STOCKHOLM: To join or not to join? The NATO question is coming to a head this week in Finland and Sweden where Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shattered the long-held belief that remaining outside the military alliance was the best way to avoid trouble with their giant neighbor.
If Finland’s president and the governing Social Democrats in both countries come out in favor of accession in the next few days, NATO could soon add two members right on Russia’s doorstep.
That would be a historic development for the two Nordic countries: Sweden has avoided military alliances for more than 200 years, while Finland adopted neutrality after being defeated by the Soviet Union in World War II.
NATO membership was never seriously considered in Stockholm and Helsinki until Russian forces attacked Ukraine on Feb. 24. Virtually overnight, the conversation in both capitals shifted from “Why should we join?” to “How long does it take?”
Along with hard-nosed Ukrainian resistance and wide-ranging Western sanctions, it’s one of the most significant ways in which the invasion appears to have backfired on Russian President Vladimir Putin.
If Finland and Sweden join the alliance, Russia would find itself completely surrounded by NATO countries in the Baltic Sea and the Arctic.
“There is no going back to the status quo before the invasion,” said Heli Hautala, a Finnish diplomat previously posted to Moscow and a research fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.
Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, the Western leader who appeared to have the best rapport with Putin before the Ukraine war, is expected to announce his stance on NATO membership on Thursday. The governing Social Democratic parties in both countries are set to present their positions this weekend.
If their answer is “yes,” there would be robust majorities in both parliaments for NATO membership, paving the way for formal application procedures to begin right away.
The Finnish Social Democrats led by Prime Minister Sanna Marin are likely to join other parties in Finland in endorsing a NATO application. The situation in Sweden isn’t as clear.
The Swedish Social Democrats have always been staunchly committed to nonalignment, but party leader and Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson has said there’s a clear “before and after Feb. 24.”
The party’s women’s faction, led by Climate and Environment Minister Annika Strandhall, has come out against NATO membership.
“We believe that our interests are best served by being militarily nonaligned,” Strandhall told Swedish broadcaster TV4. “Traditionally, Sweden has been a strong voice for peace and disarmament.”
Neither Finland nor Sweden is planning a referendum, fearing it could become a prime target of Russian interference.
Sweden and Finland have sought — and received — assurances of support from the US and other NATO members in the application period should they seek membership.
Both countries feel they would be vulnerable in the interim, before they’re covered by the alliance’s one-for-all, all-for-one security guarantees.
The Kremlin has warned of “military and political repercussions” if the Swedes and Finns decide to join NATO.
Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president who is deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said last month it would force Moscow to strengthen its military presence in the Baltic region.
However, analysts say military action against the Nordic countries appears unlikely, given how bogged down Russian forces are in Ukraine.
Many of the Russian troops stationed near the 1,300-kilometer (830-mile) border with Finland were sent to Ukraine and have suffered “significant losses” there, Hautala said.
She said potential Russian countermeasures could include moving weapons systems closer to Finland, disinformation campaigns, cyberattacks, economic countermoves and steering migration toward the Russian-Finnish border, similar to what happened on Poland’s frontier with Belarus last year.
There are signs that Russia already has increased its focus on Sweden and Finland, with several airspace violations by Russian military aircraft reported in recent weeks and an apparent campaign in Moscow with posters depicting famous Swedes as Nazi sympathizers. Putin used similar tactics against Ukraine’s leaders before launching what the Kremlin called its “special military operation.”
After remaining firmly against membership for decades, public opinion in both countries shifted rapidly this year. Polls show more than 70 percent of Finns and about 50 percent of Swedes now favor joining.
The shocking scenes playing out in Ukraine made Finns draw the conclusion that “this could happen to us,” said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
During the Cold War, Finland stayed away from NATO to avoid provoking the Soviet Union, while Sweden already had a tradition of neutrality dating to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. But both countries built up robust conscription-based armed forces to counter any Soviet threat. Sweden even had a nuclear weapons program but scrapped it in the 1960s.
The threat of a conflict flared up in October 1981 when a Soviet submarine ran aground off the coast of southwestern Sweden. Eventually the sub was tugged back out to sea, ending a tense standoff between Swedish forces and a Soviet rescue fleet.
As Russia’s military power declined in the 1990s, Finland kept its guard high, while Sweden, considering a conflict with Russia increasingly unlikely, downsized its military and shifted its focus from territorial defense toward peacekeeping missions in faraway conflict zones.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 prompted the Swedes to reassess the security situation. They reintroduced conscription and started rebuilding defensive capabilities, including on the strategically important Baltic Sea island of Gotland.
Defense analysts say Finland and Sweden have modern and competent armed forces that would significantly boost NATO’s capabilities in Northern Europe. Finnish and Swedish forces train so often with NATO that they are essentially interoperable.
Adding new members typically takes months, because those decisions need to be ratified by all 30 NATO members. But in the case of Finland and Sweden, the accession process could be done “in a couple of weeks,” according to a NATO official who briefed reporters on condition that he not be identified because no application has been made by the two countries.
“These are not normal times,” he said.
Crucial NATO decisions expected in Finland, Sweden this week
https://arab.news/mpcb5
Crucial NATO decisions expected in Finland, Sweden this week
- Sweden has avoided military alliances for more than 200 years
- Finland adopted neutrality after being defeated by the Soviet Union in World War II
LVMH chief Bernard Arnault to testify in France spy trial
- Arnault is not accused of any wrongdoing in the trial after paying a 10 million euro settlement in 2021 to close a criminal probe into LVMH’s role in the case
PARIS: LVMH Chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault is set to testify at a Paris court on Thursday in the trial of France’s former spy chief Bernard Squarcini, a case that has cast light on the lengths to which the world’s biggest luxury group has allegedly gone to protect its image.
Squarcini, who headed France’s counter-intelligence services from 2008 to 2012, was later hired by LVMH as a security consultant, during which time he allegedly illegally collected information on private individuals and violated privacy laws while helping the company fight counterfeits and monitor left-wing activists planning to target the company with protests.
He is also charged with leaking classified information, interfering with justice and peddling influence.
Squarcini’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Arnault is not accused of any wrongdoing in the trial after paying a 10 million euro settlement in 2021 to close a criminal probe into LVMH’s role in the case.
He has said that the recruitment of Squarcini was conducted by Pierre Gode, his longtime right-hand man at LVMH who died in 2018, and that he was unaware of information allegedly collected by Squarcini, according to court documents.
However the two-week trial has thrust the billionaire into the spotlight at a time when his sprawling luxury empire is already navigating a downturn in the industry and a reshuffling of top management.
LVMH paid Squarcini’s consulting firm Kyrnos 2.2 million euros for services including allegedly searching the background of individuals suspected of counterfeiting luxury goods.
He also allegedly monitored Francois Ruffin, a French activist who is currently a politician, and members of his left-wing publication Fakir as they planned to disrupt an LVMH shareholder meeting and prepared their satirical, documentary film “Merci Patron.”
The film, which won the French Cesar award for best documentary in 2017, follows a family that lost their jobs at a supplier to LVMH.
Bernard Arnault’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Adani allegations shine spotlight on India’s clean energy conundrum
- The problem is that India’s states are unprepared for the rapid rise in renewable generating capacity, lack adequate transmission infrastructure and storage
NEW DELHI: Bribery allegations against Adani Group founder Gautam Adani have highlighted the growing problem India’s renewable energy developers face in finding buyers for the power they generate.
While India’s central government wants to shift away from polluting coal-fired generation toward solar and wind, officials say state government-owned power distribution companies responsible for keeping the lights on have dragged their heels over striking renewable purchase deals. US authorities allege that Indian billionaire Adani conspired to devise a $265 million scheme to bribe Indian state government officials to secure solar power supply deals, after one of his companies was unable to secure buyers for a $6 billion project for several years.
The Adani Group has denied the charges.
The conglomerate is not alone in facing increasingly long delays in signing up buyers for the renewable electricity capacity which is now being developed in coal-dependent India — the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
Coal accounted for 75 percent of India’s power generation during the year to the end of March, with renewables such as solar and wind, but not including hydro-electricity, making up about 12 percent.
India is still more than 10 percent short of its much-publicized pledge to add 175 gigawatts (GW) of renewable power by 2022.
That has led the federal government to ramp up bidding for renewable projects to meet an ambitious 2030 target of increasing its non-fossil fuel capacity to 500 gigawatts (GW). In the five years to March 2028 it plans to tender for more than four-times the capacity of renewable energy projects it commissioned in the preceding five.
To push states to help meet India’s overall goal, New Delhi in 2022 introduced so-called renewable purchase obligations (RPOs), which mandate that states increase clean energy adoption so that the national share doubles to 43.3 percent in March 2030.
Honouring these RPOs would require 20 of the 30 provinces monitored to more than double the share of green power in their electricity mix, a February report by government think-tank NITI Aayog showed.
The problem is that India’s states are unprepared for the rapid rise in renewable generating capacity, lack adequate transmission infrastructure and storage and would rather rely on fossil fuel for supply than risk “intermittent” renewables.
The challenges were stark in the case of Adani Green, India’s largest renewable energy company, which took nearly 3-1/2 years to strike supply deals with buyers for the entire 8 gigawatts (GW) of solar power capacity it won in a tender widely publicized as the country’s biggest.
DEMAND POOL
Yet setting targets for tenders and issuing contracts is “meaningless” so long as interest from power distribution companies is so low, said R. Srikanth, energy industry adviser and dean at India’s National Institute of Advanced Studies.
And the allegations against Adani are likely to result in a further renewables slowdown, as low-cost finance from foreign investors may become more difficult to secure, Srikanth said.
A change in the way some tenders are run has exacerbated delays in the time it takes to complete renewables projects. The tender won by Adani Green was the first major contract issued by state-run Solar Energy Corp. of India (SECI) without a state-guaranteed Power Purchase Agreement (PPA).
When announced in June 2019, SECI said buyers were guaranteed, but it withdrew the provision from the deal signed a year later.
SECI’s chairman told Reuters last month that a three-fold increase in tendering of renewable projects has left 30 GW of projects for which bidding is complete, but without buyers.
“You can’t expect the states to respond and start signing three times the power supply agreements,” R P Gupta told Reuters in an interview, adding that a “demand pool has to be created” and states had to be “sensitised” to renewables.
Brokerage JM Financial said that it now takes 8 to 10 months to sign power supply deals after a contract is awarded.
By comparison, companies that were awarded contracts between July 2018 and December 2020 needed around three months to strike supply deals, SECI data showed.
“The sudden surge in bids, large pipeline of projects under construction, mismatch in power demand and bid-pipeline ... and constraints in timely execution of projects are leading to delays in signing,” JM Financial said.
Renewable energy projects have also seen cancelations, with about 4 percent-5 percent of all tendered projects annulled, and backlogs in transmission infrastructure development, Gupta said.
One solution, said Rakesh Nath, former chairman of India’s Central Electricity Authority, would be knowing how much power buyers want before projects are bid for.
“Taking buyers into confidence before inviting bids may minimize delays in signing power supply agreements,” he said.
‘Anti-woke’ Americans hail death of DEI as another domino topples
- Conservative activists hailed 2023 as a landmark year in America’s never-ending culture wars
WASHINGTON: America’s largest private employer, Walmart, is the latest name to join a list of US businesses and institutions rethinking programs to bolster minority groups as support for progressive policies erodes.
Walmart said it will phase out the terms “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) and “Latinx,” end supplier diversity programs, shutter a racial equity center and pull out of a prominent gay rights index.
The announcement comes in the wake of similar moves by a string of prestige brands — from Ford, John Deere and Lowe’s to Harley-Davidson and Jack Daniel’s — reflecting a backlash against so-called political correctness in American public life.
The rightward shift is credited in part for populist Donald Trump’s White House comeback and for laying the groundwork for a 2023 Supreme Court ruling ending affirmative action in college admissions.
DEI initiatives aim to right historical discrimination but conservatives have long criticized them as unfairly targeting white people, particularly men, as well as being performative “virtue-signaling.”
Anti-DEI activist Robby Starbuck, who lobbied Walmart before its announcement, celebrated the “biggest win yet for our movement to end wokeness in corporate America” and noted that the company’s stock had risen 2.1 percent.
“Our movement is a force in the market. Go woke, go broke actually has meaning now,” he posted on X.
Starbuck, 35, told AFP in an interview before Trump’s November 5 victory over Democrat Kamala Harris — who was criticized for previous “woke” policy positions — that ordinary Americans were sick of inclusivity and diversity policies at US companies.
“People are entitled to their views, and we need to have a system that creates equal footing for everybody and doesn’t force any one ideology down everybody’s throats,” he said.
Emboldened by Trump’s campaign pledges to end “wokeness,” conservative groups have been filing numerous lawsuits targeting corporate and federal programs aimed at elevating minorities and women.
Trump himself focused mostly on political correctness that he says is infecting the nation’s classrooms, promising executive orders to cut federal funding schools pushing critical race theory and “transgender insanity.”
The president-elect has surrounded himself with anti-woke allies of all stripes, including his incoming deputy policy chief Stephen Miller, whose America First Legal group has targeted corporate diversity.
The military has been the main target of anti-woke crusaders in the US Congress, who argue that racial justice education and an obsession with climate change have made the troops go soft and driven a recruitment slump.
Republican lawmakers who spent much of the last congressional session locked in a war with Pentagon leaders on political-correctness were rewarded with Trump’s pick to lead the defense department’s workforce of three million — anti-DEI Fox News host Pete Hegseth.
Conservative activists hailed 2023 as a landmark year in America’s never-ending culture wars, when the conservative-majority Supreme Court ended affirmative action in university admissions, reversing a major gain of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.
Conservative groups pounced on the ruling to fight all manner of diversity programs in court.
And in March, the University of Florida ended DEI programs and related jobs as part of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s offensive against “woke ideology” — joining campuses in around a dozen other states.
Workers are divided on the merits of DEI, with a slowly-growing share saying their company pays too much attention to the issue — 19 percent in an October Pew Research Center poll compared with 14 percent in the same survey in February 2023.
But a new poll of 1,300 employees from business think tank The Conference Board, showed a robust 58 percent indicating that their organization devotes the appropriate level of effort on DEI.
“Leaders should focus on what really matters for their workforce amid the noise, as these initiatives are crucial for attracting and retaining current and future talent,” said Allan Schweyer, the group’s principal Researcher for human capital.
Global operation seizes 1,400 tons of drugs, unearths new Pacific trafficking route
- More than 1,400 tons of drugs seized, over 400 criminals arrested in global operation in October and November
- Operation “Orion” involved the US, Brazil, Spain, Netherlands and other nations, as well as multiple international organizations
- The seizure deprived drug cartels of more than $8.4 billion dollars, according to the Colombian Navy
BOGOTA: Authorities from dozens of countries seized 225 metric tons of cocaine in a six-week mega-operation where they unearthed a new Pacific trafficking route from South America to Australia, the Colombian Navy said Wednesday.
The latest phase of global naval operation “Orion” resulted in the seizure of more than 1,400 tons of drugs, including 225 tons of cocaine and 128 tons of marijuana, navy official Orlando Enrique Grisales told reporters.
More than 400 people were arrested in the operation targeting oceans, coasts, rivers and ports around the globe in October and November.
The massive bust involved the security agencies of the United States, Brazil, Spain, the Netherlands and several other nations, as well as multiple international organizations.
The seizure deprived drug cartels of more than $8.4 billion dollars, according to a Navy statement.
Grisales said officials also seized a semisubmersible wood-and-fiber glass vessel on its way to Australia with five tons of Colombian cocaine.
This was the third such vessel discovered in this area, revealing a “new route” of trafficking with sophisticated boats that can cover the distance of some 10,000 miles without needing to refuel.
A kilogram of cocaine is sold for up to $240,000 in Australia, said Grisales — about six times more than the price in the United States.
“It is a route that is becoming increasingly profitable because prices are much higher in Australia,” a security source told AFP.
“Initially, these boats were used mainly to take the drugs out of the country and move them off the coast of Colombia and then transfer them to ships,” added the source.
“It has been found that these semisubmersibles, sometimes even submersibles, are now increasingly sophisticated, with very fine engineering.”
The operation also uncovered previously-unknown alliances between cartels from Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru with groups from Europe and Oceania.
“It is not just a pyramid structure as the cartels once were. Today they are organized crime networks joined together,” said Grisales.
Colombia is the world’s biggest cocaine producer and exporter, mainly to the United States and Europe.
Last year, the South American country set a new record for cocaine production and cultivation of the coca leaf it is made from.
Under tariff threat, US wholesaler warns: ‘People will pay’
- No matter what happens in January, retailer Melquiades Flores says he has no option but to keep importing produce from Mexico
- The tomato-growing season in California lasts four months. The rest of the year, he gets the produce from Mexico
LOS ANGELES: While most of Los Angeles sleeps, 58-year-old Melquiades Flores starts his day at 1 a.m., supervising the unloading of produce at M&M Tomatoes and Chile Company, the wholesaler he started in 2019.
But the business that Flores hopes to pass to his children one day is bracing for a disruption.
US President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to impose a 25 percent tariff on all imports from Mexico and Canada when he takes office on Jan. 20, plus an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods.
“Produce of Mexico” is stamped on almost all the boxes of tomatoes and chilies that arrive at Flores’ downtown warehouse, destined for homes, hotels and restaurant kitchens across the city.
“People will have to pay a higher price. Whatever they charge us, we will pass on to the consumer,” Flores said from his section of the larger complex, the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market.
No matter what happens in January, Flores says he has no option but to keep importing produce from Mexico. The tomato-growing season in California lasts four months, from August to November, he says. The rest of the year, he gets the produce from the Mexican states of Sinaloa, Baja California and Sonora.
His team stacks boxes upon boxes of tomatoes in every size and shade of red, plus some shiny green ones for making zesty tomatillo sauce.
“Any tariff is an added tax that impacts all of us, including those who buy a pound, two pounds, or a thousand or 10,000 pounds,” said Flores, who has lived in Los Angeles for 40 years and is originally from the Mexican state of Morelos.
Trump has pronounced his love of tariffs, presumably for raising revenue and protecting US industries against imports, but he avoids speaking about the inflationary effect or the impact of potential retaliation from the United States’ top three trading partners.
Officials from Mexico, Canada and China and major industry groups have warned that the tariffs Trump proposes would harm the economies of all involved, cause inflation to spike and damage job markets.
“The president should have first seen how much this will impact everyone before speaking,” Flores said.
