Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep! It’s been a busy week for us, but we’re not quite as busy as this Ukrainian soldier fighting in Bakhmut who still found time to take a FaceTime call from his girlfriend—in the middle of a firefight.
Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: U.S. President Joe Biden leaves Turkey and Hungary off his invite list for a major democracy summit, Ukrainians train on Patriot missile systems in Texas, and armed Russian jets are overflying U.S. military positions in Syria.
If you would like to receive Situation Report in your inbox every Thursday, please sign up here.
Summit Snubs for Two Troublesome U.S. Allies
The Biden administration is inviting around 120 countries to join its Summit for Democracy next week, but two of its NATO allies aren’t getting a call.
Turkey and Hungary have been left off the invitation list for the major summit, which Team Biden bills as one of its hallmark foreign-policy initiatives, meant to shore up democracies worldwide and stanch the rise of autocracies.
Backsliding. The spurning of two NATO allies, confirmed by three U.S. officials who spoke to SitRep, reflects a mounting concern with the degree of democratic backsliding in Turkey and Hungary, even though Washington is relying on both to support the West’s strategy against Russia as the war in Ukraine rages on—and needs both to approve Finland and Sweden’s bids to join NATO as full-fledged allies.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has consolidated power and dismantled elements of the country’s democracy, but he faces the toughest challenge yet to his 20-year rule with upcoming elections in May.
Hungary, under Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has alienated itself within the European Union and NATO for its own democratic backsliding and Orban’s close ties with Russia, even in the aftermath of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Orban’s government, for its part, has constantly rebuffed criticism from Washington and its EU neighbors over accusations of backsliding, even as it blocks a steady stream of EU-wide initiatives on aid for Ukraine and sanctions on Russia.
The snub is likely to inflame tensions between Washington and the two NATO allies even further as well as widen the distance between the rest of the NATO and EU alliance and the two outliers.
The upcoming Summit for Democracy, scheduled from March 28 to March 30, involves a hodgepodge of in-person and virtual events in Washington and four partner countries—Costa Rica, South Korea, the Netherlands, and Zambia—with U.S. President Joe Biden and around 20 of his most senior administration officials participating.
Outside experts hope the summit can revive some momentum in the global network of democratic governments after years of global democratic backsliding.
“There is a fundamental split right now between leaders taking their countries into a more repressive, closed, and authoritarian direction versus those that are going in a more open and inclusive direction,” Thomas Perriello, executive director of the Open Society Foundations and a former Democratic congressman, told SitRep. “And the other side, frankly, has a lot of money and power to throw around.”
He said the summit, if pulled off right, can help serve as a “counterweight” to the rise of autocracies as well as help mature and emerging democracies compare notes.
The importance of an invite list. Administration officials who spoke to SitRep insist that the summit is about more than who made the invite list and who didn’t.
“The United States is not interested in this event being seen as an all-encompassing judgment on the strength of another country’s democracy. That’s not the intention,” one senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told SitRep.
“When it comes to both Turkey and Hungary, we are committed to further strengthening our relations with both countries. They’re both important NATO allies, and we’re working together on many issues of mutual interest,” the official added.
This is the second Summit for Democracy the administration has organized. The first was in late 2021. Turkey and Hungary didn’t get an invitation for the first summit either, prompting Hungary at the time to block the EU from taking on a joint role in the summit.
Some new additions to this summit. The 2023 summit will invite all the same countries, with eight additions, according to officials familiar with the matter: Honduras, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Mauritania, Mozambique, Tanzania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Liechtenstein. (No word on why the small but mighty microstate of Liechtenstein got snubbed in the 2021 summit, but congrats to them for securing an invite this time around.)
Jonathan Stivers is now Democratic staff director on the U.S. House Select Committee on China. He previously held a number of jobs in the House, including as a longtime aide to former U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and served as an assistant administrator in the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Obama administration.
Rear Adm. Daniel Cheever is set to become the next commander of Naval Air Forces. Cheever also will take over as commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s naval air forces and fly up to vice admiral, a three-star rank. Hard to see why he’s still known by the nickname “Undra.” Like Undra-Cheever. Get it?
Also in Navy news, Rear Adm. James Downey is set to become the next commander of Naval Sea Systems Command. He was previously a program executive officer for aircraft carriers for the past four years.
Vice Adm. Daniel Dwyer is moving into the job of deputy chief of naval operations for warfighting development. He was previously commander of the U.S. Second Fleet, which covers the U.S. East Coast and North Atlantic.
Over in Kyiv, the Zelensky administration is shuffling the wartime cabinet. Oksen Lisovyi will become minister of education and science. Mykhailo Fedorov is set to be promoted to vice prime minister for innovation, development of education, science, and technologies. Fedorov is best known for getting Starlink to the Ukrainian military. Former Ukrainian railroad czar Alexander Kamyshin, who organized Biden’s 10-hour train ride from Poland to Kyiv last month, is set to become minister of strategic industries.
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
Cleanup on aisle GOP. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely 2024 Republican presidential contender, appears to be changing course—at least somewhat—on Ukraine after recently calling Russia’s invasion a “territorial dispute” and hinting that the United States should no longer fund the Ukrainian military.
In an interview with journalist Piers Morgan, DeSantis called Russia “a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons” and called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.” It’s not clear if DeSantis is changing his tune on U.S. military aid to Ukraine after facing criticism from Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and John Cornyn over his stance.
Safe skies. Several dozen Ukrainian soldiers are wrapping up training on the Patriot missile defense system after a 10-week course at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the New York Times reports, and the trainees who had mostly used Russian artillery systems beforehand have surprised their instructors with how quickly they’ve gotten up to snuff on the complex air defenses.
The Ukrainians have been essentially running their own training, using scenarios comparable to Russia’s strikes on the Ukrainian electrical grid.
Flyover. Armed Russian fighter jets overflew the U.S.-held al-Tanf garrison in Syria about 25 times this month, the top U.S. Air Force commander in the Middle East told NBC News, a pattern of airspace violations that could threaten to derail a four-year deal between the United States and Russia to stay out of each other’s airspace in the war-torn country.
Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, combined forces air commander for U.S. Central Command, said the overflights were a “substantial increase,” as much as double what the U.S. Defense Department has seen in the past, with some of the Russian flights going directly above the heads of American troops. The news comes a week after a Russian fighter jet downed a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone near Crimea.
Today: Busy day. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, and Pentagon Comptroller Michael McCord are set to defend the Biden administration’s new $842 billion defense budget request in the House Appropriations Committee.
TikTok CEO Shou Chew is also set to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee amid calls on Capitol Hill to ban the China-owned video app.
Meanwhile, Biden is off to Canada for an overnight visit.
Saturday, March 25: U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris sets off for a weeklong tour of Africa that will include visits to Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia.
Sunday, March 26: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is set to travel to China.
Monday, March 27: Hungary’s parliament will consider Finland’s accession to NATO.
“Ukraine was unfairly underappreciated, and I regret it took bloodshed and a devastating war for the world to realize how cool we are. We were always cool. It just took you too much time to realize that.”
—Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba had choice words for a BBC interviewer on Friday, March 17, when he was asked what was driving Kyiv’s creative diplomacy during the war.
A little bit of chicken fried. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to see Russian President Vladimir Putin this week might have included some good old-fashioned American comfort food.
Russian state media indicated bags of KFC takeout were delivered to Moscow’s Soluxe Hotel, where Xi was staying—which is odd since KFC is one of the dozens of brands that pulled out of Russia after the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. (The chicken franchise sold their restaurants to a Russian company that rebranded the restaurants.) So what’s in the bags, Xi?
Living his best life. Bowtie-wearing U.S. diplomat George Kent has taken a lot of heat over the years, whether from pro-Trump talking heads who criticized his testimony during former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment in 2019 or for bringing a double-sized Nalgene water bottle to the hearings.
But now that he’s taken over as U.S. ambassador to Estonia, Kent seems to be a happy camper: He and British ambassador to Estonia Ross Allen have joined a choir.
Rocio Fabbro contributed reporting.
The post Scoop: Turkey and Hungary Not Invited to Biden’s Big Democracy Summit appeared first on Foreign Policy.
