UN Meets in Tense Times, Pager Explosions Rattle Hezbollah, Biden’s Last Quad Summit, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, the annual UN General Assembly debates take place amid global turbulence. Hezbollah reels from unusual and shocking attacks from explosive pagers. And, President Biden hosts his last Quad Summit. It's September 19th, 2024, and time for The World Next Week.
I am Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins. Well, Bob, let's start in New York where I live, and I am not today, with the UN General Assembly high-level debate, which spells an enormous amount of traffic and, we hope, some interesting events. Can we expect any big speeches, or at least some performance art from the podium?

MCMAHON:
Yeah, the performance art is rarely telegraphed ahead of time, so it means you have to sometimes sit through some forty to fifty minute speeches. Or in the famous case of Fidel Castro, four-hour speech. Although in the case of Castro, he was somebody that people would watch just to see how far he would go sometimes. Or Gaddafi.

ROBBINS:
Although not historically the longest speech, but we can talk about that someday.

MCMAHON:
Yes. What will be of interest this year, comings and goings. The last UN address of Joe Biden, where he just seemed like yesterday coming to say the U.S. was back multilaterally, and he laid out all sorts of markers. We'll get back to him in a second.

There will be the first UN address by the new Iranian president, Pezeshkian, who has been making overtures towards reviving the Iranian nuclear deal, as well as opening up the country's economy. Even amid reports that Iran is beefing up its missile deals to Russia, which Iran denies, or certainly been backing its axis of resistance countering Israel. That will be interesting, because it's on the same day as Biden. It's the afternoon of the speech. Biden is going to speak early in the session on the first day on Tuesday.

A couple days later, there will be a scheduled speech by Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, which promises to be a doozy. There will also be the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, speaking that same day. That will be interesting. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is scheduled to speak as well. On day two, though, Vladimir Putin, as usual will not be representing Russia. He'll be sending his foreign minister. Putin has not appeared at the UN podium since 2015.

ROBBINS:
Wow, since 2015. Really?

MCMAHON:
Yeah.

ROBBINS:
And he wasn't even under an indictment in those days. Pezeshkian should be quite interesting, because is he a reformist? Isn't he a reformist? Given everything that's going on in the Middle East, and all the deaths, is he going to get up there and make some offers, or is he going to hew to the tougher line? I think that's probably the one that I'm most looking for. Zelenskyy is obviously quite unhappy with the UN, which is a question I want to ask you about.

Israel, Netanyahu, of course, the General Assembly has just really taken them to the woodshed in a really basic way this week. Almost nobody voting in defense of Israel's occupation anymore. They have no friends left. I would suspect he's going to be pretty in their face. And Abbas, does he still have it? He's really old, and does not seem to be much of a player. I suppose people are going to be watching that one pretty closely to see whether there's any leadership there. Because of course the Americans want the Palestinian PA to be a renewed PA, a reformed PA, a revised PA, to take over leadership if there's ever some sort of a peace deal in Gaza. Who is Abbas? Where is Abbas? I think there's a lot to watch there.

One of the questions, and I'm hearing this from my students, who actually are believers in the UN, in part, they come to my program because our school, Baruch, is so close to the UN, but they are very frustrated because the UN has been unable to do anything to stop the war in Gaza. They've been unable to do anything to stop the war in Ukraine. They ask a very legitimate question that a lot of people are going to be asking: why should we even pay any attention?

MCMAHON:
Yeah. It's a question that comes up, and comes up appropriately every year. It seems to be much more to the point this year, given everything going on in the world, and the somewhat marginal role, really, the UN seems to be playing, especially in the two really big conflicts, the Israel-Hamas and Russia-Ukraine. It did play some mediating role in opening up some sea lanes for Ukrainian grain, temporarily. That was Secretary-General Guterres, but Turkey also played a really important role there. And then Ukraine then ended up taking matters into its own hands, and has been delivering its grain in its own fashion without the help of any intermediaries.

You have Russia sitting on the UN Security Council, and routinely quashing any effort to provide serious scrutiny of its invasion of Ukraine and its conduct of that war. And in a different way, but also drawing comparisons, is the U.S. defense of Israel, and efforts in the Security Council and other UN bodies to try to bring about a cease-fire. Since Israeli actions, again, responding to the brutal Hamas attacks of October 7th, almost a year ago, but what a number of observers, especially UN agencies say has been a disproportionate response that's been killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

There seems to be a keen desire to bring that to an end once and for all. It is still proving elusive. The U.S. has been trying to drive through some sort of an agreement, painstakingly, and it's proving to be a really tough one. And it continues to be this major concern, which we'll address it a little bit later in the podcast, about a real escalation, region-wide escalation of conflict in the Middle East, which is confounding the UN. The UN still plays a really important humanitarian role. It is a chief provider of aid to Palestinian refugees. There's still a UN peacekeeping contingent in Lebanon, which is in kind of a fraught moment right now. But it's a reminder that even as it's marginalized, the UN system is a place where countries end up coming back to again and again, even when they tend to skirt it for other reasons, especially in terms of the UN political response, because they need it. They need its agencies, they need its humanitarian help. Sometimes they need its ability to step in as peacekeeping.

I'll point to another difficult chapter. There's been a number of these difficult chapters. This one feels tougher than others. But in the lead up to the Iraq war, the U.S. on the Security Council...It must be said the U.S. was trying to justify its pending invasion of Iraq, through observance of Security Council resolutions about disarmament. And at the end of the day, it pushed through and said it was invading because Iraq was presenting a grave and gathering threat, and it was seen as a real blow to the UN system that the U.S. proceeded to push forward in that. Soon after, though, after Saddam Hussein was toppled, and the U.S. was trying to set up some sort of rump government there, it came back to the UN to try to hold elections, to set up all sorts of administrative functions within Iraq. And this happens over and over again. It's not to say that the UN is hyper relevant in this particular moment right now, but it is to say that it does play a role.

I'll just say generally, though, we're going to hear a great deal of sturm und drang in the coming week about the UN's role, but also the role of individual states. Because at the end of the day, the UN is the sum of its parts. And it's when these major states, especially Security Council states are driving change through the UN, is when it's most effective. The Security Council is sort of ground zero for why it's ineffective right now. There is major impasse going on there. There's real antagonism involving the United States and Russia, but also China in a number of occasions. And so, it's a real difficult place right now.

I'll finally add that the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, laid out some markers at a CFR event last week about Security Council reform. Seemed to be very sensible, pursuing two permanent seats for African nations, pursuing rotating representation for island nations. But that's going to be a tough, as she acknowledged, a really tough row to hoe, especially as the Biden administration winds down and we don't know what's coming next in the U.S..

ROBBINS:
She's talking about perm seats, like veto-bearing seats?

MCMAHON:
Not veto-bearing. Because it's widely acknowledged that the current five veto-wielding countries, first of all, would just never allow that. And she also called it expanding the dysfunction of the council. She says the veto is a source of dysfunction, even while acknowledging the U.S. will not give up its veto power either. The veto is staying with the five set up in the post-World War II period.

ROBBINS:
So, a new definition of permanent?

MCMAHON:
So, a new definition of permanent where you basically have, although it seems like weak tea to some, you do have countries that will have a permanent ability to be debating issues and raising issues on the agenda at the UN, raising a fuss in some cases, and certainly complaining if some of their initiatives are getting vetoed by other more powerful members. But it's still seen as a step forward to have some permanent membership in the Security Council, even without the veto power.

ROBBINS:
I love that term about the dysfunction. I think that's...It's sort of can't live with it, can't live without it, certainly that including the veto structure.

MCMAHON:
Yeah. The Security Council, even with this dysfunction, it must be noted, and we'll a piece up on our website soon from Paul Stares and Natalie Caloca, pointing to areas where the council has continued to function through its problems. Setting up what is still a work in progress, which is some sort of a pacifying mission in Haiti, allowing Kenyans and some other forces to deploy there, in addition to providing aid of various sorts. UN is said to have played a constructive role in Colombia. It could still play a role in Sudan, which is an absolute disaster. It is the world's worst humanitarian crisis right now. And big outside powers have been one of the reasons for that, in terms of helping to support warring sides. But it could still play a role. It could still play a role in Myanmar, where it's been sidelined as well, but Myanmar seems to be coming to a head, the situation there, in terms of threats to the central government, the military junta.

It comes back to what do the most powerful nations want? Do they see the UN as useful? And is there enough leverage from other countries to make the UN function in a way that can help, in the way it was intended to be when it was set up? Even with its anachronisms and the way its composition is, with veto-wielding states and so forth, we come back to the refrain that if it didn't exist, that something like the UN would be created to step into the breach.

ROBBINS:
And as Adlai Stevenson says, "When you have that platform there, they're prepared to wait for a response until hell frees us over." One of my favorite moments with the Security Council

MCMAHON:
There is drama in the Security Council, as there is at the pulpit in the UN General Assembly. So stay tuned, Carla, for that. It's not just about the traffic next week.

One other thing I should mention, that has accompanied this UNGA event now for the last fifteen years, has been a New York City Climate Week. It's just to say that climate activists have seen this as an opportunity to focus attention, to raise their profile amongst the gathered diplomats about climate issues. And in those fifteen years, all the climate benchmarks have only gotten worse, in terms of consecutive months now of record-setting temperatures, extreme weather events. The island nations that I mentioned before, they are trying to raise serious alarms about just their own existence with rising sea levels. And we've seen in the past year also, things like insurance companies are dropping homeowners because they can't support people who live anywhere near a flood zone, fire zone, you name it. And those zones are getting bigger. Climate is going to continue to be a topic on the sidelines, but still a topic.

Carla, I want to take us back to the Middle East, because it has been quite a week in the Middle East. Especially in Lebanon, where in the course of two days, hundreds of pagers, and then walkie-talkies exploded. These were, most of them, in the possession of Hezbollah members, if not fighters, but there were also bystanders who were killed. The UN and other news agencies believe Israel is behind the attack. Israel officials have not commented publicly, but they have said that the Israel-Hezbollah war is entering a new phase. There's been movement of Israeli forces towards the north of the country. And so, are we looking at a further escalation in what has been a low wattage Israel-Hezbollah conflict?

ROBBINS:
Well, this is sort of an extraordinary story. Watch this space right now, we're not clear. Certainly what were the Israelis trying to do, is one of the biggest questions out there. It's an extraordinary intelligence coup on their part. The Times, reporting this morning, says that instead of intercepting these pagers and walkie-talkies that exploded in people's hands, incredible carnage, instead of intercepting them somewhere along the supply chain to insert explosives, Israeli intelligence actually manufactured them. They set up a front company, and as far as Hezbollah knew, they thought it was a Hungarian company under contract to a Taiwan manufacturer. The Israelis produced the pagers, and then sold them to Hezbollah, and they started shipping these pagers back in 2022.

After Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, told his operatives earlier this year that the Israelis were using their smartphones to track them, and ordered them to replace them with these low-tech pagers, which they believed were much harder to track, the Israelis stepped up production and delivery, and these thousands of pagers, and some walkie-talkies, were spread throughout Lebanon in the hands of the cadre of Hezbollah. And chillingly, according to the Times, Israeli intelligence officers called these pagers buttons. They were referring them to buttons that could be pushed whenever the order came. That's a pretty cold description there.

The question, of course, is why now? Why did they decide to use this pretty indiscriminate weapon right now? And whether these attacks, and the damage is frighteningly widespread, will make Israel safer or just spark a wider war, as you asked? The government announced before they pushed this button, that they were going to shift their strategic focus away from Gaza and toward the north, which is their second front with Lebanon, and that they're determined to do whatever they can to stop the shelling from Hezbollah, that has driven more than seventy thousand Israelis from their homes since the start of the Gaza war.

We've talked about this before. There are American and French mediators shuttling between Lebanon and Israel. But the assumption has always been that until there's some sort of hostage cease-fire deal, that there's not going to be any calm on that border as well. The Israelis seem to have decided that there's not going to be a deal, or at least not for a while. Netanyahu's feeling an enormous amount of pressure from the families that have been displaced, and the political scene, and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who may or may not be on his way out the door, said this week that, quote, "Military action was the only way to end the conflict on the northern border."

Is this going to change anything? Certainly in all the reporting, people in Lebanon are completely freaked out, as we would be as well. Some are comparing it to October 7th in its physical and psychological impact, other people are talking about 9/11. If you can't trust electronic devices, because people aren't just worrying about pagers and walkie-talkies, they're talking...Unplug your cell phones, unplug your TVs. They just don't know where it's coming from, because these are normal devices in their hands. It's killed off some unknown percentage of Hezbollah's cadre, certainly disrupted their communications for a while. How much of their actual chain of command has been disrupted? We don't know yet. We haven't seen any reports of major leaders being killed. We know that the Iranian ambassador in Lebanon was wounded, but we haven't seen major names beyond that.

Nasrallah gave a speech just a few hours ago, and he obviously was furious about it, described it as an act of war. But he also acknowledged that it is a blow that is unprecedented in its history, and he said that Israel has a clear technological advantage. Because it is not only Israel, and he said it's also backed by the United States, although the U.S. denies it had any involvement or any knowledge of it, he also sounded like a man who didn't know what he was going to do next. He vowed retaliation, but he also said...Not going to talk about the place or the time. It's not clear what they're going to do.

Once again, as we have said week after week, is this going to lead to that wider war that we're so terrified of? Some people in Israel are saying this is going to tell Hezbollah, "We can get you any time, any place, so back off, guys." Other people are saying that this is going to be the one that pushes them over the edge. Right now, all we know is that lots of people have been hurt, Lebanon is in incredible disarray, and the Israelis are flying jets. Even when Nasrallah was speaking, there were sonic booms. You could hear them over Beirut.

MCMAHON:
It is quite an unusual moment, again, in a year, really, almost a year that has been extraordinary, and has had extraordinary developments one after the other, that we have talked about and have been flagged. But this use of the supply chain, as you mentioned, the front company and all of that, raises a lot of concern about, as we're seeing in increasing reports, the laws of war. Aside from the threat that Israel is trying to hold off, and its legitimate concern about its population near the Lebanese border, something like-

ROBBINS:
I mean, I'm looking at my cellphone right now and saying to myself, "What can you trust?"

MCMAHON:
Exactly. Cyber experts are raising that concern. The unusual situation, already pre-existing, which you had an organization like Hezbollah, this militant organization that was taking the fight to Israel, even obviously much earlier for decades than October 7th, but since then regularly lobbying explosives, missiles and so forth at Israeli targets. And it's a movement that's embedded in the Lebanese society, Lebanese government. Lebanon itself, it must be said, is teetering near failed state status as it is. When something like this happened, it was really quite shocking to the country, but also, as Nasrallah admitted, to Hezbollah itself. It has been deeply penetrated. That's clear. That was also the conclusion after a senior Hezbollah military chief was assassinated in a Beirut suburb last summer, and now you've seen this. It gives them pause in terms of what sort of response they would do. Is this in fact an opening salvo, the pushing of buttons, as you said, to an Israeli incursion, perhaps, where they would want to push Hezbollah forces back sufficiently that they feel like they have a safe zone?

All of this is open for question, as is the extent to which Israel is sharing any information with the United States. It's a very dangerous time for a lot of the parties involved, and the U.S. is going to be inevitably drawn into this if the escalation gets much bigger. It's got a large footprint now, militarily, in the greater area. There are a lot of these Iranian-linked axis of resistance countries that are staying involved, the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, obviously very weakened, as well as forces based in Syria and Iraq. This can all mushroom really badly.

We mentioned earlier the UN, perhaps there will be some useful sideline discussions that take place at the UN during that gathering of leaders there. One hopes that the U.S. and Israelis will be sharing more information for starters, and then some sort of movement towards really tamping this down. Because this is what the UN should be set up for. This is what the U.S. has been striving, and says it's striving, to do for the last couple of months. Something has to happen soon, because this had ripple effects, really, across the world. Carla. And for the reasons you mentioned, in terms of the new front opened in this war, as well as the ongoing concerns about what a Mideast expanded war will be.

ROBBINS:
We've talked about this, and we talked about this after the Haniyeh assassination during Pezeshkian's inauguration. Is Iran going to retaliate? Is it going to tell its proxies to retaliate? It seems like we're there. I will say that the Americans moved forces into the region to deter, in defense of a long-time ally, Israel. But boy, Tony Blinken in the region this week, after these pagers started exploding, he sounded like a man who did not know what was going on. He was in there trying to move this hostage-for-cease-fire deal forward, and just had this sense of just, cannot control an ally that we're providing all this military support for. It's just got to be extraordinarily frustrating and extraordinarily frightening.

Well, Bob, with so many leaders gathered in New York for UNGA, officials are maximizing their time, and at least trying to leverage their carbon footprints, so there are going to be a lot of big jets lined up there with all those leaders.

MCMAHON:
I like that reference. Leveraging your carbon footprint. That should be a new way of dealing with summitry. Yeah.

ROBBINS:
There are going to be a host with side meetings. And this Saturday, in Wilmington, Delaware, President Biden is going to host a Quad leader summit with Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and Japanese Prime Minister, Kishida Fumio. For Biden and Kishida, this is their final meeting of the so-called Quad, and what are you looking for in this discussion, not to mention the fact that they get to experience Wilmington, Delaware?

MCMAHON:
Yes, and I'll leave that part aside, and mention what could be the crux of their discussions. Which is, first, it is significant that half of the leadership of this are going to be moving on shortly, very shortly. Kishida, at the end of the month, Biden in January. I'll be looking for, as one often does with these Quads ever since it was set up, what are the references to China? Because it's the country that dare not speak its name at these summits, but in fact, it's hovering over all of this. Whether you want to consider this setting up of a Quad a kind of partial counterpart to the Belt and Road Initiative, China...Which is this incredibly ambitious, and in some ways really effective worldwide network that China has been trying to set up to expand its influence, and soft and hard power, as the case may be. Or is it also a military counterpoint, at least in terms of them expanding maritime cooperation, for example, which has been discussed at these meetings?

The Quad did take on a separate role in sort of a new frontier under Covid, in terms of sharing information about vaccines, about health and health infrastructure, which I think is a good use for this Quad. These are four consequential countries that bring a lot to the table, and have a lot of insights from different perspectives into what is going on with China. How much of a threat is percolating in the South China Sea, for example, between China and the Philippines, one of the latest big issues? What sort of threats are emerging, or might be continuing to emerge in Taiwan? Again, these countries can bring different insights into that.

It's significant that they're meeting ahead of the UN summitry, that they're going to have two of their key members moving on, and just establishing basic practices that can survive these administrations. By all indications, if there was a incoming Trump administration, they would be behind the Quad; they were behind the initial Quad setting up, and obviously the same with Japan. So, this has traction. It seems to be an organization that tries to have some tangible practical coordination going on in maritime areas, and supply chain securing, and so forth. And so, will this Quad mention China as something that they are concerned about, that they have under control? That'll be an interest to me.

ROBBINS:
Well, particularly because the Chinese have been particularly aggressive, what they're doing with Philippines, ramming ships and all of that has been going on. But at the same time, they've always insisted that this isn't all about China. It's all pretty much about China, isn't it? Wouldn't Biden want, on his way out, to have a more clarion statement about this? Or is he going softly, softly on China these days?

MCMAHON:
Yeah. I think he would like to. On the one hand, the U.S., as we've discussed before, has had many, many stepped up contacts with China, which in general is a good thing, despite all of their differences and their antagonisms. And the U.S. does not want to needlessly provoke China when they don't have to. Having this meeting in and of itself certainly gets China's attention, and I think they all realize that. But by the same token, I think if they're concerned about Chinese assertiveness, especially again in this Philippines front, which is not going away, they might want to just reinforce their priors on that, in terms of a big swath of the sea that China claims as its own, which the rest of the world does not, and the free and fair navigation of ocean waters. These sort of principles that have been stated again and again, I think they're going to want to state that again, and China is going to be one of the intended targets for that message.

ROBBINS:
And so, one of the really strange things is not only is the Japanese leader on his way out, and the American leader on his way out, there is a possibility that the Australian leader could be on his way out as well, which would then leave...

MCMAHON:
Next year, at the end of next year, right? Yeah.

ROBBINS:
Yeah. Then leave Modi the only one standing in the Quad. And Modi is a guy who plays all sides against the middle, so I'm not sure that the Quad really will survive that. Modi is in the Quad, but he's also always cozying up to the Russians, so he's not probably a great defender of Western values, is he?

MCMAHON:
He likes to be in the room, let's say.

ROBBINS:
We all like to be in the room, Bob.

MCMAHON:
And he's had his issues, India certainly has had its border issues with China, which are still percolating, for example. They are co-members of the BRICS group too, which is going to have a meeting next month. But at the same time, Modi likes to hold a lot of cards. I think he does have a good relationship with the United States, and whether or not it will be a Harris or Trump administration, will likely continue to have a good relationship with the United States. That relationship alone, I think, would keep him in Quad structures, and perhaps promising to use his leverage with the so-called Global South, and connections with Russia, to potentially be serviceable. I don't know. You raise a really good question.

India has seen this overall as useful, and Modi himself took a little bit of an electoral setback, and has had to deal with a bit more of voices who are not all singing in unison behind him in his own country. I think this is a meeting that serves him well. Modi's going to have an interesting week at the UN. It'll be interesting to watch him, whether or not, for example, he meets with the new Bangladeshi interim leader, Muhammad Yunus, who we talked about, or he's also supposed to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the UN. He's worth watching both beginning with the Quad, and through UNGA week.

Well, Carla, it's the time of the podcast to discuss our audience figure of the week. This is the figure that listeners vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at cfr_org's Instagram story. This week, Carla, our audience selected, "Putin Orders Up To 180,000 More Troops." Why is this figure of the week getting attention?

ROBBINS:
Well, first of all, why did they not choose Shogun winning the most Emmys?

MCMAHON:
Unfathomable. Don't know.

ROBBINS:
Unfathomable. They exist to frustrate me. I'm clearly going to have to start lobbying all of my friends, and all the people who watch as much television as I do to be voting.

It's important to note that the Kremlin has announced that it wants 180,000 more troops, but it also hasn't decided to draft them, at least for now. That raises a host of questions, including whether and how they're going to pull that increase off. When the Kremlin instituted what it called a partial mobilization in September and October of 2022, calling up 300,000 reservists and former soldiers, remember, there were just protests, and recruitment offices were attacked, and tens of thousands of draft age men fled the country, some border crossings had to be closed. This is a pretty sensitive issue here. There are a lot of people who are suggesting they're not going to get to 180,000 without having a mobilization, so are they really going to get to 180,000? The way Putin has filled the ranks, mainly since Ukraine started, is by paying big bonuses.

MCMAHON:
And emptying out the prisons, as the case may be.

ROBBINS:
And emptying out the prisons, and both of those are probably not sustainable models. So, why are they talking about 180,000? If they were to get it, they would have the largest active duty combat military, or the largest number of active duty forces in the world. Why does he think he needs that? I think it's not a sign of strength, it's an indication of the tough battles they're currently fighting. That very long front in Eastern Ukraine, and the fact that they haven't been able to marshal enough troops to push the Ukrainians out of Kursk, the first time Russian territory has been taken since World War II, and an assessment that the war is likely to grind on for quite a bit longer. I don't think this is an admission of strength.

It also could be posturing, or it could be contingency planning. They're betting that perhaps Trump will win, and then they won't have to fulfill that. They're talking about that number in December, after the U.S. election. Every analyst basically says they can't get there without a mobilization, and I think that's just politically unsustainable for him. Certainly, the number one thing he has done up until now is insulate the Russian public from the cost of this war.

MCMAHON:
To great success, by many accounts.

ROBBINS:
And so, I think it's an admission of weakness on their part. It has been presented in a lot of the coverage as a sign of, look, they're going to have this biggest army in the world. I'm reading it as weakness. But there is another grim thought to keep in mind. As hard as this is for Russia, it still has a population more than three times that of Ukraine. But on the other hand, the Ukrainians have a much bigger reason to fight than the Russians do. It's the survival of their own country, which is why they can talk about mobilization and the Russians can't.

MCMAHON:
Yeah. That troop numbers are a concern on the Ukrainian side. Certainly, if Russia was able to muster up anything close to this figure, that would be a real area of concern. We've talked before about the Ukrainians are recycling, and training up people who are typically older, who are going into repeat battle duty, and are really burned out, and it's having a real toll. It's one of the reasons behind some of their defeats in the Donbas of the past several months. But at the same time, Russia has also thrown as many projectiles as it can at Ukraine, and by all signs is going to continue to do that. Yeah, I think it is worth looking at whether or not, behind the Russian bravado and everything else, there is a weakness there that is not going to be filled, and mobilization is not going to be in the cards for them.

ROBBINS:
And it is also a sign of just how many people are being killed. This is just a real, it's a grinding, grinding war. The Brits are estimating that the Russian casualty rate is about a thousand or more a day right now. Neither side is giving actual numbers, but this is a grinding, horrible, horrible war.

MCMAHON:
And that's our look at The World Next Week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on: Sri Lanka holds its presidential election and the 189th Oktoberfest begins in Munich.

ROBBINS:
Beers next week.

MCMAHON:
I've been there for a few of those years.

ROBBINS:
I'll bet.

MCMAHON:
That's all I'll say.

ROBBINS:
In Lederhosen?

MCMAHON:
Never.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or any other favorite podcast source. And leave us a review while you're at it. We appreciate the feedback. If you'd like to reach out, please email us at [email protected]. The publications mentioned this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation, are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on cfr.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Helena Kopans-Johnson for her research assistance. Our theme music is provided by the redoubtable Markus Zakaria. And this is Carla Robbins, saying so long, and let's hope for better news next week.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon, saying goodbye.