Daily News Brief

October 22, 2024

Top of the Agenda

The countries resolved their differences regarding the patrolling of their joint border, officials from both sides said ahead of today’s start to the BRICS summit in Russia. Chinese and Indian officials did not immediately offer further details on the logistics of border patrolling under their agreement, but it signaled a major assuaging of tensions that had soured bilateral relations since a deadly 2020 border skirmish.

Both India and China are members of the BRICS group, which expanded in January from a membership that included Brazil, Russia, and South Africa to welcome in Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. Officials from at least thirty-two countries as well as United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres are expected to attend the three-day summit in Kazan, Russia’s biggest gathering of world leaders in its borders since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Moscow produced a summit report outlining potential strategies for the group to promote cross-border payments in local currencies to counter the global financial system, though there is some disagreement within the group about that prospect, with countries such as China calling the plan too ambitious. (WaPo, Bloomberg)

Analysis

“The details about the resolution of the border issues with China are sketchy,” Yale University’s Sushant Singh posts. “Of course, this announcement is meant to pave the way for a meeting between [Chinese President Xi Jinping] and [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi at Kazan, without any pressure of having an unresolved border issue. It will also take pressure off the Modi [government] of having deep economic and trade ties (investment and technology) with China.”

“Some [BRICS] members, chief among them China and Russia, want to position the grouping against the West and the global order crafted by the United States,” the Carnegie Endowment’s Alexander Gabuev and Oliver Stuenkel write for Foreign Affairs. “Other members, notably Brazil and India, do not share this ambition. Instead, they want to use BRICS to democratize and encourage the reform of the existing order, helping guide the world from the fading unipolarity of the post–Cold War era to a more genuine multipolarity in which countries can steer between U.S.-led and Chinese-led blocs.”

This Backgrounder by CFR’s Mariel Ferragamo looks at what BRICS faces as it meets for the first time as a bigger club. 

Pacific Rim

Australian Defense Industry Minister Pat Conroy announced the purchase in Washington yesterday, saying his region is undergoing the biggest arms race since 1945, as competition with China intensifies. The purchase will boost Australia’s long-range strike capabilities. (Bloomberg, Australian Financial Review)

South and Central Asia

Indian authorities detained at least sixteen farmers in Haryana state and Pakistani authorities detained dozens of people in Punjab state who were starting fires to clear their fields as the region is battling high levels of air pollution. (Reuters)

In this article, Think Global Health talks to India's former health ministry secretary about the country’s long-running smog problem.

China/Myanmar: China lodged an official protest to Myanmar authorities after an attack on its consulate in Mandalay. It has urged rebel groups and the government to reach a resolution in their civil war, ongoing since 2021. (SCMP, Reuters)

Middle East and North Africa

This is U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s eleventh trip to the Middle East since Hamas’s October 2023 attack. It comes as Israel steps up its assault on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, saying yesterday it hit three hundred in the previous twenty-four hours. Hezbollah said it launched an attack yesterday on an Israeli base near Tel Aviv dedicated to their slain leader Hassan Nasrallah. (AP, France 24)

In this YouTube Short, CFR expert Ray Takeyh gets into how the Middle Eastern public views Hezbollah.

Germany/Qatar: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is hosting Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani near Berlin today to discuss economic and political relations. Germany turned to Qatar to help supply it with gas after Russia invaded Ukraine, and Qatar is weighing the purchase of a Russian share of Berlin’s main refinery. (Reuters)

Sub-Saharan Africa

Niger is one of the world’s biggest uranium producers, and after a junta took over its government last year it revoked mining permits from French and Canadian companies. Turkey has been eyeing Niger’s uranium for some time to help build out its nascent nuclear power sector, but the details of Turkey’s access to existing or undeveloped mines remain unclear. (Bloomberg)

Russia/Sudan: Russia’s embassy in Sudan said that Russians could have been on board a plane shot down by paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the Darfur region and it was investigating the incident. The RSF said it shot down a “foreign warplane” that had been aiding the Sudanese military; documents shown in mobile phone footage also appeared to link the plane to a Kyrgyzstan airline. (AP)

Europe

Lloyd Austin discussed strategy in the ongoing war with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and pledged $400 million in new military assistance. Austin held off on the permission for Ukraine to use U.S.-provided long-range weapons inside Russia that Kyiv has been after. (WSJ)

This Expert Brief by CFR Fellow Max Boot explains Zelenskyy’s victory plan and the chances it stands to stop the war. 

Americas

The Earth is on the docket as countries present plans at the two-week summit for securing targets to protect land, waters, and oceans that they committed to at talks in Montreal two years ago. The meeting in the city of Cali is expected to be the largest UN biodiversity conference in history. (NYT)

Peru: A court sentenced former President Alejandro Toledo yesterday to twenty years and six months in prison for accepting some $35 million in bribes from a Brazilian construction company. Toledo was first detained in 2019 at his California home. (AP)

U.S. Campaign 2024

Charges unveiled yesterday against a Philadelphia man for threatening to kill a state political party official were the latest case in a spate of political violence that has intensified since the January 6, 2021, riot on the U.S. Capitol, Reuters reported. It tallied at least three hundred cases of political violence since that incident, together comprising “the biggest and most sustained increase in U.S. political violence since the 1970s.” (USA Today, Reuters)

This memo by CFR expert Jacob Ware looks at preventing election violence in the 2024 vote.

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