India’s G20 Summit, 9/11 in Chile and the U.S., Kim Jong Un and Putin Draw Closer, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, India hosts the G20 summit, Chile and the United States mark very different 9/11 anniversaries, and a possible Putin-Kim Jong Un meeting sparks international concern. It's September 7th, 2023 and time for The World Next Week. I am Bob McMahon.

 

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins.

 

MCMAHON:
Carla, let's kick things off in India. This Saturday, global leaders will be meeting in New Delhi for the G20 summit. Now they represent at least 80 percent of the world's economic output, although some of the leaders will not be there. They'll be their deputies or second in command, but the G20 tries to address what they term as the most pressing economic challenges and sometimes that veers into other areas as well. This year's theme is, believe it or not, "The World is One Family."

 

ROBBINS:
Like a Coke commercial, no?

 

MCMAHON:
I would love to see a Coke commercial come out of New Delhi. But Carla, is this something that could be akin to a family reunion or is that really taking this too far?

 

ROBBINS:
I'm not sure family reunions are particularly happy, and this is about as happy as the times we live in. So probably not. This year's host, India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is running for a third term early next year, and so he's going to put on I'm sure a spectacular show for his guests. And he's been playing up this meeting. This is a rotating presidency, so you basically get it if you're a member at some point. But he's been playing up India's presidency and his leadership throughout the country over the last year. There's been light shows and billboards and educational campaigns. They even have a certification program in G20 literacy, which perhaps we should all take. 

 

And he's been using it as proof of India's credit as a global leader and his own credit as a global leader. So I'm sure it's going to be a great show, but Modi never misses an opportunity to make things dark. And when his government sent out invites for a summit dinner, it referred to India as Bharat, which is the Hindi name for the country, and the one that Modi's party as well as the ultra nationalist RSS wants the government to adopt much to the fear and dismay of millions of people in India who aren't Hindu. So watch this space, it's going to be spectacular, but at the same time probably have something of a dark edge to it because it is Modi-land. 

 

What's Modi pushing and what are the priorities for the conversation? They're going to focus on very legitimate challenges with a particular interest in those facing the so-called Global South, climate change and the disproportionate impact there, economic development, alleviating debt burdens in low-income countries. And that's something President Biden, who's going, is expected to push for. Biden and Modi will also be pushing for more funding for the World Bank and urging other multilateral lenders to increase lending for climate change and infrastructure projects in countries around the world. And global inflation, which has been spurred by Russia's war in Ukraine, is going to be a big focus. And Modi is also going to be pushing for granting full permanent membership for the African Union. But a lot of the attention is going to focus on two of the great powers, Russia and China, and we can talk about that because it's, Bob, you noted they're not going to be there.

 

MCMAHON:
And the China one is more surprising. The news came fairly late and there'll still be high level Chinese representation. But of course summit level is what hosts like to see. The India-China relationship is a tricky one to say the least, although the two leaders saw each other not too long ago at the BRICS Summit on South Africa. And they have a lot to talk about. It also raises the question about whether or not from what I've seen in reports, Carla, there's going to be any sort of consensus document that the G20 agrees on because up to now it doesn't seem like they have agreed on anything that's going to come out of this.

 

ROBBINS:
So Xi is not going and he has attended every other G20 summit since he took power and this year he's sending the Chinese Premier Li Qiang in his place. And analysts have been spending an enormous amount of time, this is one of the great international relations parlor games this week, puzzling over why. And they've offered a lot of explanations. Is he snubbing Modi because of his problems with historic borders? But as you noted, they looked reasonably friendly at the BRICS Summit, but there was some tension there as well about this question about whether they were going to expand the BRICS and who was going to have more influence. Is he punishing Modi because of India's cozying up to the U.S. with Modi's visit to the White House and his membership in the so-called quad? But once again, they've had conversations since all that happened. Is it Xi's decision to give the meeting a pass really rather all about what's happening inside of China and is it potentially a sign of his own domestic insecurity?

 

Things are not going great inside of China for Xi right now, and they're facing a pretty big economic downturn. Foreign and domestic investment is leaving the country. There's been this mysterious disappearance of the former Chinese foreign minister and there's just the possibility that Xi himself is sick. There's a lot of COVID going around there. The First Lady has COVID and everyone's been checking President Biden to make sure that he's okay. So we don't know why Xi's not coming. But it does shift the focus to a certain extent away from what's going on in the substance of the meeting to the fact that one of the key players in the G20 isn't there. 

 

And then the other player who is not going to be at the table and who's sending a representative is Putin. And that's not much of a surprise. Of course, he's under ICC indictment and he went virtually to the BRICS Summit. He's sending Sergey Lavrov, his foreign minister, to this. And even though Putin isn't there, the biggest question and the thing that could perhaps be the biggest problem for Modi in this is whether or not they can get a consensus document, and they have gotten a consensus document or a leader statement at the end of every other G20 meeting, because of disagreements over the war in Ukraine. 

 

The Russians are saying they're not going to sign on to anything. Not surprisingly that makes a negative comment about the war in Ukraine. The French and others are saying they won't sign on unless it's a clear condemnation of it. Last year in Bali they managed to square the circle by saying many nations were very concerned about this and the impact on fragile economies. But I think right now for Modi, the biggest issue is trying to scramble to get some sort of a document out there that bridges the gap, not so much between the G20 and the Global South, but between differences over the Ukraine War.

 

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I think it's going to be a real test and it will be fascinating to see how Modi handles that issue in particular. I mean, I saw a report that he had recently had an exchange with Putin and the readouts were fairly cordial because India remains a very big market for Russian arms and discounted Russian energy. And so he's got that very important consideration to balance out against being a credible partner to the United States, among other places, but also countries that have been affected by the Russian blockade of Ukrainian grain and other activities that have created real economic problems, real privation for the Global South. And the BRICS was interesting to see the maneuvering going on there. But G20 is of a different caliber and so I think this gives it a sense of drama that maybe we wouldn't have been seeing otherwise at a G20 summit.

 

ROBBINS:
And the stakes for Modi are a lot higher than they were in the BRICS because this is his show. He has a huge, huge investment for domestic politics because he is running for reelection. So we will have to see whether he can pull off a consensus statement over Ukraine. And since this is focused on the global economy and the Ukraine war has had such an impact on the global economy, they'll probably come up with some weak tea in the end, but it won't be a strong consensus statement.

 

So Bob, let's move over to the Americas. This Monday, September 11th is the anniversary of major events in Chile and the United States. For Chile, this marks fifty years since General Augusto Pinochet's coup, which led to an incredibly brutal dictatorship. And in the U.S., of course, we continue to reflect on the lives lost during the 2001 terrorist attacks and its impact on U.S. policy and on the world. How are two countries going to be remembering these incredibly grim days?

 

MCMAHON:
Well, I'll start with the United States first, the fresher memory. It's twenty-two years. It's not the big round number that we had just two years ago and marking that anniversary. But even then, there was a sense of already the remoteness of that event as world changing as it was, as life altering as it was for so many in the U.S., for New Yorker area people like ourselves, we'll never forget that. But it really has receded in terms of everything else that's going on in the world, and you touched on it already with our opening discussion, Carla. 

 

So we'll have the president noting the anniversary not in any of the sites that were hit, which has normally been the case, although not always. But President Biden's actually going to be at the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska because he's returning from his trip to the G20 summit and Vietnam. And so he'll be making his comments there. Vice President Kamala Harris will be at the New York City National September 11 Memorial Museum. First Lady, Jill Biden is expected to lay a wreath at the National 9/11 Pentagon Memorial. So there will be representation at important sites, but it will be, I think already in the run up to this, it's a bit muted still. 

 

There's all sorts of things that are still playing out from 9/11 in the U.S. including the Guantanamo Bay detainees, including those seen as plotters in the coup and whether or not there is a way for them to gain release or gain a further sounding on their cases. The number of people in Guantanamo Bay continues to decrease. There continue to be a lot of discussion about whether or not that should be closed once and for all. There is a lot of controversy about the early years of Guantanamo Bay and the extent to which torture was carried out to get confessions and so forth.

 

So there is a lingering reverberation about the U.S. 9/11 anniversary that will play out far beyond this date, which will again be marked as a somber day. We should also note it continues to be a somber occasion for Afghans whose country was the haven for Al-Qaeda. When Osama Bin Laden launched the attack, they then became overrun by international forces and the U.S.-led occupation. And now that occupation and the U.S.-led attempt to create reforms in Afghanistan is over. Taliban is back, as we've discussed. The situation is just dreadful in Afghanistan and no signs that it's going to get any better. So a pretty grim anniversary all the way around.

 

As for the Chile anniversary, very different type of thing, not necessarily a joyous anniversary either, but it will be marking a very important moment in Chilean history, the overthrow of the Salvador Allende government, what that meant for the next seventeen years in terms of harsh repression under Pinochet and the disappearances of thousands. Thousands of people fled the country. Some changes in the country's economic standing, to be sure, but also the very mixed performance overall. I think there's been a lot of study about the U.S. role in that. The U.S. government at the time under the Nixon administration certainly embraced the end of the Allende government. And there have been the release of our archives showing the U.S. was trying to play a role in fomenting an overthrow of some sort, or at least opposition, a very strong opposition. There continues to be debate about whether or not the actual coup on that day was U.S. engineered or not. A lot of U.S. officials say, "No, not on that date." Although again, it was accepted.

 

And then there's Chile's story itself. It has rebounded remarkably overall since 1990, since the end of the Pinochet era. And it's going through its own period of transformation, I guess we could say, under a leftist leader, Mr. Boric. And it's still trying to sort out a post-Pinochet constitution as part of its debate. And there's a great deal of attention paid to some polls that came out in Chile about the attitudes of Chileans. The Latinobarómetro poll showed that 36 percent of Chileans believe the military quote unquote "freed Chile from Marxism back in September 11th, 1973." About 42 percent of the respondents said the coup destroyed democracy, and that's the lowest number that responded to that query since 1995. So you have some stirrings domestically in Chile that show not a great deal of satisfaction under the Boric presidency. But Chile is a divided society like so many other democracies, Carla.

 

ROBBINS:
So about divisions, and there's always a revision of history and sometimes some pretty disturbing revisions, and it's of note on the campaign trail in the early Republican presidential primary campaign that candidate Vivek Ramaswamy gave an interview to The Blaze and he was asked if he thought 9/11 was, "an inside job". And he said, "I don't believe the government has told us the truth. Do I believe the 9/11 Commission? Absolutely not." Is this a common thing? And how disturbing do you find this, Bob? The notion that there is this weird conspiracy arguments still about 9/11 and how potentially divisive and just really disruptive for American politics if we have politicians talking that way in this country.

 

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I mean that is disturbing the questioning of the 9/11 Commission, which is from many sides and really in a bipartisan way had been seen as a very authoritative commission and went about its business seriously. And by the way, I would recommend anybody to reread that report and what it had to say about it because it holds up extremely well. And anybody who's trying to get to the truth needs to start there. To use it as political hay for the conspiracy minded, I think Ramaswamy sees that as political gain for himself. He's got a bit of a lift from that first Republican debate. And despite coming off as quixotic and being attacked by other Republican candidates on his foreign policy and other statements, he's trying to, I think, appeal to a base that he sees as upset and angry. And if it's a conspiracy-fueled base, all the better. It seems like, again, it's not comforting and I don't see a critical mass of Americans who are seriously questioning what happened on 9/11, however.

 

ROBBINS:
I think just a reminder that we have our own polarization and our own denial of reality. I'm not sure if this is on a happier note, but for Chile, there's a new movie that's just come out by Pablo Larraín who directed among other things, Jackie and Spencer. And this movie's called El Conde, which means the count, and it imagines Augusto Pinochet as a 250-year-old vampire who wants finally to die. And it's getting really pretty interesting reviews. And the narrator for this is another favorite certain people on the left caricature, and that's Margaret Thatcher. So I'm not sure I'm rushing off to see that one. So El Conde.

 

MCMAHON:
El Conde.

 

ROBBINS:
Those who were looking for a movie to reimagine Chilean history that's one perhaps worth watching.

 

MCMAHON:
It's worth, again, repeating some of the numbers from both anniversaries, Carla. So the U.S. it was roughly 3,000 people killed in the terrorist attacks on the trade center, at the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the crash of the plane there. We should also note a number of people who have had illness afterwards, especially in New York. The first responders pretty clear sign that they picked up illnesses and cancers and so forth from the toxic air that was there. Chile, the numbers are over 40,000 estimated to have been tortured, executed, or forcibly disappeared. These are big numbers and these are traumatic numbers in both cases. The playout in Chile was obviously seventeen years or so, whereas it was one day in the U.S. but still worth noting.

 

I'll add one more thing on the Chilean front, which I think is interesting for people who want to follow that. So I mentioned the way the Allende ouster was received in the U.S. by the then Nixon administration. There's a note that U.S. Mission to the Organization of American States sent out in response to the fiftieth anniversary of the Chilean coup that's extremely carefully worded but very revealing. I'll just quote one part of it. It says, "Salvador Allende was more than just a political figure. He was a symbol of hope and social justice for many in Chile and across the Americas. A humanist and statesman, he believed fervently in the principles of equality and the empowerment of the marginalized." And then it goes on to mark how there's still information coming out about what happened at that time and the role of other countries. But it is fascinating reading coming from a US mission at a time of huge controversy.

 

ROBBINS:
And I think on an other more upbeat note, and it's hard to be upbeat about these anniversaries. I was in Chile when they voted Pinochet out of power. And there are very few places that I've worked that did have happy endings. This was a very legalistic dictatorship for a dictatorship that committed so many incredible crimes. And they had a constitution and they said they were going to have a vote, and the vote was going to be yes or no, do you want more years of the dictatorship? And they lost. And at the last minute, Pinochet tried to steal it anyway, and it didn't work. The rest of the junta turned against him. 

 

And it was a pretty extraordinary thing, and it was such an incredibly suspenseful night. And the next morning after finally it was clear they had lost and they had stopped the vote and all sorts of things, I watched out the window as there was a changing of the guard in front of the palace, a place where so many demonstrators had been beaten up over the years for demonstrating against the dictatorship. And the changing of this guard came out and all of these people stood around and they just quietly clapped, clapped because the military had finally done the right thing and decided to get out. And it was an extraordinary moment and a peaceful transition.

 

MCMAHON:
No, that's great to hear, Carla. I'd love to see some of your reports from that era too, but maybe we can put those on our show notes page for this podcast if they're still around.

 

ROBBINS:
Or a review of El Conde.

 

MCMAHON:
Or a review of El Conde, right. Show different aspects of the Chilean perspective. Carla, I want to talk about something completely different and take us halfway around the world to Vladivostok, at least least if reports can be believed. Vladimir Putin is going to meet Kim Jong Un. Now this will be Kim's first trip outside of North Korea since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. It generated an immediate response from the United States among others. Why is this trip raising eyebrows in national security circles?

 

ROBBINS:
Well, as you noted, Kim rarely leaves North Korea, but U.S. and other allied officials say they expect him to travel to Vladivostok in Russia, likely via armored train for a meeting with Putin, possibly on the sidelines of a meeting of the Eastern Economic Forum, which Russia has run for the last seven years to encourage investment in its far east. And I don't think that Kim is coming to invest in the far east of Russia. Both Russia and North Korea are under heavy international sanctions, Russia for the invasion of Ukraine and North Korea for lots of things that it does wrong, including nuclear and ballistic missile programs. And U.S. officials say the two sides are looking for ways to fill each other's strategic shopping lists. Putin urgently needs artillery shells and anti-tank missiles for the war in Ukraine, and Kim is looking for advanced technology including for satellites and for nuclear-powered submarines.

 

And so the White House warned that Putin and Kim had exchanged letters and discussing this possible arms deal. And so that's what they're predicting from this. And this White House has been very good at using intelligence to preempt or to try to deter countries from helping Putin fill his arms coffers. They've used it with the Chinese and lots of other people. But I don't think that Kim is so easily deterred. So that's why everyone's paying so much attention to this trip.

 

MCMAHON:
And we will have a piece up on our website, I think later today, from our colleague Scott Snyder looking at this relationship, which he says has been off and on for a number of years. And it's not necessarily there's a bromance between the two leaders, but as you say, potentially a time of a convenient relationship emerging. It is, as you say, the U.S. is keen to put as much information out there as possible. Also in part because Russia sits on the UN Security Council, which is supposed to be overseeing an ongoing sanctions regime against North Korea for all sorts of violations of UN resolutions that Russia approved in the past that were supposed to limit North Korea's capabilities in ballistic missiles and nuclear developments and so forth. So are we seeing a further just blatant breach of that, or are they going to finesse that?

 

ROBBINS:
I don't think the Russians at this point worry about blatant breaches of anything. They have violated the most fundamental of UN commitments, which is you don't invade other countries. The Chinese over the years have been the ones that have most violated the sanctions on North Korea. They've been the enablers of Kim, whether it's by giving oil or allowing smuggling across the border. And interestingly enough, the Chinese are sending a delegation right now. I think what is it? It's the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of North Korea this weekend. They're sending a delegation there. Whether this is a celebration or perhaps a quiet behind-the-scenes warning, you can never tell which way the Chinese are going to play the game with North Korea. So you don't know whether the U.S. is saying to the Chinese, "We depend on you to reel North Korea back," or whether they're saying, "Go for it." But there's lots of different moving parts here. And Kim and Putin have very strong shared interests. They're both highly isolated countries at this point, and they both know what they want and they want weapons and technology.

 

MCMAHON:
Okay. So we'll keep an eye out on whether this actually transpires and the armored train does make its way to Vladivostok, Carla.

 

ROBBINS:
Yeah, it is interesting that the armored train thing is fascinating why he travels by armored train. But both his father and his grandfather traveled by armored train, and this is the guy who loves to emulate his father and his grandfather to the point of you look at photographs of them and the clothes that he wears. There's talk, his haircuts, there's talk perhaps he's had some sort of surgery to look like them. There's lots of history playing out in that country as well, and all of it very quirky.

 

The other meeting, Bob, you and I should probably be talking about is this meeting between Putin and Erdogan, Turkey's Erdogan, to go back to the Black Sea grain deal that you and I were talking about before. They met. Erdogan came out sounding hopeful, and Putin said pretty much what he has said all along, that he's not going to restore the grain deal until he gets what he wants. So lots of people moving between places and not a lot of progress, I fear.

 

MCMAHON:
And Erdogan like Modi trying to balance out factors including Turkey's own ability to benefit from let's say Russian energy and Black Sea trade in general, but also wanting to seem like a broker who's keeping things open for Ukraine. And he's a NATO member who seemed to say all the right things or many of the right things at the NATO summit over the summer. But it's basically we're looking at status quo then, and Russia continues to pound Black Sea ports that contain granaries.

 

ROBBINS:
Yeah, and I suppose we actually, I think correctly played down the impact of this suspension because grain prices spiked internationally immediately after this latest suspension. And then they have settled down, which I think lessens the pressure on Russia and the focus on this. But we shouldn't minimize the impact on the poorer countries, the ones that depend on UN deliveries and the ones that can't find alternative sources easily. And this is causing genuine pain, and the Russians are trying to buy people off the ones in the Global South that they want to continue to sit on the fence. Putin's promising he's going to ship a million metric tons of cheap grain to Turkey for delivery to poor countries, and he's going to send free grain to some African countries.

 

He's very interested in keeping countries on side while trying to make sure that Ukraine doesn't make any money at all trying to squeeze it at the same time. So he's spending a lot of time trying to figure out the boar here, and in the meantime, a good part of a lot of poor countries get squeezed in the middle.

 

So Bob, I think it's time to discuss our audience figure of the week, which listeners can vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org's Instagram story. And this week they selected, "EU Asylum Applications Surge 28 Percent." What's driving this round of increased asylum applications?

 

MCMAHON:
Well, Carla, a lot of it is what you're referring to, the Global South. These are all primarily people from the poorer countries. We should note that this figure does not include the estimated 4 million Ukrainians that have received special refugee or temporary protection status in the EU. But it's people like Syrians who continue to flee. 44 percent of the overall applicants, and it was from January to June, it was 519,000 asylum applications submitted. So nearly half of those from Syria, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Turkey, and Colombia. What Colombians are doing seeking asylum in Europe, I'm not clear unless they're trying a path through Spain. But that's a curious route to consider. But these are people coming from ongoing conflict, failed states, climate disasters, you name it, Carla. 

 

And pressure is the most, and the volumes are the most that we've seen since about 2015-2016, which was a real inflection point as you recall. And it was a period when Germany decided to boldly let in, I think, a million mostly Syrians at the time. The other response to that surge at that time was an EU-Turkish agreement to have Turkey become a staging area because that was where many of the migrants and asylum seekers and a whole mixture of people were coming through. So this is different, and it just again speaks to the real challenges going on in the world, the stresses that places like Europe that the Global North will continue to face while the world continues to go through upheaval in really every part of the world we can point to.

 

ROBBINS:
This is a time in which Europe has proved to be remarkably unified in supporting Ukraine and its fight against Russia defending its borders. And 2015, the time of the last migrant crisis, was a time when it looked like the EU was going to tear itself apart. Is this new surge going to create new fissures inside of the EU? There were a lot of countries that when they came up with a division, a quota system, countries were going to have to share responsibility for accepting migrants and paying for things. There are countries that refuse to accept their portion of the refugees and the responsibility that was given to them by rulings of their leaders within the EU. Are we going to see other major political disagreements, even deep cracks in the alliance?

 

MCMAHON:
It's potential, although I think you have more states now who have raised concerns about the level, the volume of, again, a combination of migrants that includes asylum seekers. Some are economic migrants, but many are really fleeing desperate situations. And I think it's a real check for the EU on its system of laws and values, frankly, in respecting international law that requires them to consider to take in legitimate asylum seekers and hear their cases and process them duly and so forth. You've had just in the last several months, a number of heartbreaking incidents including in the Mediterranean Sea involving EU members. You've had the incident with Greece and the Coast Guard seemingly turning away an overcrowded ship that then capsized and a number of people were killed or missing. You had the UK, which is no longer an EU member, but still setting another policy priority and turning away the boats representing people trying to cross the channel by boat as a threat.

 

So there's this sense of the political right, in many cases, trying to leverage blood and soil nationalism and raising this as a concern with the EU's own sense of values. And it is the kind of thing that could tear it apart, or they come together and they size up the problem and come up with some sort of pragmatic solution. They did emerge from 2015-2016 with a solution. This is of a different volume right now, so it's not clear.

 

Well, that's our look at the world next week, Carla. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visits the Philippines. The North American International Auto Show takes place in Detroit. And, Ursula von der Leyen delivers the annual state of the European Union speech.

 

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review while you're at it. We appreciate the feedback. The publications 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 on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

 

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. This is Carla Robbins saying so long.

 

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