As the Pentagon and Tokyo fret over Asia, Moscow looks to win friends in Africa

(Originally published July 25 in “What in the World‘) The United States’ top military officer warned Sunday during a stopover in Indonesia on his way to a military pow-wow in Australia that China’s provocations are a growing threat to Indo-Pacific security. Japan’s own defense ministry echoed those concerns in its latest annual defense white paper, which also frets about growing cooperation between China and Russia as Tokyo moves toward adding preemptive strike capacity to its national security strategy.

Russian forces, meanwhile, launched attacks against one of Ukraine’s last unvanquished ports, Odessa, less than a day after Moscow struck a deal with Kyiv to allow grain shipments and ease global food shortages. Russia is leveraging its defacto control over Ukrainian grain exports to gain influence with desperate grain importers in Africa, such as Egypt, where Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov arrived this weekend at the start of a four-nation African tour.

The Russia-Ukraine grain deal was brokered by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has become a kink in Washington’s efforts to build a common front in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization against Russia, China and Iran. Erdogan threatened to veto Finland and Sweden’s entry into NATO unless they promised to withhold support for Kurdish rebels. U.S. President Joe Biden pledged to send Turkey new F-16 fighter jets to replace older ones that Ankara has been using to bomb Kurdish positions in Syria and Iraq.

But as this newsletter has remarked before, reviving the Cold War has forced has forced Biden to court many strange bedfellows. That includes cozying up to Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, despite a campaign promises to punish Riyadh for the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Kashoggi in—where else?—Turkey. Biden had to eat crow in Riyadh as part of efforts to win higher Saudi oil output and put a lid on U.S. pump prices. Washington also needs the Saudis to cooperate with Washington’s curious plan to allow Moscow to sell oil abroad at an enforced discount to everyone else’s oil. The Saudis must still be scratching their heads as to how that’s going to benefit them. Biden must have spelled it out when he visited Riyadh earlier this month to exchange fist bumps with MBS.