UNGA Vote on Russia’s Annexation, Arctic Circle Assembly, International Day of the Girl, and More

Bob McMahon:
In the coming week, the UN General Assembly considers condemning Russia's annexation of four Ukrainian regions. The Arctic Circle Assembly meets in Iceland and the International Day of the Girl marks its 10th anniversary. It's October 6th, 2022, and time for The World Next Week. I'm Bob McMahon.

Jim Lindsay:
And, I'm Jim Lindsay.

Bob McMahon:
Jim, a resolution has been drafted in the UN General Assembly for a vote next week that would condemn Russia's annexation of four Ukrainian territories as illegal. Now, Russia just last week vetoed a similar effort in the UN Security Council, so how much importance should we attach to this next UN effort?

Jim Lindsay:
Bob, the General Assembly's vote is going to be more symbolic than substantive, nothing that the General Assembly does will compel Russia to change its policies. People may recall that back in March, the General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Russians fearing that they are going to take a beating in this General Assembly vote, have called for it to be a secret vote, arguing that if it is a public vote countries that would otherwise support the Russian position will feel pressured by western governments to vote to condemn Russian behavior. I don't know how true that is, probably not true at all, but it at least gives the Russians a pretext for an argument to be made next week after they lose the vote that it was rigged against them. Now, as you know Bob, all of this is coming amidst real setbacks for the Russians when it comes to the fighting. The Ukrainians have continued to have success, not just in the northeastern part of Ukraine, but now increasingly in the southern or southeastern part of the country. The Ukrainians have been making significant gains around the city of Kherson, which sits on the Dnipro River just across from Crimea, this is the city that the Russians took in the early days of the fighting. One of the questions is whether Russian forces will fall back across the river or whether they can even do that given that the Ukrainians look to have destroyed most of the bridges going across the river. There are reports that Putin is now intervening directly in military planning and has ordered his generals to hold Kherson on at all costs. And the question now is going to be, how is Russia going to respond in the face of these very significant military setbacks.

Bob McMahon:
Jim, you're touching on something that seems to be the new narrative here, which is that we could be seeing the beginnings of a route, and that regardless of the mobilization, the Russian troops are so demoralized, the command structure is so corroded, the destruction of elite Russian forces is so extensive and Ukrainians have big momentum on their side, that they could very well be rampaging through a region that Russia is still finishing up on the formal annexation of. Now that could be also a huge overstatement, Russia has a lot of other resources at its command, but I'm wondering whether we do enter a more dangerous period of Putin on his heels, maybe testing out some of the bigger threats that he's been making.

Jim Lindsay:
Well, certainly Bob. And I think that's the concern that everybody has and here is where people recall Putin describing how he as a child in St. Petersburg, seeing what a cornered rat did. The question is, what will Putin do? He went with the partial mobilization, that seems to have caused him more problems, at least in the short run, than it solved. In purely military terms, these new conscripts either will need to be trained, which is going to take some time, so they won't relieve Russian forces currently at the front, or you send them to the front right now where they're inexperience means they're likely more a hindrance than a help in terms of turning things around. So that gets us to the question, what other options does Putin have? We've seen some of them already, which is to attack civilian infrastructure in Ukraine in the hopes of making the cost of the war for Ukrainians even higher and presumably trying to break their will. There's no evidence that that's happening. There's also the possibility of terror attacks on Ukrainian cities. We saw earlier this week that the Russians launched something on the order of a dozen so-called kamikaze drones, which attacked a city about 50 miles south of Kyiv. And just as we were sitting down to tape, I saw a news flash that Russian missiles struck a residential section of Zaporizhzhia, so we have that. Then there's also the question of whether Putin goes with what might be called horizontal escalations, maybe it's sabotage. We've talked about what happened to the Nord Stream Pipeline, do we see other attacks like that? Does he try to foment problems in places like the Balkans and try to distract the West? And then there's the threat of using nuclear weapons and then these attendant set of issues of how he might use them, what the consequences could be. And then finally, I think we are likely to see Putin continue to exercise energy leverage. I think one of the more interesting things happening this week is that Russia reached agreement with Saudi Arabia and other major oil exporters under the auspices of the OPEC+ three group to cut oil production by two million barrels a day starting next month. Now, the rationale or motives for most of these countries in cutting oil production are different than Russia, it appears to be that these countries are worried that we're about to go into a global recession, which means that oil prices will fall. So the idea is what they will do is they will cut supply in order to sort of hold up price. Now the irony there of course, as you know Bob, is that if you jack up oil prices, that could actually speed up the appearance of a global recession because obviously as prices go up, things get tougher. But again, Putin is seemingly guided by the belief that his best card right now is to split the West. That in essence, he or the Russian people can take more pain for a longer time than what he has called, "the decadent West" can. Now, I've done an article with Ivo Daalder and Foreign Affairs, which sort of takes that argument apart. I think western unity is far stronger than we give you credit for, but the reality is, is that many people are concerned or believe that the West will crack.

Bob McMahon:
So taking off from that point, Jim, if not the West, perhaps he's got more leverage with other, let's say, leading democracies in the world. And I'm thinking about a number of things including the Security Council vote I referenced where that was a vote to condemn the annexation, but you had India and Brazil abstaining in the vote. Everybody knew Russia was going to veto the vote anyway, it was a symbolic gesture. But given the chance to condemn a move that leaders of both countries have indicated in other forms that they don't approve of that still in all when it came to it, they were not going to vote against Russia. And this UN vote could also be quite revealing in that way. We're seeing countries that still on balance see it as worthwhile to do business with Russia. So it seems like the Russians, they're not cornered as of yet, certainly they're facing the western unanimity that you're talking about.

Jim Lindsay:
Well, certainly and I think what the UN General Assembly vote will show, as it showed back in February, or it showed back in 2014 when the UN General Assembly voted to condemn Russia's seizure of Crimea, is that the international community is not united on these issues. It is clearly the case that countries in the so-called Global South in particular, have decided, whether for reasons of solidarity or reasons of self-interest, reasons of anger toward the West, that they are going to abstain or withhold their criticism of Russian behavior. Even granting that, Bob, it's pretty clear that a number of world leaders from the Global South are growing increasingly concerned about Russian policy. I don't think it was an accident that Prime Minister Modi of India, when he met with Putin, spoke about how the 21st century was not an era of war. I think that is Modi trying to signal to a country that India has long had very good ties with that this policy is not sustainable nor is it appropriate.

Bob McMahon:
And we'll see more of that kind of international flavor and response to Putin in upcoming summits next month, I think the G20 and APEC, so there'll be a lot of Asian summitry and Putin is supposed to be at most of those I think.

Jim Lindsay:
And it will be very interesting to see what sideline meetings we have or don't have. That is, will leaders of countries agree to meet with Putin? Now I know the Indonesians, and they're going to be the host of the G20 summit meeting, are hoping that all of the leaders are going to attend and that they can have a productive session. But clearly Ukraine is going to overhang all of this, and it would not surprise me to see Ukrainian President Zelensky criticize the G20 If in his view it is trying to gloss over what the Russians are doing to the Ukrainian people. But Bob, let's change topics and discuss the Arctic Circle. Thousands are about to gather in Reykjavík, Iceland for the annual Arctic Circle Assembly meeting, that's the largest international gathering on the Arctic. Meeting sessions cover Arctic governance and security, climate change, indigenous rights, technology and more. What can we expect to come out of the meeting, Bob?

Bob McMahon:
Well, Jim, first it's worth pointing out that this is not the Arctic Council, so that's the intergovernmental body that can make concrete decisions on the region's future. And that body has actually been suspended, Russia was the alternating chair of it at the time it invaded Ukraine. There are eight overall members, these other seven said, "We can't go on with business as usual." And so the Arctic Council is not functioning as a body at this point. The assembly which meets annually as you said, is I think is a bit more important because it is an opportunity to talk through a whole host of issues, some of which would be funneled through the Arctic Council in various ways, but it allows all sorts of members of society, all sorts of strata. You have official representatives from very high levels, but also lots of NGOs, indigenous representatives and so forth. There are roughly four million people who live in the Arctic, they're mostly indigenous. And so the issues that we have talked about before that have been the subject of CFR papers and other think tank papers, they are continuing to grow. It's the emerging opening of the Arctic as a passage way because of the melting of the Arctic ice cap, for example. But also, apropos, or just the discussion we just had Jim, that is the Arctic under some sort of threat to be an arena of military conflict? A lot of experts say that's still a low possibility, but there have also been reports just from this past summer of Russia violating airspace of countries in the Arctic, including Finland, which is tapped to be a NATO member. So there's concern about a whole host of issues, Russia and Ukraine, as in many other fora looms large. But there are also a lot of issues that are on the agenda that could still get some meaningful discussion, whether it's commerce, whether it's the environment, resource exploitation and exploration. Again though, Russia looms large, more than 50% of Arctic coastline is in Russian territory.

Jim Lindsay:
Certainly Bob, and here again, when you allude to environmental issues, climate change plays a role. We are seeing the melting of the polar ice cap. That means that the Arctic which was once frozen 365 days a year, is going to be open to shipping for at least part, and eventually it looks all of the year. And then there's this question of having access to whatever lies below the surface of the Arctic Ocean, potential exploitation of minerals, oil rights and things like that. But it seems to me that they're competing claims among these countries over who owns what.

Bob McMahon:
Yeah, and you saw even well ahead of the invasion of Ukraine, but after the annexation of Crimea, you saw Russia's sort of planting flags in certain areas. They don't carry any sort of international weight, but they are hugely important as kind of markers that countries are starting to lay out because they are estimated to be quite substantial resources, whether it's energy resources, carbon especially, or minerals or other valuables, as well as I mentioned this passageway aspect. You have an increasing number of countries from far away from the Arctic, including the UAE with interest in the Arctic as a route in which ships can pass and cut many, many miles from their delivery of goods and raw materials and so forth. You have China is sort of stepping up and showing huge interest in the Arctic as well. Obviously China, territorial China is not terribly far away, but still it is not an Arctic country per se, and so what's going to be its economic and political involvement in the area. And so as you say, Jim, claims are being laid. Canada has a great deal of interest, obviously a major Arctic country. It was already going to be a delicate set of issues that were coming under discussion by the Arctic Council, now in this new environment, it just makes it that much more contentious.

Jim Lindsay:
My sense is, Bob, that when it comes to Canada, Canada and the United States have conflicting claims over sovereignty in the Arctic because there are different principles that could be applied in terms of determining what area you have sovereignty over.

Bob McMahon:
That's right. And you have also a number of countries that would like to see the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the writ of that carry into the Arctic. The U.S. has defacto observed the sovereignty under that, but has not signed onto it as of yet. But you're right, there are competing claims across the board. There's lots at stake. If you look at the agenda of this upcoming assembly, something like 90 topics are going to be discussed, 400 speakers. Again, top level representatives, including one of the senators from the U.S. state of Alaska, the Arctic State, Lisa Murkowski is going to be there. Derek Chollet, who you had on your podcast, The President's Inbox, who was a State Department Counselor is due to speak there as well. The Nordic nations in particular are going to be highly represented where they're again going to be speaking about the importance of coordination and cooperation in the Arctic. I would just say one more thing on the military front, the US still has a way to go to kind of develop ships, ice breaking type ships, robust enough ships that can patrol in any Arctic waters, it is behind the Russians in that regard and so that's something that also you could see more discussion about.

Jim Lindsay:
Certainly. And I'll just note that for Canadians, the opening up of the Arctic changes their security calculations because now you have to worry about protecting your borders to the north, that's a lot of territory, potentially a lot of water. Again, for the foreseeable future, it's still going to be fairly inhospitable for a good portion of time. But as climate changes, this is an example of how countries have to sort of rethink what their strategic vulnerabilities are and may be.

Bob McMahon:
It's a really good point, Jim. The only thing I would add to that is we should watch what's happening in Greenland where you have natives there who look for more rights, for more independence from Denmark. There's a lot at stake, an increasing amount at stake as Greenland becomes more green.

Jim Lindsay:
Certainly Bob, this is an issue or a set of issues that are going to be with us for quite some time. I think they're going to grow in importance precisely because climate is changing so dramatically.

Bob McMahon:
Yes, a real climate and the geopolitical climate. But Jim, I want to take us in a completely different direction and talk about the 10th anniversary of the International Day of the Girl, that's next Tuesday. The UN General Assembly had adopted this day to recognize girls' rights and promote girls' empowerment. As we look at this anniversary today, Jim, what can we say about the challenges girls are facing in the world?

Jim Lindsay:
Well, they're facing lots of challenges, Bob, but perhaps I should declare upfront that when we talk about the International Day of the Girl, it is distinct from International Women's Day, which is marked on March 8th. As you noted, this is the 10th anniversary of the International Day of the Girl. It is a result of a UN General Assembly declaration. And the purpose of the International Day of the Girl is to raise awareness about the unique challenges children and adolescent girls face and to empower their human rights around the world. This is part of the so-called Sustainable Development Goal Number. 5, and the UN General Assembly's declaration charge communities and countries to invest in girls education, to reduce child marriages, to end sexual, physical and mental violence against girls, and to provide support to girls in times of conflict and natural disasters. One thing we know, Bob, is that educating girls, protecting their health and setting them up to become full members of society as adults has enormous payoffs for countries. Here I want to do a shout out for our colleagues in the Women in Foreign Policy Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, who over the last two decades have done a tremendous amount of work in this area. Going back to a report, I think it was in 2004, on what works in girls' education, more recently investing in girl's STEM education. And what the evidence overwhelmingly shows is that if you invest in girls, they grow up to become much more productive in society, society as a general rule benefits. But the problem is when you look around the world, that far too many girls grew up in societies that deny them opportunities, the numbers are just sobering, if not shocking, about 1.4 billion girls and women live in countries that don't provide for gender equality. Worldwide, something on the order of 130 million girls do not go to school. One in three adolescent girls from the poorest households around the world are uneducated. About half of the world's countries, at least formally have gender parity in primary education. Only about 40% do in [lower] secondary education and only about 25% do in [upper] secondary education. Child marriage continues to be a problem around the world. It's believed that there are up to 10 million child marriages a year. Girls are victims of sexual exploitation, forced labor in many continents, in many countries. The practice of female genital mutilation is sadly commonplace. And UNICEF estimates that one quarter of adolescent girls aged 15 to 19 have been the victims of sexual violence. So those are all troubling figures. And again, the purpose of the International Day of the Girl is to raise awareness and hopefully galvanize countries to take steps to protect the rights of girls and of women.

Bob McMahon:
Now, Jim, listening to you run down those issues and those stats, it is really disturbing because, among other things, I think there is a general sense, certainly when you see international events, as well as declarations like this, that girls are owed better treatment, they are owed the right to education and so forth, and yet the cultural conditions they find themselves in can be really difficult to overcome. We noted this in an interactive we did for our website several years back on child marriage. And one of the things that came out from that report was that in societies where advances have been made, it really took courageous stands by men to say, this is not right, this cannot stand. We are better than this, we need to move on. And there are too few cases still where that occurs. And we look at, sadly again, as we've discussed previously what's happened in Afghanistan where girls were making strides, incredible strides. I still recall a few years ago the all-girls robot creating team came and won an event in Washington, and it was a great story. Now you're seeing the litany of reports about repression, but also and just recently an attack on a girl's school in Afghanistan, it's really, really disturbing and you hope a day like this can sort of refocus efforts.

Jim Lindsay:
Yeah. Sadly, Bob, I think a lot of the numbers I quoted in the problems you just alluded to are likely to intensify in the coming years because of what looks to be a looming global recession. The reality is, is that the burden of such recessions tend to fall on the poorest, most marginalized members of society, so I think a lot of these trends are going to be aggravating. And just going back to Afghanistan, which is in the midst of a tremendous humanitarian disaster because the country essentially has ceased to function in normal ways, and because it essentially operated for a number of years on the basis of international donations that have been cut off because of the behavior and actions of the Taliban. And you read stories of families selling off their young girls because they need money to provide for other parts of their family. So that's sort of a tangible example of the horrors that we're witnessing. But again, there's the impact of COVID. There is the recession. There is looming food shortages being created as a result of the war in Ukraine. So a lot of these are tying together. And I think sadly, for girls, for women, for people in general, I think tougher times lie ahead.

Bob McMahon:
And I shudder to think what the next 10 years is going to bring. But again, the world has plenty of information and plenty have learned from the past 10 years, hopefully they can build on that.

Jim Lindsay:
I certainly do. But I think you're right, Bob, to really make progress requires men to fight, lobby, and work on behalf of girls and women.

Bob McMahon:
Agreed.

Jim Lindsay:
Bobby, we reached that portion of the show where we discuss the audience figure of the week. This week our audience figure of the week came from Instagram where you can vote by looking up CFR_org. Our audience figure of the week, Bob, is, "Ayatollah Khamenei condemns Iran protests." Tell me more.

Bob McMahon:
Well, this is the ongoing story of, the protest now entering their third week in Iran, triggered by the death in police custody of a woman named Mahsa Amini, who according to the reports, was detained by morality police for not proper wearing of her hijab. There were a number of reports indicating that she was mistreated, if not beaten, in police custody. She collapsed, and there's footage of her collapsing in a police station at a hearing. She died, the government has promised investigations and so forth. Her family has said it's all a big cover up. And protests have spread and sustained across the country in many different sectors now. It continues to be a woman-led protest in many ways, women cutting their hair, there's footage of women burning their hijabs. There are university students who are shouting down regime officials who come by to speak. There are all sorts of footage, and I should note footage seemingly verified by a number of agencies that cover Iran closely. So the BBC, which has a Persian service, has done exhaustive studying of videos and verified, or scrutinized what it says are plausible videos. The New York Times, The Washington Post have done similar investigations into this. So it is an investigation that's continuing amid a strong crackdown. The supreme leader, as he has in the past, does not accept the legitimacy of such protests, which he terms riots. So his comments just this past week at a military academy, he acknowledged what he said was the painful death of Mahsa Amini, painful for the country to consider a young woman dying in that regard, but not at all accepting that she was mistreated or that there is any sort of legitimacy to the protests that continue. I should also note that Ayatollah Khamenei has been said to be for years in poor health. He's 83 years old now. He's one of only two supreme leaders the Islamic Republic has ever had since 1979. And he would be a crucial figure in potentially pivoting government response to the protests, to the claims and the calls for loosening of this patrols of the morality police, but that does not look like it's coming, Jim.

Jim Lindsay:
So where do we see these protests going, Bob?

Bob McMahon:
If you follow the, let's say the feeds of some of the Iran experts like I do, you see an interesting set of commentary, some a bit breathless and taken by the protests and saying, these are completely unprecedented. We are looking at circumstances that were similar to what happened in 1978 and '79, the revolution that brought in the Islamic Republic. Others are saying the government will endure. They've taken a hit, they've shown their ability to fight back in this regard. I do think going into a third week is rather unusual, even for Iran, which has had number of protests, a lot of them economy based, because the country's economy continues to be in very bad shape. Again, we should note, an economy under duress because Iran is under heavy U.S.-led sanctions over its nuclear program. It's a hard line civilian government. It's a hard line supreme leader who's not changing by any accounts, and certainly by his comments we saw this past week where he basically blamed the United States and Israeli officials for fomenting what he called these riots. And so I think you're seeing this hard line getting harder, but it's a country that's different than other countries in the region, and it's got a more educated populace, including women. And it's also, even though there's an internet crackdown, Jim, they've shown an ability to be able to share and distribute information about protests that have really occurred across the country from the Kurdish west and northwest to the south, and certainly the capital, Tehran.

Jim Lindsay:
We've also seen Elon Musk get permission from the White House to use, I think it is Starlink satellite, to enable Iranians to use the internet during this time, something he wasn't previously able to do because of sanctions of the United States has on Iran.

Bob McMahon:
That's right, so we'll have to see whether that is able to sort of trigger the usage and the communication capabilities that we saw Starlink generating in places like Ukraine, which by many accounts was extremely useful. The authorities do have a lot of control over the airwaves, but there is a bit of a cat and mouse aspect to people being able to use different nodes of communication to communicate, and so we'll have to see. It's a very wired country, but also very wired countries can sometimes be controlled a little bit more effectively by authorities and this kind of control has been used before. Again, the region has had any series of protests. Iran's not like the Arab Spring countries, certainly, it's certainly not like Syria, which it's played a role in supporting the regime. It's someplace that's very much worth watching, Jim, because it's a young population, it's a more educated population than a lot of other countries in the region and it feels like there's something growing here that the regime is having a hard time suppressing.

Jim Lindsay:
You're right, Bob, certainly about the surveillance capabilities of the Iranian government. They have some fairly sophisticated digital capabilities. And as we've seen with the horrifying video coming out of Iranian cities, this is a regime that is willing to use repression to suppress its public.

Bob McMahon:
Yeah, very much so. And I think people should not overlook that, it has lasted for four decades because of that capability. Yes, it's an aging patriarchy, but it has a lot of weapons at its disposal

Jim Lindsay:
And it certainly does, and it has a lot of wealth because they have managed to shield themselves from the impact of the sanctions that the United States and western countries have imposed, enforced average Iranians to bear the burden.

Bob McMahon:
And that's our look at The World Next Week. Here are some other stories to keep an eye on. Austria holds presidential elections, Japan lifts strict border restrictions amidst a tumbling yen, and the International Whaling Commission meets in Slovenia.

Jim Lindsay:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, leave us to review while you're at it. We appreciate the feedback. The articles, books, and podcasts 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 in The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, with senior podcast producer Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks go out to Sinet Adous for her research assistant. Our theme music is provided by Miguel Herrero in licensed under Creative Commons. This is Jim Lindsay saying, so long.

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