Turmoil in South Korea, French Government Collapses, Syrian Rebels Reignite Conflict, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, South Korean lawmakers vote on whether to impeach President Yoon after his aborted martial law attempt. France struggles with political chaos after a no-confidence vote in its prime minister, even as it celebrates the reopening of Notre Dame. And Syrian rebels continue their surprise offensive after seizing Aleppo. It's December 5th, 2024 and time for The World Next Week. I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins. Bob, let's start with South Korea. This is both a frightening and really reassuring story because people and democracy won. This past Tuesday, December 3rd, South Korean President Yoon suddenly announced he was imposing martial law. I mean, we still don't know where this came from, and the speech he gave was extraordinary. He began with what he said was a feeling of "spitting blood." He called the National Assembly a monster. He blamed it for paralyzing the nation and he said that martial law was necessary to "defend the country from the threats of North Korean communist forces and to eradicate the shameless pro-North Korean anti-state forces." Immediately after the declaration, mass protests broke out and within hours the National Assembly voted unanimously, including everyone in his party to overturn his declaration. And the assembly summoned top military leaders to testify in their role in the affair and now plans to hold this impeachment vote. Is President Yoon on his way out? And what does this say about the strength of democracy in South Korea?

MCMAHON:
Well, in the first one, it certainly would appear that way. We've already had a cabinet, an important cabinet resignation. Defense Minister Kim Yong Hyun has resigned and he was replaced right away with a retired General Choi Byung Hyuk, who's the South Korea's ambassador to Saudi Arabia. And that's one of the casualties of the way this whole thing came about. The impeachment vote still looks like as we sat down to tape this, and by the way, we're going to be saying that a lot today because it's an incredibly fluid news week, but it seems like the impeachment vote is due to take place and South Korea is no stranger to this process. And we've seen in the past that it can be up to three months or so process while something like this plays out. But as we're going to get into in this discussion, this is both a chaotic and a resilient democracy at the same time.

Where it's coming from, really quickly, we'd just add that the backdrop is an inability to get through what President Yoon saw as priority legislation. The country's economy has been in a bad way. He's been trying to address a really severe housing prices, cutting corporate taxes, trying to overhaul the national pension system. There is a standoff that's been playing out with doctors in the country and he has suffered electoral setbacks repeatedly, including in April of this year. And on top of that, there was a corruption scandal involving his wife. So you have an unpopular president who's seemingly unable to get through important legislation, and as some analysts have said, conjuring up the threat of North Korea is a tried and true practice of years past of let's say autocratically minded leaders past.

The thing that makes this, it was shocking in so many ways, but also a bit concerning is the fact that Yoon has been a very staunch ally to the U.S. and has played a big role in creating and strengthening this trilateral relationship with Japan and the United States. He's also gone as far as providing materiel to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia. And a lot of that is now in question terms of a policy from the government in that the opposition looks poised to be able to advance after this episode because of the real losing of face in this six-hour gamut. And by the way, I would refer readers to if they wanted an entertaining first-person account of what played out, there's a piece in the Verge called the "Six Hours Under Martial Law," which is a bit of a humorous but realistic look at the way a U.S. citizen who was visiting Seoul during the martial law attempt tried to sort out what was happening while being drunk.

ROBBINS:
I'm sure her mother is very proud of that experience.

MCMAHON:
So take a look and see what you think. But back to your question about the democracy, it was an incredible sign of resilience. I mean, we have an interesting analysis on the website of the events that night by an expert named John Delury who mentioned that when this all played out, it was clear that Yoon had not consulted his own cabinet, which was a violation of procedure for declaring martial law requires "deliberation by the state counsel." He didn't alert his prime minister who becomes acting president in extraordinary situations. He did not inform the United States Embassy. He did not alert U.S. Forces Korea, which is part of a linchpin alliance as the author said, would be indirectly implicated in any sort of martial law. So all these certain steps were not observed. It seemed like he thought he could shut down with a late night announcement, could block any attempt by the National Assembly to move against it, but he was wrong.

People came in, lawmakers came in defying the martial law, defying a military presence that had been mustered and was able to vote emphatically and unanimously against the measure such that within six hours he basically stood down on the martial law declaration and now we're wondering how this is going to play out in terms of his own future and how an impeachment will play out. So it's a fascinating, alarming, but also as you say, Carla, a bit encouraging because the people had a chance to respond and they responded immediately and emphatically and democracy lives another day in South Korea.

ROBBINS:
Well, South Korea of course, has relatively recent, although most of the people alive don't remember it, experience with really brutal martial law. That's the first thing. But we've seen this in a lot of other countries when presidents are in power and try to keep themselves in power or try to seize extraordinary powers. But it only works if the military and the police are with you. And we still don't completely understand how that broke down. But they did summon some of the military leaders already for an accounting of it. And I was reading this morning that the South Korean general, whom Yoon named the martial law commander, he was testifying. He said he only learned of the move when Yoon announced it on television. Surprise, you're in charge of this really awful thing. And he said he didn't know who had ordered the troops who were cordoning off the assembly or were trying to head off any possible vote. And then the deputy defense minister came in and said that the defense minister had ordered the troops. And this is the same defense minister who has now resigned.

It will be really interesting to find out in the next few days how the troops split, whether there was a split within the troops. But it's so essential for a democracy to assert the civilian control over the military. The way you're describing it, it's almost as if he did this on a whim, that he didn't really get his ducks in a row and thank God he didn't.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, and it does show though, I mean really close Korea watchers on the one hand took a step back, but on the other hand said, "Ah, I get it." Because they've been following this stuff very closely, much more closely than a world that has been obsessed with take your pick in wars and crises and U.S. transitions and so forth. But in fact, this situation has been deteriorating in South Korea in terms of them trying to get anything done, and an increasingly unpopular leader. And so it came to a head, and I think it is that the recent brush with this type of behavior at the top maybe made it seem like a more palatable option, but the people emphatically just said, "No, no way. This is not happening anymore."

ROBBINS:
Well, political paralysis, and we're going to get onto that in France, political paralysis seems to be part of what's going on in so many places around the world. But the alternative suspending democracy is obviously even worse, and the Korean people spoke.

MCMAHON:
And it's again, just to point out, the bigger ramification it is going to have consequences for defense policy, security policy, relations with North Korea potentially. And North Korea has been on this trajectory on its own of being much more aggressive and really solidifying a dangerous partnership with Russia. So there's a lot at stake here that South Korea is able to kind of put things back together and then work on its security posture in the midst of all this. So stay tuned. More to come on that front that you didn't think you needed to cover.

ROBBINS:
Well, the good news is democracy has triumphed.

MCMAHON:
Well, let's talk about one of the oldest democracies, Carla, and that would be La Belle France. The famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is going to reopen this Saturday, December 7th, five years after it caught fire. This is a moment of celebration to be sure, but it's also a moment fraught with all sorts of political tension. Just yesterday, far-right and far-left lawmakers backed a no-confidence vote that basically collapsed Prime Minister Michel Barnier's government. This is the first time a French government has lost a vote of no-confidence since 1962. So we'll talk about Notre Dame and that incredible achievement, but also can you talk a little bit about what's going to happen on the political succession front?

ROBBINS:
Well, let's talk about the good news first.

MCMAHON:
Okay.

ROBBINS:
I'm in a good news mood today.

MCMAHON:
Let's go for it.

ROBBINS:
So we all remember watching in utter horror in April of 2019 as Notre Dame burned, and you remember that main spire collapsing when destroying this twelfth century wooden roof. But I didn't know until I started researching this this week how close the whole cathedral came to being destroyed. It took this extraordinary courage and strategizing by the firefighters to prevent the north tower, which has those enormous bells in it from burning and then crashing into the south tower and bringing down the whole structure. And when we think about how we lost the World Trade Center and came down that horror, can you imagine if they'd lost Notre Dame that way? But the damage was still devastating.

But within two days, Macron was out there vowing that Notre Dame would be rebuilt more beautiful than before within five years. And in those days, he was considerably more popular than he is now. But even then, the claim was seen as utterly vainglorious, if not delusional, but they missed the deadline only by a few months, and I think they get a little bit of wiggle room because of Covid. And it was financed by private donations, nearly a billion dollars raised from more than 300,000 donors in 150 countries. And after the French, Americans donated the most to this reconstruction project, yay us, and keep in mind, the government pulled this off at the same time it was staging that pretty extraordinary Olympics. So yes, the French are utterly fed up with their do-nothing government, but their government did pull off two pretty extraordinary public projects there.

Also, I discovered that Macron, a man of infinite ambition, if not particular success recently, he briefly toyed with the idea of building a modern spire. Did you know about this? He said they talked about having a global competition for a modern design, but that was pretty quickly dropped. They settled on recreating the original design with traditional craftsmanship backed up with modern technology. And that was possible because the entire cathedral had already been mapped inside and out with laser scanners, so they knew how to recreate it. And this past week, Macron was given a tour including of this wood floored attic where the fire broke out. And he was told about each of the new wooden beams was hewed by hand just like they had been in the Middle Ages.

So looking at the photographs, I've been able to see it's pretty extraordinary. It's that same soaring beauty just like we remember of Notre Dame. But it's incredibly bright and clean because after all the soot of the fire, but also hundreds of years of pollution and grime have been stripped away, and it's probably what it must have looked like when it was first built 800 years ago. It looks extraordinary.

So they're going to have this official opening ceremony beginning on Saturday, and while the public is not going to get to see it, there are fifty heads of state and government coming, including Jill Biden and President Trump. And Macron, of course, was the Trump whisperer for a while in the first Trump term, and he invited the president for that. So at least they get to see it and we'll all get more pictures as well. So that's the good news.
Political troubles. Shall we do that one?

MCMAHON:
Sure. I'll just say briefly on Notre Dame, really looking forward to seeing the revised version. But I'm also really happy I saw back in the 1980s the previous version and did note the years of soot and things, but it also was just a staggering experience to go through there and see the rose window for the first time and everything. So it is a great story though.

ROBBINS:
And for all the destruction, neither the organ nor the stained-glass windows were destroyed in the fire. Miraculous in it.

MCMAHON:
That's great.

ROBBINS:
Covered in toxic ash and all that, but those things were not destroyed. It looks dazzlingly white in the picture, so lots to see there.

So the political troubles and doesn't look like Macron's getting a lot of credit for having pulled these things off. France is in deep political and economic trouble. His Prime Minister Barnier got this vote of no-confidence, and once he resigns, he's going to enter the Google search as the shortest serving prime minister in modern French history. And what happened, the proximate issue here is they have this constitution in which they can force through in austerity budget or any budget without even a vote. And Macron has used this before with the pension and all that.

But what the legislature can do is that they can do this vote of no-confidence, bring a government down. Now what Barnier was arguing is that they have this huge deficit, a 6.1 percent of GDP, and he was warning that the country's spending more on their debt than on defense and basic things like higher education. And the financial markets are hugely unhappy with France, and so is Brussels. But the legislators were unpersuaded. And as you said, the left, this coalition left, and the far-right joined together to vote Barnier out. They are paralyzed politically. And Macron bears a good deal of the blame for that. This legislative stalemate is of his doing. We talked a lot about this at the time, after Marine Le Pen's National Rally did so well in the parliament elections in May. Macron called those snap parliamentary elections. And while-

MCMAHON:
In the Euro parliament election?

ROBBINS:
Yeah.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, right.

ROBBINS:
And then he called the snap elections back in France, and what ended up happening is they managed to hold off Le Pen's people, but they have this parliament that's divided in thirds and they can't get anything done, and that's where they are right now.

MCMAHON:
All of who seem to be implacable enemies, each bloc, yes.

ROBBINS:
And so what's going to happen now? Under the constitution, they can't hold another election until next summer. Macron whose own term is not up until 2027, is refusing calls to step down. I will say that he is giving a speech today. Who knows, maybe we'll be utterly surprised, but I don't think that ego is going to let him step down. And I'm not even sure what that would change if he did. France does have a possibility that they can continue with the current budget, I suppose their version of a CR itself. So it's unlikely to be a shutdown, at least in some of the things I've read, but this political upheaval and ultimately the stalemate is unlikely to go away until they get around to having another election, which can't happen, I think until next July.

MCMAHON:
And meanwhile, they have a budget problem that has not been solved and is posing a lot of concern and could have knock-on effects. One other interesting subplot in all this is that in the midst of the French crisis and an inability to act, the European officials are trekking off to try to seal a deal on America's trade agreement in South America that France was very heavily opposed to. It just shows political dysfunction in home can have all sorts of consequences abroad as well.

ROBBINS:
Well, and when you consider President Trump is coming in, he is no fan of Europe. He's really no fan of the EU itself. And unlike the last time around when he was in and he had Angela Merkel and he had a much stronger Macron there, there are no strong leaders and-

MCMAHON:
Germany's facing elections in February.

ROBBINS:
Macron obviously much more wounded than he was before. There's no interlocutor for Trump here. There's nobody to challenge him here. And there are really big problems in Europe.

MCMAHON:
These are the two biggest European economies. And then not to mention UK, which is no longer in the EU, but also has a new government. So it's an incredibly tricky time, time of opportunity for Trump administration.

ROBBINS:
And you've got Ukraine, and you've got the threats of tariffs and all sorts of things. So I think probably the most important thing here right now is that if Macron is going to focus on anything, he should probably enjoy the Notre Dame celebration this weekend. It's probably the happiest thing that's going to happen to him for months to come.
Bob, let's move on to another extraordinary story. This is an incredible week for news.

MCMAHON:
It's amazing.

ROBBINS:
Let's talk about Syria where we thought Bashar al-Assad had brutally ended the civil war, basically turned his own country into rubble. On Saturday, out of what obviously we weren't paying enough attention, this rebel group, Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham suddenly seized one of the country's largest cities, Aleppo. And today, Thursday, December 5th, the group took the city of Hama, which is about 130 miles north of Damascus, the capital, and announced they have now set their sights on another important city, Homs, which lies on this critical north-south highway. This is moving incredibly fast. Is Assad in danger of losing control of the country and is at least part of his problem here, and it couldn't happen to a nicer guy, is that his main backers, Iran and Russia, have their sights on other problems with the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Lebanon?

MCMAHON:
That latter part certainly seems to be a precipitating factor, Carla. Definitely Hezbollah has weakened. It was a major supporter of Assad in crunch time in the earlier years of the civil war and Iranian IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, also I think has been preoccupied as Iran has been trading blows with Israel this year, which has been unprecedented as well. And then Russia obviously heavily involved in Ukraine, not having the firepower nearby that it had when it brutally suppressed the rebellion in Aleppo in particular. We have seen some response by Iranian and Russian sides, especially Russian air power. And it was significant that one of the first things they did was bomb hospitals in Idlib, in northwestern Syria, hearkening back to their deliberate targeting of soft targets and civilians to put down the rebellion then. It's not clear that that is going to have much staying power and how much more they can bring to bear here as these forces continue to move south.

What's also challenging in this moment, our colleague Steven Cook pointed out in an early analysis for us on the website was that there's not a lot of original reporting, independent reporting in Syria, really dangerous place for one thing. There are some monitoring organizations that are able to send along third-hand reports from various places. So the reliability of reporting is sketchy. But clearly this group, which goes by the acronym HTS, has rebuilt itself possibly with considerable help or at least a looking the other way approach from Turkey since Turkey controls a region right near that border in northwestern Syria. And Turkey might've found that to be convenient because it allowed it to, at the same time this offensive happened to move in and push out Kurdish forces that were in the region as well. Turkey's job, one, continues to be focus on eradicating any threat from the PKK-affiliated forces in northern Syria.

So what is Turkey going to do in all this? There was a lot of diplomatic activity going on, not clear yet. There might be some movement towards getting sides back to a peace process, which has been totally dormant for a while. But HTS might also have such wind in sails, and it's not clear where they're getting all this firepower and the support, but certainly the brutal record of the government, including using chemical weapons, including documented cases of torture, and also sort of backing itself up with some sort of gangster trade and drugs, all of these things have made it incredibly unpopular. HTS had been affiliated with al-Qaeda, is on the U.S. terrorist list still, but HTS is trying to rebrand itself and projecting an image of being a softer alternative for Syrian people to turn to. What's going to be interesting as it moves south, if it gets near Homs is it's moving into areas that are not Muslim, that are Christian in particular, and see how it performs in those areas as well.

And so this is all new territory, again, from something that we had been used to talking about in dreary fashion in the past. It's now new. And let's remember there are more than 6 million or so Syrian refugees still from the earlier fighting. There were estimated 300 to 600,000 deaths from the previous fighting in Syria. This is a bloody horrible war, 10 to 12 million displaced within Syria. So the country can, ill afford another chapter like that. The region can ill afford it frankly, but it shows things don't happen in a vacuum in the Middle East. Israeli activity has seemed to create an opportunity for this group that certainly the Israelis are not aligned with, but maybe it'll be interesting to see how the Israelis respond if HTS continues to gain traction.

ROBBINS:
So we really don't know what if HTS were to take over could they be worse potentially?

MCMAHON:
We don't know, exactly.

ROBBINS:
It's hard to imagine anybody being worse than the Assads, but we-

MCMAHON:
Remember this is a country where the Islamic State, the so-called Islamic State, took a big swath of territory and did brutal awful things before U.S.-aligned Kurdish forces, which still control some territory. And we can go on and on. It's extremely complicated. It's worth also mentioning there are 900 U.S. forces still based in southern Syria. In the first Trump administration, he had tried to withdraw all forces, was persuaded to keep some, and whether or not he wants to continue that, that's another test for the incoming Trump administration. So stay tuned.

ROBBINS:
Really.

MCMAHON:
Carla, we have talked our way into the audience figure of the week part of the podcast. This is the figure that listeners vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org's Instagram story. This week, the audience selected, "Trump Threatens 100 Percent Tariffs on BRICS Nations." Why is Trump targeting the BRICS?

ROBBINS:
I think we're going to need a scorecard to keep track of all the...

MCMAHON:
Tariff scorecard?

ROBBINS:
Yes, A tariff and target scorecard.

MCMAHON:
Tariff tracker. I like that.

ROBBINS:
Yes. So let's remember that this came after former and future President Trump threatened our two closest trading partners, Mexico and Canada, countries with which we have a free trade agreement that President Trump negotiated. He threatened them with a 25 percent tariff on day one "until such time as drugs and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country." So we've been in tariff fest for a while here.

Yeah, I mean the BRICS thing is a big deal, but nowhere near as big deal as the other one. So as for the BRICS, in a post on Truth Social on November 30th, President Trump said "the idea that BRICS countries are trying to move away from the dollar while we stand by and watch is," all uppercase, "OVER." He added that "either these countries commit to not creating a new BRICS currency or backing any other currency to replace the mighty U.S. dollar, they're going to face a hundred percent tariffs. They can go and find another sucker." He's really good on social media or whoever's writing him is really persuasive. Who knew that you could do currency and still and have the word sucker all at the same time?

So we've talked before about why Russia, China, Brazil seem to want to create an alternative currency and reduce the reliance on the U.S. dollar. For Russia, but China in particular, it's a way to reduce U.S. geopolitical influence and as well as the U.S. ability to pressure countries by denying access to dollar and the dollar trade. It's not all that surprising. And having our own currency as well as we know, also lowers our borrowing costs and brings us a lot of prestige. So you can understand why other countries would be tempted by it. Putin declared with the BRICS summit in October, "the dollar is being used as a weapon." He certainly knows that, and the Brazilians have been interested in the prestige aspect of it for a long time. They've been pushing it.

And that brings us to the next question. Would a new BRICS currency truly threaten the dollar? The reality of it is that there's almost no chance this is going to happen. The dollar's the world's main reserve currency. For all of the hand-wringing that's come, that sanctions are going to undermine the dollar, for all of the ideas of the BRICS that they're going to create one, it still makes up about 58 percent of the world's foreign exchange reserves. Critical commodities are still traded mainly in dollars. And pretty much everyone says that it's really unlikely that the BRICS are anywhere near close to...And certainly given what we know about the Russian economy, would anybody really want anything that was backed by Russia?

If they were to place tariffs on these countries? Once again, we all know what tariffs are. Tariffs are taxes on consumers. So it would drive up the cost of imports from BRICS nations. And more than anything else, and I think the best take on this comes from our colleague, Brad Setser. And I'm going to read a long quote, but it's really great. He too was very good on this, on social media. "Curious how former President-Elect Trump ever became convinced that the nowhere-close-to-happening BRICS currency was a threat to the dollar. It isn't a good look as it indirectly elevates the stature of a non-threat and suggests a lack of confidence in the dollar." In other words, why are we even worrying about this?

MCMAHON:
And elevates the stature of the BRICS group, which has been kind of reading its own press releases the past year and is high on itself, but the verdict is still out on what it really adds up to other than a platform for these countries to vent against the U.S. And these countries also include, first of all, U.S. partners like India. So where does India figure into all this? I think it's just-

ROBBINS:
Saudis?

MCMAHON:
And the Saudis now, right, with the expanded BRICS. Although it should be noted, Argentina was invited and said, "No, thanks." And Argentina is trying to cozy up Javier Milei.

ROBBINS:
Our new friends. And their currency is so stable anyway.

MCMAHON:
Yes, let's not get going on that currency front. But yeah, it's a great quote. I saw that quote from Brad as well. And it's just signaling in every direction, seemingly at this point. It's pretty remarkable to see still almost two months out that the sway and the impact that Trump is having around the world right now. And apparently there are a number of officials trooping into the U.S., Washington and Florida, Mar-a-Lago, to make sure that they get their dibs in and are able to take a meeting and present their cases and everything else. So it's just another sign Trump is taking on all comers.

ROBBINS:
And tariffs. What did he say? It was one of the most beautiful...

MCMAHON:
One of the most beautiful words.

ROBBINS:
One of the most beautiful words. So get your tariff scorecard now-

MCMAHON:
There will be no excuse for people not to know what tariffs are after the next couple of months.
Well, Carla, that is our look at the turbulent world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on in case you have any more bandwidth: Romania holds a very important presidential runoff election; India's defense minister visits Russia; and the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors, which aims to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast platform, and leave us a review while you're at it. We 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. And 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.

I'd like to say something from both Bob and I. We really want to thank our producer, Ester Fang, who's moving on to a new fabulous chapter. Ester, it's been so incredibly good working with you. You're just a really great news person and just a wonderful friend. So thank you for all of that. And thank you for Justin Schuster, who's new and helping us as well. And as always, thank you to Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra, and special thanks to Helena Kopans-Johnson for her research assistance.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, producers and research assistants are the unsung heroes of podcasts.

ROBBINS:
Well, they're sung. We sing them every week, but not perhaps enough.

MCMAHON:
We can't sing them enough.

ROBBINS:
Our theme music, talking about singing, is provided by, he's everywhere, Markus Zakaria.

MCMAHON:
But he doesn't sing.

ROBBINS:
He doesn't sing?

MCMAHON:
Well. He doesn't sing on our podcast.

ROBBINS:
Okay. And this is Carla Robbins saying, so long.

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