COP27, U.S. Midterms, ASEAN Summit, and More

MCMAHON:

In the coming week, Egypt hosts the COP27 Climate Summit, the closely watched U.S. midterm elections take place, and ASEAN kicks off a month of Asian Summitry. It's November 3rd, 2022 and time for the world next week.

I'm Bob McMahon. And today we are joined by Carla Robbins, who is a senior fellow here at CFR. Carla, thanks for being here.

ROBBINS:

Great to be covering for the redoubtable, Jim Lindsay.

MCMAHON:

Great to have you.

ROBBINS:

So Bob, this Sunday COP27 kicks off in Sharm el-Sheik Egypt. This annual UN climate conference sort of Paris with pyramids, brings together nations from around the world to look at the state of the global climate, and what needs to be done to address the crisis going forward and all the things that haven't been done that were promised. So the delegates are going to hear from the scientists, how bad is the news that they're going to hear? Is there any hope that this meeting is going to make progress on all those promises? And is there any concern about the fact that the host country is such a horrendous human rights record? I mean, it's a great thing that this conference is taking place in a developing country when so many developing countries are really going to suffer more than a lot of other countries. But Egypt is really, this should be on the blacklist when it comes to human rights abuses.

MCMAHON:

There's a lot to respond to there, Carla. But I'll start out with the climate side of the things and first we'll talk about what kind of year we've had. If it needed any more emphasizing, it's just been another epic year of flooding. Take your pick, Pakistan or Nigeria. A drought, China's had another historic drought to add to the others that have been recorded around the world, the US Southwest. The US Southeast, west coast of Florida, just absolutely leveled by Hurricane Ian and on and on. Just recently, another report from a UN agency, UNESCO, I believe, noting that several notable glaciers will cease to exist by 2050 because of climate change. So any number of things that any country in the world can point to as areas of concern.

And what the delegates are going to be talking about in Sharm el-Sheik is sort of reinforcing some of the commitments that were made last year in Glasgow about, okay, how do we get to the goal, which is this ongoing goal of limiting warming to 1.5% above pre-industrial levels. By all accounts, that appears like it's going to be overtaken by the end of this decade, if not earlier. So that's 2.7% Fahrenheit, I believe, for those not using Celsius. And so a lot of the question then quickly skips to, as the western coast of Florida can attest to, is to resilience and adaptation. And for countries, especially, this will be a theme of this summit based in Egypt, based in an African nation. They're calling it Africa's COP because many countries, many of the poorer countries that are barely industrialized or have come much later to industrialization than the richer world are paying for it more heavily than the richer countries are, with whether it's drought or rising sea levels or whatever.

And so what is the formula for helping them to cope with that? What is the formula for everything from just early weather warning systems to kind of have a good sense of a major storm coming or a severe weather system coming like some other parts of the world now take for granted? Whether it is safeguarding coastal communities, rising the level of dwellings or moving just completely away from coastal areas. On and on, and as well as recovering from that unexpected storm that came or that was more powerful than was expected. These are places that need billions of dollars. There was a pledge of something like $100 billion a year at a COP 10 years ago. And it was a pledge. Again, a lot of these COP meetings are pledges, they're not binding, but they are sort of supposed to be some sort of serious commitment, Carla. And in that time, since that 10 year old pledge of $100 billion a year from rich countries, support countries, about 80 billion has been committed collectively. So 80 billion over 10 years.

ROBBINS:

So $8 billion a year rather $100 billion a year.

MCMAHON:

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so what will be the way in which these countries are going to help with what's being termed, you're going to hear this phrase a lot, loss and damage? What are going to be the ways in which the United States, the European Union, countries like that can help in some sort of compensation? And whether or not they want to call it some sort of reparations or some other terminology, will there be some sort of commitment to that that will come out of Sharm el-Sheik? I think that's going to be one of the big takeaways. To put a little bit more of a light on the issue, there will be a number of speakers pointing to commitments that have been made, and especially countries that are integrating renewables into their energy systems.

The other thing that I would note for starters, and we'll get to a lot of the other questions too, Carla, is like so many other big events this year, the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine I think will be resonating in a lot of ways. and it'd be interesting to see how that will be raised in the context of this summit. But you've had countries that have done an extreme pivot from a reliance on Russian fossil fuels, for example, and maybe further accelerated the urgency of going to renewables because of what Russia has been doing and it looks like it intends to continue to do in Ukraine. And the fact that it's going to stay under sanctions for a while, the fact that the Nord Stream Pipeline, which was a crucial source of natural gas is going to be offline. And the fact then you might even see more sabotage taking place in existing natural gas pipelines like we have seen happen recently.

And in addition, the pipeline sabotage that took place that they're still trying to find the source of contributed to another problem that was identified last year or that was emphasized last year, which is methane, which is a particularly potent greenhouse gas, because methane was burbling up. And what will countries do to mitigate that? It's not slowing down fast enough. And some countries have gone back to coal usage again, Germany among them, because of the loss of natural gas. So we've got a lot of issues that weren't even on the table last year that are back. And it does get back to this question of will there be a serious sort of commitment to financing, to helping the poorer countries that are going to pay the price sooner than the richer countries to climate change that's already happening?

ROBBINS:

So one of the things about these UN conferences, they're not organizations, they're conferences. And they are, I'm going to date myself, they are sort of like Brigadoon. I mean, they sort of disappear and then they come back in a different place every year. So there's no real leader. There's no institutional leader for COP. And so the country that's the host has to take responsibility for pushing it forward. So I don't see Sisi doing that in Egypt. I mean, somebody's got to take the leadership role in this, because this is, I mean the most recent IPCC report was terrifying. And as you said, they're going to blow past what the commitment was in Paris potentially by the end of the decade. I hadn't realized it was even that soon.

So who do we look for for leadership there in Sharm el-Sheik? Because there's a lot of stuff, whether it's money or it's all the other commitments. I mean there was supposed to be a monitoring mechanism that everybody was supposed to commit to that was supposed to move forward. There are a lot of things there. There's no sanctions in Paris for meeting it, but at least there was supposed to be a naming shaming component to it. So who's the leader?

MCMAHON:

Yeah. I think like so many things in the modern era, there's an institutional through line that is the UN, but the UN is at the end of the day, is only as effective on these types of issues as the strongest countries. And many times that has fallen to the U.S. But what have we seen in the U.S.? And we're going to get to U.S. politics shortly, but there's a bit of a flip flop where you still have a major U.S. party that will not come out and say that human caused conditions have contributed to climate change, that greenhouse gas is created by human activity is what's the cause here. And then what do we do to move away from that? And so you had these non-binding, but somewhat serious pledges that came out of Paris, then the U.S. Extricated itself from that under the Trump Administration. And now it's back under the Biden Administration, but it can only cajole so far.

And I do think there'll be a little bit of wind in the sales because the Biden Administration's the Inflation Reduction Act had a huge component that dealt with climate and dealt with renewables and steps that were seen as helping to ease emissions and acknowledging the role of human activity in climate. You just had elections in Brazil where you have the return of Lula, who under his previous terms as president saw really striking slackening of deforestation in the rainforest Amazon known as one of the lungs of the earth. And it was really consequential when your Jair Bolsonaro took over because the Amazon was open for business in a way we hadn't seen in decades. So you'll have those types of things. It will be interesting to see what kind of Brazil representation there is because Lula does not return formally into office, I believe until January.

So whether there'll be some sort of residual Brazilian representation there. And what other countries are going to step up? Paris, again, was seen as successful because you had the United States and China, the world's biggest carbon emitters making common cause on a number of areas, and sort of striding into the effort together and providing a huge bit of lift for other countries to follow suit. And so China and the U.S. are at a very tense stage of relations right now. John Kerry mentioned that appearing at CFR just a week ago, that there's not really much of a climate dialogue going on at the moment. China is doing things that on the one hand can be seen as positive in this regard. It is a huge player in the renewables energy field. But also builds a lot of coal mines, and it's still developing those and still is going to keep to itself now.

If we follow the signals under Xi Jinping, it is going to be keeping its own counsel on things and not as engaged in some of these issues as had been hoped. So back to your original question, Carla, it's the big powers that have to set the tone. The host, back to on one of your original questions, Egypt has on the one hand shown seriousness about the issue, again, saying it's going to represent the cause of the African countries. But it's holding this summit in a hard to get to community in the Sinai Sharm el-Sheik. By most expectations you're not going to see a lot of NGOs or free expression in the streets of people trying to represent the cause of less carbon and related causes. And it's the related ones in particular that Egypt is not interested in seeing. Sisi has cracked down heavily on any sort of public dissent. So you have the incongruity of a authoritarian state hosting this type of conference. But still in all, if you can look past it, it's not strong enough to really crack down on the assemblage. Although, who knows? We might see a strong Egyptian lead official corralling forces towards a strong communiqué and, in some sense at least, of expressed purpose. There needs to come out of this, I think, Carla, just some sort of organizing body though that is going to help, at the very least, create a financing mechanism, create some kind of nuts and bolts way of being able to help out the poorer countries, and a sense of momentum as we continue to rack up these extreme weather events.

ROBBINS:

Yeah. This is amazing. Every time they meet we talk about the financing mechanism, we talk about all of these things, and the IPCC reports come out. I want to believe so. I will keep my fingers crossed because there's just not enough time. I mean, the time is running out on this. And you've got John Kerry and there's some leaders who are committed to it. And maybe it'll count that you'll have an African Middle Eastern country there at least representing the case of the people who are going to suffer the most damage. And that was a smart choice there, although I think I would've chosen a different country.

MCMAHON:

Yeah. And so we'll see whether the force of the collective actions that we've seen this past year, the collective calamities that we've seen this past year has an impact in addition to, again, some of these areas of momentum on renewables that continue to show a path towards powering countries, both poor and rich. And maybe that's part of the path out of this.

Well, Carla, I want to take us into another topic, which I alluded to a few minutes ago, which is the U.S. midterm elections. This is where all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for grabs, about a third of the U.S. Senate seats and a whole host of important local elections for governors. And as we've been coming to learn, election commissioners are up for grabs. The issues start out with the economy, inflation with all capital letters, abortion rights, immigration policy. Can you give us a sense of what the stakes are, especially after the president's speech last night on prime time?

ROBBINS:

The congressional candidates and President Biden are going to talk about the legislative stakes, and that was quite powerful when the president spoke about democracy being at stake. I will say legislatively to start, that's probably the area that's going to be least affected by the outcome of this election, with two very big caveats that I will get to. So the first thing I'm going to be watching is the level of harassment and intimidation targeted at voters and at election workers next Tuesday and what happens the day after, especially if election denying candidates, and there are a lot of them running, lose. Even before the attack on Speaker Pelosi's husband last week, the Federal Government released an internal bulletin warning of the heightened threats of violence around the election. And this is really, I quite think quite chilling, the OSCE, the European based election monitoring organization has even warned about the threats of violence against election officials, election misinformation, the potential for voter suppression and voter intimidation in the U.S. and the level of election denialism among GOP candidates.

I mean, who would've thought that we would get to the point that the OSCE would be warning about what's happening in the United States? So that's the first thing. The second thing I'm going to be watching are these state elections, something that we usually don't spend a lot of time thinking about. And as you said, how many of those election denying candidates are going to win, especially the ones who could affect the electoral process in 2024? So Arizona and its candidate for Secretary of State, that's not our sort of secretary of state, not somebody who makes foreign policy, but this is the position that oversees elections. Mark Finchem is the poster child for this. He was once a member of the Oath Keepers. And he said he was near the capital, not in during the January 6th insurrection. Now he's built his campaign completely around the stop the steal rhetoric.

But in Arizona, every candidate except one, and I don't know which one it is, so don't ask me, has questioned the legitimacy of the Biden win and suggested they might not accept the results if they themselves lose this time. That's really quite disturbing. So according to an ABC News and FiveThirtyEight tally, of the 552 Republicans running for Office, 199 of them have fully denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Another 61 Republicans have raised questions about the results of 2020. So let's do the math here. That is nearly half. Election deniers are also running for Secretary of State in 10 states, not just in Arizona, including Jim Marchant out of Nevada who was said, and this is a direct quote, "When my coalition of Secretary of State candidates around the country get elected, we're going to fix the whole country, and President Trump is going to be president again in 2024." That's pretty brazen.

So there is a lot at stake on a state level. An attempt it seems to be, I mean, someone like Marchant is saying is that there's an attempt to take over the electoral process, and we don't have a federal electoral process, we have a state level electoral process, or trying to take it over on a state level to hijack elections. That is a fundamental threat to democracy and a very scary thing for us here, and not a good look internationally. People are paying attention to what's happening here. And when you see something like a magazine like The Economist suddenly writing about explaining what secretaries of state are on a state level, you know that we're fundamentally have a pretty serious problem. So for the legislative agenda, and that really is why we hire these guys to go to Congress in the first place, where the poll crunchers now stand, it is a near certainty that the GOP is going to take the house.

And then according to Nate Silver on FiveThirtyEight, my go-to website, a 53 to 47 chance as of this morning that the Republicans are also going to take the Senate. So with the Democratic president in the White House holding the veto pan, the Republicans aren't going to be able to pass major legislation, even if they have both houses. But they can block the president from getting any legislation passed. And there are two major areas in the near term where that damage could be considerable. The debt limit. The treasury's expected to reach the limit on its borrowing sometime in the third quarter of next year and it's going to need Congress to sign off on raising the debt ceiling. This is usually an automatic thing except when it gets politicized. And house speaker in waiting, Kevin McCarthy, is already warning that he plans to use that leverage to roll back some of Biden's spending without saying what exactly, but the betting is the student debt relief is very high on his list for the chopping block. You could see a standoff.

We've seen standoffs over the debt ceiling before. In fact, in 2011, a standoff over the debt limit led S&P to downgrade the U.S. bond rating, which raises borrowing costs again, for people who say they care about the deficit. This leads to we already have incredible problems of the economy, the chaos and potential there is really, really high. And you have lots of Republicans saying, "We're going to get the leverage here and we need to use it." McCarthy said, "We'll provide you more money, but you got to change your current behavior. We're not just going to keep lifting your credit card limit." I mean, so he's been quite clear about that. And then finally, Bob, there's the potential threat to Ukraine aid. And that one is coming from both sides of the aisle. We saw the House progressive caucus late last month send out and then retract immediately a letter calling for Biden to redouble "efforts to seek a realistic framework for a ceasefire."

And in it they talked about their responsibility because they're authorizing tens of billions of dollars from military assistance from Ukraine. And meanwhile, McCarthy, once again, the house speaker in waiting has said that quote, "there will be no more blank checks for Ukraine." So the last time the house voted directly on aid to Ukraine it was pretty enthusiastic. The vote was strongly in favor, 368 to 57. But all of the no votes were Republicans. And you see that growing. So the debt limit, Ukraine, those are two immediate things that could very well be on the chopping block if the Republicans take over the House and the Senate.

MCMAHON:

Well it's pretty stark landscape you sketch out and it certainly sounds plausible. A few things jumped out at me, Carla. One is your reference to the way this is being regarded in the rest of the world. So certainly if you look at the two major U.S. geopolitical rivals, China, you've already had Xi Jinping referring to what he called the chaos in the U.S. as a path he doesn't want China to take, but also warns off China's partners that they need to be wary of that. And so you had almost a super scripted Chinese party congress that just concluded where it was almost like a blast from the past looking at how that was choreographed. But I think it might have been just to emphasize a point, which is that this is an orderly system right down to them continuing to try to stamp out Covid. And that has its own problems in pathologies as well, but it does show the way a major U.S. rival is looking at all this.

And Vladimir Putin certainly is keenly aware that he stands to gain from U.S. economic turbulence, certainly Russian activists and misinformation shops and so forth. Disinformation shops have been active in trying to foam in further unrest like they did in 2016 and 2020. And for him it means less staunch support of the country that's really doing the most to stand up with Ukraine in what has been a disastrous Russian invasion. But it buys him time to maybe come out of it potentially with some wins, whether it's holding onto some extra territory or not. But those are two big consequences of this mayhem, let alone the, what you're talking about, the economic one, which is in some ways much bigger. And for me, it strikes me as a bit of just incredible cognitive dissonance that the polling is showing a majority of Americans, so presumably not just Republicans, but independents and even some Democrats who just have lost faith in Biden's stewardship of the economy and taking it out against him in midterms.

But yet what they're going to do is usher in a group of people who are going to burn the house down, so to speak, and make things even worse for them. And so there just seems to be, while you can point to specific policies that have exacerbated inflation or you can point to problems with the student loan pledge and so forth, it's still in all to take this kind of warfare into Washington at a time when it's really going to affect so many people across the board. It does not seem comprehensible, but we're just maybe just that's the climate we're in.

ROBBINS:

Well it's certainly the climate we're in. So my husband covered the Hill for years for the Washington Post, so he's a domestic politics guy married to me being a foreign policy person. And every morning over breakfast I ask him the same question, he's getting really bored with it. I say to him, "What does Mitch McConnell say to himself every morning when he looks in the mirror?" I mean, this is a guy, I don't necessarily have to agree with him on policy, but this is a guy who has spent an entire career on politics, certainly understands democracy and the electoral system, and-

MCMAHON:

Former senate majority leader, current minority leader, but potentially future majority leader.

ROBBINS:

Majority leader in waiting. What does he say to himself? So when President Biden gave his speech, and it was a very, very strong speech talking about the threats to democracy, and what did he say? He tweeted that President Biden was just trying to divert everybody's attention away from inflation and crime. And this sort of near termism is we're all just going to score points, I had to keep coming back to this idea. For those of us who have worked in authoritarian states, for those of us who seen democracy get dealt away, you have to think, do these guys think that the system is a hell of a lot more resilient? Do they not see the brittleness of what's going on around us? I mean, I actually used to think that, oh, we'll just snap back. And now I'm really less certain about that and I find this all really, really chilling. And it came very close in 2020, and 2024 could very well be, next Wednesday could be very really scary as well.

MCMAHON:

There's lots of different threats to look at and we'll be talking about it a heck of a lot more. I would note for listeners, the council has a initiative called Renewing America that deals with all the underpinnings of U.S. democracy, including democracy itself and the governance issues, as well as areas like immigration and trade. All of these are going to be affected by what happens not only Tuesday, but going forward in what's going to be a fervid environment leading up to the U.S. presidential elections, where you could very well see Donald Trump and Joe Biden going at it again as the main candidates.

ROBBINS:

So if you haven't already voted and if you're in the sound of our voices, go out and vote.

MCMAHON:

Nothing else we can say at this point.

ROBBINS:

So Bob, the biannual ASEAN Summit is going to kick off next Thursday in Cambodia. President Biden is going to be attending this summit in person. So what do we expect they're going to be talking about there? I mean, Biden was going to be pivoting to Asia, and then of course Ukraine came in the middle of this. This is a chance for him to talk about Asia and is he going to take a leadership role there? Is ASEAN going to take a leadership role? This is a consensus based organization that tends to not make waves very often, but they're also very focused on the economy and the global economy is in deep trouble. So what do you expect?

MCMAHON:

We should note that this will be a second big stop on the president's trip. So he goes to Sharma el-Sheik to pay a visit for at least a day to the COP27 Summit, and then heads over to Cambodia to Phnom Penh for the ASEAN Summit. Goes on to the G20 Summit ultimately in Indonesia, in Bali before heading back to the U.S. And there'll be an ASEAN Summit without President Biden before he shows up. That'll be sort of the special U.S. ASEAN Summit, which is important in its own right. ASEAN itself is going to be talking through a lot of the issues you just mentioned. A big one continues to be Myanmar. So it's an organization of 10 countries, but really has been defacto nine countries functioning as an organization because Myanmar has not been invited to its meetings. The junta that's ruling Myanmar after the coup almost two years ago-

ROBBINS:

And that was, by ASEAN standards, quite a daring thing.

MCMAHON:

That was a big step by ASEAN, yes.

ROBBINS:

Just the fact that they disinvited them and then they said you could send somebody low level. That, by ASEAN standards, was really, I mean it was a nothing burger, but by ASEAN standards it was a big thing.

MCMAHON:

That's correct. So they will meet amongst themselves. The economic integration continues to be a big issue with ASEAN. They're a group that is extremely aware of the big power interest. So in its own neighborhood, it's the gravity from China that is pervasive. And so China is seen particularly through an economic lens, the U.S. through a security and some trade aspects. And I think you'll see Biden trying to play up the trade side of things. The U.S., I guess is the fourth largest trading partner for ASEAN behind China, the EU and Japan. And the U.S. would like to keep on bumping that up. China has a lot of skin in the game through things like the Belt and Road Initiative. At the same time, countries in the region which know China really well talk about China hands. The countries in the region know China are the original old China hands.

And so they sort of want to have a clear lens in how they view China, not to antagonize it too much, but also not to be suffocated by its embrace. So I think it'll be a very interesting summit to watch, first the ASEAN discussion amongst themselves, and then when Joe Biden shows up, what sort of pledges are made? What sort of expressions are made? The U.S. is also seen as the sort of guarantor of the safe passage of waterways, which are vital to the region. China has major claims to the South China Sea. And there's been an ongoing attempt to try to come up with some sort of code of cooperation between China and the ASEAN countries. We'll see if it happens under Cambodia's watch, because Cambodia is seen as one of the friendliest countries in ASEAN towards China. So it's U.S. cooperation. It's maritime cooperation. It's trade. And just how will the region retain its sense of being this neutral but interested player in all of the geopolitics churning about?

ROBBINS:

So what would be in this code of conduct? I mean, there's lots for these countries to be nervous about, particularly Vietnam. I mean there's everything, from oil rights to under the sea, to the fact that the Chinese obviously are building islands. There's claims to counterclaims and all these other things as well. And the Chinese rejected a ruling by one of the arbitration courts under the UN Convention Law of the Sea. This is an arcane's skill set, but actually I know something about it. UNCLOS.

MCMAHON:

Which by the way, the U.S. is not signed on to but abides by most of its sort of guidelines.

ROBBINS:

There's lots of things we don't sign on to.

MCMAHON:

Yes. Yes.

ROBBINS:

And we really don't ratify treaties. When you say the Chinese might consider signing onto a code of conduct, is it something that has any teeth to it?

MCMAHON:

Well, I think at the end of the day, discussion have been going on for a number of years. Again, given the tenor of China, especially coming out of the party Congress, and Xi's really affirming his complete rule over China - he's got allies in the Politburo - and his view of China and his assertiveness ever since he took office. I think what at best you would look at is some sort of watered down document that affirms the rights of states' sovereign use of the seas and China's not going to be a threat or whatever, but I don't think you'll see any kind of backing away of China. So I would be surprised if you saw some sort of code of conduct that would in any way, let's say endorse the ruling that took place in the international court that was in favor of the Philippines and then disputed highway China, for example. I think you're going to see something much more watered down-

ROBBINS:

Literally.

MCMAHON:

Literally, yeah. In all senses of the word. Again, it is something that has come up repeatedly. That might be enough for some nations just to say we talked about it and China has agreed it's not going to be a threat, or something along those lines. It's not clear. But I do think another interesting little subplot is going to be whether or not Ukraine comes up in the discussion of ASEAN. I mean whether Ukraine is going to sign on to a treaty of amity and cooperation in Southeast Asia, which a handful of other countries, European countries have signed on to. We don't know yet exactly the scale of the Ukraine discussion and whether or not there's going to be any sort of ASEAN statement about Ukraine. Some countries in ASEAN have spoken out against the Russian invasion. Some have refrained from or refrained from signing on to any sort of sanctions.

Vietnam, for example, continues to have a long standing relationship with Russia and has refrained from taking any strong stance. But as I mentioned in relation to the climate summit, it's all these summits that are playing out, it's going to be very interesting to see whether there is any sort of shift in the mood. One, because Russia has so bungled it, has been so aggressive and harsh in its attack on civilian targets in Ukraine, and just had repercussions worldwide, really economically. Russia did, we should note just sign on or re-sign on to the grain deal after it was basically in a lose lose position on that front so that the food crises that were starting to percolate in the Middle East and Africa won't expand. But still in all I think countries are very wary of endorsing Russia. Certainly Russia heard some pushback at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit, which generated some surprise. So that's going to be something else we look for at ASEAN, I think Carla.

ROBBINS:

So all of this, when you see President Biden and senior U.S. officials go to Asia, they're constantly saying, we really care. This is actually our number one priority here. China's our number one pacing threat, and our number one competitor and all of these. You hear this all the time, and of course their entire bandwidth is taken up with the Ukraine War, not surprisingly. But underneath it, the thing that they could do, they won't do, which is to join the treaty formerly known as TPP. And they've created these new acronyms of things that really, there's no there there for these. The quad, the whatever, the IPAF, all these other things. Why don't they just join the trade agreement?

MCMAHON:

That's a really good question. And you will hear trade come up in all sorts of other different expressions during this summitry ahead. Trade and TPP in particular are among the acronyms that have become toxic for both parties. Growing out of our discussion on the midterms and U.S. policy, this is actually something both parties have a lot in common. The bases do not like these big trade agreements. Globalization has become a bad word. And they don't see any political utility in going to bat for it, even though they know in their brains the benefits. Especially TPP, the way it had been negotiated, there were a lot of positives there, a lot of trade experts-

ROBBINS:

Including for American farmers.

MCMAHON:

Including for American farmers. But that's going to continue. The U.S. is not going to get involved in that. And it will instead get up what Jagdish Bhagwati called the spaghetti bowl of trade agreements in which you have all sorts of special bilateral arrangements for different countries seen as more palatable than a big sweeping agreement that could hurt some sectors, but might, on balance, help more sectors, which is what we saw happen with NAFTA.

ROBBINS:

But we are seating space. We're seating an enormous amount of space at Asia. And things like, I mean, the AUKUS agreement. The AUKUS deal was badly executed. There's no reason to annoy the French as much as they did, as much as I like to annoy the French personally. But this was a smart idea. It's a smart idea to build up strategic relationships with countries in the region. There's a lot of smartness going on there. But there's a lot of seating in the space there. You stay out of this trade agreement. And the Chinese have RCEP and the Chinese are slyly saying they'd like to join TPP. We've seated an enormous amount of spaces. President Biden may go to the U.S. ASEAN Summit and say, why are we only the number four trading partner? As long as you're not willing to really play the big game, you're not going to be part of the big game.

MCMAHON:

I would imagine he would hear that again and again from ASEAN, into the East Asia Summit, into the G20 as well. And we should also note, there's major trade frictions going on between the U.S. and China at this point, and the U.S. exerting controls over semiconductors is a really big step. And as we're sitting here talking, there might be discussions going on about a Xi-Biden meeting on the sidelines of the G20, which would be very interesting and could play some role in softening that. But overall, it's a climate of contention and not one of expansion on the trade front.

ROBBINS:

Well, I'm always a believer that face to face meetings are a good idea, and we'll see.

MCMAHON:

It'll be good to show up. It'll be interesting to see what the family photos show in terms of proximity and so forth.

ROBBINS:

This is not the meeting with the funny shirts though, is it?

MCMAHON:

This is not the APEC funny shirt meeting, which Biden is not going to be attending. Kamala Harris will be attending that. I'm not sure there's going to be anybody who's going to be in the mood for wearing funny shirts this year though.

Carla, we've talked our way into the audience figure of the week segment of the podcast, which listeners can vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday @CFR_org's Instagram story. This week, Carla, our audience selected North Korea launches 23 missiles. That figure's probably changed since that was voted on, but why is this significant?

ROBBINS:

Well, we could just leave it there, 23 missiles. So why is this happening first of all? So the approximate causes that South Korea in the United States are in the midst of an annual joint military exercise, and Kim says this is a threat. The larger cause is that Kim doesn't like to be ignored. Nobody puts baby in the corner. And the U.S. and pretty much the entire world has lots of other things going on, like Ukraine in a global economic crisis. And the Biden Administration has shown only a very limited inclination to engage with him. So this has been a year of tantrum throwing for him. So far this year, the North has tested more than I think 40 ballistic missiles and in defiance of the UN Security Council Ban. And that's the largest number by far for a year that I can remember, and the year is not over with.

And they also have a new nuclear doctrine in which they're threatening to use nuclear weapons against the South. So why is it significant? Usually I'm somewhat dismissive of the tantrum throwing. The danger here, Bob, is that these things can always escalate. And yesterday South Korea in response fired missiles from fighter jets into the waters near the North's territory. I mean, if a missile goes off course, I'm much more worried about what the North does because I don't know about their technology. I think the South Koreans are probably more disciplined, I hope. But if a missile goes off course and people get killed, it can turn into a real crisis fast. And remember, the North is lofting these things near both South Korea and over Japan.

MCMAHON:

Over Japan, right.

ROBBINS:

So something goes tumbling and kills someone. In 2010, the North Korean shelled an island where people died. This time around, I think there'd be a much, much harsher response and the potential for escalation is pretty high. So that's why it's significant, and significant and scary.

MCMAHON:

And we have a still new South Korean administration, which potentially Kim Jong-un is testing. Maybe he's testing the degree to which the South Koreans and the U.S. are really strong allies, and maybe he wants to find a wedge in between that in some way and see what he can do to disrupt that. Do you see any chance of that? Or is it more of say, North Korea, which it occasionally does, just trying to get back in on the agenda and onto the U.S. radar?

ROBBINS:

I don't think there's any sign with this new administration in South Korea of a wedge, certainly on a hard line toward. And I don't see much of a possibility of a wedge between the Japanese. But what we have to remember when we talk about escalation is that we have a very strong defense commitment to both of these countries. So if it does escalate, and not to mention all the troops we have in both of these countries, if it does escalate, we're going to be there.

MCMAHON:

And in the past, as in so many other things, there used to be actually a diplomatic lever which was in the UN Security Council, even Russia and China would sign on to, and now it's been a few years, but they would sign on to statements, if not resolutions tightening the grip against North Korea, or at least warning them against provocative actions. None of that is happening now seemingly. And at one point, I remember papers at CFR and other think tanks saying, "Hey, there's an opportunity for China to be a lever against North Korea and we could be a partner with them." And that certainly doesn't seem to be the case either.

ROBBINS:

Although if Biden and Xi meet, that may be one of the topics that the president wants to raise with Xi is that if he wants to prove his global leadership. And he does have the ability to really, really to turn the oil deliveries off. And we've seen them, not that they admitted to ever doing it, we've seen them at moments of, after nuclear weapons tests, a few of them, I mean, we've seen them turn the oil off temporarily. I mean, that sanctions regime looks really tough on paper, but the Chinese let lots of stuff go through. The North Koreans are very good with counterfeit cigarettes, counterfeit money, all this other stuff that they have a lot of, and selling technology. They make a lot of money. And they don't have to make a lot of money because they don't feed their own people. But the Chinese have a lot of leverage with North Korea. So that's something that if there is at summit, I would assume that it would be high on President Biden's agenda.

MCMAHON:

And you mentioned a nuclear test, which there hasn't been one in several years. The timing seems to be especially acute for North Korean planners. They could very well pick the G20 Summit to decide to test them.

ROBBINS:

We've been playing this game. We're constantly talking about this. Is it this anniversary they're going to have a nuclear test? Is it that anniversary? But I will say that the intel community has seen them moving stuff around, and building berms or doing whatever it is that they do. So I wouldn't be surprised at any moment that they'd have a nuclear test.

So that's our look at the world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. The G7 foreign ministers will meet in Munster. Pope Francis will visit Bahrain. And Greece's largest labor union will hold a 24 hour strike in protest of rising energy costs.

MCMAHON:

Sure to be the first of many others. Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review while you're at it. We appreciate the feedback.

Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts or our guests, not CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Today's program was produced by Markus Zakaria with senior podcast producer, Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Mormei Zanke and Molly McAnany. Our theme music is provided by Miguel Herrero and licensed under Creative Commons. This is Bob McMahon saying so long.

ROBBINS:

And this is Carla Robbins saying goodbye.