🌍 What Poland’s election means

Hi there Intriguer. We’re constantly typing sentences we never thought we’d type. Like this one: a train full of politicians in the EU somehow took a wrong turn and ended up at Disneyland.

Today’s briefing is a 6 min read:

• 🇵🇱 What do Poland’s election results mean?

• 🚨 Intrigue’s latest take on Israel-Gaza.

• 🤝 What today’s BRI summit says about China-India ties. 

• ➕ Plus: The 1973 oil embargo, how the papers are covering the return of four Ukrainian children from Russia, and why folks in Mexico have been tweeting about the moon.

1. 🇰🇷 South Korea: Seoul’s new fighter jet, the KF-21, made its debut yesterday (Monday) at the Seoul International Aerospace & Defense Exhibition. South Korea’s defence sector has been expanding rapidly abroad, reaching $17B in exports for 2022, up from $7.25B in 2021.

2. 🇪🇺 EU: European gas prices have hit their highest peak since March amid concerns about tight global supplies and geopolitical turmoil. European countries have filled their gas supplies in preparation for winter, cushioning them against price rises.

3. 🇵🇭 Philippines: President Marcos Jr has discontinued the annual commemoration of his own father's toppling as an official holiday. Marcos Sr ruled the Philippines for two decades before being ousted amid mass peaceful protests in 1986.

4. 🇨🇱 Chile: President Gabriel Boric met his Chinese counterpart on Sunday during his first visit to China since Boric won Chile’s 2021 election. His priorities include a project that would connect Chile’s port city of Valparaiso to Shanghai via submarine fibre-optic cables.

5. 🇲🇱 Mali: The UN has warned that a spike in tensions in northern Mali could complicate the withdrawal of its 13,000 peacekeeping troops. Malian authorities have ruled out extending the UN’s 31 December withdrawal deadline.

🇵🇱 Poland | Politics

Poland’s election averts EU collision course

Polish opposition leader Donald Tusk (ex prime minister and president of the European Council) is set to return as leader after last Sunday’s elections.

But it could take a few weeks.

The ruling, right-leaning Law & Justice party actually won the most votes (~36%), so it’ll technically have the first shot at forming a government.

But it’s the second-placed Tusk and his centrist Civic Coalition of parties who actually have the numbers in parliament to form a government.

A Civic Coalition government would mark a pretty significant shift:

1. 🇪🇺 Warsaw has long criticised the EU and bristled at its accusations of democratic backsliding. But Tusk, well-known in Brussels, is pledging a new approach that could unlock billions in frozen EU aid

2. 🇭🇺 Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is set to lose a fellow EU sceptic who frequently joined efforts to stymie EU resolutions, and

3. 🇺🇦 Ukraine will now breathe a sigh of relief after Poland’s significant aid to its war-torn neighbour emerged as a thorny campaign issue.

This election saw a broad spectrum of parties offering some starkly different visions for Poland. So things often got heated, driving more folks to the polls (74%) than the 63% who turned out to topple communism in 1989.

Intrigue's take: Zooming out, it’s not easy to place Poland’s election neatly within broader regional trends: for example, voters in Italy, Greece and Finland have all recently moved towards the right.

But Poland’s results do confirm another trend: out of the eleven European elections this year, the incumbent party has suffered real setbacks in six.

And to us, this suggests governments of every shape are struggling with a formidable in-tray right now, and voters are holding them accountable.

Also worth noting:

• The Organization for Security & Co-operation in Europe says Poland’s opposition faced a pro-government public media bias.

• Poland’s president and constitutional court have ties to the outgoing party and will retain authority to block legislation.

📰 How newspapers covered…

The return of four Ukrainian children from Russia

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Israel-Gaza

If we were in the room…

Israel has vowed to “completely destroy” Hamas. So here are just two scenarios that might play out, and the questions we’d be asking if we were ‘in the room’.

1. ‘Get in, get out’

• The longer the offensive drags on, the more it benefits Hamas. As conditions in Gaza deteriorate, Israel will come under growing pressure to withdraw, while the risk of a regional escalation rises.

• So Israel may seek a short, sharp ground offensive to root out Hamas leaders beyond the reach of targeted airstrikes (like the one that reportedly just killed Hamas political leader, Osama al-Mazini).

• But Hamas will deploy every asymmetry to its advantage – tunnels, hostages, civilians – to maximise Israel’s operational and reputational costs. And that’ll make the complete defeat of Hamas difficult.

2. Occupy until Hamas is ‘completely destroyed’

• This would mean a longer-term occupation with more responsibility (willingly or not) for Gaza’s humanitarian needs; it’s one thing to invade, another to try to govern, and still another while also pursuing Hamas.

• And there’s still no guarantee Hamas would be destroyed. Urban fighting will favour Hamas, with Israel’s costs rising as it fights door-to-door while the world watches on in high-def.

• And what happens after Hamas is gone? Israel might hope any disarmament and deterrence is long-lasting, but history suggests a new, freshly radicalised generation will emerge and fill any power vacuum.

Final thought: There truly are no ‘good’ options here, but even President Biden thinks option two above “would be a big mistake”. So option one may be more likely. Biden himself will visit Israel tomorrow (Wednesday), and we assess he’ll publicly support Israel while privately cautioning about the limited but growing risk of all this escalating into a broader regional conflict.

And either way, it’s hard to imagine Israel making a move until Biden’s departed.

🤝 China | Geopolitics

Does anyone lead the Global South?

A guest piece by Neil Thomas, Asia Society Policy Institute

China hosts the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing today (Tuesday) and tomorrow. It marks a decade of President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to boost Chinese leadership through infrastructure investments across the Global South. Notably absent will be India, Asia’s other population behemoth, which also increasingly regards itself as a great power.

A nice idea. Greater cooperation between Global South countries could help to elevate economic development as a priority for Western countries and reform global governance institutions like the United Nations to be more representative of and responsive to the developing world.

But still far off. The BRI forum is being overshadowed by the war between Israel and Hamas. Neither China nor India have figured prominently in the international response, showing the regional limits of their influence compared to the United States, whose military and security footprint affords it a greater relevance (for good and for ill) across the world.

And for China, economic woes and foreign pushback have in recent years led Xi to downgrade the BRI’s focus to “small but beautiful” projects.

Importantly, the chances of a truly united Global South are slim. Conversations with Indian scholars and policy advisors on a recent trip to New Delhi, for a conference run by the Organisation for Research on China and Asia, yielded several insights into the degree of strategic scepticism there is toward Beijing:

• The Indian government and strategic community are more focused on the China threat than even on old foe Pakistan, especially after fatal clashes on the disputed Sino-Indian border in 2020.

• New Delhi views border troubles as the central issue of bilateral relations, while Beijing wants to isolate boundary issues and focus on rebuilding economic and political cooperation.

• India uses its membership of ‘China-led’ Global South groupings like BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to hinder Beijing’s ability to use them to build a Chinese-led international order.

Neil Thomas is a Fellow on Chinese Politics at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. He’s on Twitter @neilthomas123.

🎧 Today on Intrigue Outloud

Why did so many incumbents lose elections this weekend?

➕ Extra Intrigue

Here’s what folks around the world have been tweeting about

• 🇫🇮 Finns were tweeting about "Martti Ahtisaari”, their former president and Nobel Peace Laureate who died at age 86 on Monday.

• 🇲🇽 People in Mexico were using #ElEclipse over the weekend after a total solar eclipse fanned out across the Americas.

• 🇦🇺 “X” was trending in Australia, after regulators there fined the company USD400k for not answering questions on child protection.

🗳️ Poll time!

📜 Today in history

50 years ago today, the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed a 5% cut in oil production, followed by a total oil embargo against the US a few days later. The announcement came in retaliation for Washington’s support towards Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

Yesterday’s poll: In honour of World Food Day (today), what do you think is the best bread?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🥖 Baguette (40%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇨🇴 Pan de queso (3%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇲🇾 Roti canai (5%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🥙 Pita (4%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇮🇳 Naan (16%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇮🇹 Focaccia (12%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🥯 Bagels (9%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✍️ Other (write in!) (9%)

Your two cents:

• ✍️ M: “Any fresh bread straight from the oven/stove.”

• Honourable mentions: Sourdough, Portuguese Sweet Bread, Bolillo, Filão Quente com Manteiga, Maraqueta, Challah, Rye, and Sinigang.

• Bonus extra! A Hungarian techno tune about bread has amassed more than 1.5 million views on YouTube (thanks for the submission S.K!)