Rwanda 30 Years After Genocide, U.S.-Japan-Philippines Summit, ABBA’s Eurovision Legacy, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, Rwanda marks thirty years since its genocide. The White House hosts leaders from Japan and the Philippines. And, the Eurovision Song Contest marks fiftieth years since ABBA's big moment. It's April 4th, 2024, and time for The World Next Week. I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins. Bob, welcome back.

MCMAHON:
Thank you.

ROBBINS:
Did you have a fun time?

MCMAHON:
I did. Thank you very much. Cold Easter break, but it was nice.

ROBBINS:
Well, this is quite a transition here then. So let's start in Rwanda. On Sunday, April 7th, country's going to commemorate the thirty-year anniversary of the ethnic genocide against the Tutsi population. In over 100 days, a radical extremist faction of Hutus killed 800,000 Rwandans. The United States, France, the UN Security Council, all failed horribly.

And in a video to be released this Sunday, President Emmanuel Macron of France says that France, which could have stopped the genocide with its Western and African allies, "lacked the will to do so." Rwanda, these days, has a really complicated standing in the world, and its President, Paul Kagame, has been called the West's favorite autocrat. How should we be feeling about this anniversary, and how should we be feeling about our relationship with Rwanda?

MCMAHON:
Well, as you had set up, Carla, complicated, it doesn't begin to say what the relationship's like, but it has to certainly be pegged back to the moment of the genocide. And it's worth noting that the genocide didn't pop up out of nowhere. There were ample warnings. The UN had a number of tripwire warnings that came out months and months ahead of what happened, basically, warning of the powder keg between the Hutus and the minority Tutsis. And then, when the killing started...and actually, ahead of the killing, there were UN peacekeeping officials who were saying a certain number of peacekeepers could prevent slaughter, they were not promised.

We should also remember this occurred not too long after the horrible Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia, where U.S.-led peacekeepers, among others, got embroiled in a deadly conflict there. That certainly colored it, but it certainly doesn't dismiss what then happened, which wasn't a real failure of the Security Council to act when it could happen, when it was warned about it. I would recommend people, if they want to get a sense of how this was building and what was happening, there's a devastating Frontline documentary about that, including capturing on the scene. They had crews. Camera crews were on the scene as Western peacekeepers and diplomats were coming to Rwanda, and there were Tutsis there sort of begging them to take them with them, and it's really tough to watch. But it was fast, it was brutal, and it was ended by Paul Kagame's RPF forces, and his movement, that took over the country, and to this day, run the country as a single movement, a single individual.

Kagame is part of this complicated relationship. He has undoubtedly put the country back on its feet and did the ethnic tensions, while still installing a leadership that is accused of favoring Tutsis, the minority Tutsis, and has gotten involved in supporting a movement, armed movement in Eastern Congo, that is said to be contributing to expanding bloodshed there. But at the same time, in Rwanda itself, he has improved the country's economic stability, its living standards. Its life expectancy has gone up from something like forty-nine, thirty years ago to sixty-six now. It has had, over the last several decades, 8 percent growth on an annual basis, and as you say, got this reputation of leading the Singapore of, the Lake District of Africa, as some people have termed it, while being autocratic in the process.

He is, by most accounts, going to be a leader for life. There are elections this summer that he is supposed to win handily, and as The Economist noted, in its inimitable way, in a recent article, "In the land of a thousand hills only one man can have the moral high ground," and that is Paul Kagame. So this situation, this is the legacy today, and it is a country that continues to get a good deal of aid, and by many accounts, uses it well because of the guilt that has arisen from that episode thirty years ago. And for some more helpful background and context about Rwanda's path of the last thirty years, I commend our colleague, Mariel Ferragamo's piece that we put up on CFR.org this week, looking at the country's path.

ROBBINS:
Rwanda has also been in the news because of Kagame's willingness to participate in this completely morally weird deal that is yet to go through with the Brits, taking in migrants, and this...I think he cut this originally with Boris Johnson, and the moral ambivalence of these relationships is so odd. Is it based on the guilt of the West that he gets such an enormous pass, or is he playing a useful role for countries?

MCMAHON:
I think it's a combination, certainly. I mean, as was pointed out in The Economist article I mentioned, in other places, Kagame has been very skillful as using Rwanda's leverage diplomatically, whether it's working on a deal to take asylum seekers with UK. By the way, he had signed a deal a few years earlier with Denmark to do the same thing; he set up an asylum center in the capital, Kigali. He has maintained relations with Russia, while at the same time, being seen as a counterpoint to the Russian attempts to be an influential security broker in Africa. Rwanda itself plays a role in exporting peacekeeping into other countries in Africa, for example. He has maintained relationship with China. China has built a lot of infrastructure in Rwanda, while also keeping China at arm's length, and is able to be accepted in Western capitals to this day, despite policies that have earned him some rebuke, especially probably more so from the U.S. than some of the European capitals, but you can't get past the heavy guilt that a lot of these countries feel for what was allowed to happen in 1994, in the spring of 1994. 

Again, as I say, at a time when Africa is dealing with the backlash against democracy or backsliding of democracy, and it's dealing with an encroachment of Russian forces of Wagner Group and so forth, and it's dealing with other problems, climate-driven, and look what's going on in Sudan now and so forth, Rwanda is this place of relative stability, but it's also exporting instability in terms of what it's doing in Eastern Congo. So again, very complicated relationship. It's somebody who has to be dealt with and has to be, I think, engaged by countries in the West, but also not fully obviously embraced.

ROBBINS:
Madeleine Albright used to say this was her greatest regret, the failure in Rwanda, so there is that profound guilt. So when you hear Macron talk about it is quite compelling. But at the same time, in its 2024 report, Freedom House says that the country rates Rwanda's not free, says they suppress political dissent, pervasive surveillance, intimidation, arbitrary detention. It's really terrible when you see the heroes fall. 

Bob, let's move to Washington. Next Wednesday kicks off back-to-back White House Summits: first, an official state visit for Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, followed by a trilateral summit, joined by Philippines President, Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr. And there's a lot going on with these visits. There's going to be a new security pact between Japan and the U.S., and then, of course, this first ever summit between the three leaders. What are you going to be looking for in these meetings?

MCMAHON:
It's going to be very interesting to see that the meetings in which, certainly, the concern about China is permeating, how much they openly say that versus how much they use other language to kind of maybe just make it a reference as opposed to an explicit, either condemnation or warning sign or whatever. And I say that partly because we started off the week with a, what was reported to be a two-hour call between President Biden and Xi Jinping, where they were supposedly having a ongoing frank productive exchange, according to some of the readouts from both sides. And you have Janet Yellen putting in a pretty long visit to China, as we went to tape this podcast, raising concerns, raising concerns about Chinese, among other things, flooding of various tech products, including solar panels on Western markets and the U.S., but at the same time, a real desire by the U.S. to maintain dialogue and not to overly antagonize China, keep the lines of dialogue open. 

But make no mistake, this meeting, this trilateral summit is about trying to project calm and security in this part of the world, where there's been remarkable sort of advance in a security web, where Japan is an important part of this. And I should just note, our colleague, Sheila Smith, has been tracking this for years since Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe revised the constitution to open up its defense policies a bit more, its ability to exercise defense in a projection way. Japan is now openly engaging with the Philippines and working to get involved in exercises and in training Filipino forces, and it had a trilateral summit last summer with South Korea. That was a really big deal because Japan and South Korea have had a really rough relationship for decades, stemming from World War II era atrocities by Japanese forces, and so we're in a moment where Japan is taking on a new role. 

Philippines, under Marcos, has somewhat surprisingly come to the U.S. much more quickly than had been expected, following the Duterte era of leadership in Philippines. And we are in a time when China has been ramping up its assertions of sovereignty in the South China Sea, but also, vis-à-vis Taiwan. It's got disputes with Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, and so all of that is a backdrop to really important security discussions between the three, and then economic as well. There's going to be some important economic overtones coming out of these talks both bilaterally and trilaterally. So I think what's called the U.S.-Philippines-Japan triad is going to be something that is going to be bearing a closer watch as they potentially enter into more binding agreements.

ROBBINS:
Two things, I suppose, about Japan. One is, "How much of this is a Trump effect, versus just a natural evolution reaction to China, North Korea?" I mean, every time the North Koreans test another missile and it tumbles close to Japan, they have pretty good reason to be nervous, but it's also, they've got this constitution that bans them from possessing any war potential, what this Article Nine. How close to the edge are they coming to violating their own Article Nine, I mean, with all these purchases they're planning on making in this closer and closer security relationship with the U.S.?

MCMAHON:
I think they're very carefully walking up to that line by most accounts, and let's just talk about some of that spending. For example, they have a plan in place to increase security capabilities by something like $320 billion, which would raise defense spending to 2 percent of GDP over five years. That's the level of what NATO countries have committed to holding, and that only maybe a third of them have done so, and Japan is saying it will do that over five years. And this is for things like Tomahawk cruise missiles and F-35 fighter jets-

ROBBINS:
Actually, NATO is saying that they're going to be half.

MCMAHON:
Oh, is it going to be half? Okay. In any event, Japan is already jumping into this as a non-NATO member, but as a sign of its willingness to get involved in this alliance of the East Asian countries, and working more closely with the U.S.. And apropos of your question, basically, if a Trump administration part two comes into office, presenting to them the fact that they are a reliable ally, and that these are ties that are worth cultivating, continuing and strengthening, it's worth noting that under the first Trump administration, Japan rather skillfully handled that relationship, was one of the first visits, I think Trump had was with Shinzo Abe, and so we should definitely take that into consideration. I think every country, every U.S. allies certainly is weighing those calculations as we prepare in the U.S. for the Biden-Trump part two, and so that's definitely a backdrop.

Trump administration's certainly not willing to sort of open the door to China. It had laid out some markers against China. It had set force some alliance, Indo-Pacific alliance, activities as well. So that's also worth considering, but I think it's all a backdrop to where things are going. You're right to note the North Korean threat. North Korea has, if anything, just ramped up its provocations, its testing. It's testing a missiles that come really close to Japanese territory and waters, or over Japanese territory, and so it's just survival mode. And I think the North Korean part, in particular, is something that gives the Japanese more and more confidence, that they can continue to adjust their constitution to meet the moment. 

Carla, I'm going to take us in a completely different direction, and talk about "Waterloo," and not the famous battle of 200 years ago. Oh, no, we're talking about ABBA. Let's go to Sweden. Saturday marks fifty years since the band, ABBA, performed the famous Waterloo song at the Eurovision Song Contest, and won. That song, I think most people just hearing it, of almost any generation, they'll immediately go to the earworm chorus. 

But ABBA's 1974 performance was a catalyst that brought this group instant global fame. They did not rest on their laurels, and they were, by no account, a one-hit wonder. So as our resident ABBA fan, why this has such staying power? Why is this Eurovision moment living on?

ROBBINS:
I mean, it's great music. Let me start again. Is it great music? There's very little about the 1970's aesthetics that I remember fondly, Bob, but the kitschiness, the singability, the...it's just an enormous amount of fun, ABBA, and it's probably my favorite thing about an era of, oh, God, the clothes, the haircuts, everything else was so grim, and just ABBA is just an enormous amount of fun, and "Waterloo" is a truly great song. And this year's celebration of ABBA's breakout win is really becoming just an incredibly massive thing.

The Brits, in particular, like to claim at least partial ownership for ABBA since the big win took place in Brighton, and the band lived there for a while. And BBC Two is celebrating the anniversary with a dedicated night of ABBA programming, including a new documentary when "ABBA Came to Britain." They're ours, we claim them. The city of Brighton, never missing an opportunity to invite tourists. Has a four-day celebration, four, count them, days, planned with ABBA shows, bus rides, painting sessions, an exhibition of the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. And at the venue, where the big Eurovision win took place, there's going to be another Eurovision winner, Charlotte, and what they describe as Eurovision royalty, will be performing ABBA's greatest hits, backed up—and this actually, I really wish I could go see—by the famous Brighton Gay Men's Chorus, so this is going to be a major celebration. 

And it should be noted that Sweden won the honor of hosting this year's Eurovision in May, and they're expected to go all in on ABBA. And under the contest rules, the countries whose singer wins the previous year gets to host this year, and when it's singer, Loreen or...I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. It could be Loreen—we'll have to look that up—won last year's competition, it sparked an online conspiracy that the system had been totally rigged so that the contest could be held in ABBA's home field for the anniversary. That's how much attention Eurovision gets and how much attention ABBA itself get. Finally, it also needs to be noted that ABBA made very clear that they are not going to be performing at Eurovision this year. Last time they played together was on the BBC in 1982, which is a very long time ago.

MCMAHON:
Wow.

ROBBINS:
But there are still hopes that their holographic avatars, which are called ... Bob, can you guess?

MCMAHON:
No

ROBBINS:
ABBAtars.

MCMAHON:
Ah, of course, of course.

ROBBINS:
And there's hope that the ABBAtars are going to be able to show up, and they have been playing at the specially created arena in London. More than 1.6 million people have gone to see them, and these are digital recreations based on the real band members who've been filmed in motion capture suits, and people pay an enormous amount of money in London to go see them. Whether or not they can actually transfer the technology to Malmö, Sweden, we're not clear on yet, but stay tuned for what is going to be an enormous celebration of "Waterloo" and the ABBA phenom.

MCMAHON:
So, Carla, Eurovision launched then ABBA in many ways, but I would think that the ABBA's success might have been a boost for Eurovision itself. I mean, this is a contest that still mystifies many Americans, but anybody who's been to Europe for any amount of time, it's a big deal and it has remained a big deal. Is that the case, or was Eurovision too big to even get a boost by ABBA?

ROBBINS:
Well, I don't know. I think you talk to Europeans. They're really devoted to Eurovision. And the way it works is that it started back in 1956, and it is this joint effort by the European Broadcasting Union, which calls itself an alliance of public service media organizations. And each country has its own public broadcaster, which nominates their one candidate, and the rules has to be an original song, can only be for the final, only three minutes long, and the rules have gone back and forth, whether or not it has to be in native language.

Of course, "Waterloo" is in English, and not in Swedish. My devotion to the podcast, if you go on YouTube, you can see clips in, actually one particular YouTube clip of every Eurovision winner from 1956 on. And I will say, and I don't mean to sound elitist about this, there's a lot there that I'm not going to be singing along to, I will say, but Celine Dion was a winner, so there have been some. And I think the rules are, and they've changed somewhat over time, but the rules are, basically there's judges, but there's also people vote, people used to call in, and then, of course, you go on the internet, and there's all sorts of ways people...And you can't vote for your own country, and there are all sorts of interesting rules.

I think it's much less foreign to Americans than it used to be, because we've got all these other Simon Cowell and all these other things that now happen, and there they're also, of course, all transplants from Europe as well. But this is a big thing, and I was at the CFR event in San Francisco, where I am last night, and I mentioned that we were going to be doing this, and two things. One, I mentioned that it was because the anniversary of "Waterloo" and a bunch of much younger than us, people, immediately started humming "Waterloo," which gives you a sense of the appeal of it. And the other thing is there were a couple of Europeans there who all went, "Oh my God, Eurovision," so it's clearly, certainly got a big pull to it. And the other winners, I can tell you, Bob, there are a lot of people you've never heard of.

MCMAHON:
So maybe in ABBA's case, you could say the winner takes it all, but not other winners.

ROBBINS:
Gimme, Gimme, Gimme a break, Bob.

MCMAHON:
Okay. We'll stop there, but we will post that list that you mentioned on our show notes page, Carla, because I think it's going to be crucial to pour over that for those interested. 

Carla, we've sung ourself into the Audience Figure of the Week portion of the podcast. This is the figure that listeners vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at cfr_org's Instagram Story. This week, Carla, our audience selected "Opposition Ekrem İmamoğlu Wins Istanbul." This is the mayorship of Istanbul we're talking about. Why is losing that race bad for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's ruling party?

ROBBINS:
It certainly makes Erdoğan, who we talk about a lot on the podcast, look a lot less invincible, and in hopes that it could be a good thing for Turkey's battered democracy. We discussed last year how Erdoğan used the power of his office, including his control, the media, and the budget to win reelection despite a really devastating earthquake and hugely high inflation. And the expectation this year was that he was going to, once again, bully his way through these elections as well, and the polls look that way, but instead, the opposition not only won big in Istanbul, and İmamoğlu won reelection by eleven and a half percentage points over a candidate that Erdoğan really went all in for, the opposition, Republican People's Party will now run thirty-five of the country's cities up from twenty-one, including the top five largest cities: Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Bursa, and Antalya. 

So this is a pretty devastating setback for Erdoğan just less than a year after he won the presidential election, so there's a real message in there. And what makes this loss, in particularly, hard is that Erdoğan made his career as an opposition leader, who first came to power as mayor of Istanbul, and adding insult to injury, he did his best to try to thwart the rise of İmamoğlu from the start. When İmamoğlu ran, you recall, İmamoğlu won. He briefly held the mayorship. Erdoğan lobbied...He claims he didn't do it, but the election commission, they took İmamoğlu out, they re-ran the election, and İmamoğlu won a second time. So he's been trying to thwart him, and I think the fact that he manages to win despite Erdoğan repeatedly is sending the message, A, that Erdoğan is not invincible, and B, that when the elections come around again in '28, he's the logical candidate.

Now, Erdoğan is term-limited. He has said that this was going to be his last election, but the betting is, and it may just be because this is a country that can't imagine itself without the autocrat in power, but it may be that Erdoğan will try to figure out another way to stay in power, and we'll see a face-off between Erdoğan and İmamoğlu, but it's not till 2028.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I think you're right. I think that's something to watch very closely. It's maybe a moment for cautious optimism that it's such a surprising result. The fact that Erdoğan allowed the party to run candidates in all these places still points out that there is some room for democratic exercising Turkey, but also shows, I think, that public is pretty much fed up with this economic stewardship. I mean, whether it's corruption scandals or just the tinkering and the currency, other things, the response to and the preparations for sustaining infrastructure under earthquakes, all those things seem to have added up to a real problem for Erdoğan, that even some stage managing elections could not overcome.

ROBBINS:
Erdoğan's a very good politician. The question is whether he has so much power and...I mean, these guys, after a while, so lose touch with what's going on around them. I don't know whether he's going to get the message. We'll have to see.

MCMAHON:
And he's in a very dangerous neighborhood. We've talked about him before, is playing as somewhat of a broker role, at least in the initial phases of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and it's obviously, Turkey's strategically important, and NATO member with a autocratically-minded leader at the moment. So a lot at stake and some stirrings of democracy, so let's give it at least two cheers.

ROBBINS:
And meanwhile, one final note, in December '22, a Turkish court sentenced İmamoğlu to two years and seven months in prison, and imposed a political ban for, when he insulted public officials in his speech after his June 2019 win, he said, "The one who canceled the March 31st election," which was the Supreme Election Council, "are fools." He appealed the case, and the appeals Court hasn't made a decision yet. Could they now retake the case because he's, once again, humiliated the AK? We'll have to see that as well.

MCMAHON:
More intrigue as we go into this mega year of elections that we've been talking about almost every week. 

And that's our look at The World Next Week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. Elections continue in South Korea, where legislative elections will be watched closely. Armed groups are expected to leave Tripoli, Libya after more than a decade of control. And, millions around the world mark the end of Ramadan.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts, and leave us a review while you're at it. We appreciate the feedback. If you'd like to reach out, please email us at twnw@cfr.org. 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 also note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts, none of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang and Sinet Adous, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra, and special thanks to our intern, Olivia Green for her research assistance. Our theme music is provided by...ABBA? By our fabulous Markus Zakaria. This is Carla Anne Robbins saying so long.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye, and keep on singing.