U.S.-Japan-South Korea Summit, Ecuador’s Snap Election, BRICS Leaders Meet, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, the U.S., Japan and Korea hold a Camp David summit, Ecuador holds a snap election amid political violence, and South Africa hosts the BRICS Summit. It's August 17th, 2023 in time for The World Next Week. I am Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Ann Robbins. So Bob tomorrow, President Biden, South Korea's President Yoon and Japan's Prime Minister Kishida will meet at Camp David for their first trilateral summit. So we've talked before about the steps Seoul and Tokyo have taken to try to heal their historic wounds and why the U.S. is so invested in that process. Are we expecting big deliverables from the summit?

MCMAHON:
I think in this case, the fact of the summit is the deliverable, Carla. And I think as has been noted by, in a few places, including our colleagues, Scott Snyder and Sheila Smith, the moment in time that they're seizing on is significant because they're trying to institutionalize cooperation. Now that's a wonky kind of a term, but in fact is meaningful because in all three places the political winds could change the next couple of years in which there's, let's say, less gusto behind this if not outright opposition to, especially making Japan and South Korea work closer together and put behind them some really tough history.

So at the moment is seen as really propitious. The issues, there's little disagreement on especially the North Korean threat. There's a great deal of concern about North Korea as it ramps up overtly signaling its desire to expand its capabilities and ballistic missile testing, everybody's waiting for another nuclear test or random nuclear test to happen as well. And then the combination of the ability to weaponize nukes has a huge amount of alarm resonating not only in the region but even in the U.S. where North Korean missiles could potentially reach.

So the three sides are very much locked in on how to coordinate on tracking North Korean activities, defending against them, as the case may be, but then also talking about the other big issue which is China, whether it's China's activities vis-a-vis Taiwan, a big deal in the area and we've talked a lot about that before, but also China's coercive economic policies and to the extent to which Japan and South Korea might be aligned on helping to change things like supply chains China plays a crucial role in, for example.

There's going to be something called the Camp David Principles, Carla, that we'll hear more about. I think that's going to be the big thing that comes out of this. Whether or not we continue to hear about the references to these principles in years to come, we'll have to see. But it's going to be things like cooperating on holistic missile defense and technology development in particular, establishing things like a three-way hotline and then as I said, this institutionalization of this relationship. So maybe there's deputy foreign minister level coordination that's locked in and there are recurring meetings that will take place, that will be something that is expected among the three countries.

Things like that are all going to be really important. And the extent to which Japan and South Korea have sought to push aside their frictions is pretty significant. So I'm looking to see the signaling that comes out of this Carla, but I think it's a rather big deal. And the other thing we should note is that it's already generated quite a hostile reaction from both China and North Korea. North Korea could take a page from their playbook and do something like holds another sort of provocative test as a signal of how miffed they are.

ROBBINS:
So when you say there's this need to institutionalize this, is it because of potential political change in Washington? We know that President Trump, when he was in office, was very transactional with his relationship in particular with South Korea, talking about the potential pulling out of troops or making demands on paying for their own missile defense, the Patriots and all of that. Is that the concern, the possibility of a Trump reelection or are you talking about potentially changes in politics in Japan and South Korea that might break this relationship apart? What's the need to institutionalize it?

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I think it's all three. Given the political calendar. There's a piece that came out just this past week in Foreign Affairs that talked about actually all three places where we shouldn't consider this a given going forward that there's going to be this trilateral lockstep in the region because, just in South Korea alone, recently with changes of administration, there have been really different changes in the way in which they regard, especially the relationship with Japan. President Yoon now is really doubling down on wanting to make this relationship work and not obsessing over the past with issues like territorial disputes or the comfort women, the notorious comfort women issue involving Japanese soldiers basically creating sex slaves out of South Koreans.

ROBBINS:
And forced labor.

MCMAHON:
And forced labor. So it's very careful messaging. It doesn't mean that it's accepting that, but it's not requiring let's say reparations or ongoing apologies and so forth, but in fact just sort of saying we will deal with this but there are other things to deal with and this is a bigger relationship in which there are shared values and shared security interests and let's move forward on that front. And Japan, also it's political calendar shows some elections upcoming and we don't know whether Prime Minister Kishida's hold on power will be such that he can continue to hold sway in the way he currently has been indicating. So that's important.

There's an economic moment here that's kind of interesting as well. Japan's economy happens to be doing really well. For example, these are two really strong economies and for all their changes, pretty strong democracies that have not been buffeted by what we've seen in Europe, for example, Carla. And so I think the Biden administration, which has been trying to really ramp up this relationship is seeing this as very important. And so I think they'd really see an opportunity. And we should say under Trump, he pursued bilateral relationships with both countries but was not particularly interested in nurturing a trilateral one. And I don't think that would change in the event he was reelected after 2024. So I think they do see this as a moment to try to build some core institutions that will survive or should survive some political changes.

ROBBINS:
I'm fascinated by this topic. So the U.S. doesn't see a bright line between security and economy, especially when it comes to high-tech and China. And last week President Biden signed an executive order banning new American investment in tech industries that develop advanced semiconductors, quantum computers, certain AI applications in China. Are the Japanese and the South Koreans totally on board for this?

MCMAHON:
It's a really good question. I think they are sort of carefully, cautiously moving forward. The South Koreans have had particular vulnerability to China's sway and I think they've been trying to not be too provocative about it, but also be supportive the Japanese a little bit more. So they both got a taste of what China's sway over rare earths has meant, which is crucial elements and needed in all sorts of tech manufacture that both these countries need.

But you're right, I mean it's hard to just kind of gloss over that. That is an area I think, aside from the security one where I think you'll really see strong support, three-way support, I think you'll see some finessing of the language on the economic front, but I think they'll be making a big point of agreeing on bolstering their own global supply chains, for example, to the extent they can. And making references to the way that China needs to participate in the world economic order like other countries, sort of talking about norms and adherence to norms and not trying to convey language of isolation. It's also unclear by the way, the amount in which they're going to use the name China at all in any of their declarations, but they are going to talk about adhering to norms and about proper open transfer of technology and so forth. But the question you asked I believe is probably going to be posed by a lot of reporters from the region as we get through this summit tomorrow.

ROBBINS:
Pesky reporters, yeah.

MCMAHON:
Carla, you are representing the breed very well, as always. 

Carla, I want to move us around the world to Ecuador, a flashpoint country in the region to say the least. This coming Sunday, Ecuadorians will head to the polls and vote in a snap election. Now back in May, President Guillermo Lasso enacted what was called a muerte cruzada, dissolving the government. The race has been intense and it has intensified with a bout a violence. Last week a top contender, Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated. Do we have a sense of who was behind this and how it might be changing the political dynamics?

ROBBINS:
So we don't know who killed Villavicencio. The outgoing President Lasso has invited the FBI in to help with the investigation. So let's see, what we do know is that Villavicencio, who was shot as he was leaving a campaign rally, had a lot of potential enemies. He's a former investigative journalist who spent twenty years exposing corruption in Ecuador's oil industry. His reporting helped bring down a very powerful previous president, Correa. And he ran a campaign pulling no punches, vowing to take on Ecuador's drug gangs, their international backers, their political cronies. And he said he'd been threatened by a leading drug gang, the Choneros, as well as Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel. But there are a lot of other gangs and other foreign cartels including a Balkan drug trafficking group that are very powerful there. And at the same time, he was also promising to renegotiate contracts with foreign oil and mining companies, including PetroChina and Halliburton and SLB, the group formerly known as Schlumberger. So he had a lot of people who were really annoyed with him.

Was Villavicencio likely to win? Is that why he was in their sights? Depending on the polls, and I don't know how good the polls are there, I don't know if there're any better than the polls here, which aren't very good, he was either in second place or in the middle of a pack of eight candidates for this Sunday's vote. And the country was before this assassination already in a really big sea of trouble. As you said, this political crisis, Lasso was trying to avoid impeachment so he invoked the constitutions never before used muerte cruzada or mutual death clause, which allowed him to dissolve the National Assembly but also required these new elections. And Lasso decided not to run again.

And while we in the U.S. have been focused on the huge amounts of fentanyl pouring in from China via Mexico, over the last five years, Ecuador has been transformed into a major platform for cocaine processing and distribution, and they have soaring rates of murder, kidnapping, extortion, and other crimes. And just last month the mayor of Manta, which has the country's second-biggest port was also shot and killed. So will the elections change anything? First they need to get a new president, and with eight candidates, the Villavicencio party has chosen another journalist to top their ticket, they're almost certainly going to have to go to a runoff in mid-October.

MCMAHON:
So I'm struck by what you're saying is that now the role of the drug trade in Ecuador... Because a lot of commentators have been saying with this latest violence, we could even be seeing the threat of state capture by gangs. And it seems like only recently this would've been unheard of for a place like Ecuador. It was just a place where maybe some of the observers or the people who watched these kinds of things closely were a little bit asleep at the switch, there's some stealth development of drug gangs there?

ROBBINS:
Oh, I think Ecuador has got this geographic problem, which is it's between Columbia and Peru and there's just been this massive explosion of coca production once again. I think we were asleep at the switch. I certainly wasn't paying a lot of attention to it. Everybody's been so focused on fentanyl. And accepting that all the other coca policies had failed, and so we weren't particularly focused on coca anyway. And Ecuador, which had been a very comparatively peaceful and comparatively stable place because of its location turned out to be a very good place as the drug traffickers found both for distribution and increasingly for processing.

So yeah, I suppose we were asleep at the switch. This looks a lot like what Columbia looked like, and which the drug traffickers... They're not trying to take over, as Columbia we saw in the... They're not trying to take over the government, but they have the potential for destabilizing the government. That's what's going on here. What we did see, there was a political debate on Sunday, every single candidate from left to right was talking about the major threat that this poses to the government and poses to personal security for people in the street as well. And so maybe this is a massive wake-up call for them. And as I said, from left to right, people were talking about the need for security, different interpretations about how they would do it. So no one wants anyone to be assassinated and this is an incredible tragedy, but certainly it seems to have been a major political wake up call. So we'll have to see.

MCMAHON:
And the other dynamic we tend to see in Latin America, at least, is, I think it's called mano dura, which is the strong fist approach to security threats. So could we in this political open season suddenly see support thrown behind an authoritarian candidate who's going to crack down and things further spiral?

ROBBINS:
That's always a danger. It's very hard to tell which candidate is ahead at this point. You're so close to an election, you've got eight candidates there and you don't know how an assassination changes the dynamic of it. According to the polls, Luisa Gonzalez, a socialist former lawmaker was the front-runner. There's a pro-market candidate, Otto Sonnenholzner who in the debate vowed that, "A criminal raises a firearm against a citizen, they will know they will get the bullet that they deserve." It sounds a lot like the Philippines that we knew. There's an indigenous candidate, Yaku Pérez, who pointed out he was the only one with an advanced law degree and he wants to do it through better social programs and criminology, using better data.

So you have lots of different ways of talking about how to do it and there's references to El Salvador, and the way Bukele's doing it, which is a pretty scary approach. So we will see, there's always this temptation and certainly people feel it not just at the very top with assassinations of presidential candidates, huge problems with kidnappings, extortion and just basic crime in the streets. So certainly lots of people are going to be demanding a way to do it, but I don't think we're going to know what's going to happen until October because almost certainly there's going to be a runoff.

MCMAHON:
All right, we'll hang on then.

ROBBINS:
Yeah. So Bob, let's head to South Africa, another country which obviously has a crime problem but also great aspirations to leadership. And next Tuesday, South Africa will host the BRICS head of state summit. The BRICS of course are Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, and they have long aspired to be twenty-first century's real economic and political powers and someday potentially supplanting the G7. But given Russia's near pariah status, Putin notably will not be there. He's only coming virtually. He is under indictment with the ICC. Brazil's economic and political troubles and now even China slowing economy, what can we expect from the BRICS in this meeting? Is Ukraine likely to come up? A big deal, talk shop? What do you think, Bob?

MCMAHON:
A lot of talking, Carla. A big deal for the current BRICS members is just to kind of reassert the fact that the group offers an alternative for the Global South to talk about how to deal with the economic challenges. And I guess one of the signature achievements of the BRICS to date has been this creation of, I think it's called now, The New Development Bank. It's based in Shanghai, by the way, Dilma Rousseff is the CEO of it, a former Brazilian president. And they've been involved in generating a number of deals, although they can't work in Russia at the moment because of sanctions.

But their talk of an alternative, even Brazil talking about ways of using an alternative currency has stimulated intense interest in whether or not this meeting was going to be the one where the BRICS talk about an alternative to the dollar, that's now been pooh-poohed by none other than the hosts themselves, the South Africans as well as a number of experts. Most people just say it's fantasy to think that the BRICS could generate a currency that could reasonably offer an alternative. It doesn't mean that there aren't alternatives that might be rising in usage over time to the dollar, but as the person who coined the BRICS phrase or the BRIC phrase back in the day, Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs, he just says, "It's just not in the realm of possibility."

You also have a group, it's one thing to talk about a rival to the G7, but any group that has both India and China as members ain't going to replicate the G7 or anything like it anytime soon. These are countries with major issues, although it is interesting how much they do value still joining together in this group. I think one of the big things that's being talked about is whether the BRICS expands, apparently they've gotten as many as forty countries want to join. I don't know whether you rename it like BRIC of BRACK and create a long acronym or something-

ROBBINS:
Geez Bob.

MCMAHON:
Sorry, I couldn't resist. But you do run the risk of diluting the groups sway of the seeming, cachet of the group, I should say. It's been noted frequently that represents like 40 percent of the world's population, thanks in great part to India and China, as well as I think 26 percent of the GDP. But you do have, countries like Argentine have made a bid, I think Saudi Arabia, Egypt and so forth. So you could have some sort of announcement about a path for expanding membership. Russia and China in particular would love to expand it quite a lot. I mean, in some ways hearing that the language of China and its sort of championing of the Global South hearkens up to its role in the Group of 77. I'm not even sure if that group exists still, but that was a big deal group in the Cold War days that represented the countries that were non-aligned with the United States and were trying to deal with the developing nation issues.

So there'll be, back to your original question, I think a lot of talk about what are some alternative ways of helping lift up these countries. South Africa as the African member and as a country struggling greatly with energy issues at the moment, I think they want to mention some practical ways in which this group could stimulate coordination on energy and clean energy in particular. They have a dependence on coal for example and they would like to move off of it and get a more reliable renewable source. So you'll see, I think a discussion about green hydrogen is on the agenda.

And I think that's the thing to look for in terms of the practical things. There'll be messaging and there'll be probably some downplaying of the Ukraine issue, even though South Africa had basically told Putin to stay away because they would have to honor their ICC commitment to seize him as an indicted war criminal. Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister will be there and holding the line on Russia's issues. We've heard Brazil, although embraced as a return to a democracy, Brazil has downplayed the Ukrainian cause let's say at a number of international events. So I do think it will be very interesting to see whether that has changed in any way, especially given the Russian targeting of grain ships and the fact that you now have the first merchant ship since the blockade that has moved away from Ukraine and people are keeping a close eye on whether or not Russia targets it or not. But Russia's in kind of a difficult spot for all sorts of reasons and we'll just have to see whether their BRICS colleagues have their back.

ROBBINS:
I mean, the meeting's particularly interesting after you had this peace conference, which the Chinese did go to in Jeddah and Saudi Arabia in which you have seen more "Global South countries", of course calling the Saudis part of the Global South is sort of an odd notion, an odd construct there-

MCMAHON:
Yeah, it is.

ROBBINS:
But in the Chinese who seem to be trying to play more of a "I'm not sure I'm completely in Russia's camp" role itself, hard to imagine that you have a meeting like this and look legitimate and not discuss Ukraine, look legitimate and not discuss world food prices and the impact of the Black Sea grain deal and the Russians blocking it and falling apart. If they want to have legitimacy and they completely sidestep Ukraine or appear to be endorsing the Russian positions, I think they're really going to undercut their legitimacy.

MCMAHON:
That's why it's going to be fascinating to see whether or not they see that as well. Is that the way that Global South is seeing things? It was a surprise certainly in the first six to ten months of the war that the Global South was not interested and was not taking it as seriously certainly as Europe and other U.S. partners were. So things have played out in a very different way right now.

And South Africa is also trying to play a careful game. They have a whole set of other meetings going on in the coming week, including with U.S. envoys and so forth. They want to keep those ties in good stead. Again, hearkening back to our original discussion on the trilateral summit. China's not going to be... They'll still be smarting over that as they head into this meeting. So maybe it's a chance to kind of push back a bit at the Western alliance because they also, I should have mentioned the trilateral summit, they worry about a mini NATO coming up with East Asia. So I think there's this desire to show the BRICS are different, that they are demonstrably not the U.S. aligned order, Western order, but I don't think they have enough juice to say what exactly they stand for and they're going to kind of muddle through the Ukraine issue.

ROBBINS:
So here's the really interesting question, is Zelenskyy going to show up at the BRICS Summit or at Camp David? Hard to keep him away.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, we've gotten into the habit of taking bets on these things and he usually follows through, Carla, so I wouldn't rule him out in either case. As odd as it would be in South Africa, you never know. Seriously, while he does seem to be far afield as it relates to the trilateral summit, I wouldn't hold out the thought of him at least approaching the Biden administration about making a comment one way or another. Because again, that trilateral relationship, especially Japan, has been very strong in supporting Ukraine and the rules-based international order. So yet another chance for the fatigue wearing Zelenskyy to show his face. 

Carla, we've now talked our way into the audience Figure of the Week portion of the podcast, this is where listeners can vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org's Instagram story. Now Carla, you were following this one particularly closely, so we might end up talking about a couple of the candidates. First we should say the audience did select the, "Niger's Junta Vows to Prosecute Former President," and that's an ongoing interest in what's going on in the western Sahel in Africa. But there was also an intriguing development this week where Saudi Arabia showed the Barbie movie, which in and of itself was sort of shocking. Do you want to take that one first and then go to the Niger?

ROBBINS:
Oh, let's do Niger first so we can end on a more upbeat topic.

MCMAHON:
All right.

ROBBINS:
So Bob, it's been more than three weeks since the military and Niger overthrew the democratically elected president. And unfortunately despite diplomatic isolation, economic sanctions and threats of military action by its African neighbors, the coup leaders are not backing down. Instead, they're now threatening to prosecute Bazoum. The charges announced by a junta of spokesman of high treason and undermining the security of Niger carry a potential death sentence. So they seem only interested in escalating the crisis. 

So Bazoum who was elected in '21 is currently under house arrest with his wife and son. He did manage to write an op-ed this week in the Washington Post, calling on the international community to help restore Niger's constitutional order before, "The entire Sahel region falls to Russian influence via the Wagner group." And as a former opinion editor, I'll say it has one of the most compelling leads I've read in a long time, the opening sentence, "I write this as a hostage." 

So what is Russia's role in this? There's no sign, frankly, so far that Moscow or Wagner were involved in the coup, but in the streets of the capital there were lots of coup supporters out there waving Russian flags and chanting Putin's name. And ECOWAS, this group of West African states that were threatening military intervention, which so far looks more like a paper tiger, but we'll have to see. But with this threat, one of the coup leaders reportedly went to Mali in early August to meet with a representative of Wagner and discuss possible support. So there's lots of different pressures going in, lots of different directions. And so far the coup leaders seem to be holding strong.

MCMAHON:
And as far as I know, U.S. forces are still based in the country and the U.S. has been one of the few outside interlocutors. Do we know whether the U.S. is getting through in any fashion? It seems like no, given what you were just saying.

ROBBINS:
There's no sign of it. We just confirmed a new ambassador, managed to get one through the Senate, a rare thing. And she is going there, but she's not going to present her credentials, I gather, according to the State Department. The U.S. has troops there, the French have troops there focused on fighting terrorism. It's one of the reasons why everyone is so focused on Niger, but also because it was a constitutionally, democratically elected government itself. I think all eyes more than anything else are on what ECOWAS is going to do or not going to do. The U.S. and France would much rather it come from African states. ECOWAS is going to have a terrible credibility problem if they don't follow through with this. At the same time, nobody wants another war. ECOWAS is ordered troops to stand by. There's a meeting in Kenya this week going on right now and they vowed they were ready to act if all else fails, but we don't know what that means. The first deadline they issued came and went with no action.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I think you're right. And the eyes are focusing on the power brokers in ECOWAS too, like the Nigerians and so forth to see whether they really want to get involved in this or not. And the specter of Wagner resonates maybe more in the West than in Africa, but the Africans are not keen to see this sort of fracturing of another country in the region.

ROBBINS:
They, Wagner, as you put it, being the German speaker that you are, they seem to have diminished presence in Russia, but they seem to have a considerable presence still in Africa. And Prigozhin has been saying great things about the coup and maybe he's just posturing because he has such a diminished presence in his own home or country, but they seem very popular in dictatorships in Africa. So Bazoum said this probably more than anything else to get the attention of the U.S. and European countries in hopes of getting their support, but they've been playing a very malign role in undermining democracies in Africa. So let's see what happens. And ECOWAS is probably, everyone wants them to take the lead. No one wants a war, but it may come down to it.

MCMAHON:
So let's skip a beat and turn to another issue then, which is Saudi Arabia opening up its cinemas to a Barbie movie.

ROBBINS:
I find this absolutely fascinating. When you think there are countries that have banned the Barbie movie, Vietnam banned it because of there was a map that showed disputed Chinese territorial claims that they didn't like. And Kuwait has banned it. Kuwait, which we helped liberate, right? Kuwait banned it saying that it didn't represent their ideals. And Algerian authorities even pulled it after a month. The Lebanese culture minister is threatening to pull it and hasn't yet. 

And anyways, I mean Kuwait and Lebanon were places where people in Saudi Arabia went because they wanted to get out of the yoke of repression in Saudi Arabia. And less than a decade ago, Saudi Arabia didn't even have movie theaters. When I worked in Saudi Arabia a very long time ago in the run-up to the Gulf War, there were no movie theaters. You couldn't even try clothes on. There were no changing rooms in shopping malls. And it shows you how far Saudi Arabia has come that not only do they have movie theaters, but this was like a big deal. I mean, of course women were still wearing abayas, but they were hot pink abayas.

MCMAHON:
No?

ROBBINS:
And so, yes, they were out there in their hot pink...

MCMAHON:
Wow.

ROBBINS:
And it doesn't appear that the censors cut anything major from it. And so there are people coming from the region going to Saudi Arabia and watching it. And Barbie I gather is just a huge hit in Saudi Arabia. That said, let's keep this in mind, that Saudi Arabia is still not the real world and it's still a hugely repressive place. And while Crown Prince MBS has done away with many of the restrictions, women can drive, people can go to the movies, there's still a lot of people in jail, including many political activists. So it is not the world I would suggest Barbie get into her dream car and go to, but it's still better than going to Kuwait, you can watch the Barbie movie.

MCMAHON:
And that's our look at the brave new world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on, Guatemalan's vote in their presidential runoff. As many as eight U.S. Republican presidential candidates take part in the first primary debate, and Spain and England face off in the Women's World Cup final on Sunday.

ROBBINS:
Oh, I'm so bummed that Australia isn't there.

MCMAHON:
The Matildas couldn't make it.

ROBBINS:
So please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review while you're at it. We really do appreciate the feedback. The publications mentioned this episode, as well as the 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 or movies. 

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Sinet Adous for her research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Miguel Herrero and licensed under Creative Commons. And this is Carla Robbins saying so long.

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