Late-Week Updates, No 30

Slow news cycles in summer ? This week the contours of 2024 became visible

It is a beautiful summer out here on the west coast, but I am hearing lots of unhappiness from friends and relations in North and Western Europe where it has been cold and rainy. Yesterday torrential rains brought death and destruction to Slovenia. Whatever the temperature, this time of year the news cycle would generally be slow and in the not too distant past we used to refer to it as the ‘cucumber season’, but that is a Dutch term really. Anyway, this year it is not exactly a slow season for news and developments, so here we go.

Ukraine

It seems Ukraine is on the offensive and is finally making some real progress by recovering occupied territory. Maybe not at the speed everyone would like as the minefield enforced Russian defence network is strong. The other factor to be aware of is that summer may well be over before Zelensky will have made the decisive moves that he needs before another long and difficult winter sets in. So it is no surprise that the battlefield is widened with some innovative approaches, one of them being direct drone attacks deep into Russia, even Moscow is now a viable target. An improved ground situation will give Ukraine not only reclaimed territory, but political capital with western leaders who all face electorates that are increasingly disenchanted with the cost of this long war. In particular in the US where the incumbent and his challenger have very divergent opinions on continued support for Ukraine, which brings me to the next item.

US Politics

It was just this weekend that I was actually in the US discussing with family living there how Trump would march on and defy all the legal challenges thrown at him. A consensus is beginning to emerge that he has pretty much locked up the Republican nomination and that against a weak and unpopular Biden he now has a very decent chance to return to the White House. A poll this week has him tied with Joe Biden, numbers that came out on the day he was actually indicted for trying to unlawfully turnover the results of the 2020 election. He yesterday appeared in court in Washington, DC, to plead not guilty to the charges laid. Not a surprising move.

Now to be clear, these are fairly consequential charges, and let’s call them the ‘Election Turnover Charges’, in order to set them apart from the less serious indictment that deals with the attempted bribing of a porn star, the ‘Stormy Daniels Charges’. However both of these in my mind pale against the ‘Classified Documents Charges’ which deal with all the highly confidential national security paperwork which was found in multiple boxes at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. The latter one produced hard physical evidence that potentially exposed the national security of the US. Easier to prove one would think than the Election Turnover Charges, however Trump’s defence team (see photo) is putting up a risky ‘freedom of speech’ defence strategy. We will see how it will go, all three cases will go to trial as follows:

‘Stormy Daniels Charges’ in March 2024

‘Classified Documents Charges’ in May 2024

‘Election Turnover Charges’ to be determined but also likely sometime in 2024

So it all comes down to 2024, the election year. For Trump all legal proceedings will essentially become an integral part of the campaign and he will leverage these to the fullest extent possible making the case it is a political witch hunt. If you wonder if these legal issues should not prevent Trump from running, no, he is comfortably meeting the three key criteria for becoming a US president (older than 35, residing in the US for 14 years and born in US), all other considerations are up to the US electorate to decide on. A large chunk of that group will go along with whatever interpretation is being offered to them by the embattled former president.

End Times

The war in Ukraine and the polarization in the US and other western democracies are only part of what some may consider an unravelling of the world as we know it. It may be a stretch to consider it ‘end times’ but it is useful to better understand how we got here. This week I listened to this really engaging interview with Peter Turchin, a Russian-American scientist and mathematician who I have been following for a while. With his science background he is attempting to discover trends and patterns in history and while it will not allow us to predict the future - still quite impossible - it does give us the tools and understanding to get a better feel of what is ahead of us. Call it the science of uncovering trends. Turchin is not optimistic and he very clearly explains how the key factors that helped to create the Trump insurgency and win in 2020 are even more present now and that therefore the year 2024 may be a real breaking point for US democracy. Listen in, highly recommended.

Enjoy the summer, but keep your eyes on the news wherever you are. And watch the weather.