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France Inter is a major French public radio channel and part of Radio France. It is a "generalist" station, aiming to provide a wide national audience with a full service of news and spoken-word programming, both serious and entertaining, liberally punctuated with an eclectic mix of music.
Photo of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev
FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Pierre Haski

How Much Does Xi Jinping Care About Putin's ICC Arrest Warrant?

After the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Moscow for a three-day visit. How far will he be willing to go to support Putin, a fugitive from international justice?

-Analysis-

PARIS — Since Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin said last year that the friendship between their nations was "boundless," the world has wondered where the limits really lie. The Chinese president's three-day visit to Russia, which began Monday, gives us an opportunity to assess.

Xi's visit is important in many ways, particularly because the International Criminal Court has just issued an arrest warrant against Putin for his role in forcibly sending thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia. For Putin, there could be no better response to this international court, which he does not recognize, than to appear alongside the president of a great country, which, like Russia, is also a permanent member of the UN Security Council. How isolated can Putin really be, when the leader of 1.5 billion people in China comes to visit?

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Photo of an open cast mine in Kalgoorlie, Australia.
Economy
Pierre Haski

Lithium Mines In Europe? A New World Of Supply-Chain Sovereignty

The European Union has a new plan that challenges the long-established dogmas of globalization, with its just-in-time supply chains and outsourcing the "dirty" work to the developing world.

-Analysis-

PARIS — It is one of the great paradoxes of our time: in order to overcome some of our dependencies and vulnerabilities — revealed in crises like COVID and the war in Ukraine — we risk falling into other dependencies that are no less toxic. The ecological transition, the digitalization of our economy, or increased defense needs, all pose risks to our supply of strategic minerals.

The European Commission published a plan this week to escape this fate by setting realistic objectives within a relatively short time frame, by the end of this decade.

This plan goes against the dogmas of globalization of the past 30 or 40 years, which relied on just-in-time supply chains from one end of the planet to the other — and, if we're being honest, outsourced the least "clean" tasks, such as mining or refining minerals, to countries in the developing world.

But the pendulum is now swinging in the other direction, if possible under better environmental and social conditions. Will Europe be able to achieve these objectives while remaining within the bounds of both the ecological and digital transitions? That is the challenge.

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Photo of Macron Meeting With Netanyahu in Paris
Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

Israel And The West: The Crisis Is Real

Israel's judicial reforms by its far-right government have been met by widespread protests. Now the country risks breaking long-formed bonds with key allies in the West.

-Analysis-

PARIS — Which country in the world has just refused to receive Josep Borrell, Europe's top diplomat? Which country has a finance minister who travels to the United States and France without making any contact with the governments of these two countries?

That country is Israel, which is not used to being a near pariah in the Western world. It is true that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was received in Paris by French President Emmanuel Macron, and also in Rome by Italian Council President Giorgia Meloni, and is currently in Berlin to meet with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

But if Israel's head of state, with decades of personal relationships with both European and American leaders behind him, is received, it might not always be to have his government's choices praised.

At the heart of the problem lingers the political crisis that was triggered by the coalition that Netanyahu has built with the far right in Israel: the latter is carrying out a judicial reform deemed undemocratic by a large part of Israeli society. The protests that have been going on for weeks have a real international impact.

It is a sign of real unease when it did not even take three months to see such a deterioration in relations.

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Photo of workers at the production line of SAIC Volkswagen in Shanghai
Economy
Pierre Haski

Will China Invade Taiwan? Volkswagen's €180 Billion Bet Says 'No'

German automobile giant Volkswagen will invest billions in China to manufacture electric vehicles. It has deemed the risk of China invading Taiwan "unlikely," a peek into the calculations that private-sector conglomerates make, just like state actors.

-Analysis-

PARIS — Automaker Volkswagen has decided to accelerate its investments in electric vehicles: €180 billion, mainly in the United States and China. The Financial Times has reported that the company's management evaluated the risk and concluded that China would not invade Taiwan in the short term. It decided as a result that it was reasonable to invest in China, one of its main markets.

It's an interesting vantage point to undertand events. Governments around the world are questioning China's intentions towards the island of Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own. What is less known is that large companies also need to calculate geopolitical risk and conduct their own analyses.

A few months after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the President of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, which represents thousands of companies, sounded the alarm in an interview with an economic magazine. Joerg Wuttke mentioned the trauma of Western companies forced to leave Russia and lose everything, and warned Chinese authorities that the same thing could happen if China invaded Taiwan.

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Photo of Anthony Albanese, Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak​ in San Diego
Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

AUKUS: Bold Deterrent Or Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Of A Future War With China?

AUKUS, the security pact between the US, the UK, and Australia, is beginning to take shape. Its aim is to deter China, but it risks drawing the Indo-Pacific region into a military conflict.

-Analysis-

You might remember AUKUS, the security pact between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. Under the pact, the US and UK will assist Australia in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.

For France, its foundation 18 months ago meant the termination of the French submarine mega-contract with Australia. The process of reconciliation with these countries was gradual: first with the United States, then with Australia thanks to a change of government, and finally with the British, who were closer and therefore more difficult to forgive.

But AUKUS (the acronym for Australia-United Kingdom, United States) hadn't been mentioned much until Monday, when U.S President Joe Biden welcomed on a San Diego submarine base his British and Australian counterparts, Prime Ministers Rishi Sunak and Anthony Albanese. The aim? To give weight to this alliance between the three English-speaking powers in the face of an opponent that’s never been addressed: China, of course.

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Photo of Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammad bin Salman Chinese President Xi Jinping shaking hands.
Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

How China's Iran-Saudi Diplomacy Stunned The World — Starting With Washington

The move is seen as a coup for China in its efforts to assert itself as a global superpower, while also presenting itself as a responsible and peaceful nation in the eyes of the non-Western world. The agreement is expected to help reduce tensions in the region and revive hopes for peace in Yemen, where the two countries have been fighting a proxy war.

-Analysis-

PARIS — There is the agreement itself, and there are the circumstances surrounding the agreement. Saudi Arabia and Iran had severed diplomatic ties in 2016 after the execution of a Saudi Shiite leader. The restoration of relations between these two rival Middle East powers is therefore no small feat.

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But even more intriguing, more spectacular, and totally unexpected is the role played by China. For it was in Beijing that Friday's agreement was signed. The photo of China's top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, surrounded by the Saudi and Iranian ministers, in front of a large Chinese painting in Beijing, attests to a world that has suddenly changed.

This is undoubtedly the first time that China has taken on the role of mediator in the Middle East, a stance that has electrified the region and beyond since the announcement of the agreement.

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Israel's Parallel Crises, And The Whiff Of Civil War
Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

Israel's Parallel Crises, And The Whiff Of Civil War

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's return to power with the most right-wing government in the country's history has revealed a deep schism in Israeli society between settlers and secularists.

-Analysis-

Israeli society is facing an intense and unprecedented moment in its history. There have been other protest movements in the past, such as the hundreds of thousands of people gathered against the war in Lebanon in 1982 or the economic demonstration of tents on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv in 2011.

But in the current wave of protests, there is an existential dimension. It's different than during wars, where it's been literally the physical survival of the Israeli state; this is rather existential in its identity, political system, and the weight of religion.

This is sometimes difficult to understand from the outside, where we often view this part of the world through the lens of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is also escalating. An attack in Tel Aviv on Thursday reminded us that the two crises are evolving in parallel.

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Photo of workers walking by a receiving station for the Nord Stream 1 Baltic Sea pipeline in Lubmin, Germany
Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

Why The Truth On Nord Stream Sabotage Matters

A new report blames the attack last September on a pro-Ukrainian outfit. It is hardly the last word on the case, but a good sign that the truth will come out in the end, which is crucial to maintain support in the West.

-Analysis-

PARIS — Who sabotaged the two Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines connecting Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea?

The famous pipelines, an absolute symbol of Germany's — now, former — dependence on Russian gas, exploded at the bottom of the sea last September. No one claimed responsibility for this act during the war in Ukraine, giving free rein to all hypotheses, speculations, and inevitable conspiracy theories.

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There is new information in the investigation, without providing a definitive answer on the identity or motivation of the perpetrators. Germany, which led the investigation, revealed yesterday that it had identified a ship that could have been used to carry out the operation. This boat had been rented by a Polish company owned by Ukrainians.

This Ukrainian lead was immediately denied by the authorities in Kyiv.

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