The Wicked Wells of EastMed
Massachusetts holds a primary while Turkey and Greece throw elbows | #TC82
Welcome to Third Cultured, an international politics and LGBTQ+ culture newsletter, written by yours truly, Kyle Borland. Reach out with feedback, suggestions, tips, and ideas at kgborland23@gmail.com.
My goal is to create an engaged community informed about foreign affairs – the messy politics of our planet – while understanding the unique role Queer people play in the US and the world-at-large. I hope that’s you!
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This edition:
Alex Morse and the Massachusetts Primary
Intra-NATO Squabbling in the Eastern Med (Part 1)
Hot Spots
Alex Morse and the Massachusetts Primary
Two of the most consequential races in the country will be decided today as Massachusetts voters go to the polls. Both contests – Senator Ed Markey’s re-election campaign vs Joe Kennedy III and Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse’s challenge against 15-term incumbent Richie Neal (MA–01) – have morphed into referendums on the current state of the Democratic party. Senator Markey, who has never lost an election, is one of the most progressive US senators and and Kennedy is the latest scion from the revered Democratic dynasty that’s never lost an election in Massachusetts. Party heavyweights like Speaker Pelosi and AOC have endorsed Kennedy and Markey, respectively, drawing clear lines in the sand (even at the expense of Pelosi’s supposed “allegiance” to incumbents). Markey went from down by 14 points to up by 12 points going into today’s election, so fingers crossed Massholes give old money entitlement a well-earned kick in the rear.
Alex Morse faces more of an uphill climb today.
Despite raising $1 million in August alone and amassing marquee progressive endorsements, the Neal campaign and its well-funded allies have continued to push debunked smears against Morse. They went as far as to “accidentally” run a blatantly homophobic attack ad across any broadcast that would play it. Even after “apologizing” and saying they planned to take the ad down – it continues to run.
It’s safe to say Neal’s camp was shaken by Morse’s fundraising and polls showing him within five-percent. He even called in an endorsement from Speaker Pelosi, which earned Morse the coveted public backing of AOC (and all the people power she controls). According to the Morse campaign, since polls revealed the mayor closed the gap, corporate establishment groups have spent over $1 million dollars on ads alone, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by right-leaning dark money groups to run negative ads against Morse.
For both of these races, it’s in the voters hands now. However, as a gay man already disaffected with the Democratic Party, I will be watching the results closely tonight. The Morse-Neal race turned so ugly and revealed the depths established corporate interests will dive in order to secure its grip on power. I hope the Democrats of Massachusetts, particularly in the 1st congressional district, show us there is still some sliver of a progressive future within the Party (and this fascist country). I’m looking to them to show me that unsubstantiated homophobic slander doesn’t work in 2020.
I hope they don’t let me down.
Intra-NATO Squabbling in the Eastern Med (Part 1)
As turbulent as things are in the US, the Eastern Mediterranean is even more chaotic.
Regional rivals and self-interested great powers are duking it out for control over the 122.4 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas discovered over the past decade in Eastern Mediterranean waters. Egypt is the dominant player given its control of the supergiant Zohr field with total reserves at 75.5 trillion cubic feet, but Israel’s Leviathan and Tamar fields also turned Jerusalem into a regional energy power. Both nations, along with the Republic of Cyprus, Greece, and Italy, support the construction of a $7 billion subsea EastMed gas pipeline to Italy that will funnel the region’s gas to Europe’s massive market. (Graphic: European Council on Foreign Relations)
That all sounds well and good until you remember it isolates the biggest geographic player in the region: Turkey.
Determined not to be kicked out of its own backyard, Ankara blocked the proposed pipeline’s path in November 2019 by delineating its maritime border with Libya (in exchange for substantial military support in Tripoli’s civil war, but we’ll get to that in a bit). Turkey is motivated to promote its Trans-Anatolian Pipeline, opened in 2018, which carries gas from the Shah Deniz field in Azerbaijan to Europe and hoping to expand its capacity. In addition to blocking the flow of its competitors’ vast resources, one of Ankara’s primary goals is to expedite the transition from pipeline to tankers as the primary form of transportation for natural gas (following in oil’s footsteps). In doing so, position Turkey as the indispensable piece of the region’s energy infrastructure.
Since the Bosporus is already overcrowded with shipping traffic – more than 41,000 vessels used the strait in 2019, more than the Suez and Panama canals combined –President Erdogan proposed the $25 billion Canal Istanbul, a 28-mile megaproject just 18 miles east of the Bosporus to create a second link between the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara. Most vitally, if completed by 2025, the canal would provide an expedited shipping channel for natural gas tankers, earning Turkey lucrative canal transit fees (much higher than pipeline fees) from natural gas powerhouses like Qatar and the US.
However, even with Turkey’s recent discovery of the 11.3 trillion-cubic-foot Sakarya gas field in the Black Sea, it is a long way from energy independence. In 2019, the country spent $41 billion on energy imports. Given Turkey’s obvious energy insecurity and its ongoing economic instability, it’s no surprise Ankara gets more belligerent and untrustworthy by the day.
In the case of Cyprus, a long standing regional feud, Greek and Turkish frigates collided two weeks ago while shadowing Ankara’s Oruc Reis oil and gas survey vessel. Greece claims the survey vessel was in contested waters following Egypt and Greece’s recent agreement that counters Libya and Turkey’s own maritime agreement from 2019. Last Thursday, Turkey’s defense ministry said Turkish F-16 jets stopped six Greek F-16s from entering an area where Turkey was operating. Over the weekend, despite threats from Brussels of EU sanctions on Ankara, both NATO allies promised to perform military drills in the next two weeks in response to conflicting claims about the extent of their continental shelves. Greece will be joined by France, Italy, and Cyprus in its drills as the EU looks to show a united front against Turkish aggression.
Even given Greece’s strong legal argument – strong agreements with Egypt and Italy backed by the EU – it is unlikely Turkey will come to the negotiating table.
If this was the only cookie jar that Turkey had its hand in, then maybe we could expect more restraint from Ankara. We need only look at the situations in Libya and Syria to see that Turkey’s aspirations don’t lie solely in energy geopolitics. Ankara is determined to re-assert itself as a regional power that is able to go toe-to-toe with Russia, the GCC, Israel, and even the US. With the reclassification of Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, many see this assertiveness as a form of “neo-Ottomanism”, but that fundamentally misunderstands 21st Century Turkey. Truthfully, many of the West’s international quagmires are started because of its inability to see modern nations (China, Russia, and Iran to name a few) as what they are and not the historical boogeymen our Eurocentric history built them up to be.
I think I’ll leave off for there for now. The Eastern Mediterranean is a hot mess at the moment and to properly do it justify will take a couple of posts. Next up, I’ll go over the brewing Battle of Sirte that may very well decide the six-and-half-year Libyan Civil War and we’ll check-in on the almost decade-long Syrian Civil War. There are a lot of the same players in both, with the common factor of the US doing the shrug emoji in each situation, and it all smashes together to create one of the most tense regions in the world. Which is saying something in 2020.
Stay safe and healthy, beautiful people. And, thanks for reading.
xoxo,
Kyle (@kgborland)
PS – Some great reads worth your time.
Allen Ginsberg at the End of America (The Paris Review)
Four Ways to Escape a Sex Panic (Boston Review)
How Chadwick Boseman Embodies Black Male Dignity (NYT) – Rest in power.
In Life as in Mythology, Greece is a Place of Frustrated Migrations (LitHub)
Hot Spots
1,201: Cumulative COVID cases for students, faculty, and staff at The University of Alabama after one week of students returning to campus and Tuscaloosa, one of the largest collegiate outbreaks nationwide. On the other side of the coin, Coach Saban joined the Crimson Tide players in a social justice march to Malone-Hood Plaza, the same auditorium George Wallace infamously attempted to block Vivian Malone and James Hood from enrolling and promised: "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” (What can I say? My alma mater is one of many contrasts.)
1,025: Transgressions along the China-India border ramped up between 2016-2019, with approximately 1,025 transgressions.
534,731: More than 500,000 mail-in ballots were disqualified in 23 states during the 2020 primary season, including 60,460 in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin where President Trump won in 2016 by roughly 80,000 votes.
Belarus: Always one to fear the spread of a neighbor’s instability, Putin threatened to intervene militarily on Lukashenko’s behalf in order to help quell the nation’s unrest. In response, the EU sanctioned 20 senior Belarusian foreign ministers suspected of involvement in election fraud and a brutal crackdown against protesters
Espionage: Former Army Green Beret Peter Rafael Dzibinski Debbins was charged with espionage activity for Russia between 1996–2011. Another case this month in Hawaii charged a former CIA officer with spying for China.
Glass houses: the Evangelical Falwell dynasty of Liberty University fell from grace.
Hong Kong: A 33-year-old man became the first documented COVID reinfection.
Iran: Tehran’s Atomic Energy Organization declared the explosion at the Natanz uranium enrichment site “sabotage,” likely at the hands of Israel and the US. Relatedly, the IAEA will be allowed to inspect two of Iran’s nuclear facilities where it allegedly violated 2015’s JCPOA.
Iraq: The US-led coalition withdrew from its eighth Iraqi base, and President Trump announced troop numbers would be reduced to 3,500 (from 5,200) by November.
Japan: The nation’s longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, resigned from his position on Friday because of deteriorating health conditions. Abe was the force behind the concept of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” now championed by official US strategy, as well as the pioneer of the “the Quad” strategic framework between Japan, Australia, India, and the US.
Mali: Leaders from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) bloc met with military officers led by Colonel Assimi Goita calling themselves the, “National Committee for the Salvation of the People,” to discuss the sanctions imposed after last week’s coup, including the suspension of trade and border closures. Despite promising swift elections, the officers’ published plan calls for three years of military rule before any transition to a civilian government which ECOWAS and France rejected outright, and demanded elections with one year. As a sign of the progress in negotiations, the military released the nation’s captive president to fulfill one of ECOWAS’ conditions for sanction relief.
South China Sea: The US blacklisted an additional 24 Chinese companies for their roles in the CCP’s island-building in the SCS. One company in particular, the China Communications Construction Company’s, will see ripple effects throughout the region as CCCC is involved in 923 projects in 127 countries. In retaliation for the sanctions and the increasing presence of US warplanes in the region, Beijing fired an “aircraft-carrier killer” missile into the SCS as a warning to the US and to show its capability to engage on three fronts at once (Taiwan, Japan, and the US). The Philippines lodged a formal diplomatic complaint against China after its coast guard illegally confiscated fishing vessels from Filipino fisherman in the Scarborough Shoal, a disputed lagoon within Manila’s exclusive economic zone that Beijing seized in 2012. (Manila even declared it “needs” the US presence in Asia for the “balance of power situation.”) Similarly, Vietnam complained last week about Chinese bombers on the Paracel islands. Beijing claims historic sovereignty over the SCS in its entirety, which is disputed by ownership claims from Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Unphased, Xi is preparing to resurrect “Party Chairman” title for himself, but may also formalize his preferred “People’s Leader Xi” as an equivalent to Chairman Mao.
Syria: US troops were injured in a collision with a Russian patrol vehicles in Syria, underscoring the risk of overlapping great power military presences without clear objectives.
Wisconsin: Kenosha police fired seven shots into the back of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man who was trying to break up a fight between two women. In the protests that followed suit, the rise of vigilante violence reached a watershed moment this week when a 17-year old terrorist named Kyle Rittenhouse – a self-described militia member linked to a group called the Kenosha Guard – shot and killed two protesters, and injured a third. The support the vigilante received following his murders, even from the cops themselves after being arrested, shows the fascist reality every American finds themselves in today. Trump was warned about right-wing terrorism, but ignored everyone. Young Black boys can’t play with toy guns on a playground without being shot in under 12 seconds, but white teenagers can walk through the street armed with an assault rifle, murder, and be hailed as a hero. This is fascism, and it’s gonna get worse before it gets worse.
Xinjiang: BuzzFeed News revealed new evidence of the CCP’s re-education camps for Uighurs in Xinjiang. Both Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of Buzzfeed’s investigation are worth your time. Even with COVID lockdowns, Xinjiang has faced harsher scrutiny and punishment than any other region of China. Similar but not related, Biden declared China’s actions “genocide” after receiving word that the Trump administration was planning to formally do the same.
In the most extensive investigation of China’s internment camp system ever done using publicly available satellite images, coupled with dozens of interviews with former detainees, BuzzFeed News identified more than 260 structures built since 2017 and bearing the hallmarks of fortified detention compounds. There is at least one in nearly every county in the far-west region of Xinjiang. During that time, the investigation shows, China has established a sprawling system to detain and incarcerate hundreds of thousands of Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other Muslim minorities, in what is already the largest-scale detention of ethnic and religious minorities since World War II.
These forbidding facilities — including several built or significantly expanded within the last year — are part of the government’s unprecedented campaign of mass detention of more than a million people, which began in late 2016.
