In Geopolitics Today - Friday, June 4th
Morocco may have used migration as a weapon to punish Spain, understanding China’s aerial incursions into Taiwan, and Russian upper house votes to exit Open Skies Treaty
Morocco May Have Used Migration as a Weapon to Punish Spain
There are reports that on May 17th more than 6,000 migrants crossed the border from Morocco to Spain as they swam across the Mediterranean Sea to a Spanish outpost in North Africa. In reaction, Spain has deployed troops to Ceuta in order to more effectively patrol the border with Morocco after thousands of migrants swam into the northern African enclave.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez proclaimed in a televised statement that his government is "going to restore order to the city and its borders," while also promising to remove all who entered illegally as he described this sudden surge of migrants as a serious crisis for Spain and for Europe.
Kelly M. Greenhill, writing for the Washington Post, suggests that in this unfolding episode, Morocco appears to be weaponizing migration to achieve its political goals. And this practice, she notes, is nothing new. Governments or other international actors “weaponize migration” by manipulating or exploiting the movement of people — or by threatening to do so — for the purpose of achieving a strategic objective.
She says that Morocco unleashed a migrant surge on Spain in retaliation for Spain’s decision to medically admit Brahim Ghali, leader of the Polisario Front — a separatist movement battling Morocco for Western Saharan independence. In her view, Morocco’s actions involved “coercive engineered migration,” and her research suggests that more than 60 percent of all such operations she studied were for carried out for political reasons.
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Understanding China’s Aerial Incursions into Taiwan
China has never discounted the use of force as a legitimate means to achieve Taiwan’s unification with the mainland. Recently, China has ramped up economic and diplomatic pressure on Taiwan, while dispatching aircraft and intruding into Taiwan’s Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ).
These incursions happen with ever-increasing numbers of sorties, and are now typically deployed alongside naval forces conducting combat drills. Adrian Ang U-Jin and Olli Pekka Suorsa writing for The Diplomat suggest that Chinese incursions into Taiwan’s ADIZ serve multiple purposes beyond sabre-rattling toward Taiwan
They find that these purposes are as follows: signalling displeasure at Washington’s diplomatic engagement with Taipei; providing surveillance of sea and air traffic in the Bashi channel; countering the presence of the US Navy near Chinese waters; and an overall demonstration of a “new normal.” They argue that Chinese air incursions into Taiwan’s ADIZ have had the U.S. in their crosshairs more often than Taipei.
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Russian Upper House Votes to Exit Open Skies Treaty
Last month I wrote about the vote on exiting the Open Skies Treaty which passed in the Russian parliament’s lower house. This Wednesday, the Russian parliament’s upper house voted to withdraw from the international treaty. allowing surveillance flights over military facilities following the U.S. exit from the treaty.
The vote comes after U.S. officials told Moscow last month that President Joe Biden’s administration had decided not to re-enter the Open Skies Treaty, which had allowed surveillance flights over military facilities before President Donald Trump withdrew from the pact.
As the Russian upper house has now voted to leave the treaty it will come to Russian President Vladimir Putin for signing off the exit. If Putin endorses the exit, the withdrawal would take effect in six months, and this time period coincides with the Putin and Biden summit in Geneva on June 16. This will perhaps be the last chance for the accord’s more than three dozen signatories to conduct reconnaissance flights over each other’s territories.
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