Congress’s Funding Battle, Iran Sends Missiles to Russia, Orbán Defies the EU, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, the U.S. Congress gears up for a high-stakes funding battle. Reports of an Iranian missile transfer to Russia signal a new escalation in Ukraine. And, Hungary faces a €200 million fine by the EU for breaking asylum law. It's September 12th, 2024 in time for The World Next Week. I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins.

MCMAHON:
Carla, let's start on the Hill. Cue to Kate Bush's song, Running Up That Hill, if you have to.

ROBBINS:
Hobbling up the hill.

MCMAHON:
This past Monday, Congress came back from its summer recess and to say it had a full schedule is an understatement. One of the things dominating headlines right away is the looming September 30th deadline for funding federal discretionary programs. Members of Congress do not want a government shutdown by many accounts, especially with election day less than two months away, but battles over the budget are already underway. Speaker Mike Johnson has faced pushback already to his proposed stopgap funding measures. So, Carla, how likely will we see a new budget approved then in the coming week or weeks?

ROBBINS:
Well, Bob, these funding fights usually bring out some of the worst impulses in Congress, but you really think that an impending election would give them a really strong incentive to do the people's business and find some compromise to keep the government open. But so far, at least that hasn't happened. The fiscal year ends on September 30th and funding, as you said, for discretionary programs, and it's about a third of the federal budget runs out on September 30th. And House members and the third of the Senate up for reelection, they are really eager to get back on the campaign trail right after they solve this budget problem.

So they need either to pass a budget, which is really completely unlikely at this late date or pass a stopgap spending bill, what's called a continuing resolution, which really just kicks the can down the road with funding at current levels for some period of time. And if they don't, we get that government shutdown. And there was always going to be considerable brinkmanship in this time period before they got to some agreement on a CR. And increasingly looks like once again House Speaker Mike Johnson can even control his own caucus.

He had planned to call for a vote Wednesday, yesterday, in a six-month CR paired with the so-called SAVE Act, which is supposed to stop non-citizens from voting, something that is of course already completely illegal. And this twofer would never have made it through the Senate, but it was supposed to increase his leverage with Democrats. But Johnson pulled the bill yesterday and pretty much everybody in his caucus and out hated him. The Pentagon and GOP defense hawks, including the chair of the House Armed Services Committee said continuing defense spending at current levels for six months would utterly hobble military preparedness. Spending hawks meanwhile were saying that continuing overall spending for another six months at current levels was just too much. They wanted to start hacking away. And especially if Trump wins, they wanted to start the process a lot earlier than that.

A more traditional three-month CR, which would go through December, would get everybody past the election, kick it down the road a little bit, then they'd know who was going to win. So it would mollify both hawk camps, keep the government open, save the incoming president of either party from an early showdown in the beginning of her or his term. But as Punchbowl noted this morning, it also means that Johnson would be trying to cut a deal with Democrats and his own party at a period of time when he was also trying to save his own job for the next Congress. So he didn't have a really strong interest on that.

Meanwhile, President Trump is demanding that his party shut the government down if they don't get the SAVE Act through his part of any budget deal. Shut it down, shut it down. And for Trump, as we all know, this is favorite political fodder. Since 2016, he's been claiming that millions of undocumented migrants have been voting. There's absolutely no evidence of that. And he claimed it again in the debate. So Johnson is in really tough space. Will they cut a deal before the September 30th? I certainly hope so. They're going to have to cut one. I can't imagine that they're going to shut the government down, but he's in a really tough spot.

MCMAHON:
Yeah. You've basically described some of the scramble and divisions that are not only between parties but within parties, especially within the Republican Party, Carla. And the SAVE Act effort is particularly important to watch because there are continuing to be concerns about ahead of election day from the Trump campaign, the raising of the prospect of this being an invalid election in some respect. So there are all sorts of ominous signs that are percolating through this budget discussion. You're right, it's hard to imagine them not renewing it by September 30th, but things are going to get ugly I think.

ROBBINS:
Well, the SAVE Act is...a certain amount of people would say, "Why wouldn't you want people prove that they were citizens to vote?" People don't get to register to vote just walking in off the street. They do have to have some proof, but making people provide further proof at this point or new proof, real ID, there's bringing your passport. A lot of people don't have passports. Some people don't have driver's license. To put more restrictions on people's ability to vote, it's really an attempt at intimidation or voter suppression, and there's enough of that going on as it is. And when there isn't a problem that exists in the first place.

And we have enough doubt that's being fueled by social media, enough doubt that's being fueled by so many politicians out there already, why would you want to do this for any other reason other than either political posturing because you believe you're going to lose the election and you really want to disrupt it in the first place? Shutting it down for the sake of raising more doubts about the election, that's not a great thing for democracy. So this is just a political game and it's really undermining democracy and also undermining the budget process right now.

There's also going to be a lot of other stupid pet tricks on the Hill in the next few weeks. We've got investigations which are going on for both parties because both parties are running. On the Democratic side, we're seeing that they're calling for investigations of...Jamie Raskin from Maryland, who's the top Democrat on the oversight committee, and Representative Robert Garcia from California, top Democrat on the panel subcommittee for national security. The Border and Foreign Affairs are requesting proof from former President Trump that he never received money from Egypt. And then the Republicans got a whole host of the ongoing investigations has been going on. They've been investigating forever, whatever they want. Biden-Harris administration for the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. They're holding hearings this week on the "Biden-Harris Border Crisis: Victim Perspective; "From Gas to Groceries, Americans Pay the Price of the Biden-Harris Energy Agenda"; Veterans Affairs Committee hearing "Accountable or Absent: Examining VA Leadership". Johnson has thanked the committee that was talking about impeaching Biden. Listen, if the VA is not doing a good job, if there's problems with grocery prices, things should be investigated. But whether or not there's going to be serious work done or all this is all an attempt.

They want to go after Walz for the first time, this is a guy who never got anybody's attention, but suddenly he's a vice presidential candidate, here's my particular favorite one. The House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into alleged contact that Walz had with Chinese Communist Party entities dating back to the early 1990s when he was leading student groups to China. Remember the Clinton contacts? I think when he was a Rhodes Scholar, the alleged contacts he had or whenever his travel. I mean a lot of this stuff is just silly stuff if it weren't in an election year, it's pretty pernicious once it gets picked up by social media. So do the people's business and go back to campaigning is what I have to say.

MCMAHON:
And it's a bad reflection on the U.S. as you say, for the integrity of its democracy, for things like you mentioned the defense funding issue. If countries are seeing a weakened U.S., that is not going to be doing the country's business either. We had a rare bipartisan moment where the former and current president were at the 9/11 ceremony the other day, which is a reminder that the country needs to pull together at certain moments, and that's one of them.But it also needs to pull together to get its house in order ahead of a major election and it's just the rancor and the pettiness is really bad. And again, raising new concerns at an already fraught moment.

ROBBINS:
And what is going to happen after the vote, the Election Day? Because if it is as close as the polls are suggesting, we may not have an outcome for potentially days, potentially longer. And once again, raising doubts about the integrity of the vote and fanning those doubts is so frightening and we're seeing it so many places on the state level. Not good for us and we don't need them. We really don't need it. We need to be pulling together and believing in what is intrinsically a very strong system.

Bob, let's talk about Iran. This past Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary David Lammy publicly accused Tehran of selling short-range ballistic missiles to Russia. Other allies have joined in and everyone is marshaling new sanctions. Iranians support for Russia's war effort...that's really no surprise. We know about drones and all sorts of other things they've been providing to Moscow. So why are Washington's allies making such a strong denunciation now? And is there anything they can do to choke off these transfers? Ukraine's struggling missile defense system we know is already severely overstretched.

MCMAHON:
Yeah. I think there's a lot of things happening at the same time, and I think by all appearances, you've had U.S. and UK intelligence, which are very tight—maybe the tightest intelligence relationship in the world have seen to confirm the shipment at a Russian Caspian Sea port—Russia shares the Caspian Sea with Iran. It's right across the Caspian—of 200, what are known as FATH-360 short-range ballistic missiles. This transfer, and the volume of these coming at a time when Russia has been lobbying seemingly everything at Ukraine and hitting hospitals, military colleges, train stations, apartment buildings, and above all, energy installations have really raised a lot of concern about what's coming next.

And so I think you've had that these two countries where you had the foreign secretary and the U.S. secretary of state arriving in Ukraine at the same time. So David Lammy of UK and Antony Blinken, they were able to confer on this. We're going to have a meeting tomorrow, so Friday, in Washington with the still new UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Joe Biden to discuss this issue and a very important related issue, which is justification for using U.S. and British weapons to launch into Russia itself. Now, there's a Ukrainian incursion there. Many people have pointed to the fact that, "Hey, this is a Putin red line and the Ukrainians have been there for weeks. What about we walk over another red line, which is allowing weapons to strike inside Russia and strike things like Russian arms depots and fuel depots and so forth?"

ROBBINS:
And using the weapons they already have.

MCMAHON:
And using weapons they already have. So things like the ATACMS, long -range rocket systems, and there's a British Storm Shadow missiles that have been mentioned as well, and the UK seems more than ready to allow theirs. So really important meeting coming up. A lot of messaging ahead of that. And by the way, it's not just Iranian missiles that are coming. There's fresh reports that North Korean missiles, and again, both of them in violation of sanctions are coming into Russia that I should say in Russia using them, they've done forensics on missiles that have been already used in Ukraine and found North Korean markings on them.

So this is a broadening of the scope of what Russia is using to add to its base. It's on a wartime footing by all accounts in terms of what it's trying to do, but it needs these Iranian drones. It's used them extensively by many accounts. These North Korean missiles and other armaments apparently are being put to use. China has been saying it's strictly providing some tech and other support, but U.S. officials are increasingly warning China against providing Russia with the wherewithal to mount a ramped up effort that is really, again, punishing Ukraine and Ukrainian civilian infrastructure.

There's not going to be any sort of a defense shield safety net over Ukraine anytime soon that's impermeable. So this is a moment of potentially really ratcheting up this campaign if Ukraine gets the green light to use these weapons into Russia.

ROBBINS:
Iran has already summoned four European ambassadors on Thursday, the ones who have imposed new sanctions. They called in the British Dutch, French, and German ambassadors, and they are fiercely denying this intel. I think that's really quite interesting. I mean, they haven't denied a lot of other things that we've accused them of doing it, and this were very specific accusations. Why do you think they're so fiercely denying this particular one? Is there a possibility we got the intel wrong or are the potential for sanctions coming so fiercely? Is there a possibility that one hand in Iran doesn't know what the other hand is doing?

MCMAHON:
I think it's a mixture of those, Carla, but especially the last one you mentioned, we have seen reports before that Iran has multiple power structures and has a number of power centers that report directly to the supreme leader, others that sort of run their own show. And they had at one point denied the supplying of drones and swore up and down they were not providing drones, for example. And until it became overwhelmingly clear that they were, they've had tight relationship with Russia. They've had visits from Russian defense officials, then Defense Minister Shoigu back in 2023 had a tour of ballistic missile systems. There's all sorts of this kind of circumstantial evidence that the two sides are talking about all sorts of these types of things.

And as I said, that intel on the U.S. has been very strong throughout this war about what's being used and the movements of armaments and so forth. So it seems very plausible. I think there was definitely Iranian concern about even though it's already considered to be the most sanctioned country in the world, adding of Iran Air and in additional individuals further got their attention.

There's a new civilian administration under President Pezeshkian that would like to step out and open up the Iranian economy a little bit more. His first visit was to Iraq just this week. He's going to be coming to the United Nations and speaking at the upcoming General Assembly high level debate. So maybe Iran wants to not be seen as playing dirty pool, but actually trying to be a responsible member of the international community to use a term that's much derided.
It's a number of things going on. I do think there could be very much a disconnect within Iran in terms of who's controlling what levers, but it will be interesting to see what follows in terms of further information because the U.S., its pattern has been to both announce these types of things and then follow up with pretty ironclad proof. So we'll have to see. Remember right before the invasion of Ukraine, the warning of Russian buildups at the borders while Russian officials were denying it right and left—that's the Russian side of it. But again, the pattern of this war, the pattern of Russian context has been to arm up and not only to arm up, but to make use of its capabilities. We're seeing it over and over again and it's becoming clear that Ukraine is being crippled in all sorts of ways that its defenders and its big backers like the United States and the UK just have had enough of.

ROBBINS:
Do you think that the Biden administration is going to change its position on using American, the ATACMS and other weapons to hit deeply inside of Russia?

MCMAHON:
It certainly seems like they're prepared to do that in terms of some of the language that's coming out, some of the comments that Antony Blinken has made about what Russia has done and what Ukraine should be allowed to do. It still would mark a really big departure though, and a move into unknown territory in terms of how Russia would respond. And Russia continues to send out ominous warnings about it will be responding in due course. It has done things like announcing, it's changing its nuclear weapons posture based on recent events like the Ukrainian invasion and other things.

It's not clear what Russia is prepared to do on the military front, but we could be entering into a really dangerous new chapter, which is why this has been resisted for so long. But again, other things that the U.S. and its allies have refrained from doing and then have done in terms of allowing other armaments within Ukraine in terms of the seizure of frozen Russian assets or allowing the interest from those frozen assets to be used, those have all sort of been approved, even though on the latter front they've been slow walking it. So it feels like they are ready to announce some sort of limited use of these weapons into Russia. You'll see some carefully worded language potentially coming out in the next couple of days, but watch the Starmer-Biden meeting coming up.

ROBBINS:
An argument can be made that we have self-deterred and then we change our mind, but it's always so late and Ukraine has more rubble piled up as we deter ourselves.

MCMAHON:
And so it goes, yes.
Carla, let's stay in the European Theater, but shift a bit west to Hungary. Tuesday is the second deadline for Hungary to pay a €200 million fine for breaking EU asylum laws. Back in 2020, the European Court of Justice ruled it was illegal for Hungary to detain and deport asylum seekers without giving them a chance to appeal the rejection of their applications. Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been defiant. He's missed the first deadline to pay this fine and has suggested Hungary will continue to flout this EU asylum law. So is there any recourse for the European Court of Justice or EU levers to force his hand?

ROBBINS:
Well, the European Court of Justice doesn't have bailiffs and it doesn't have troops. There's no Brown versus the Board of Education. There's no troops that go there. But the EU has some levers in this and they've been able to push Orbán around a little bit. Although one would say that Orbán pushes back more than he gets pushed. We chose this topic before Orbán got his shout-out at the debate as the European strongman who most values President Trump. And this story is interesting because it is a reminder how much the issue of immigration is bedeviling politics in so many countries, not just the United States.

Germany, which has been one of the most generous in Europe toward asylum seekers announced that it is going to place tighter controls at all of its land borders starting September 16th for at least six months. And this latest move came after a knife attack by asylum seekers in the city of Solingen, killed three people in August, and the Islamic State claimed responsibility. And the anti-immigrant AfD earlier this month became the first far-right party since World War II to win a state election. And there's more state elections coming in Germany, so that government's very nervous about the anti-immigrant feelings in Germany. There's further controls already placed in Austria and Switzerland and Poland.

Orbán's fight with the European court is also a reminder of how much the world is watching what happens in the U.S. in response to this. And not always in the best way. Orbán has accused, "Brussels bureaucrats of caring more about illegal migrants than their own European citizens." It sounds like rhetoric we've heard a lot of here. And after the court ruled and included not just this €200 million fine, they've slapped also an additional fine for each day. Hungary is now threatening. Whether they'll ever be able to collect is another thing.

Like we've seen Texas Governor Abbott and we've seen Ron DeSantis in Florida, Hungarians are now threatening to bus migrants allegedly voluntarily into Brussels. "They like migrants so much, they can have them," is the way they're talking about them. The Belgians are not amused by this. Brussels mayor is demanding that Belgium's prime minister block the buses at the border, something that we at least have not done in our cities in the United States. And what the Brussels mayor said was, "How long are we going to tolerate these provocations from a country that we subsidize?," which is Hungary. And Hungary is actually for all it complains about the EU, it actually takes money from the EU rather than gives it to it.

So in the past, the EU has actually frozen some of the money that it gives to the EU for Orbán's antics. In 2022, it froze 30 billion in so-called cohesion and COVID recovery funds to Hungary due to concerns over alleged corruption, violations of academic freedom, protections of LGBTQ+ rights, asylum rights, judicial independence, and other violations of basic EU laws. But in December of 2023, the commission released about 10 billion of that because Orbán was standing in the way of Ukraine: money for Ukraine military aid, economic aid, and the beginning of the accession talks. So Orbán has a lot of levers as well, but the EU has some levers. The court itself has moral standing, but it doesn't have a lot of police power. But the EU itself does give money to Hungary. So we'll see how this one plays out.

MCMAHON:
And we'll also see how much Orbán's moves potentially reinforce others that might be like-minded. There are sensitivities across, especially in Eastern countries in the EU about migrant policy among other things. And Slovakia has a populist-led government, for example, and is also close to Ukraine theater of action and said positive things about Russia among other things. How much will Slovakia tweak the EU and taking inspiration from Hungary? Or some of the other countries where we've seen continue to see the gain of right-wing populists or coalitions in which they sit, countries like the Netherlands or other countries that are in a tough spot like Austria.

It's going to be a very interesting period of time about whether it's just a outlier Hungary or whether there's a bunch of EU countries. And you mentioned Germany facing its own concerns, and its recent regional elections showing a surprisingly sharp surge in far-right populist parties and in leftist populist party for that matter. How much of this is going to affect the EU's ability to really enforce these policies?

ROBBINS:
Orbán, of course, is...and there's less support for Putin, although some in Slovakia, there's less support for Putin. But those have been sort of the big two dividing lines, the asylum policy and Russia. I think the EU has done an extraordinary job of holding together in its support for Ukraine in a way that certainly surprised the Russians and in many ways surprised Washington and their ability to hold together. And they've had to do a mixture of bullying and jollying Orbán along because Ukraine policy has been one of the things in which they've had to have a certain measure of unanimity, which has been sort of the weakness of EU governance and the strength.

Governments don't give up their sovereignty easily, and that's the way they make their decisions, at least on this particular issue. But when he took over the rotating presidency, he was really in their face. We talked about this. Their slogan was MEGA, make Europe great again. And then what did he do? He took unauthorized trips to Moscow and Beijing allegedly to negotiate some sort of a peace deal that was nobody else said, "You could go ahead and do this." And there was some talk about boycotting his presidency. They didn't do it. But if he starts busing migrants into Brussels, I think people may take another look at how they feel about his remaining months of this presidency. People get pretty fed up with Viktor Orbán in Brussels-

MCMAHON:
Let's see how many borders they get across with those buses, by the way. They're not even getting close-

ROBBINS:
And that's not a good look either. Given the way the EU feels about borders and the way they feel about asylum, this is, and I think Putin is going to sit back and enjoy every minute of it. Not a good look and not a good thing.

Well, Bob, it's time to discuss our audience figure of the week. This is the figure listeners vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday @CFR_org's Instagram story. And this week they utterly surprised us. There were so many others we expect them to choose, and they selected, "China Gifts Cambodia Two Warships." Why is China being so generous, and why do you think they chose this one?

MCMAHON:
Chinese generosity. It is interesting. It is an interesting choice, and it's, again, sometimes it's the audience is looking at things and reacting to things in ways that we don't appreciate. This is by all accounts-

ROBBINS:
Oh, we appreciate it. We may not understand it.

MCMAHON:
We may not understand it. We always appreciate it after it's been selected because we dig into it and say, "Ah." But in this case, this seems to be part and parcel of China's playbook, its strategic playbook, part of the Belt and Road Initiative, part of its broader strategic playbook about keeping access to important sea lanes. China gets vast amount of its trade through the sea. And in the case of Cambodia, there are two ships known as Type 056 corvettes. They've been docked for months at the Ream Naval Base in Cambodia, which is located on the Gulf of Thailand.

Cambodia says they've been there because they've been taking part in training and joint military exercises. And it was thinking, "Why shouldn't we procure these ships like this for our own navy?" Keep in mind, China has been helping to develop this base and other facilities, other military facilities for a nation that does not have, currently have the capability to, and the need for such bases. It does not have any ships that currently would need such a base. But lo and behold, China does, and China is a very close, almost suffocatingly close ally of Cambodia. And this is one of the early countries, early notches in the belt of the Belt and Road.

And so this is an opportunity for China to exert this influence. And not only will China gift these corvettes, but according to at least one Australian think-tank analyst, Euan Graham, China could be expected to retain a complement of naval officers on board the gifted corvettes. And so what better way to continue to maintain this kind of influence nearby? And maybe it becomes a prototype for other Chinese activities and other ports. It's not clear to say other than that China has an extensive program for developing overseas ports that could have military capabilities as well as commercial ones.

Our colleagues, Zoe Liu has done an interactive piece that looks at this. It is worldwide and it continues to grow, and it's an ability of China's government to project its power globally and challenge the U.S. in ways that has not been challenged in many years. This is both for keeping influence over global supply chains, but also, again, that ability to develop a port, the deep sea capabilities in which a military ship could be docked and maybe docked for months at a time. And maybe it's an allied country that might want have a role in working with the Chinese military. And in such ways alliance with Chinese features develop that sort of tie.

Again, this seems to be the backdrop to this figure of the week, which is this "gift" of two warships. And they're just two corvettes, but a country that doesn't have them and is acquiring them and in potentially acquiring them with Chinese officers involved. And Chinese backing seems to set in motion potentially a new approach by China to exert its influence.

ROBBINS:
So don't look to give corvette in its mouth is what you're saying?

MCMAHON:
You've been waiting to say that.

ROBBINS:
No, it just actually came to me right now. Actually, I have another question, which is as much as the Cambodians insist that their constitution doesn't allow them to have foreign military bases on their soil, et cetera, people are nervous about this. And so we've had Lloyd Austin who's gone there, our defense secretary has gone there, and there've been other countries that have been testing how exclusive all of this is. I gather the Australians tried to dock there and the two Japanese destroyers tried to go there and they were rerouted. The Australians were...A navy frigate was rerouted. So people are sort of testing and going in there. So it's not that everyone's just taking this and they're testing and the Cambodians so far seem to be, shall we say, respecting their patrons.

MCMAHON:
Absolutely. Again, their previous ruler, Hun Sen and his son now seem to be in lockstep. They tend to do China's bidding and meetings of ASEAN, the regional grouping, and are just very tight. And they are part, in addition to things like providing convenient port space. They are beholden to Chinese infrastructure development, which is seen as one of the downside. And you have a number of countries chafing at some of this Chinese investment because it's become known as debt diplomacy where they rack up huge debt and China's got them over a barrel and has other ways of exerting influence. Cambodia, tiny country, it's been under China's sway for a long time. And this is just a new chapter in that by all accounts.

It's worth noting that the U.S. actually had been involved in plans to refurbish this base, the base in question at the request of Cambodia, but then further contacts were had with China apparently, and that was scrapped and the few buildings that had been made were demolished and they went ahead with the Chinese base construction plan. So this is the anchoring of Cambodia and the China orbit, I guess is why this is a figure of the week.

And that's our look at the geopolitical world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. A U.S. Court will hear an appeal to the TikTok ban, which is the China-based ByteDance's social media app used by 170 million Americans. And, Chinese-speaking countries celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review while you're at it. We really do appreciate the feedback. If you'd like to reach out, please email us at [email protected]. The publications mentioned in this episode as well as a transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on cfr.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the host, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, with the Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. And special thanks to Helena Kopans-Johnson for her research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Markus Zakaria. And this is Carla Robbins saying so long, and early voting starts soon, so get ready to vote.

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