All the Updates: Ukraine, Brazil, Iraq and More!

On this episode, we discuss the latest updates on the Russia-Ukraine war. After two months of the front lines unchanged, Ukraine has begun its first counteroffensive to recapture the city of Kherson, which would isolate Russian troops in the South. We also consider the meaning of the G-7 agreement on a price cap on Russian oil and more on Europe’s struggles to deal with its ongoing energy crisis.

Brazil’s presidential election will be held in October, but there are reasons to be concerned about a military coup as the current president, Bolsonaro, borrows from Trump’s playbook by questioning the integrity of the voting machines. Finally, we look at how the latest violence in Iraq may lead to a civil war.

 Ryan and Anita also share the latest on their own research projects on energy security and China’s asymmetrical trading relationships.

Topics:
Ryan's Research on Energy Security - 08:25
Anita's Research on Chinese bullying - 18:10
Ukraine and EU Energy Crisis - 34:50
Brazil's Presidential Elections - 51:40
Iraq's Descent Into Civil War - 01:01:00

Articles and Resources Mentioned in Episode

Kherson Counteroffensive and EU Energy Crisis

• Why does Kherson matter? (The Economist)
• The Right Way to Sanction Russian Energy (Foreign Affairs)
• Europe scrambles to protect consumers against dizzying energy prices (The Economist)

Election Roundup: Brazil

• Lula vs Bolsonaro: What is at stake in Brazil’s presidential election? (The New Statesman)
• The Imminent Election Crisis in Brazil (Americas Quarterly)

Iraq Civil War?

• Why Iraq could be approaching another civil war, explained by an expert (Vox)
• Timeline: What led to the fighting in Iraq’s capital Baghdad (Al Jazeera)
• How Inter-Shia Strife Is Threatening Iraqi Security (Council of Foreign Relations)

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Transcript

Welcome to Kellogg's Global Politics, a podcast on current events in US foreign policy and international affairs. My name is Dr. Anita Kellogg, an international relations scholar specializing in the relationship between economics and national security. I'm here with my co-host, Ryan Kellogg, an expert in energy investment and policy. Thanks and glad to be back. So this is episode 18 and we're recording this on September 4th, 2022. On this episode, we discuss the latest update on the Russia-Ukraine war. After two months of the front lines unchanged, Ukraine has begun its first counter-offensive to recapture the city of Kherson which would isolate Russian troops in the south. We also consider the meaning of the G7 agreement on a price cap on Russian oil and more on Europe's struggles to deal with its ongoing energy crisis. Brazil's presidential election will be held in October, but there are reasons to be concerned about a military coup as the current president, Bolsonaro, borrows from Trump's playbook by questioning the integrity of the voting machines. Finally, we look at the latest violence in Iraq and how may lead to a civil war. But first, we share the latest on our own research projects on energy, security, and China's asymmetrical trading relationships. So I thought we should open with a couple minutes on Paris, since that's why this episode was delayed a week. Last weekend, we were recovering from the trip and I had a bad cold. So what was your highlight? What did you highlight for our Paris trip? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know if I have like a clear cut answer to that. It's funny, the things that I go back to, the things I seem to key in on any part of the trip is kind of my grocery store. You're already laughing. Of course I am. You and Becca, I mean, Becca's favorite part, our 10-year-old daughter, favorite part was eating. That's the only time she was happy. I tried to show her the loo or castles or anything, and she's only happy when she was eating. Yeah. I feel like I have more of an excuse because it's probably our fourth or fifth trip to Paris. We got to Airbnb. My whole goal was kind of be like, okay, what would it be like to live in Paris and just kind of the same experience we had in the Netherlands, but like in Paris. So I always find almost endlessly fascinating is going to the grocery store, because I do the grocery shopping here. So I have like a knowledge of prices and what things cost and all that. So I think you can tell a lot about a country, kind of its priorities by going to the grocery store. Yeah, it's true. What about French priorities? Can you tell by the grocery store? Well, okay. This is a good question. Yeah. So I think a couple of different things in terms of like, what was in terms of quality and then in terms of what's a lot cheaper in France than it is here. So on quality, you know, I didn't tell you this, but one thing that I bought, I should bought a lot more from the French grocery store, but the overall quality of the average product, butter, cheese, and in this case, honey. So I bought it like a jar of honey and I had it. It's like the best honey they've ever had. It's just the store brand. It's the car for... Well, this is what's funny. I didn't taste the honey. Yeah. You haven't tasted it yet, but I brought it back so you can taste some of it. Oh, I see. Yeah. I just bought one jar of it. I just bring it in Paris and then... But yeah, and it was like two euros and something equivalent, if you could get it in the US, would be like eight, ten dollars. It would be this very high end boutique honey. We do have to mention though that all agricultural products are heavily subsidized. Exactly. Yeah, but that shows the country's priorities. They're making affordable these high quality products that are heavily subsidized to the average person. So they only cost like two euros. And that was the same for cheese, wine, even though you hated the champagne that we brought back. That was cheap though. It was only five euros. But it's just, yeah, I feel like the overall average quality and price for kind of these certain core things, because it is heavily subsidized because French government prioritizes that, right? The EU. Just all EU government. But it wasn't worse subsidizing the Netherlands, even though that's subsidized too. Well, the quality was good in the Netherlands. It was just that they didn't have very many products. I don't know. Yeah, I guess the quality was good, but the taste wasn't good. It wasn't beloved outside of the Dutch palate. No, the food. Let's put it that way. But like if you were going to eat the tomatoes or the vegetables or whatever, they were really... Well, that was the thing. Another thing that stood out was the produce was a lot more expensive than the US. Well, I didn't really buy it because I didn't see it as a good deal. Also the amount of it, it may have been just effective the stores that we got to shop at. So you mean the products that are most famous France like cheese is super? Well, I know. Honey was, but... I mean, okay. I don't know that I learned anything to you. Anyway, that's what I keep going back to. But I think it is, yeah. A lot of it's kind of the subsidies and what they subsidize, but then the average quality being much higher, then you'd have to pay very high premium in the US to get the same quality. Yeah. Well, you asked me what... I know. No, that's pretty good. I get like, man, I regret it. What about you? What was stood out? One, I love the cafe culture. So if it was just me by myself in Paris, I would probably just sit in cafes all day and just sit, people watch, maybe read some. That's pretty much what I would do. But a lot of the things we did, we hadn't done since our very first trip to Paris a long time ago after our honeymoon. So going back to the Louvre for the first time since then, because remember, when we saw the Louvre at that time, we had gone to Italy for our honeymoon only a couple of months before that and seen so much art. And so I was kind of not as interested in art then. But so it was really nice to go back to the Louvre. I could have stayed there for a really long time looking at the highlights of it. Yeah, that part did stand out. I don't even, you know, I feel like we either blitz through it where, yeah, we were so burnt out from Italy. I remember seeing the Vermeer. Because I will always go and see whatever Vermeer Museum has. So I remember doing that. Yeah. I really liked the upper floors that we kind of went to where the crowds are a little less than and but it was still, you know, especially like the historical scenes, like the huge portraits showing like Napoleon being crowned emperor and just, I think it was the size of it, right? That really, it really gets you. You see something in a book, but then when you see it basically life size or even greater than life size, yeah, it creates a whole different impression. I know. And so we're speaking as people who aren't art connoisseurs, just people who like to go look at art. So there was that. And then the last day sort of doing something we hadn't been before, which was the Gallery Lafayette, which not only was an amazing shopping mall, but beautiful architecture and beautiful views over the city of Paris. And it's kind of, I don't know how we'd miss that before, but I loved it. I loved that day. I loved being there. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how it is, especially, I mean, you love shopping, so I know how we miss the the herds of Paris. I love shopping like other people like I rarely ever do it.  When I hadn't just, it was so like massive scale, like kind of fascinating, just, I mean, just not literally looking at windows, but window shopping when you have the fanciest brands in the world. And then just like the most common to you, you know, I was like that. I was just like looking, but even if you don't care at all about shopping, it's a beautiful building and a really nice way to, to see Paris from a pie. Yep. So since we don't have an interview today, I decided that we both have some research projects that we've been working really hard on. And I thought that maybe we would discuss them a little bit. So if you're not interested in hearing about this, then in the show notes, I'll put for sure check out the time of when we start our normal coverage of international events. But I know your project is very interesting, Ryan, on energy security. You mentioned it in our last episode because you had written the war and the rocks piece that had been just published. But I just thought maybe you could talk a little bit more about what this project of yours is. I know it's ongoing as well. Yeah. It's, I mean, honestly, it's pretty early stages with it, but it does grow out of that war and the rocks piece, which really focused on, it's the acknowledgement that there's been a real shift in how global energy networks and investments are being viewed, particularly in, in Europe and maybe to a lesser extent the U.S. But the idea of the shift that energy security is important, energy security is a core component of national security. So it really builds on that and trying to, and essentially build a framework of national energy policies that are grounded in the idea of strengthening U.S. energy security. Basically as a useful guide or source for policymakers in the United States, as we, especially as we see, and we'll talk about this later in the podcast, what Europe is going through currently and probably the worsening condition in Europe over the course of the winter around energy security. You know, what are the things that we can do in the U.S. to prevent a similar incident happening either here or in the future with our allies abroad? So it's really built on that. The idea of energy security is national security that we want to avoid the fate of Germany and the ignoring energy security at your own peril. So it's really kind of building, the goal is to build kind of a white paper on a series of policy recommendations in the U.S. So why do we need a project like this instead of just relying on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? Well, I think we've seen that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has failed, you know, in its purpose just because the scale of it is far too small to affect global energy prices in a meaningful way. So and we've seen, you know, as the War on the Rocks pieces talk about market forces alone, which, you know, is the great hope of the U.S. shale revolution is that private individuals, private businesses making decisions based on price incentives would be able to keep energy markets in balance, which would be good overall for consumers around the world because it'd be plentiful supply. But that's failed, you know, based on variety reasons. We talked about a decade of poor returns, price volatility, and then the, yeah, the growing concern from capital around climate change and those long-term impacts. So there really has to be more of a almost industrial policy that the U.S. needs to take in order to intervene, essentially, not only around kind of crises situations like we're facing now with Russia, Ukraine, but also to ease the pain that's coming because of the energy transition. If there's not incentive for oil and gas to invest, but there's not the sufficient technology and infrastructure to switch over to renewables, then that's naturally going to lead to a short fall and the supply of energy that is needed, that base load energy, which largely comes from fossil fuels currently. So unless the government is prepared, you know, in a meaningful way to protect the consumer, then you can end up a situation like what Europe is seeing for different reasons. Yes. So what is your proposal to deal with this situation? Well, you know, a lot of it was the formation of a energy security agency under the Department of Energy, which is essentially seeking to kind of create what we saw in World War II, where the U.S. government partnered with American energy producers to address kind of key security challenges. So I proposed kind of a 21st century version of that, where it's a public-private partnership, much closer aligned, and focuses on kind of a series of things that somewhat build upon the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but also feature kind of a number of different policy positions. So the biggest thing probably got the most traction within some of the feedback I got from members of the industry was the idea of a strategic reserve to drill, but uncompleted wells that could be done on federal land, federal leases. So essentially, instead of just having kind of a supply of oil sitting in big tanks like the Petroleum Reserve, you actually have physical wells that the government could order up and complete those. And that could bring a much more substantial amount of production online, potentially. What maintenance would be required to keep those drilled, but not taken advantage of? I mean, is there something that are they just holes on the ground, or does there need to be maintenance so that if you do need them, then they can be ready to go? Yeah, there's not a lot of maintenance required. I mean, if you're talking about extremely long timeframes of like 20, 30 years, then yeah, maybe there would have to be kind of routine maintenance and clean out. But otherwise, these are completed. So these are actually have steel in the ground. They're just waiting to be hydraulically fracked. Does the government pay for the companies to drill these wells? Is that how it works? Yeah, that would be the trickiest part of implementation is kind of the contracture arrangement for that. But yeah, the government would essentially pay upfront for the drilling of these wells, and then the government would be paid back those costs when the oil is produced and sold back to the federal government. In essence. So yeah, there's a lot. And then a lot of it gets pretty technical. There's things around regulatory flexibility during energy crises. Another is the encouragement of actually global emissions standards. So a accepted standard of measuring emissions and trying to pursue a policy that creates a either a market premium or a penalty for oil and gas products produced in a sustainable way. In essence, if you're competing against the Saudi oil company, but under those global emissions agreement, either they don't agree to have their emissions measured through satellite or it is measured and it's much worse than what's produced in the US, then there's agreed upon kind of price increase or penalty for the use of that oil. Again, maybe it falls on this idea of kind of the price gap that we'll talk about where it's originally kind of a G7 negotiated, which kind of aligns with the whole Paris Accords. But it's the idea of creating an incentive for more sustainably produced oil and higher standards around that. It was interesting because I was listening to this podcast, so that I'll try to get into the show notes from CSIS and it was about the European energy issues. And just noting that how much more interventionism by the government in energy markets is occurring regardless of whether you're conservative or liberal. It's just become necessary because of how important it is to keep the lights on and things of that matter. I mean, because it focuses on this joint venture with businesses, but I just think it's interesting the way governments are having to reconsider their involvement in energy kind of in the light of this crisis or the issues that have been brought to light by the crisis. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, it's not limited to the crisis. And I mean, the government's always played a significant role in terms of the development of new technologies within the energy sector. But just to cite a recent example, the government with the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act has created a huge incentive for certain either renewable technologies or carbon capture technologies through the change in their 45Q tax incentive, which has basically doubled the amount that they are award for storing carbon underground. So the idea that it just feels like it's like a new period where the government is much more interventionist than it was in the past in markets. Yeah. So like I said, I think it's a really interesting project that I thought that we should highlight here. Yeah. I appreciate the opportunity to share it. So I have been busy with my project because I am presenting to the Foreign Policy Institute on Wednesday, and then I'm giving the same presentation a week later at the annual Political Science Conference in Montreal, such a hardship to have to go to Montreal. But basically, this project looks at the argument of China's asymmetrical trade relations. So a lot of people think and have made the case that because many other countries depend more on China for their export markets, then China depends on them, then that gives China the power to be able to use that to put pressure on those governments to make political decisions that they would like to influence. So I think I read somewhere that 152 nations of China is the number one trading partner, which is a lot. There's a lot, yeah. So I've looked at this question in different ways, and as I've talked a lot here or elsewhere, the rare earth minerals and why China was not able to use as monopoly of rare earth minerals to get Japan to capitulate on an issue that involved whether that Japan was going to prosecute a Chinese captain who ran into a trawler, whether they were going to prosecute that as a national case, thus denying the disputed territory of the Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands, or if they were going to treat it internationally. And everyone thinks that China won because Japan released the ship captain, but they'd already planned on releasing him and that released him three days earlier. But what I've been working on lately is looking at the bad missile crisis between China and South Korea in 2016. So to recap for people, that stands for terminal high altitude area defense. It is basically an anti-ballistic missile defense system designed to shoot down short, medium, and intermediate range ballistic missiles. So the idea is that this is to prevent missiles being launched from North Korea to be able to shoot those down. China's objection was that the sensors on this missile system could actually carry into Chinese territory and the sensitive information about China's military on its own soil. So the radar for these systems goes into Chinese territory or? Something like that. So the US first started pressuring South Korea in 2014, and it was in 2016, July of 2016, and South Korea actually agreed to this. It was kind of notable that when it surprised China because they thought that they had a sort of tacit deal with the South Korean president Park at the time that they would not do this, not give in to the United States. And I need to emphasize that South Korea at many points could have gotten out of the deal because it was only started to be built in March of 2017. And so it would seem like according to the asymmetrical trade that China would have a fairly easy time of putting enough economic pressure on South Korea. South Korea is a more medium-sized economy, and thus its trade dependence, which is this total trade with China as a percentage of GDP around 26 was about 14%, where with China the opposite is true and it's like under 4%. Now the argument is that essentially the least dependent state then knows that if you're going to economically pressure, and this is through informal sanctions, as I'll explain a little bit, then any cost to them is less. And so then they should be able to impose higher costs on the other country who will fill the pressure a lot more. Does that make sense? All right. So the ways you put economic pressure on the country is either through formal sanctions or informal sanctions. These are all considered informal sanctions because the government can claim deniability. It doesn't take responsibility for any of the direct actions, so use regulatory issues of why suddenly we're closing these latte supermarkets and stuff. Its boycotts are usually encouraged by official media channels, but not the government doesn't take responsibility for that. Also, there's a lot of pressuring on local leaders to actually carry out these sanctions, which is actually where it kind of goes wrong for China. So a lot of these punitive actions were in the realm of tourism. So there were a lot of restrictions placed on the tourist agencies to prevent Chinese citizens to vacation in South Korea, which is significant because so much of South Korea's tourism depends on Chinese. Altogether, the cost for South Korea was considered to be $7.5 billion, and I believe over half of that was tourism, and that is 0.5% of the country's GDP. So not insignificant. Yeah, that definitely would have hurt the... I mean, that's significant for the tourist industry within South Korea, I'm sure. Very much. And so for China, it was only $880 million. And so one of the assumptions about the asymmetrical trade argument is that how willing are you to bear costs as the country trying to put the pressure on them, right? Because the idea is that if China were willing to take a loss of $7.5 billion, it would be less of its GDP than South Korean's GDP. But what we see in this case is that China is very unwilling, this case and others, to go put sanctions on anything that would hurt itself. So it targeted tourism because tourism is something that Chinese tourists could go find other places to go, but it's also something like South Korea can't easily replace. The supermarket, those kind of goods are easily met by demand by domestic producers. But if it really wanted to hurt South Korea's economy, it would have gone after the semiconductor business, which provides a lot of semiconductors to the products being made in China. So it would have extracted a pretty high cost for China. And so it didn't go after any of those things. So its pressure was very muted, and this is one of the reasons why it just doesn't succeed. It's also hard to calculate the cost when you kind of just compare them on a national level. So this one study looked at Shan City, and which had a 3.61% of its GDP was dependent on South Korean trade. But even this sort of underestimates it because the city's economy largely revolves around the Samsung electronic semiconductor facility, which employs tens of thousands of people. It was a 10 billion project invested by Samsung, the largest ever foreign-funded project in this period of time. They were expanding, talking about a $10 billion expansion. So projects like these, the local governors went a long way to protect these projects, even though Shan's diplomatic ties were cut due to the party leadership directives. It was always available to Samsung executives. And then a year later, in October of 2017, South Korea and China agreed to resume normal diplomatic relations. And this was, so there's no change in the THAAD missile system? Zero change. So they didn't get anything, and how long was that? So that was in place for a year? So the whole process of it, so they announced the decision in the fall of 2016, July of 2016. Okay, July for the boycott of the South Korean tourism, we're going to South Korea. So it began in August of 2016. Then it was not sure that South Korea would continue to uphold that agreement. So actually things calmed down a little bit in December. And then it was in February that South Korea made definitive disagreement, land swap deal with latte and company, which is then what was targeted by Chinese. But it began installing it in March. And so the biggest activity they saw was in March and April. But even when it comes to latte as a product company, they really targeted the supermarkets, and that's what the company ended up having to close its stores. But as we know, latte is much bigger than that. So they have all these commercial properties where it's sort of like a mall. Right. And they have all those, I don't know how else to describe it. All those stayed open. And projects to build more of those were sometimes put on hold, but resumed as soon as normal relations resumed. So it's really striking that China goes to these sort of efforts and then fails completely, just does not gain anything. In fact, in the long term, they certainly lost soft power because before that, China was pretty popular with South Koreans. And then the views turned very against China and remained that way. Right. Well, how much is done for domestic consumption? Like, I don't know, the online nationalist, the Wolf Warriors are like up in arms saying, oh, we need to be tough. We need to, we can't let this that missile system. How much is done to just kind of appease the ardent nationalist to say, oh, we did something, then they forget about it, and then they just go back to normal? Is any of it like driven domestically grassroots? No. This was very top. They gained nothing in other words, like zero. They gained nothing. They gained zero. This is what's really important to the argument too, is just that people argue, well, China's authoritarian is the status system. So they're more likely to bear economic costs. And instead, China seems to be the opposite and very sensitive to any economic loss. And so one of the things I forgot to mention, when you have these provincial leaders, their chances of promotion depend on economic growth in their area. So that's why they were still focused on maintaining those links because they need growth in order to be considered for promotion. And these things will blow over eventually. Right? I mean, both sides know that. Yeah. So those are really notable constraints on China. So also what's important here is that certain directives may be from the central government, but it's the local government that actually makes a lot of its own foreign policy. So the ones that were economically interdependent with South Korea were they did official diplomatic relations, tourism, which was directed by the central government. But in every other way that they thwarted a lot of any pressure on other goods. Now, what a no real focused on China's side of it. But what did you look at kind of the South Korea side? Was there anticipation from China? Yeah, you targeted the tourism industry because it really won't have an impact on you or at least costly. But was there any hope that in a somehow business interest in South Korea would petition their own government to tamp in that? Not that they're going to change something as fundamental as national security, I wouldn't think. But was there any kind of perception or did they attempt any sort of lobbying or advocacy during that time? One of the papers I read kind of looked at that issue and it's complicated because of the Chaebol system where you have like five or six families that pretty much own businesses that cover every sector. So they'll have stores and they'll semiconductor plants and they will have all different parts of the economy. And so the study found on one hand that there was no effort to target specific Chaebol’s families who might influence. But it's difficult to differentiate because they all were affected in some way. But because maybe they should diversify even if one of the Chaebol's had some sort of tourist part impacted, the rest of their business was fine and small enough part. Exactly. So like I said, they didn't seem to target a particular one, but they would have had to have a much more diverse strategy to put pressure. So the thing is that China could have put more pressure, but it would have severely impacted its own economic growth and particularly things that it gets a lot from South Korea like semiconductors. So it's not just about numbers. And that's the really important thing is that you can't just say, oh, well, China's less dependent economically because if it lost access to semiconductors, that's not just about the economic loss of trade with South Korea, but it's about its larger ability to make the goods that relied on that. So I think that's why the argument is flawed in a lot of ways. Just thinking one, that an authoritarian country isn't sensitive to economic losses. I mean, that might be true, but that's not true in China. And then those items that they could put the most pressure on are ones that would cost them and the ways they do that, and then the localization of foreign policy. Yeah. And I think it's really interesting and unexplored, too. I mean, that argument's not really out there to that extent. A challenge to that extent. I mean, it's such a popular narrative. That's why everyone wants to decouple from China, which isn't happening, but it's this threat that China will use these goods to persuade. Yeah. That's widely accepted. I mean, especially the more the Japan example and re-earth minerals feel like that's even the average person. But what's important because I have those two case studies of China, I mean, China, Japan. And the second one, Japan in 2014 actually bears a lot of resemblance in the case to the Thad missile crisis. But I wanted to emphasize the Korean one because Japan is a very sizable economy, even though it's more dependent on China than vice versa. It's still a pretty large economy, whereas South Korea is a mid-sized economy and thus more vulnerable, at least theoretically, to China in many ways. What's also so fascinating is that imports to China actually increased by 14% in 2017. So despite this target of certain goods, certain consumer goods, luxury goods, that they actually increased what they were importing from Korea. This is actually a really strange result that I wouldn't have expected. Yeah. Not really interesting. So that is that. Let's go on to the news. Russian, who has turned on the news lately, has heard something about Ukraine's Southern offensive into the city of Kherson. So, Ryan, would you like to explain more about it? Sure. Just a little background. So Kherson is the capital of the southern province of the same name. And it was captured really early on during the war within the first week. And Russia has been in the process, and the reason Kherson is so strategic is it is kind of a staging area potentially for taking Odessa. And Odessa is critical for the Russian goals, essentially, of cutting off Ukraine permanently from Black Sea ports, which would be devastating for the Ukrainian economy. So in this process since March, Russia has been tightening its grip on the province. And it's done this through, similar to what you see in the eastern part, I mean, almost kind of ethnic cleansing. It's introducing a Russian curriculum in schools, offering Russian passports to residents, and preparing a fraudulent referendum to try to pave the annexation of the territory into Russia. So the Ukraine sees this as very strategic in order to recapture. It would really reshape the military geography of southern Ukraine. And as I mentioned, it would block that overland path to the Black Sea ports like Odessa, and maybe even threaten supply lines and Crimea. And I think even more than that is it would provide, it would be the first instance where Ukraine has gained since being invaded, you know, significant retaking to significant cities. It's had some success in retaking some villages and territory in the east. It's beginning to push kind of the south, but taking Kherson would be a huge symbolic and strategic victory for Ukraine. And would send the signal to its Western allies, US and EU that all of the funds and the sacrifices, you know, particularly in Europe around energy prices are worth it. But, you know, now that the Ukrainian military is supplied with sufficient offensive military equipment, particularly the high Mars mobile rocket artillery system that the US provided, that it has the capability to really punish Russian forces and force them back. So I think it'll be interesting seeing, you know, how this plays out over the coming months before winter, you know, if they're able to essentially divide the existing Russian forces around Kyrgyzstan, which is about 25,000 troops, and successfully retake the city. I think their goal is really to cut off half of the forces and force them to surrender as opposed to having to lay siege to the city. They're trying to keep the infrastructure in place. And I read that one of the concerns is that if they took the city, then Russia would just shell the city. And you would see the sort of humanitarian disasters that you saw in the early Russian initiatives. Yeah, that's the key, too, is whatever Ukraine takes in terms of territory, they have to be able to hold it over the winter period when things just become more difficult to kind of wage. And I think that's where the new equipment and being able to strike behind enemy lines will help Ukraine. But yeah, it's an open question whether they can do that. And then, you know, if they're able to be successful in Kherson, it opens up a lot more opportunities for them going forward, even to the point where they can strike Crimea directly and the Russian Black Sea Fleet. It could be a pivotal turning point for the whole war. It could. What I was reading and listening is that people were not necessarily overly optimistic that the full territory could be taken, but mainly that they felt like it was about softening provisions. And so it was making a difference, but it was unlikely to make the full strategic difference that a completely successful campaign would make. If you can take the same, I mean, the key is if you can block or make it much more difficult to take Odessa, then that's a huge win for the Ukraine. If you can't take further territory in the south, if you can block them and if you're forced into that negotiated position, you know, a year or two down the road, then at least you're in a stronger position. For sure. So Europe's energy crisis continues. And one thing that was recent development is that the G7 countries agreed to a plan that would cap the price on oil. So one of the problems that we've talked about very often is that while there are sanctions, the US and the EU have committed to not buying Russian oil, that it decreased supply and increased the price of oil so that Russian revenues are actually greater than they were before the war. So this has been floating around and certainly in foreign policy circles for a while, this idea that, well, sanctions just have this negative effect. So what you really need is to get the buyers to agree to only buy Russian oil for a particular price much, much lower than what they're receiving now. The trick to it is that all the main buyers of Russian oil have to agree to it. Yeah, because the, I mean, two of the bigger buyers currently, so China and India are already getting it at a pretty significant discount. So Russians are certainly getting less than the spot price is for it. But so much higher than proposals for like the price cap. Well, I don't think I, do you read something out there? Because that's one of the things they haven't nailed down. It's like, well, what are the prices going to be? Because they're currently, so Russian oil, the discount is about 30% for in terms of like what, India and China are paying. So what I've read as part of the proposals, I don't know that this is any part of the agreement was like $30 a barrel. Yeah, that's potentially, I mean, so the only thing that I've read is that they would propose something that's higher than Russia's cost of production. So there's actual incentive to produce and sell it, but lower than the global market rate. So that leaves a big range. I was going to look up what Russia's current cost of production, which I think they brought down a lot before is one of the world's higher cost of production. Well, that's where the $30 comes from. As they think the $30 is. Yeah. Well, that's low. I'd be surprised if it's that low. But if it's that low, that may be a stroke. That definitely be a struggle to get to something like that. I would think the baseline is what they're paying, what they're getting from India and China is like the de facto crude price, which is still an improvement, right? Because Europe is still buying the two million barrels of Russian oil. They're paying $100 a barrel or something close to that. So they would go to paying $60 a barrel. So you're still cutting off revenue from Russia through the agreement, assuming all the EU countries on board, which Hungary isn't, so that remains to be seen. So a lot of what I know about it originated from a foreign affairs article that was in April, I believe, April or May of the year. And we'll have it in the show notes. So the idea behind it is that India and China would want to join because they would be getting oil at a significant discount from even where they're getting it now. So it's like, oh, why wouldn't every country want to get Russian oil for $30 a barrel if it could? Because then that's going to make it a lot cheaper for everyone. That's the argument. I don't see it as being feasible. No, not at this price, as they were talking about. Yeah. I mean, it has to be significantly above for them to produce. I mean, you have to at least be in a 20% above. Clearly enough, yeah, that's when parts of the argument is that, well, Russia needs some income and so it will still keep producing at these prices. And honestly, everything that I read, the biggest thing was there's a lot of hand waving. There's a lot of hand waving, one, on the price mechanism, and then two, on the enforcement of the price mechanism. So that was the other interesting thing is it seems like they're relying on the fact that this is all targeting the seaborne shipment, so not the pipeline shipment. And all of these ships have to be insured. And everybody that owns or funds these shipments are Western backed institutions. So that's the idea of how you can influence the whole global trade of Russian oil is through the shipping and through this insurance thing. And they basically say, well, it'll be up to the maritime insurers to be tasked with the compliance. So they're actually buying and selling at the agreed upon price, whatever that is. But a lot of these details have been worked out. There's a lot hand waving. The insurance agencies say, no, I don't think we can do this. The EU is like, no, no, we'll make this so there's not burdensome on you. And sites say, oh, there'll be some sort of tracking system and then we'll do and blah, blah, blah, but it just seems like, OK, they don't appreciate the complexity of it or the enforcement of it. I swear this idea sounds exactly though. It hasn't advanced in feasibility or practicality. This article, it's called the Right Way to Sanction Russian Energy. It's by Edward Fishman and Chris Miller, period of May 17, 2022. And it literally is the argument that the G7 is making. And the whole point is you enforce it because of the insurance shipments. And that's how. So, yeah, so it's interesting because it sounds just like this proposal with... Yeah. And I think the interesting thing you've seen already is that Russia has kind of countered that move within days, going back to our favorite pipeline, Nord Stream, that we talked about last time. So Nord Stream 1 has gone down again for maintenance and is not coming back on. That was the big announcement. Essentially, they've cited a technical reason, but the manufacturer, the German company Siemens, has already said that it's not a valid technical reason. So it's clear that they're playing politics with this as punishment. And as a result, gas prices already very elevated in Europe. We're up another 30% last week on this news, which essentially is now the equivalent of over $400 per equivalent barrel of oil if gas is kind of converted to the oil price. And electricity itself, again, being affected because it's priced by the last marginal producer, which is often gas plants. Within Germany, for instance, where Nord Stream really impacts kind of their market most directly, daytime prices for electricity are up year over year from 60 euros per megawatt hour to 1,200 euros per megawatt hour. So here's... It's just astronomical. One thing I couldn't understand myself, which is how electricity is priced in Europe, because apparently it does not run proportional to the increases in oil price or gas price. So how is it so much higher? Even the percentage increase? The percentage increase? Yeah. I mean, I think it has to do... And I'm not an expert on this or understand... I mean, it almost seems like a deregulated market, but I don't think that's the case. It always reminds me of how the Texas utility function during their gas crisis and how high prices went. But yeah, it's like at least the spot prices for when the renewables fall off and you have to... In order to keep the electricity on, you're purchasing electricity on the spot market. So these are all these prices that we're quoting. So that's the last marginal producer. Why is so much higher than gas? I think it just reflects the shortage of gas. So it's being bid up even beyond what the average sales price is for gas that day. Because you need that, say like 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. to turn on your gas plant. You need this gas, but everybody else and every other utility needs this gas. So it's being bid up to this astronomical rate. Kind of get it? Because the gas is the only one you can flip the switch on and off. The whole bidding on the spot price is confusing to me. It's why they need to keep the nuclear plants on. Because you need that base load in the evening when the wind and solar dies off. Yeah. So this also goes to my point of why I've always felt this idea of a price gap on Russian oil to be unrealistic, because it's just assuming that Russia is just going to take it. That Russia just needs the revenue so much that it can't impose any penalty. And gas is a very easy place for it to propose to have penalty. Almost costless for them, yeah. Yeah. Because Europe is so dependent on it. And if Russia were to cut off all gas, there's just no way to make up for that totally. Yeah. I mean, the storage situation, I don't think that's changed so much even with, I mean, we'll see how long this complete shutoff of Nord Stream 1 is. I mean, that may change the calculus. But right now, European nations are really focused on trying to ease the pain, particularly for consumers. I know Germany has gotten pushed back because they're hoping out, they announced like a big 70 billion Euro plan targeting consumers, providing them subsidies. But industry is saying, hey, what about us? We're the ones that are going to go bankrupt because of these high energy prices. They're not really subsidized business, but they're very focused on consumers. And that's across the board. Most European countries, they've already allocated 300 billion so far this year, just trying to shield customers from these price shocks. So a couple of different things on that that I read about. One, if the winter is particularly cold, then will Germany be able to share energy with countries like Italy to protect the citizens while at the same time letting their foreign factories not have electricity? And that's the big question. Yeah. The big thing I read is the coordination is they have to work out on a continent, EU level, what is going to be shut down across different nations, a different interest. That alone sounds complicated and contentious as hell. They have a massive challenge. So that's where there could be possible dissension working in Putin's favor. So I was also reading that they have refilled their storage capacity to about 80%, but that's not going to be near enough if it's a particularly cold winter. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about that last time. It's like everything has to go right. I think the one good thing is there hasn't been any hurricanes, not going to wood. So the LNG shipments have been uninterrupted heading from the US. But yeah, the Nord Stream, I don't think that's going to affect some of that additional storage. I think their target is 85%. I think they're going to get there. But yeah, things have to go right. It has to be a relatively mild winter. Yeah. Which this isn't to say that Russia will completely cut off gas to Europe, but we can see how vulnerable it is and that it's a tool that Russia is willing to use. Yeah, definitely. Okay, on to Brazil's elections. So in October, Brazil will have its presidential election between the current president, Bolsonaro, and the former president, Lula de Silva, who goes by the name Lula. Polls have shown that Lula has a substantial lead over Bolsonaro. The most recent one showed 45% to 32%, and that's much nearer than earlier polls. Bolsonaro, you may have heard about many times he was a friend of Trump's, he tried to become as close to Trump as possible. His COVID strategy was often, Trump often referred to it because basically they had no COVID strategy and they just called it a small flu, which actually meant that led to Brazil having 10% of the global COVID deaths, even though they only have about 3% of the world's population. So basically, he is adapting a strategy to undermine the election process. He has also repeatedly gone on record to say that he will not accept a result in which he is not the winner and said, only God can remove me from office. Also notable, like Trump's movement, evangelical Christians form a very strong base. So there's obviously some political mistakes. Yeah, well, yeah, it's amazing the parallels between the guys. And even the whole tactic of months ahead, discrediting the election if he doesn't win, the whole challenging the voting machines, all of the Dominion voting systems here, it's like they just kind of feed off of where Trump provided him essentially kind of a political Right. And so he's referred to the tropical Trump. But what made me think is we talked about how organism was something that was exported or has been exported to a lot of countries and how to move your government to the right without being completely authoritarian, like it's authoritarian like. But in some ways, here we have we're exporting Trumpism. So one of the American exports is not democracy in this sense, but is anti-democratic. And so this is kind of also emphasizes the danger that this movement here poses globally. So one of the things that Bolsonaro has that Trump did not was the support of the military. And they have been very adamant into questioning the integrity of the voting machines. So basically a couple of days ago, they forced to deal with the election commission for security tests before and during the election. One of the disputes is over how many of the voting machines can you actually test during election day? Apparently, there have been agreements before, but should this go through, it would eliminate, it could possibly eliminate one of the main charges. But this military support of Bolsonaro, who is also in the military, sort of definitely has sparked the fears of a military coup, which is very resonant in Brazil because they were ruled by a military junta from 1964 to 1985. So Brazil's democracy is quite young. So the idea is that the courts are very unlikely to rule in Bolsonaro's favor in upending the election. So his strategy, again, like Trump, is to win the court a public opinion. And one of the dates to watch I found that was really interesting is September 7th, which is three days from today. And I guess you probably won't know what happens by the time this episode comes out. But one of the authors that I read said that Bolsonaro may be trying to initiate a Brazilian January 6th before the election and still after it. I don't think he gives very good support for this, but it will be interesting to see what happens on that day. Bolsonaro has invited thousands of his supporters to Rio de Janeiro to attend an event at Copa... But why can I not say that? It's like in a song. Copacabana. Yeah. Copacabana. Yeah. I know it's like a song. Why can't I say it? I'm just going to leave it in this way. The thing about this is that it will feature extensive participation by the military, including troops parachuting onto the shore, 29 cannon shots, and a procession of Navy boats. I don't fully understand the analogy here because the idea is, I mean, one of the things that saved American democracy is that the military did not support Trump in any sort of extralegal measures. But here at the event, a minimum will be seen by the Brazilian public as a decisive show of military support for the president, possibly setting the stage for a real showdown later on. Yeah. I mean, this is what Trump wanted. I mean, remember, Trump came back from Bastille Day in France. Right. Exactly. And then he was like, man, I want this, DOD, what can you do July 4th? I want these tanks rolling through the street, me looking like a 10-pot dictator that I am. So yeah, this alone, the fact that the military is participating in it, knowing that they're used as a political prop. Now in this same article, though, I did read there was an analysis of, I guess there's a PowerPoint presentation out there that looks at the individual generals within the Brazilian military, and I think the majority were assessed as they would support the constitution and not support Bolsonaro. But yeah, the author also indicated, though, that there was a need to do this. But you had to do that. It says a lot about this statement. Yeah. So I think it's, yeah, it was seen as, well, Brazilian institutions will probably hold up and be able to get him out of office, but it's an open question. It's definitely something that everyone should be paying attention to. So whether you know much about Brazil or are interested in elections in other countries, what happens here is going to be very important down the road. And hey, and it's full of drama, so you can pay attention to it for that reason, at least two. Yeah, yeah. Bolsonaro is a character. Yeah, I mean, Trump or Trump, that's... He's living up to it. But it's also, you know, it's really striking to me seeing the re-emergence of Lulu, who, you know, I remember having studied South America since my dissertation, his popularity should also come as in this context of this move left by all these South American countries that we've talked about. Yeah, and definitely, I mean, a backlash, I mean, I think a lot of it is the backlash to poor handling of COVID and all the economic fallout during the last couple of years with both in Colombia and in Brazil. That being said, I mean, Lulu is significantly diminished from where he left office because, you know, he was tied up in the whole scandal around Petrobras and the kickbacks that his party and government, I think he was at office at the time, but, you know, essentially they were convicted at a high level of funding billions of dollars to private donors and people within their country. He was in jail for a while. Thank you. He was turned over. His conviction. Yeah. It's amazing. It's not cleaned. It's not clean. You know, it's everything they, yeah, Trump wishes like Hillary and all that. It's very confusing that case. And I didn't have time to go into it more. A lot of people even at the time found that case to be kind of questionable in its prosecution and by who he was being prosecuted by. And that's a lot of how his conviction was related to condo specifically. Right. Yeah. Part of how it got overturned is the court that was. Was it like a jurisdiction issue? See that really is like, I mean, yeah, I don't know any detail. I'm just going by what we've read, but I would like to read more to understand. Yeah. I encourage everybody to do that. It's complicated. I don't, I don't have any defense. I don't know enough about it. I just remember at the time a lot of Latin America watchers were really unhappy about it and did think that this was more of a political prosecution, but that stands, I don't know the actual facts and how guilty or not guilty he is. Right. Yeah. At least one of those articles from any bias towards him, I think, you know, and the international community, the support for Lulu is that he's not the tropical Trump. He's not Bolsonaro. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think people prefer that, but it is also his popularity in Brazil has a lot to do with how successful Brazil was economically under the previous presidency. And I still think I think that the important shift to the left in South America has some effect on this as well. No, definitely interesting one to watch. Right. Last, but not least, we'll give just a quick summary of what's going on in Iraq and the violence that could be leading to a new civil war. Yeah. So, and I think just upfront, you know, wanted to provide a little background on Iraq because it's something at least, you know, for American audiences, we haven't paid much attention to since the pullout of the troops were the majority of the troops prior to the Trump administration. So towards the end of Obama. But you know, essentially since 2003, a lot of the drama that has fallen kind of Iraq is driven from kind of mistakes made by the US occupation. One was you took a Sunni minority that had ruled over Iraq for centuries and removed them from the power structure. So this is a whole deep authentication. So Saddam was part of the Baathist, the Sunni group, largely secular. So the US came in, barred the ruling elite from holding office and then also disbanded the military. So he created this huge number of young guys unemployed with so bad decisions all around. You know, from that period, you had the main occupation from 2003 to 2007. Here the power really shifted under the new constitution that the US put in place to the Shias who make up the majority of Iraq's population. And then for the first time, the Kurds, which had been protected in the prior period by US Air Force in northern Iraq, had gotten new independence. So the Shias, the Kurds now have the majority of power. During this time, you had the insurgency. This is followed by the surge where you were able to bring in the Sunnis that had previously been alienated and were providing part of the jihadists. And that really clamped down the violence to the point where Obama was able to kind of have the period of the large number of troops pull out, where we had up to 160,000 troops towards like 2007, 2008. And that gradually reduced probably by 2012 to 20 or 30,000. This is then when you had the rise of ISIS, which was a response to really kind of the corrupt Shia government of Nuri al-Maliki, who really turned against the Sunnis and the Kurds. Iraq had before had kind of a coalitional government where even if the majority Shia won the most votes, that the various offices within parliament and the presidential system were kind of split between these ethnic groups. So this really, this Maliki government really alienated the Sunnis to the point that led to the rise of ISIS. They of course conquered a third of the country. You saw the embarrassing collapse of Iraqi forces that were trained by the US during that time. And then that ultimately led to the US having to build a coalition. Just together with Iranian backed forces, this is the rare opportunity in the region where Iran and US are kind of on the same side. Fascinates me the most in reading about this was just the role of the Iranian backed groups and how much Iran plays into the foreign policy of Iraq. Oh yeah. Yeah. No, they're a huge factor and we're easily the ones who gain the most from their removal of Hussein and well, just the de-Baathification and the process that kind of resulted. Yeah. But in this rare instance, in the pushback against ISIS, Iran and the US are on the same side briefly. It led by the beginning of the Trump administration, the defeat of ISIS and brought us into kind of this current era. And there was a lot of hope built on. There was this idea of, okay, Iraq could come together. It successfully pushed out ISIS. And in 2018, there was a pivotal election where a coalition between the Shia cleric Al-Sadr, who if you remember from those old enough at the beginning of the occupation, Al-Sadr was the dude leading the insurgency against American troops. He's always been very strong nationalist and has been anti-US, but also anti-Iran. So he's actually was seen as the preferable person and the person kind of putting together a coalition as opposed to the strictly Iran backed coalition. I'd like to say that I'm old enough to remember and did not. Yeah. Now, I remember him, but maybe not the name, but yeah. So he's been very active in Iraqi politics for 20 years. So he put together kind of this coalition, which is interesting because it consisted of certain Shias, anti-Iranian Shias, secular Sunnis and communists, and they won the largest number of seats after beating in a Iran backed coalition called this coordination framework or COF, I think CF. Essentially this didn't really lead to any sort of stable system. You had a huge protest movement in October 2019, basically through July of 2021. And this was driven by the fact that deep corruption within the government, the average person wasn't seeing any improvement in terms of unemployment, in terms of services, and you still had huge foreign influence blaming both the US or the US is far more marginal, even though it still has 2,500 troops in Iraq, which I was surprised we had any troops. And obviously Iran probably is the bigger. So there's definitely been a pushback against Iranian influence. So this current crisis was really driven by an election that happened in October of last year. They had an early election. It was driven by this protest movement. They made a big change in the electoral law. After the election occurred. Yeah, there was a change afterwards, but there was a change. The two-thirds majority was afterwards. Yeah, yeah. Now I'm talking about there was a change in just how things were structured. It changed the number of districts. It is kind of a technical change, but it forced technically more what was hoped was going to be a more representative, more responsive government, less attuned to kind of these elites. Anyway, the emerging winner was Al-Sadr and his movement. And he tried to form a majority government, which was kind of unprecedented because like I mentioned before, they typically have an agreement where even the winning partner, their Shia, they would have like a Sunni prime minister and then somebody, a Kurdish foreign minister or whatever. They tried to kind of split the government. In this case, he had formed already a coalition with the Kurdish party and with Sunni allies. So he was trying to form a majority government. Like you would have an a normal parliamentary sort of approach. But then this is where the changes in the election system came in. He won the majority. So yeah, so he won 73 seats out of 300, but it was enough together with his Kurdish allies and his Sunni allies to form a majority, a simple 50% majority. But then in comes the Iran backed coalition CF and they apparently had enough control of the judicial system that they changed the rules then and say, well, no, instead of just needing 50% of the members of parliament, you need two thirds to form a government. And they also punished the Kurdish region by saying, well, you don't have control over the oil revenues produced in your territory. That all has to go to the federal government. So this led to a big protest movement. But it was what surprised, I think observers within politics was that Al-Sadr just asked his entire coalition to resign. So they gave up all of these seats, which then went to the CF, so the Iran backed coalition. But at the same time, they began to occupy his supporters, Al-Sadr supporters occupied the green zone, so where the central government and Baghdad is located. And this went on all summer and you had a series of kind of protests. Everything was mostly peaceful. But then Al-Sadr announces, hey, I'm done with this. I'm done with Iraqi politics and basically ordered his militias to attack. And so that's what we saw over 30 people killed, several hundred people injured. And it got really contentious because they were just trying to storm. I remember the very corrupt Al-Maliki who isolated kind of the Sunnis led to the rise of ISIS. Protesters tried to storm his residence and that led to kind of this pitch battle between the militia groups. But then surprisingly, Al-Sadr, after a couple days of this, ordered his forces to pull out completely from the green zone and that seemed in the immediate crisis. And this was kind of prompted by a betrayal within his own group. So this gets really, all of this is pretty complicated and involved. But remember, this is like two different Shia groups. So this is an intra-religious sort of contention. So that's also what's really notable about this. This is not sectarian. So much of the violence, especially in the beginning of Iraq, was Sunnis versus Shiites and such. But this isn't an inter-Shi'i sort of conflict. Yeah. So Al-Sadr actually isn't a spiritual leader. Instead his father was a spiritual leader. He kind of inherited, I guess, the political aspects that are common within Iran and Iraq around Shia leaders. But father's close friend was actually a spiritual leader of his movement, had stuck with him for 20 years. This name, Kadim Al-Hari, sent him a letter that was basically saying, Al-Sadr, you screwed up, you're a traitor. And actually told, this is the real shocking part, told his followers that I'm done being your spiritual leader, look to Khomeini, so the Iranian leader, which is crazy because Al-Sadr's whole brand is being anti-Iranian. His closest confidant and spiritual leader is saying, hey, follow Iran instead. This is why Americans have trouble keeping up with Iraq, even though we should because we were involved so much. But it gets really difficult to follow because that seems crazy. Like you said, there has to be a reason for it. But this requires a lot of research. And again, it seems really hard to follow. And I think the narrative, the clean narratives of at least kind of what I read and link kind of the article to, okay, yeah, Al-Sadr is strictly this anti-Iranian guy. So we don't like Iran, we should back this guy. But it's not always so straightforward. And even the CF, so the Iranian-backed coalition isn't necessarily like completely in the pocket of Iran. So it's this messy, complicated process. I like the Council of Foreign Relations guidance for the US is basically like, this place is a mess. US has its hands full with Russia and China. The best that we can provide guidance is continued political support for Al-Sadr and kind of building up for a new election. Because that seems to be the consistent avoid civil war. There has to be a new election. And this is basically trying to prevent Iranian consolidation. But also again, it goes back to, it's a simplistic interpretation that Al-Sadr is strictly anti-Iranian. Well, true, that's simplistic. But it seems then, I mean, from the perspective of the Kurds, the way that the CF is going, you know, they screwed over the Kurds. And I think the US should also be supportive. Yeah, if there's any group that was just aboard in Iraq, it should be the Kurds because they have been the most loyal allies in the region. Yeah, so confusing. I hadn't gotten to your final point. So as we were talking about this, and as I was reading it, I was like, how do you resolve this outcome? Because the fact that when you withdraw, like all your members of parliament, right? Now it's actually a common tactic when you want to dispute the legitimacy of elections before. So, I mean, so that's why in a lot of authoritarian regimes or countries that are sliding towards authoritarianism, you will often see one party just bow out completely because there won't be fair elections and they don't want it to look like, oh, people had a real choice between us and them. It seems more unusual to do this after the election, but it definitely is something to do if you want to initiate a political crisis and not allow the other government to rule legitimately. Yep. So I see how only a new election will resolve this. Yeah, and I think part of it was a power play to show that, you know, he clearly has full commander who is militia. He tells them to attack, they attack in force. He tells them to pull back, they pull back. So it was definitely a flexing on his part to show that he still has this, he's still committed power player within the area. I didn't read anything that was like, well, okay, this definitely seems like this is going to lead to a new election, or has to lead to a new election. Otherwise they're staring at a civil war. So I think that about covers it for today. Yeah, nice episode. All right. Well, that brings us to the end of this episode of Kellogg's Global Politics. You can visit our website at www.kelloggsglobalpolitics.com and follow us on Twitter @globalkellogg or me @arkellogg. You can also reach us by email, anita@kelloggsglobalpolitics.com and myself, ryan@kelloggsglobalpolitics.com. As always, please see the show notes for the articles we discussed in the episode and leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast provider. Bye, y'all. Bye....