $370 billion in incentives for clean energy, electric vehicles and other carbon-cutting efforts – though the actual spending is likely to soar even higher due to widespread interest in its programs and subsidies – and accounts for a bulk of projected U.S. emissions cuts this decade.
House Republicans have attempted to claw back parts of Biden’s climate law several times. That’s merely a political messaging effort for now, thanks to a Democrat-held Senate and a sure veto from Biden, but the prospects flip if the GOP gains full control of Congress and White House.
Under a plan hatched by Tubiana and backed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, countries would in the future log their state and local government climate plans with the U.N., in an attempt to undergird the entire system against a second Republican blitzkrieg.
The U.S. isn’t the only place where climate action is on the ballot, Benton told the conference at Chatham House on Nov. 1.
News on Sunday that Argentina had elected as president right-wing populist Javier Milei — a Trump-like libertarian — raised the prospect of a major Latin American economy walking away from the Paris Agreement, either by formally withdrawing or by reneging on its promises.
Elections are also scheduled in 2024 for the EU, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Russia, and possibly the U.K.
“A quarter of the world’s population is facing elections in the next nine months,” he said. “If everyone goes to the right and populism becomes the order of the day … then I won’t hold out high hopes for Paris.”
Zack Colman reported from Washington, D.C. Suzanne Lynch also contributed reporting from Brussels.
This article is part of the Road to COP special report, presented by SQM.The article is produced with full editorial independence by POLITICO reporters and editors. Learn more about editorial content presented by outside advertisers.
Germany has floated that the United Nations could take control in Gaza once the Israel-Hamas war is over, according to a document seen by POLITICO.
However, both the Palestinians and some EU diplomats have serious doubts about the feasibility of the idea, with a senior Palestinian figure in Europe calling it “unacceptable.”
Israel has been striking the densely populated Gaza Strip in reaction to an attack by Hamas on October 7, during which the militant group killed around 1,200 Israelis. According to data from the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli strikes have killed more than 11,000 Palestinians.
Discussions are ongoing about how to allow more humanitarian aid into Gaza and how to stop the fighting. But there are also increasing discussions on scenarios for after the war.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month that an “effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority” should ultimately govern Gaza but offered no indications on how to make it “effective” or overcome Israeli opposition. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had stated earlier that his country would take “overall security responsibility” for Gaza “for an indefinite period.”
That is a no-go for the EU and the United States.
The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, on Monday stressed that Israel cannot stay in Gaza after the war, when he presented his vision for what happens post conflict ahead of a trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories. Healsosaid, “we believe that a Palestinian authority must return to Gaza,” stressing he meant “one Palestinian authority, not the Palestinian Authority.”
Blinken has also warned that Israel cannot reoccupy Gaza after its war with Hamas ends.
The German proposal — a two-page, nonofficial document (or non-paper in EU-speak) — is dated October 21, so before Israel’s decision to launch the second phase of its military operation against Gaza at the end of October.
Berlin, one of Israel’s staunchest allies within the EU, writes that “Israel’s goal is a goal we share: never again should Hamas be in a position to terrorize Israel and its citizens.” Yet at the same time, “it is clear that these goals are hard to achieve with military means only … Its radical ideology and agenda cannot be fought by military means.”
It floats five different scenarios about the future of the Gaza Strip, including Israeli re-occupation of Gaza, and either the Palestinian Authority (PA) or Egypt taking control.
The U.N scenario is also on the list. In Berlin’s words, the scenario means an “internationalization of Gaza under the umbrella of the United Nations (and regional partners)” with “a carefully organized transition” toward Palestinian self-administration, “ideally” through elections “and in combination with an international coalition that provides necessary security.”
The document described this scenario as one that “could offer a political perspective since neither the PA nor Egypt are willing or able to take over and a return to the status quo ante or an Israeli re-occupation are politically not desirable.”
But Berlin also warned that “this scenario would require significant investment of political capital and financing as well as an international coalition to engage on security issues alongside the U.N.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last month that an “effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority” should ultimately govern Gaza but offered no indications on how to make it “effective” or overcome Israeli opposition | Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
The document says that “the EU should take over a pro-active role in shaping this [the post-war] discussion” and it ends by emphasizing that the situation in the Gaza Strip “can only be sustainably stabilized through a relaunch of the Middle East Peace Process.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen echoed the U.N.idea in her speech last week to EU ambassadors, saying that after the conflict the world has to ensure Gaza is no longer a safe haven for terrorists. To ensure that, von der Leyen said “different ideas are being discussed on how this can be ensured, including an international peace force under U.N. mandate.”
But several diplomats — granted, like others in this article, anonymity to discuss the sensitive subject — said that theGerman suggestion didn’t go far enough. It came in the very early stages of the conflict, it was not circulated among all member countries and was not intended to be discussed by foreign ministers.
When German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock stated Berlin’s line more recently, she said that “Gaza must not be occupied, but ideally be placed under international protection” without explicitly mentioning a U.N. role.
One EU diplomat described the document as “stillborn.”
Palestinian no-go
The German suggestion has angered Palestinian officials, already unhappy at EU statements that don’t mention a cease-fire in Gaza.
When German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock stated Berlin’s line more recently, she said that “Gaza must not be occupied, but ideally be placed under international protection” without explicitly mentioning a U.N. role | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
That feeling extends across Muslim countries. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) — which has 57 Muslim countries as members — held a press conference in Brussels on Monday morning, at the same time as EU foreign ministers were meeting, to argue that they don’t want to talk about the future of the Gaza Strip as long as there’s no cease-fire.
The 27 EU member countries have agreed on a call for “humanitarian corridors and pauses” but there’s no unanimity on a cease-fire, which is being pushed by Spain but objected to by the likes of Germany and Austria for several reasons, including that it could put Israel and Hamas on the same level, as the former is a country and the latter classed as a terrorist organization by the bloc.
For Abdalrahim Alfarra, the head of the Palestinian Mission to the EU, Belgium and Luxembourg, the U.N taking control of Gaza would be “unacceptable.”
He told POLITICO that a U.N role in providing international protection at the borders — like the blue helmets in the south of Lebanon — to protect the frontier between two future countries, Israel and Palestine, is “what we need.”
The problem with the German document is that it doesn’t talk about U.N protection at the borders but rather about U.N “control of Gaza,” he said.
Alfarra said that the Palestinian Authority has not been consulted about the document and also criticized it for not mentioning any form of cease-fire before addressing the future of the region.
“They didn’t talk about how we’re going to protect the men and women now. Right away: the future of Gaza,” he said.
