In Geopolitics This Week
Indonesia's Nickel Industry Squeezes Rivals, NATO-Russia Brinkmanship Reaches New Heights, Violence Flares as Chad's Government Tightens Grip, and other stories.
Indonesia's Nickel Industry Squeezes Rivals
Relying on massive low-cost nickel reserves, Indonesia is rapidly expanding extraction and processing with an ambitious aim of utilizing discounted pricing and integrated supply chains to establish dominance over a strategic EV battery material.
With possibly the world's largest extractable nickel deposits, Indonesia has heavily promoted mining activity and processing capacity expansion over the past decade — luring Chinese investment to develop an integrated domestic nickel supply chain. Government quota policies severely limit external shipments of unprocessed nickel ore, forcing multinational extractors to build local refining facilities. Concurrently, within just three years, Jakarta aims to double mixed hydroxide precipitate processing capacity — the battery-suitable nickel product — by providing deals to Chinese mining companies. Leveraging discounted pricing and establishing nearly unassailable scale has allowed Indonesia to capture almost 50% of the global nickel market.
But even prior to completely maximizing production pipelines, this state-subsidized Indonesian nickel flood has already depressed prices nearly 70% over two years — threatening higher-cost foreign producers unable to compete with Indonesia's cost advantages. Already, the Australian nickel industry sits on the brink of wholesale collapse, with further contraction seemingly imminent across European refiners and component manufacturers if prices remain low. The prospect of two dozen mines and smelters going permanently dark has sparked wider supply chain reliability fears, especially with stainless steel demand projected to rise in tandem with electric vehicles absorbing more battery nickel.
Indonesia envisions leveraging its battery metals market share in upcoming decades to attract next generation manufacturing across the EV value chain, locking in influence over associated spheres of economic advantage pivotal for development ambitions. By deepening China partnerships across battery component processing, solid state technologies, and gigafactory investments, Indonesia aims to translate raw materials control into foreign corporations staking vast sums on transferring production capacities if they wish to access the nickel reserves. From Jakarta’s vantage, discounted nickel pricing helps captures higher-value process partners — and technology sharing opportunities — that might have otherwise concentrated solely in East Asia.
Indonesia's state-driven coordination of discounted battery nickel production points towards broader aspirations of utilizing commodity influence over a sector deemed critical to the coming decades. While dismayed Western rivals alternatively urge sustainability tariffs or sanctions in response, fundamentals of global capitalism and energy transitions inherently dictate manufacturer migration towards lowest mineral input valuations. Moreover, Indonesia envisages potential membership in the BRICS bloc as accelerating this trend. Washington concurrently pushing “friend-shoring” policies that prioritize domestic mineral security and supply chain localization has vastly strengthened the hands of Jakarta, Beijing, and other resource powerhouses. This is particularly prescient given these are materials, technologies and associated spheres of economic influence pivotal for sustaining advanced military hardware research.
NATO-Russia Brinkmanship Reaches New Heights
This week saw another escalation in brinkmanship between NATO and Russia, as NATO member states publicly weighed in on direct military involvement, collectively maintaining ambiguity. There remain disagreements on troop deployments between France and Germany, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz facing criticism after alleging the UK and France are already actively aiding Ukraine's military in unspecified “target selection” assistance. With unanimous consensus required for major NATO decision-making, these deepening internal disagreements call into question the force posture enhancements likely to emerge from the rhetoric.
A leaked wiretap also exposed German military officials casually hinting at plans to supply advanced Taurus missiles to Ukraine for the explicit purpose of destroying the Kerch Strait Bridge. As this singular bridge constitutes Russia's sole logistic resupply artery, ferrying reinforcements and ammunition to frontline forces in Crimea and the Kherson region, its incapacitation could single-handedly deal a serious blow to Moscow’s operational capacity across the southern theatre. This NATO attack plot potentially represents Ukraine's last-ditch attempt to stop Russian momentum before defensive lines begin to falter.
While momentum appears to be in Russia's favour for now, these high-stakes posturings are a part of the nervous tightrope Moscow and NATO powers now walk between projecting necessary military strength for advantage and catastrophic signalling. Although the rasputitsa approaches, offering possibilities for change on the battlefield, intractable nationalist sentiments and domestic media recriminations on all sides have seemingly paralysed diplomats. Even marginal rhetorical misfires or military signalling incidents threaten uncontrolled escalation, so the risks of mismanaged great power conflict have scarcely appeared more likely since the darkest days of the Cold War.
Meanwhile, reporting from the New York Times has revealed the extensive depth of CIA and MI6 intelligence involvement across Ukraine over the last decade, secretly supporting insurgent factions and consolidating anti-Moscow informational and operational structures since the 2014 Maidan uprising. Newly confirmed details point to covert joint raids into the Donbas and Crimea, establishment of CIA listening outposts along Russia's border to coordinate sabotage attacks against Russian proxies, and active security collaboration with the Ukrainian SBU to recruit Russian collaborators, informants and senior assets — all providing essential context for the hyper-escalatory reactions of the Russian leadership to growing evidence of NATO interference on their border.
The next few months will likely determine whether the clashing imperatives and bellicose motivations surrounding this increasingly internationalized conflict can be diplomatically contained before kinetic tensions reach a boiling point. Once unleashed beyond rational restraints, history warns escalatory momentum often overrides even wise leadership, as primal cycles of action-reprisal-retaliation pull more powers into the widening violence. Ukraine is fast becoming a test-case for calibrating risk and reward in contemporary great power competition.
Violence Flares as Chad's Government Tightens Grip
Recent armed clashes in Chad’s capital N’Djamena have exposed the deepening political and ethnic fault lines fracturing a fragile transitional military government already facing mounting dissent over delayed elections. The incidents fuel risks of further escalating street violence and security crackdowns that together threaten to reshape regional power dynamics should unrest continue.
The initial trigger for violent clashes reportedly came after Chadian security forces attempted to arrest a political opponent, prompting retaliation from some 300 of his supporters, who then stormed the National Security Agency headquarters in the capital. However, in the ensuing violence, Chadian authorities unleashed a lethal crackdown that left dozens, including prominent politician Yaya Dillo, dead. Government head General Mahamat Idriss Déby quickly moved to leverage the unrest by consolidating power and eliminating political challengers, crushing opposition party bases while detaining rivals. With only months left until planned presidential elections, the tumultuous events have allowed Deby to weaken anti-regime dissent under the guise of restoring order through force.
These developments signal the immense pressures building within Chad’s embattled military government on multiple fronts — with economic grievances and political marginalization kindling anti-government resentment. Having opted for an approach of asserting dominance through brute force rather than compromise with the diverse array of aggrieved challengers to his rule, the chances of near-term stabilization are low. Violent opposition will likely only increase with crackdowns. Already, reports have emerged that besieged opposition groups may escalate their own force posture by seeking to court Russian mercenary groups and weapons dealers active across various African hotspots. This would be in the hopes that tactical battlefield alliances could shift the balance of power in their favour, despite risks of conflict internationalization.
Beyond Chad’s own borders, the violent clashes have magnified worries among Western powers that increasing instability could spill over to further destabilize borderlands already contending with unrest. In particular, France had already been sounding alarms over scenarios requiring a potential drawdown of its troop presence stationed in strategic bases across Chad. As their launch point for most regional operations in Mali, Niger, and the Central African Republic, among other hotspots, a hasty French exit from Chad could subsequently leave the entire sub-region lost to even indirect French control.
Monday, February 26th
ECOWAS Lifts Sanctions to Coax Military Regimes Back — Al Jazeera
Zambia Secures Debt Relief from China and India — Financial Times
EU's Carbon Border Tax Impacting China's Aluminium Exports — Metal Miner
Cracks Emerge in Visegrád Alliance — FPRI
Hungary Expands Gripen Fleet and Ratifies Sweden's NATO Membership — The War Zone
Egypt Signs $35 Billion UAE Deal to Develop Mediterranean Coast — Middle East Eye
Tuesday, February 27th
Macron's Remarks on Troops in Ukraine Rebuked by Allies — Reuters
Indonesia and Papua New Guinea Ratify Security Pact — Benar News
China’s Police Deal with PNG Threatens US and Australian Inroads — Asia Times
US to Back Guyana at the UN in Essequibo Border Dispute — MercoPress
Report Reveals Decade-Long CIA-MI6 Intel Partnership with Ukraine — NY Times
China Studies Russian Helicopter Tactics for Taiwan Insights — The Diplomat
Wednesday, February 28th
Violence Erupts in Chad — Reuters
Australia Bets on Conventional Naval Expansion — RUSI
Mapping Out Myanmar's Multifaceted Civil War Actors — Geopolitical Monitor
Azerbaijan-Armenia Peace Talks Resume Despite Power Asymmetry — AP News
India's Ties with Russia Undergoing Steady Erosion — War on the Rocks
German Frigate's Eventful First Operations in Red Sea — The War Zone
Thursday, February 29th
Indonesia's Nickel Boom Poses Dilemma for EV Makers — Metal Miner
US Isolated as UN Court Scrutinizes Israeli Offensive — Responsible Statecraft
Iran's Ballistic Missile Transfers to Russia Signal Deepening Alliance — Jamestown
EU-Funded Senegalese Police Unit Implicated in Violent Crackdown — Al Jazeera
Mercosur Chief Rules Out EU Trade Deal This Year — MercoPress
Internet Cables Between Europe and Asia Damaged — Zero Hedge
Friday, March 1st
Poland Invests Heavily in Networked Air Defence Upgrades — Defence 24
Australia and Philippines Strengthen Defence Ties — Anadolu Agency
Kenya and Haiti Forge Police Deployment Deal — Al Jazaeera
Breakthrough Boosts Viability of Plant-Based Biofuel Production — New Energy and Fuel
G20 Fails to Reach Consensus — Nikkei
China's Dual-Use Tech Collaboration Enhances Russia's Military — RUSI
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