The World Next Year: What to Watch in 2023

MCMAHON:
Welcome to The World Next Week's special year end episode, The World Next Year. I'm Bob McMahon.

LINDSAY:
And I'm Jim Lindsay.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins.

MCMAHON:
Jim and Carla. We've made it through another turbulent year, 2022 certainly has had its fair share of seismic global events. In this special episode, we examine what has happened in this past year, but also discuss some of the leading foreign policy challenges as we go into the brave new 2023.

LINDSAY:
Joining us for this special episode is Carla Anne Robbins. Carla is a senior fellow here at the Council on Foreign Relations.

MCMAHON:
And longtime listeners of the podcast will of course recall Carla and her insights, as she has co-hosted previous episodes and previous special episodes. Carla, it's always great to have you back on the show.

ROBBINS:
Thanks for inviting me.

LINDSAY:
Carla. Let's start with U.S.-China relations. Most recently, President Biden and President Xi met on the sidelines of the G20 Summit. They both agreed that while the United States and China will compete economically, their country's relationship will not veer into conflict. What events from this past year led us to this point, Carla?

ROBBINS:
Well, Jim, this has been a pretty tense year between the U.S. and China, and while it's always good to see world leaders, especially those with nuclear weapons sitting down at a table together, despite what they said, next year is likely to be just as tense. Biden had comparatively soothing words after that summit as well as Xi did. But in its long awaited National Defense Strategy, the Biden administration, and keep in mind that the NDS in theory shapes decisions on everything from military spending to forced posture. The administration declared that China, not Russia, is our number one strategic competitor and our number one threat. I don't know whether Biden brought a copy of that to give to Xi, but I'm sure that Xi was quite aware of it. 

Ad we got a flavor of just how quickly things can spin up and potentially spin out of control between the two countries during the August visit to Taiwan, by then house speaker Nancy Pelosi. And for a while, it looked like the two countries might actually come to blows over that visit. The Pentagon was certainly nervous enough about it that they tried to persuade the house speaker not to go, but perhaps even more significantly for the Chinese and for the future relationship is just a few weeks before that summit in Bali, the Biden Commerce Department unveiled a new policy of what I'm calling maximum economic containment. That was not their term, that's mine, announcing sweeping new extraterritorial restrictions on exports to China of advanced semiconductors, chip making equipment, and supercomputer components. These things are very important for weapons and surveillance technology as they went out of their way to say in this announcement. But this technology is dual use and the restrictions could also stymie Chinese progress in e-commerce, in the building of autonomous vehicles, and cybersecurity and pharmaceutical research and climate modeling and a lot of other work that requires AI.

This is really quite a strong declaration here, and it's one that certainly the business community paid a lot of attention to, but it hasn't gotten a lot of coverage. They can talk about not veering into conflict. This is quite a declaration here. We haven't seen anything like it really since the restrictions on trade with the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. So after the Biden-Xi summit, both emphasized their desire to work together on transnational challenges like climate change, global economic stability, public health, and to resume, and this is a really important thing, senior level dialogues that were halted by China after the Pelosi visit, and we shouldn't forget how the two economies are. I mean, the Chinese really need us to sell stuff and we really need them because they certainly hold a lot of our paper. They hold a lot of our debt. 

But really, first of all, when you have to say that the relationship isn't going to veer into conflict, that means that the relationship is probably going to veer into conflict. But more than anything, this feels like the start of a really serious Cold War and it's going to have to be really carefully managed to make sure that it doesn't turn a lot hotter.

LINDSAY:
Carla, as you note, the National Defense Strategy point to China as foreign policy priority one for the Biden administration. President Biden has spoken about winning the competition with China, has the Biden administration told us what winning actually means, how will we know we're winning, and are there any places where the United States is willing to accommodate China's rise?

ROBBINS:
They sort of go all over the place with this, and they have since the beginning of the administration and certainly even during the campaign. I mean this Commerce Department announcement, if you take it to its logical conclusion, winning for this is basically setting back their economy or certainly limiting their economy's ability to grow for decades to come. Do we want to use the word strangling? Yeah, probably want to use the word strangling and that's... They're not using that word, but this is a pretty remarkable declaration of a policy. It's extraterritorial, but are we going to get our allies to go along with it?

LINDSAY:
Well, can I get you to answer that question? Do you think the allies will go along with these bans?

ROBBINS:
With something that's sweeping? We managed to get our closest allies to go along with Huawei, which is a different thing. It's buying things from Huawei. This is much more sweeping. We'll see and particularly because I don't think they consulted with anyone before they made this announcement. And everybody's been so focused on Ukraine and there's been great solidarity with the allies over Ukraine because obviously what the Russians has done is so outrageous and we'll get into that later on. But I don't know, I mean, I don't think people are crazy about the idea of a really powerful China and a lot of the things that China does with its technology is truly horrifying. Nobody wants to see China with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of nuclear weapons, the use of Chinese surveillance technology and what it's planning on doing with AI, and they don't deny what they're planning on doing with it, but a policy in which part of winning is strangling their economic development...eh?

And China's a really big market and for a lot of other of our allies. So I just don't know. They certainly haven't done the diplomatic work to bring countries on board to do that. So that's one form of winning that they haven't really explained. They also talk at the same time that they want to cooperate with China, and that's what this summit was about. They want to cooperate with them on climate; they want to cooperate with them on keeping the stable global economy. This is really different from the Cold War in which we were trying to strangle the Soviet economy such as the economy that it was. But this is an infinitely more integrated global economy and we are incredibly interdependent with the Chinese. So I don't know how you balance those two.

LINDSAY:
Do we have any sense, Carla, that the tough line the Biden administration is taking is leading Beijing to recalculate its own approach to foreign policy? One of the distinctive characteristics of President Xi's foreign policy has been its assertiveness. Many people would say it's a belligerence, wolf warrior diplomacy, and the like. Any signs may be that Beijing calculates that a new sheriffs in town, the United States is taking a strong anti-China line, so China has to recalibrate? And let me just note that it's not just the Biden administration that is calling for a tough line vis-à-vis China, that seems to be bipartisan consensus here in Washington, DC And I would imagine that when the Republicans take control of the House in January that you're going to see even more tough rhetoric coming out of the House about U.S. relations with China.

ROBBINS:
Yeah, I'm never a big fan of foreign policy made based on rhetoric. I mean, there are two ways of looking at this. I mean wolf warrior and I've been very focused on what the Biden administration has been doing. Obviously belligerence is a very good way of describing their foreign policy Jim, and you saw their reaction to the Pelosi visit and the live fire exercises in the Taiwan straits and a lot of the threats that are there, the way they bully their neighbors, things that they're doing to defy international law around them, that they're doing a lot of very scary and threatening things. I haven't seen them back off because of we're in their face. 

The one thing that they haven't done is they haven't gone all in supporting Russia and Ukraine. And is that because they had gotten very stern talking to from the United States about what was going to happen to their access to the global financial market? Or is that because they felt betrayed by Putin, because Putin told them that he was going to win really, really fast? Or is that because they are pretty savvy business people and they saw this as disruptive to the global economy? So they are not at least in that one area as belligerent as they might be. On the other hand, there Xi was in Saudi Arabia and what is he talking about once you start selling oil in yuan and let's move away from the dollar. So it's not that Xi isn't playing the competition on his side and that would be a major declaration of economic warfare from the Chinese side.

LINDSAY:
And this is a big issue and I think we will continue to be talking about it for quite a while to come.

ROBBINS:
Yes, and I hope that ultimately we will go back and say, well that Biden-Xi summit was one in which we don't veer into conflict over the things like this. And we will see, we'll have lots to talk about. 

So Bob, another uplifting topic here. This past year we've seen devastating hurricanes, earthquakes, heat waves, flooding. In Pakistan, monsoon, flooding, displaced nearly 8 million people. It's really extraordinary. And the difference now between just even just a few years ago is that scientists are no longer saying that we can't directly attribute these events to climate change. This is all climate change. So we know that global climate action is imperative. We had another COP meeting this year. Did we make any progress in 2022?

MCMAHON:
I wish I could say we did and some people who follow these things extremely closely would point to a few things. But first I'll note the exercise of talking about climate has become this sort of repetitive year end thing that we all do. It's a bit like Groundhog Day in that we usually talk about a COP meeting because they tend to happen at the end of the year that was ineffectual or limited or underwhelming. And then we also talk about what happened in extreme climate. 

So as you alluded to Carla, it was another extraordinary year, widely distributed. I don't think any part of the planet didn't have something to point to and say, did you see what just happened? Pakistan was extraordinary. United States mainland, they called Hurricane Ian, one of the strongest storms ever to hit the U.S. mainland, wiped out places like Fort Meyers, iconic tourism destination and retiree destination. You had the worst drought in at least 500 years on Europe, according to many experts. You had China's longest heatwave since full records began in 1961, which drained the Yangtze River. It all added up to a more alarm and seemingly the thought that well surely now tension will be focused and will take steps to start to limit and commit to limiting carbon emissions. 

That did not happen at all at COP27 in Egypt. The big thing there was the commitment to what's called a loss and damage fund and those who've been lobbying for that fund have insisted this is a really big deal. The countries that have been pressing for this, especially low lying island nations have been trying to do this set up such a fund for almost thirty years. So Pakistan was really big in the forefront in trying to get such a fund generated. But saying you'll do it and doing it has always proven to be a problem with these climate pledges. As our colleague Alice Hill pointed out, there was a 2009 commitment to provide a $100 billion per year to developing countries by 2020. That has not happened yet and there was hope that the pledge would start to be fulfilled next year in 2023. So maybe that's something we look forward to in 2023, a fourteen year old commitment there. 

So the news is grim on that front and I guess the only thing I would leave as I have also repeatedly in talking about climate at year end is a little glimmer of hope on the energy side of things, gaining a lot of attention over the last few days was a new report by the International Energy Administration about renewable energy development and in fact green energy sources are due to overtake coal and become the main generators of global electricity before the end of this decade. That's a revised forecast based on very rapid development of things like solar and wind. Certainly it includes, I believe hydro as well and hydro only works if you have the water to generate it. So that's a concern. And then nuclear is sort of in a class by itself, but there is new interest there including potential technological breakthrough on that front. So energy leaves a little bit of a tantalizing option potentially, especially if the animal spirits of economic progress really dive into that. But in terms of country commitments and based on another year of extreme weather we had, it's still a grim looking situation.

ROBBINS:
I know this commitments have been made again and again and again about helping countries adapt, giving them incentives to not burn down their forests. There's just a variety of reasons why those commitments were made for all that money that hasn't been delivered. But this is a major shift in gestalt, a major shift in norms, to say, "Yes, you're right, we bear responsibility here. Loss and damage is based on the notion that we are the ones who created this problem and you are the ones who are suffering the loss and damage for it," and that's one of the reasons why the United States resisted it. Does it matter? Does it matter if you?... You know, I teach this. We talk about norms when they shift and whether or not they really take, does it matter that people have said the words or is this something that's one of these soft norms that's just going to fade away? Is there more likely that countries are actually going to kick the money in because they've defined it differently? It's no longer foreign aid, it's actually reparations?

MCMAHON:
It's a great question. I'm going to give an unsatisfying answer, which is, we'll see, it's a gut check moment. There's all sorts of reasons that argue for it. The CFR itself has published a series of discussion papers related to why you need to help countries with mitigation adaptation, let's say in Africa, Sahel, because there's all sorts of knock on effects and it's not just about burning up the crops or eliminating water sources. It then feels conflict and instability and among other things, drives up population flight. We've already seen a lot of that and Europe is dealing with epic flows of migrants now at levels that I think we haven't seen since 2015. U.S. certainly has for all sorts of reasons, but climate is one of them on its own southern borders. So I think it could just be Carla, that there is a bit of a sea change here. We're going to have to watch really quickly whether this account that's been open starts to get populated with real money and then what happens next?

LINDSAY:
I'll just make two quick points on this. One, the countries that are going to have the hardest time adapting to climate change are precisely the countries that did the least to contribute to climate change. Second thing is, even if this fund gets up and running, it will not have anywhere near the amount of funding that is going to be required to adapt to climate change. I think one of the things we haven't come to terms with is that resilience is expensive. It requires changing major ways in which we operate. People are going to resist it. It is going to take time, it's going to take a lot of money, it is going to be difficult, and I think there's going to be a lot of controversy around it. Just going back to Hurricane Ian, which devastated the west coast of Florida, you have a big question about whether you should rebuild on these places.

ROBBINS:
And we've seen this here in New York after Superstorm Sandy, I mean people rebuilding along the beaches in New Jersey and this whole question here in New York about building sea walls and adapting the way London did into billions and billions. Very little discussion about maybe we don't want to live right on the ocean, maybe we don't, and what makes it more difficult is a lot of the people, not everybody, but a lot of the people who live along the ocean are people with a lot of clout.

MCMAHON:
Jim, let's move over to another topic that's obviously already been hovering over this discussion and is the story of the year in many respects, which is the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While Russia has been heavily sanctioned and it's faced a series of defeats as we round up this year, it still has a lot of cards to play and it's banking on, as we've discussed in this podcast, a wrinkling and a rupture in the Western alliance among other things to allow it to ultimately prevail in some fashion in Ukraine. So can you talk a bit about how the war has affected Russia and U.S. relationship with allies?

LINDSAY:
Well, a couple of big points right at the start, Bob. One is that relations between Russia and the West are broken completely, entirely broken. It's not clear how we get back to any kind of workable relationship. Second is, Carla noted, Putin went to war supposedly knowing that he had a strategic partnership without limits with China, we discovered there are limits. The Chinese quite noticeably have not come to Russia's aid in terms of providing materiel for fighting. Third thing is, and you alluded to it, many countries often referred to as the Global South, have been sitting this one out. Indeed, some countries in the Global South, I think South Africa have been vocal in blaming the United States for having provoked the war. So I think those are sort of the big macro-currents that are going on. I will note that this war hasn't followed its script since the start.

First the convention of wisdom back in February was that if the Russians did attack, they would just go after a small slice of Eastern Ukraine, probably in the Donbas. They would not seek to occupy or conquer Ukraine. That was wrong. Then immediately the convention of wisdom was that the Russians would take over Ukraine and the question was how would they be able to occupy it in the long term? But we discovered that the Russians were unable to take Ukraine in particular, their bid for Kyiv faltered. Russians readjusted their strategy, concentrated their efforts in the eastern part of the country. So the argument then was that that's where the war would settle. Then in September, the Ukrainians I think surprised a lot of people, maybe not themselves, with a very successful military counteroffensive in the northeastern portion of Ukraine taking back Kyiv. Recently, they've succeeded in pushing the Russians out of the city of Kherson in the southeast portion of the country, Kherson being the one provincial capital that the Russians were successful in capturing. So the momentum, at least militarily, is on the side of the Ukrainians right now. 

We have talk about whether or not the Ukrainians are going to make a bid to take back Crimea from Russia, Crimea being the portion of Ukraine that Russia seized way back in 2014. That may not be in the cards immediately because we're heading into winter, which in theory should make fighting more difficult, doesn't make fighting impossible. I expect we will continue to have fighting over the course of the winter and the big question going into 2023 is does anyone's will get broken? The Russian strategy clearly is to inflict maximum pain on Ukrainians by going after critical infrastructure, by trying to put pressure on the west; by withholding the sale of gas; by, as best we can tell, helping to fund far right parties, populist groups; criticizing Western support for Ukraine.

So perhaps Putin's strategy of trying to win by breaking the resolve of the West or breaking the resolve of the Ukrainian people will work. I'm skeptical on that score, but clearly the West is going to be tested as will the Ukrainian people. The counterargument from the West is how can Russia sustain this war? Putin had to go to a partial mobilization. He's sending conscripts into battle. They're basically not prepared to wage a war. Russians relying a lot on paid mercenaries to go and fight, but mercenaries may not have the commitment to winning that is necessary. And now I think we have to come to grips of the fact that this is a war that could go on for quite a long time. And indeed, when I talk to people who track the Ukraine War, what they would say is this war actually did not begin in February, '22. It began back in 2014 when the Russians took Crimea, began to foment a separate rebellion in the eastern part of Ukraine. 

So this fighting had go on for a very long time and possibility we could get ceasefires or "peace deals" and I'll put "peace deals" in quotes that the Russians could use as an opportunity to stock up, replenish their reserves, and then to reopen the fighting. So this is something that is new to our Europe, it's something that was common before World War II. And I think one of the reasons why this war has really galvanized Europe and sort of reinvigorated the West and gave it a sense of solidarity is because I think many Europeans thought that they had advanced beyond war, that Europe was the one place in the world where life was good, that that sort of atavistic behavior was something for the history books, not for the lived present and we discovered sadly, that war can come even to wealthy countries.

ROBBINS:
Jim, the Ukrainians have shown incredible courage and their ability to take pain and fight through, the Russians are targeting civilian infrastructure, which is a war crime and the Ukrainians say, "Bring it on, we're going to continue to resist." But the other reason why they're resisting is because they get money and weaponry from the United States. Is that flow going to continue? Do we see a weakening of resolve on Capitol Hill and Republicans are taking the house, they're coming in January? Can Ukrainians depend, will they be able to depend on a reliable flow of U.S. funding and U.S. weapons going on indefinitely because they're going to need that.

LINDSAY:
U.S. support for Ukraine is going to continue for the foreseeable future. But obviously Carla, what happens is going to be influenced by events on the battlefield. You refer to the House Republicans taking control on January 3rd. Kevin McCarthy famously said in the fall that House Republicans wouldn't give Ukraine a blank check. I think the operative phrase or word in that phrase was blank. The argument isn't that the United States shouldn't give aid to the Ukrainians. They want to make sure that this money is spent wisely. If you look at the Senate side, Senate Republicans led by Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell had made it very clear that they stand with Ukraine. And I think that's the position of most members of the Republican Party on Capitol Hill. I do think that things are being done right now to get money to Ukraine so that the new Congress doesn't have to address this issue for quite a while.

I think the big danger to U.S. support for Ukraine is an outright opposition to doing so. I think it's going to be the question of whether this new Congress can actually do its job and do things like appropriate funds. I think we're going to be going through I think a lot of turbulence on that score. I do think Western support for Ukraine is going to continue, but again, this is a war that has not followed the track that people have predicted for it. 

Carla, you used an important word a moment ago, and that's courage. And I want to say that the word courage comes to mind when I think about events in Iran. Over the course of this year we've witnessed one of the longest and largest women's protest movements. It's taking place in Iran. Thousands of women have taken to the streets to denounce the Islamic Republic, to demand reform, to demand their individual rights. The core issue or the issue at the top of the list is getting rid of the hijab, the headdress for women or the requirement that women wear a headdress. But this seems to be aimed more broadly at the regime and its control over life in Iran. What should we be thinking about the protests in Iran?

ROBBINS:
Jim, as you noted, the protests began in September after the death of Mahsa Amini, a young Iranian Kurdish woman who was taken into custody by Iran's horrifyingly named morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab correctly. And since then the demands of the protestors, as you also noted, Jim have escalated and they're now calling for an end to clerical rule, an end to this regime. And despite a brutal government crackdown, 18,000 protestors have been arrested, more than 475 people who have been killed, including some 60 children. Eleven people have been sentenced to death so far and just in the last few days, two people have been hanged. These protests have garnered remarkably wide support across gender, across age, across class. The three day general strike, closed businesses, shops, and bazaars and dozens of cities. I mean these pictures, they were ghost towns.

And students of Iranian history note that during the year leading up to the 1979 revolution, the same sort of general strikes, this is what happened. They choked the economy and this was the precursor. Whether we're really close to a tipping point like that, I don't think so. There's no sign of splits in the clerical establishment, no signs of splits in the security forces. But that said, there was a CIA assessment six months before the shah was overthrown that said that Iran wasn't even in a pre-revolutionary situation. Now this may be wishful thinking, but we don't know.

MCMAHON:
Carla, as you lay out, there are still strong nodes of support, especially in the security establishment. But we have heard a number of very close longtime Iran watchers saying this one's different from 2009. It's different from name any number of protests that we've seen that have been pretty virulent over the years because of its, first of all, it's been sustained and while it was triggered by women's rights, it had been a lot of other issues thrown together, deep resentment of the clerical establishment.

The question is if it is some sort of a proto revolutionary movement, who are the forces that are going to be able to come in and take over and provide some sort of either interim or lasting Iranian leadership? It just seems extremely far-fetched to think about an Iranian opposition movement at this point in time. So I'm just wondering whether we should be looking at ways in which the regime might, by small cuts be changing its policy, whether it's the morality police being disbanded as we might have seen recently or not, or some other changes. Will they be a little bit pragmatic to use it an overused term about Iran and its leadership?

ROBBINS:
Well, I think the difference between 1979 and now is that there was a leader in, we're not positioned to the shah and there is no apparent leader to this and I think that's really important. And one of the fears that I've heard expressed about this is that even if this regime were overthrown, might you get another repressive regime to follow because there's no institutional alternative. There's no real group, and that's a sort of a cherry thought to consider. 

The general feeling about the supreme leader is that he never gives an edge. And so is the morality police being disbanded? Isn't it? We heard that one statement about it. Is this hijab policy going to be changed? I think the general feeling is it's not going to be, can they control what women are doing in the street? Apparently they can't, but they have been brutal, but they haven't been as brutal as they can be. And I think that's the sort of the calculation they're making right now, and the fact that they haven't been as brutal as they can be, is that a sign of weakness or a sign of pragmatism? We don't know.

MCMAHON:
And they also have some strong friends, or at least partners certainly seem to be doubling down on their relationship with Russia at the moment in terms of security sharing. They provide a great deal of drones that are being used in great lethality in Ukraine. Russia seemingly is providing them with support, has always supported their civilian nuclear program. And China is a major or potentially major looming economic partner.

ROBBINS:
Well this is what's so interesting about the shift in the sort of the considerations even inside the Biden administration is six months ago, if you said the word Iran, it would all have been about can we revive the nuclear deal? Now the conversations such as they are, and I don't think they have a particularly articulated Iran policy, it is, should we be doing, can we be doing something behind the scenes to support the protests? What should we be saying publicly about the protest and what's going to happen about the Iranian nuclear program, particularly now with Bibi Netanyahu coming back to power in Israel? It's a very different conversation about Iran than we saw six months ago. And certainly profound concern about Iran's support with materiel with these drones and the potentially, with missiles. 

Bob, these have not been easy times for democracy around the world. So how did processes and parties committed to democratic ideals fair in 2022 elections? We had a lot of them, people were watching with great anxiety in Brazil, in the Philippines, in Italy, in Sweden, and Israel. So what can we expect for global democracy in 2023? Please tell me that this is going to be a happier response than we've had so far.

MCMAHON:
Well that big gust of wind you heard in the last couple of weeks was a sigh of relief in a lot of quarters, Carla, that democracy and some of its biggest champions are going to live another day. Certainly the phrase democracies on the ballot seem to have resonated in some places some people saw that as an overstatement. But in the United States we had midterms in which there was not major warfare between the increasingly divided left and right at the polls and there was not mass denial of the results that came in, even the results that went against Republicans who said they would not accept losing results. While you have a split U.S. Congress now, the house is going to be Republican led and the Senate narrowly remains led by Democrats. 

You also had the result in Brazil in which Jair Bolsonaro who had also said he was not going to accept the results, seems to have relented. And you will have January 1st Lula da Silva returning into office in Brazil. Even in the Philippines you mentioned that in the intro, the return of a Marcos was seen as a really dark harbinger of what was in store even after the Duterte years in the Philippines. But yet Marcos is showing signs of a bit more pragmatism, shall we say, on both social and international policy. 

So I think we're looking at a year in which we continue to see democratic shrinking, shrinking freedom around the world. Freedom House last year had found that freedom had declined in something like sixty countries and improved in only twenty-five. And populism is still around, divisions are still around, but I think there is, to your point about whether we can look for signs of hope. I think you're seeing in some the older democracy, shall we say, a concern and an activism that is rooted in trying to shore up institutions and trying to sort of fight for democracy in and of itself. And that might be something to take some hope in both in the United States and elsewhere.

LINDSAY:
So Bob, there's been some good news in 2022, as you look out to 2023, do you see storm clouds on the horizon? Are there significant elections we should be paying attention to? Is 2022 going to be the exception or do you think it's going to be the rule?

MCMAHON:
It's going to be very interesting to watch whether some of the things that I was mentioning I saw in terms of a digging in on democratic activism in the United States and Europe in particular, but also in some countries in Asia, whether we're going to see that prevail and carry through. And there are not as many elections on the calendar going into this year as we've seen in past years, but still some pretty big ones and some important countries that will be harbingers for democracy or the return of democracy. Let's say Nigeria is supposed to have presidential elections early in the year, always a big one. Most populous country in Africa, country with... You talk about divisions, it is rife with them, and really important for Africa, not just West Africa but all of Africa. If you have a Nigeria that emerges with basically a stable, free and fair election in which the losing side accepts the result and the country moves forward without any sort of reprisals. So that's one to look for. 

Later in the spring, they're supposed to be elections in Turkey, actually June, I believe they're supposed to be held. President Erdoğan has been among the vanguard of leaders really cracking down on any opposition forces. Turkey has one of the worst records in terms of its treatment of a free media among other things, but also has isolated opponents at home and abroad as much as possible, and it's obviously in a crucial place. It's playing a very important role, some would say a very cynical role, in the Ukraine-Russia war,  nonetheless, is in an important position there. So I think that's going to be one to watch. Thailand's another one where country that had a coup and has been this topsy-turvy democracy and one time championed as a pillar of democracy in Asia. It's been a country also ridden by populism and military strong handing and so forth. Thailand is supposed to have elections in May. So I would say those are three to watch. 

There's going to be actually a second Summit for Democracy that the U.S. is going to co-host in late March. It's going to be co-hosting it with carefully pick countries like Costa Rica, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, and the Republic of Zambia. So we'll see whether that can in any way catalyze any sort of movement among countries to knit together, some of their policies, some of their promotional practices. I think the first summit was in some ways overshadowed by the imitation list and countries that felt slighted and so forth. And I'm not sure what are some of the tangible results from that first one. And I think it's always going to be a challenge for the U.S. as it's trying to navigate this very tough geopolitical world that we've been talking about, to be coming down hard on countries it needs as partners that might not have the greatest records in democratic practices or human rights.

So it's going to be a year of both trying to make sure that elections, wherever they take place are free and fair, but also watching how the courts act in other parts of the society act. In the United States, for example, people will be looking for the Electoral Counts Act. The reform of that is going to be a huge thing. A Supreme Court ruling on whether or not states have ultimate sway over election results, huge thing. That's just one venue. 

And then the only thing I would add to that is the role of information, which plays a crucial role in democracies, whether or not you're going to see misinformation, this counter misinformation movement that's starting to take place, whether or not it gains any traction. And you have the ability to combat what has been just been rampant campaigns and misinformation, whether it's on public health issues, whether it's around election time, the Russians have been masters at this, the Chinese have really stepped up their game as our colleague Josh Kurlantizick has written recently, his new book. And so will there be a movement among democracies in particular to really fight for free flow of information or are we heading into this period of information so siloed that the world is just talking past each other?

LINDSAY:
I just tossed out two other elections to pay attention to in 2023. One is going to be Pakistan. Pakistan has been going through a series of crises, political economic climate, we'll see how that turns out. The other election would be in Bangladesh where there's been some considerable democratic backsliding. Recent weeks, we had some protests with the government cracking down, arresting protestors, arresting journalists. Things were so significant that the Biden administration called on investigation of how journalists and human rights activists were being treated in the run up to those protests. So I think those are two countries whose elections could be in the news later in the year. The Bangladesh elections, I think will take place in November or December. It's a parliamentary system, so when elections are called can vary.

MCMAHON:
Well, Jim, I want to take us to our concluding topic, which is sort of the issue that kind of gets at everything, which is the economy, stupid. That's a broad statement that's not about you, Jim. And let's talk about the economy. We've noted repeatedly on the show that the Biden administration is hesitant towards striking trade deals. There's a trade aversion in U.S., I think among U.S. lawmakers across the board at this point. And we've discussed how Washington has limited trade with China, but now we're looking at situation with European partners in the U.S. and economic rifts developing. Can you talk a bit about what we should be looking for there?

LINDSAY:
Happy to, Bob. When Joe Biden came into office back in January 2021, there was a certain amount of hope, maybe even an expectation among many U.S. trade partners that Biden would abandon Trump's protectionist trade policies, and perhaps he might even with a little bit of time be enticed into restarting trade negotiations and find a way to join ongoing trade talks and agreements, most notably the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership. Of course, Biden didn't run in 2020 as a free trader, but he, like many Democrats, criticized Trump's tariffs on Chinese imports for what they were, a tax on American businesses and customers. Likewise, Biden had supported trade deals in the past and what he had always said in the campaign trail was he would turn to trade once he made a down payment on his foreign policy for the middle class. So the expectation was he gets his big bills passed, that he would pivot and move.

We're not seeing that. What we've seen is Joe Biden essentially embrace and extend Donald Trump's protectionist policies. He essentially has no real trade agenda. They did roll out something called IPEF, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. I'll just tell you haven't been in Southeast Asia last month, it managed at best in eye roll, a polite eye roll from people who want something more significant. They want to have access to the American market, and that's not what the Biden administration is offering up. 

But beyond that, in terms of Joe Biden's domestic policies, we have the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act, which basically revive industrial policy, which for more than thirty years was a no-no. What that means is the government's going to intervene in the economy and subsidize production. And that has alarmed many of our trading partners, particularly the Inflation Reduction Act, because it provides a variety of subsidies and brakes to go into electric vehicles and it gives exemptions to producers in Canada and Mexico, but essentially shuts everybody else out. And if you talk to Japanese officials, South Korean officials, European officials, what they say are these are beggar than neighbor policies. They're designed to steal jobs from us. 

French president Emmanuel Macron was in Washington earlier this month. Soon as he showed up, he gave a speech at the French Embassy, which he focused on this issue like a laser beam, didn't focus on Ukraine as a divisive issue in the West. He talked about this issue and he said it had the potential, let me quote him here, "To fragment the West." Again, countries are very angry with the United States that it seems to be pursuing this protectionist policy.

And just in the last couple of days, we've had the World Trade Organization hand down a very unsurprising conclusion over a suit filed over Trump's national security tariffs. You may recall Donald Trump said that under vision of U.S. trade law, he could impose tariffs on China because he believed it posed a national security threat. But the tarrifs weren't just on China, they were on some of America's closest allies. WTO said, "You can't do this." Essentially, this is an abuse of the so-called national security provision under the WTO. Biden administration reaction, to attack the WTO. And again, the problem with the national security provision, which says that you can impose tariffs you otherwise couldn't if you believe your national security is under threat, is that the Biden major argument is only a country can decide it in a sense. It's like grading your own homework. You get to decide and it can be abused by everybody. 

All of this runs counter to the core Biden principle in winning the competition with China, to go back to where we started Bob and Carla, and that is the idea that we're trying to rally other people around. And presumably that relies on coordination and cooperation, not unilateralism. But as I think we talked about a bit before, this has been an administration which has done a lot of things unilaterally. And I think that's been fraying in terms of our relations with some of our closest partners. Partners that we want to do stuff for us. And again, in life, in order to get, you've got to give, and I think that this is going to be growing complaints in foreign capitals that the United States is not upholding its end of the bargain.

ROBBINS:
I was just going to say, I don't know how much of this is lack of coordination. It's almost as if we rely on the Europeans in Ukraine and they've done a really brilliant job on that diplomacy and putting that alliance together and maintaining that alliance, even using intel in a really smart way. I mean, this was really good diplomacy and a lot of people said that that alliance wouldn't be put together and wouldn't hold, and they've done a really great job of it. And then they do things like the AUKUS deal and really piss the French off. And so you've thought, well, is that arrogance? Is it just different parts of the house not talking to each other? His trade thing is a very good example of it. 

And they come out with a China policy like this in which there's no way in the world they're going to be able to enforce it unless everybody else plays with them, the close allies play with them. And then granted, this is legislation, but they made no effort at all to calm people, to bring them along, to try to figure out what sort of exemptions they can legally do to get our closest allies who we need in Ukraine, who we need for China policy and who, as you said, Jim, they criticize the Trump administration precisely for this, for having a very in-your-face China policy, but also at the same time a very in-your-face Euro policy. Is this bad coordination, arrogance? I don't understand how a policy like this comes about.

LINDSAY:
I have the same questions you do, Carla.

MCMAHON:
Well, in a way, the Trump administration was more sort of open in the direction it was going to take. It was no secret how Trump viewed its relationships with Europeans and the desire to be transactional. The Trump administration had made such a move, would've been something anticipated, probably more and Biden was seen as coming back to the fold in terms of relationship to Europe. And so I do think though that the return to industrial policy, as Jim said, is something that it's been almost a generation away. It's such a change, it's such a course change that they are not practiced in the way in which you message such a change. But that's just speculation.

LINDSAY:
I'll just note that after a while, people stop listening to what you say and pay attention to what you do. And I think a challenge for the Biden administration is it has allowed a large and growing gap to develop between what it says and what it does. And I think they're going to have to find a way to close that gap. Otherwise, many of the things they want, let's just go back to this ban on advanced semiconductor exports to China. They're going to find that other countries simply won't play and if they don't play, the policy is going to fail.

MCMAHON:
And that wraps up the World Next Year. To all of our listeners, we hope you've enjoyed this special episode. Tune in January 5th, 2023 for our regular look at The World Next Week. Carla, thanks again for joining us.

ROBBINS:
Happy to join you in happy holidays.

LINDSAY:
Happy holidays to you as well, Carla. Thank you for joining us.

MCMAHON:
And be sure to listen to CFR's other podcasts Why it Matters, The President's Inbox, and the Foreign Affairs Interview. They also have great conversations to help close out your year.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast and leave us a review while you're at it, we appreciate the feedback. The articles in books 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 manners of policy. 

Today's program is produced by Ester Fang, with Senior Podcast Producer Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks go out to Sinet Adous, Elia Ching, and Molly McAnany for their assistance. Our theme music is provided by Miguel Herrero, and licensed under Creative Commons. This is Jim Lindsay saying so long and see you in 2023.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye. Happy New Year, Jim, Carla, and our listeners.