News round-up, April, 26, 2023
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A new front in the water wars: Your Internet use
In the American West, data centers are clashing with local communities that want to preserve water amid drought
WP By Shannon Osaka, April 25, 2023Eyes on the prize: Lula’s outbursts won’t deter EU from chasing Mercosur deal
Brazilian leader’s erratic geopolitics are testing the nerves of EU trade negotiators.
POLITICO EU BY CAMILLE GIJS AND SARAH ANNE AARUP, APRIL 25, 2023 Belgium's De Croo: 'It's time for Europe to move away from a purely national approach on energy'
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who is hosting a summit of North Sea countries in Ostend on Monday, promotes coordinated development of renewables
LE MONDE By Jean-Pierre Stroobants(Brussels, Europe bureau) , Published on April 24, 2023Who are the candidates for the 2024 US presidential election?
There are already seven candidates vying for the Democratic and Republican nominations, including frontrunners Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Le Monde with AFP, Published yesterday at 11:27 pm (Paris)
Inside Biden’s Renewed Promise to Protect South Korea From Nuclear Weapons
President Biden’s emphasis on America’s willingness to defend South Korea is a striking admission that North Korea’s arsenal is here to stay
NYT By David E. Sanger and Choe Sang-Hun, April 26, 2023
France to continue subsidizing electricity bills until 2025
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced the extension as the country's electricity providers continue to suffer the effects of Russia's war in Ukraine.
Le Monde with AFP, TODAY
Andrés Gluski, CEO of energy and utility AES CorpHow can strategic investment achieve both economic growth and social progress?… What is the role of renewable energy and battery storage in achieving the goals of the low-carbon economy?…
The AES Corporation President Andrés Gluski, Dominican Republic Minister of Industry and Commerce Victor Bisonó, and Rolando González-Bunster, CEO of InterEnergy Group, spoke at the Latin American Cities Conferences panel on "Facilitating Sustainable Investment in Strategic Sectors" on April 12 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Today's events
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Image: By Germán & Co A new front in the water wars: Your Internet use
In the American West, data centers are clashing with local communities that want to preserve water amid drought
WP By Shannon Osaka, April 25, 2023When Jenn Duff heard that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, wanted to build yet another data center in Mesa, Ariz., she was immediately suspicious. “My first reaction was concern for our water,” Duff said. The desert city of half a million residents was already home to large data centers owned by Google, Apple and other tech giants, and Duff, a city council member, feared for the city’s future water supply.
“It’s not like we’re sitting fat and happy in water,” she said. “We’re still constantly looking at the drought situation.”
Mesa is only one of many cities and towns in the West wrestling with the expansion of water-guzzling data centers. For years, data centers have come under scrutiny for their carbon emissions. But now, as a “megadrought” continues to ravage the Southwest and the Colorado River dwindles, some communities charge that the centers are also draining local water supplies.
In The Dalles, Ore., a local paper fought to unearth information revealing that a Google data center uses over a quarter of the city’s water. In Los Lunas, N.M., farmers protested a decision by the city to allow a Meta data center to move into the area.
In a small Dutch town, a fight with Meta over a massive data center
More than 30 percent of the world’s data centers are located in the United States; the power required to run those centers already accounts for about 2 percent of the nation’s electricity use. As the data storage requirements of the planet escalate — and as water becomes scarcer because of climate change — these operations may attract greater scrutiny.
It’s common to think of the stuff of digital life — the photos, the videos, the webpages, the e-books, the reams and reams of data — as somehow lighter than air, existing in “the cloud” or zipping along global wireless networks. The reality, however, is much more concrete. The dozens of zettabytes of data produced every year (a zettabyte is a gigantic unit of data, equal to about 250 billion DVDs) are increasingly stored in thousands of data centers around the world, where massive servers keep the internet afloat.
Those servers require a great deal of energy and produce a great deal of heat. Without adequate cooling, the servers can overheat, fail or even catch fire. Companies can either use traditional air conditioning to cool the servers, which is expensive, or use water for evaporative cooling. The latter is cheaper, but it also sucks up millions of gallons of water. A large data center, researchers say, can gobble up anywhere between 1 million and 5 million gallons of water a day — as much as a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people.
According to a Virginia Tech study, data centers rank among the top 10 water-consuming commercial industries in the United States, using approximately 513 million cubic meters of water in 2018. Much of that water use comes from electricity use — coal, nuclear and natural gas plants take water to operate, and hydropower also consumes water — but about a quarter is due to using water for direct cooling.
The researchers also found that a lot of data centers operate where water is scarce.
Part of the problem is that tech companies put many of these centers in areas where power is cheap and low-carbon — such as Arizona or other states with plentiful solar or wind power — to help meet their own climate targets. Water in those regions is scarce. Meanwhile, areas where water is plentiful, like in the East, have higher-carbon sources of power.
“You have to think about how much of the western United States is water-stressed,” said Landon Marston, a professor of water resources engineering at Virginia Tech and one of the study’s authors. California, for example, has at least 239 data centers; desert Arizona has at least 49.
Ben Townsend, Google’s global head of infrastructure and water strategy, said there is a trade-off between using more water for cooling, thus saving precious drops, and using more energy for cooling through traditional air conditioning, which emits more greenhouse gases. The right combination depends on where the center is located.
Compared with agriculture and urban demands, data centers take up a small proportion of the West’s water. But in small towns and rural areas, the proportion can seem much larger, and spark conflict. In The Dalles, Google was embroiled in a 13-month legal fight to keep the water usage of its local data centers private. Eventually, the company disclosed that its data centers now consume more than 25 percent of the town’s supply. Google then became the first company to publicize its data centers’ water usage worldwide.
John DeVoe, adviser for the environmental group WaterWatch of Oregon, worries that data centers in The Dalles are taking away precious water that could be used to help support species in nearby wetlands and rivers. “It’s an already difficult situation where too much water is promised to too many interests,” DeVoe said. “And now you have a new use coming in and saying, ‘Hey, we want our share too.’”
In the nearby Cascade Locks, Ore., residents are also pushing back against a proposed data center that they worry will raise electricity rates and suck up precious water.
The good news is that data centers’ efficiency has improved dramatically over the past decade or so. In the mid-2000s, Marston said, researchers projected that data center electricity use would expand to take up huge proportions of the world’s electricity demand. But while data centers’ workloads increased fivefold between 2010 and 2018, their electricity consumption only increased 6 percent.
Still, as the world lives more and more online, data storage requirements are climbing. Newsha Ajami, director of urban water policy at Stanford University’s Water in the West center, said even if data centers’ water use is relatively small, the region’s long-term megadrought means every use is up for debate. “We have really limited amounts of water,” she said. “Every drop counts.”
Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country
…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.
More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.
Image: Germán & Co by ShutterstockEyes on the prize: Lula’s outbursts won’t deter EU from chasing Mercosur deal
Brazilian leader’s erratic geopolitics are testing the nerves of EU trade negotiators.
POLITICO EU BY CAMILLE GIJS AND SARAH ANNE AARUP, APRIL 25, 2023 BRUSSELS — The European Union might have been put out by the latest anti-Western antics of Brazil's maverick president, but that's not going to deter it from pushing ahead to conclude a trade deal with Latin American countries that’s been in the making for decades.
The EU is on a charm offensive as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva tours Portugal and Spain — part of a courtship that seeks to mark progress on a deal with the Mercosur trading bloc at a major EU-Latin America summit in Brussels in July.
Lula's behavior of late has hardly helped the cause: He had been due to welcome European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen a couple of weeks back, but instead flew to China. There, he railed against the West in general, and the United States in particular, calling on Washington to "stop encouraging war” in Ukraine. Lula's comments triggered a storm of criticism from Washington and Brussels, amid concern that that the West had lost the Brazilian leader just months after he returned to power.
But in the corridors of power in Brussels, diplomats say the public acrimony won’t be enough to derail the crucial trade deal.
“Obviously, it is important to push back strongly against any comments that would look to question the realities of the war in Ukraine, wherever they come from," said one EU diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to freely discuss sensitive topics. “However, the EU doesn’t take such big decisions based on issues like this. Mercosur is an important long-term strategy.”
Europe sighed with relief after Lula won reelection last year to lead Brazil — which with its GDP of $1.6 trillion is the region's largest economy — hoping this would put an end to the tumultuous years under far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro.
Lula is being hosted on his Iberian tour by two of the staunchest supporters of the EU-Mercosur agreement. On the Portugal leg of the visit, he signed a dozen business deals. He was due to attend a business forum in Madrid on Tuesday before meeting Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Wednesday.
Won't let you go
“Now that Brazil is back, we won't let Brazil go,” said Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa after meeting with Lula. “Brazil can also always count on Portugal as a spearhead in the work we must continue to complete the EU-Mercosur agreement.”
Madrid, for its part, aims to strengthen the EU’s economic ties with Latin America during its turn at the helm of the Council starting in July.
“Lula will find [it] hard to explain his position in EU capitals, but the finalization of the EU-Mercosur association agreement will continue — and other issues, like agriculture or the environment, rather than Ukraine, will become the real stumbling blocks,” said Oscar Guinea from Brussels-based think tank ECIPE.
Support in the EU for Mercosur is not, however, unanimous: France and Austria are among the countries that expressed skepticism on the proposed trade deal at a summit of EU leaders last month. Their longstanding pushback is motivated by concerns over deforestation in the Amazon as well as fears of a surge in agricultural imports.
Securing an accord with the Mercosur countries — Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay — thereby winning a market of over 260 million people would be a welcome boost for Brussels, which is ramping up so-called values-based trade with like-minded partners around the world to cut the EU's trade dependency on countries like Russia and China.
Intensified talks between EU and Mercosur negotiators are scheduled in the coming months in the hopes of touting significant progress on the deal at the July summit.
But trip-ups could still jeopardize the deal. Chief negotiators were supposed to meet in person in Buenos Aires last week, but the visit was canceled at the last minute. The Mercosur side still needs to formulate its counterproposal to the EU’s sustainability side-letter, which is a key condition laid down by EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis for closing the deal.
Balancing act
The EU is keen to point out that it's not the only entity with its eyes set on Latin American markets.
“If we don't negotiate that agreement ourselves, the Chinese and other powers will come in and do it,” said a senior EU official who was not authorized to speak publicly on the topic.
China is now Brazil’s No. 1 trading partner; it was a sign of the new geopolitical pecking order that Lula decided to visit Beijing earlier this month rather than host von der Leyen in Brasília.
While in Beijing, Lula made clear that he doesn’t see the world as Washington does.
“Every night I ask myself why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar,” Lula said, adding that Brazilian-Chinese ties would be crucial to building “new geopolitics.”
In Portugal over the weekend, the Brazilian leader stressed the so-called neutral stance of his country on the war, and said that he didn’t want to “please anyone”; just “build a path for peace in Ukraine.”
Lula’s statements “are perceived in different ways in Europe and in Latin America and in Brazil,” pointed out Lucia Ortiz from the nongovernmental organization Friends of the Earth Brazil. She added that Lula’s comments stress his willingness to engage Brazil in “a diversity of relationships in terms of trade, cooperation with different states, more multilateralism.”
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking ahead of the July summit.
The agreement “will give us a stronghold, not just from a trade point of view [but] from a geostrategic point of view, into that region,” the senior EU official said. “If we don't manage to conclude this agreement — well, others are waiting. And the Chinese are already formally or informally voicing their interest to conclude [an] agreement.”
Image: Belgium's Prime Minister Alexander De Croo speaks during a plenary session of the Chamber at the Federal Parliament in Brussels on April 20, 2023. NICOLAS MAETERLINCK / AFPBelgium's De Croo: 'It's time for Europe to move away from a purely national approach on energy'
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who is hosting a summit of North Sea countries in Ostend on Monday, promotes coordinated development of renewables
LE MONDE By Jean-Pierre Stroobants(Brussels, Europe bureau) , Published on April 24, 2023Flemish liberal Alexander De Croo, 47, has been leading a seven-party Belgian coalition government since 2020. On Monday, April 24, he is to host a summit of North Sea countries in Ostend with representatives of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway and Luxembourg. The European Commission will also take part.
What is the objective of this meeting?
The primary goal is to move from announcements to action, and from innovation to industrialization, in the field of renewable energy. This field is now of geostrategic importance. The nine countries concerned must agree on the objectives to be achieved, the standardization and the interconnection processes. It is time for Europe to use all the advantages of its size and to move away from a purely national logic in the field of energy.
Did the war in Ukraine accelerate this project?
The conflict has obviously turned energy policy into a major geopolitical issue. And, furthermore, securing energy infrastructure has become a key issue. The crisis we have experienced was caused by our dependence on fossil fuels produced by a country with which we have a fundamental disagreement. Exploiting Europe's technological leadership is the only way to protect ourselves against exorbitant price increases: Renewable energy is one of our best weapons for this. In my country, which has a small maritime area and only 67 kilometers of coastline, it covered almost a quarter of consumption in February.
The North Sea energy infrastructure has apparently already been the target of Russian espionage...
Yes, and Belgium is, more generally, a central location for political and military decision-making. We are aware of this special role. In particular, we plan to double the number of our intelligence services during this legislature in order to safeguard all our institutions and those based here. The recent exposure of the scandal of alleged corruption in the European Parliament by foreign states is a case in point. Like other countries, we have already expelled Russian diplomats.
Ukraine is demanding more resources and the translation of European commitments into action, particularly with regard to weaponry. Is the European Union procrastinating so as not to show its differences?
The unity that we have displayed displeases Russia, which did everything it could, long before the war, to try to break it. And it cannot be denied that our Ukrainian partner has a tendency to push us to go further, which means that we sometimes take the time to think about aligning our positions. There may of course be differences between us, but we can be proud of the action we are taking and will take in the long term. It is understandable that President Volodymyr Zelensky is calling for more weapons faster. But we must constantly find a balance between his demands and our own security and strategic imperatives. This is not easy.
Do you believe in the possibility of a negotiated solution to this conflict?
My hope is that this war will end as soon as possible and any ending includes the element of negotiation. But it is understandable that Ukraine does not consider negotiation when it has lost a large part of its territory. Let us not forget, on the other hand, what history teaches us: wars sometimes end because of unforeseeable events.
The conflict has upset the balance between Europe, the United States and China. How does your country position itself?
My priority is the affirmation of a common, clear European position, without constant reference to others. The European Union is a world leader in all areas except the military. This is an area in which it is being remobilized, however, and this should lead to a rebalancing within NATO. The transatlantic relationship remains essential in my view, and we share fundamental values with the US, not with China.
The balance between China and Taiwan is delicate. I think it must be respected and if it is disturbed, the Europeans should react.
One of the problems facing Europe and Belgium – especially in Flanders, where the far right is on the rise – is getting people to stick to a political project. Do you have any remedies for this?
The financial crisis, the pandemic, the energy crisis and the climate-related crises have led to the collapse of our certainties, the migration issue has fueled extremist discourses, and our societies are complex. But do we believe that authoritarian regimes offer better results than democratic states in terms of mutual respect, prosperity and solutions? Democratic countries do not wage war. As for the disaffection of public opinion, for me, it is a motivating factor. The coalition that I lead will show in the coming year, before the elections, what it is capable of. We have 400 days left to provide answers and concrete solutions.
With a surge of the extreme right in Flanders, and of the extreme left in Wallonia, will your country play out a new and prolonged crisis in 2024 once again?
This country cannot afford to engage in another round of institutional debate while the world moves on. Our priorities are to get our public finances in order, increase employment and maintain an innovative industry. Anything else would be a waste of time.
But in Flanders, nationalist parties are claiming that Belgium will not escape its problems without a new major negotiation between its communities...
It is a simplistic discourse that leads them to hide behind a supposed impossibility not to act. They talk about the risk of blockage, whereas their goal is precisely to organize this blockage.
I know France well and I have a good perception of the French protest fiber, which sometimes leads the population to oppose things that, from a foreign point of view, do not seem staggering. And then they find solutions.
Image: / US President Joe Biden boards Air Force One at the Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Delaware, on January 15, 2023, en route to Atlanta, Georgia. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP/ Editing by Germán & CoWho are the candidates for the 2024 US presidential election?
There are already seven candidates vying for the Democratic and Republican nominations, including frontrunners Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Le Monde with AFP, Published yesterday at 11:27 pm (Paris)
With the two candidates from the United States' previous election now campaigning for the next one, the 2024 US presidential election could be a rematch of 2020. Former Republican President Donald Trump has been in the running since the fall, while current Democratic President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday, April 25 that he would run for reelection.
With just over a year and a half to go before the election set for November 5, 2024, the number of primary candidates for the two major US parties keeps getting bigger. In any case, the Biden and Trump candidacies appear, for the time being, to be the strongest. For the Democrats, there doesn't appear to be a credible alternative to Biden while on the Republican side, Trump, although somewhat weakened, is still the man to beat.
Below, Le Monde gives an overview of the profiles of the seven declared candidates, and of two others who could potentially change the odds on the Republican side, more than five hundred days before the election.
Among Republicans
Donald Trump, the outrageous ex-president with a myriad of legal problems
Aged 76, the 45th president of the United States (2016-2020) officially declared his candidacy on November 15, 2022. Surrounded by investigations into his financial affairs, his pressuring of election officials in Georgia during the 2020 election and even his management of White House archives, he is throwing himself headlong into his new election campaign, regularly decrying "a witch hunt" against him. He recently became the first former president to face criminal indictment.
While still very popular with many parts of the American public, his new campaign effort could be stymied within the Grand Old Party itself, where dissenting voices have been growing since 2020.
His age – he will be 82 at the end of his term if elected in 2024 – is also seen as problematic, along with his repeated outbursts that, over time, have grown tiresome to some conservative voters. In the absence of a strong opponent, he remains the top-polling Republican for the moment.
Nikki Haley, a former Trump loyalist who advocates change
The former governor of South Carolina (2011-2017) and former US ambassador to the United Nations (2017-2018) was the first Republican to officially enter the race for the presidential nomination against Trump on February 14 at a rally in Charleston, South Carolina.
At 51, the self-assured conservative was a loyal ally of the US president, whom she served as chief of staff for two years. However, she has decided to take a step back and present herself as an alternative to Trump.
In her announcement speech, she called, among other things, for generational change. She is also banking on potential interest from minority voters, as her party is dominated by white male figures. She offers a certain sophistication in terms of appearance and speaking that sets her apart from the more virulent Trump supporters in Congress.
Ron DeSantis, the main challenger, not yet announced
Many skeptical Republicans are pinning their hopes on the possible candidacy of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who, at only 44 years old, is seen as the rising star of the hard right. He could be the most serious challenger to Trump in the Republican camp but has not yet announced his candidacy.
In 2018, the former naval officer was narrowly elected to lead the southern US state after receiving an endorsement from Trump, whose ideas he shares – although at times he is critical of his excesses. Since then, he has distanced himself and gained in popularity by repeatedly making ultra-conservative strides on education and immigration.
"I've only begun to fight," he said in early November, after his comfortable re-election to the top job in his state, which fueled speculation. However, a formal announcement of candidacy is not expected before the summer.
Mike Pence, Trump's former right-hand man, expected to announce
After years of unwavering loyalty to President Trump, his former vice president, Mike Pence, changed his tune after the assault on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, when the former president publicly pressured him to not certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The 63-year-old evangelical Christian, a fervent opponent of abortion, now seems determined to enter the race for the White House. He is traveling across the country, regularly speaking in states that could make a difference in the Republican primary.
While he has not yet formally announced his candidacy, he said he would make his final decision within "weeks, not months," with an announcement expected "well before the end of June," according to an interview with CBS on April 22.
The 'minor' candidates: Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson
Vivek Ramaswamy, a 37-year-old multimillionaire entrepreneur and author, has become known for his "anti-woke" positions and his strong conservative stance. In particular, he denounced what he calls a "national identity crisis" in the United States. He announced his candidacy on February 21 on the set of FoxNews, the show of the conservative channel's recently departed star anchor, Tucker Carlson.
Former Arkansas governor (2015-2023) Asa Hutchinson, 73, who has been a candidate since April 2, is one of the few Republican elected officials who have dared to openly criticize Trump, particularly during the 2020 election. The conservative former governor has a strong anti-abortion stance and signed a law banning abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, in his state in 2021.
Among Democrats
President Joe Biden, candidate for a second term at 80
After months without any real suspense, Biden officially announced that he is running for a second term on Tuesday, April 25, in a video published across his social media accounts. The current American president, already the oldest who has ever held office, would complete his second term at the age of 86 if re-elected in 2024. A point that raises concerns and is especially used as a political argument by his Republican opponents, who seize on every opportunity to criticize his sometimes slurred speech, public gaffes or moments of confusion.
Nevertheless, Biden has tried to be reassuring, presenting himself, since his inauguration, as dynamic and resilient while not hesitating to prove his "good health" through medical check-ups.
In this new campaign, Biden is betting above all on continuity, repeating his desire to restore the "dignity" of the "forgotten" working class America, part of which Trump has been able to seduce. He is counting in particular on his favorable economic record, as well as on his initiatives in the areas of employment, health care and education to achieve re-election. He is also the defender of individual rights and freedoms for all, including women and minorities, and presents himself as a bulwark for American democracy.
While Democrats have been waiting for him to officially declare his candidacy, no serious candidate has emerged to challenge the incumbent's leadership internally.
The 'minor' candidates: Robert Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson
Robert Kennedy Jr., the son of former Attorney General Robert Kennedy and nephew of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, declared his candidacy for the Democratic nomination at a rally in Boston, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, April 19. The 69-year-old environmental lawyer is a controversial figure, and for good reason: since 2005, he has been known as an activist and spokesperson for vaccine conspiracy theories, linking autism to one of their components.
Marianne Williamson, 70, re-entered the race for the 2024 Democratic Party nomination on March 4 after briefly running in the previous presidential election. A best-selling author of books on spirituality and personal development, she is best known for being Oprah Winfrey's spiritual advisor and is regularly noted for her lyrical rants about the power of "love." During her few months of campaigning in 2019-2020, she had advocated for the creation of a State Department of Peace, promoted questionable healthcare practices and denounced Trump's success as a "symptom" of America's malaise, among other things.
Image: Germán & CoCooperate with objective and ethical thinking…
Image: A South Korean news program displaying a North Korean missile test.Credit...Lee Jin-Man/Associated PressInside Biden’s Renewed Promise to Protect South Korea From Nuclear Weapons
President Biden’s emphasis on America’s willingness to defend South Korea is a striking admission that North Korea’s arsenal is here to stay
NYT By David E. Sanger and Choe Sang-Hun, April 26, 2023
*David Sanger has covered the North Korean nuclear program since the late 1980s. Choe Sang-Hun covers South Korean politics and securityWASHINGTON — In the four years since President Donald J. Trump’s leader-to-leader diplomacy with Kim Jong-un of North Korea collapsed after a failed meeting in Hanoi, the North’s arsenal of nuclear weapons has expanded so fast that American and South Korean officials admit they have stopped trying to keep a precise count.
North Korea’s missile tests are so frequent that they prompt more shrugs than big headlines in Seoul.
So when President Biden welcomes President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea to the White House on Wednesday, only the second state visit of Mr. Biden’s presidency, there will be few pretenses that disarming North Korea remains a plausible goal.
Instead, American officials say, Mr. Biden’s most vivid commitment to Mr. Yoon will focus on what arms control experts call “extended deterrence,” renewing a vow that America’s nuclear arsenal will be used, if necessary, to dissuade or respond to a North Korean nuclear attack on the South.
The emphasis on deterrence is a striking admission that all other efforts over the past three decades to rein in the Pyongyang’s nuclear program, including diplomatic persuasion, crushing sanctions and episodic promises of development aid, have all failed. It is also intended to tamp down a growing call in South Korea for its own independent arsenal, on the very remote chance that North Korea would make the suicidal decision to use a nuclear weapon.
The North’s arsenal will hardly be the only topic under discussion during Mr. Yoon’s visit. He and Mr. Biden will also celebrate the 70th anniversary of the alliance between their countries, commitments for more South Korean investment in manufacturing semiconductors and plans to bolster Seoul’s always-fraught relationship with Japan.
But the rapid expansion of North Korea’s capabilities is a subject of perpetual mutual concern for both countries. At a recent security conference held by the Harvard Korea Project, several experts said they believed Mr. Kim’s goal was to approach the size of Britain’s and France’s arsenals, which hold 200 to 300 weapons each.
Mr. Biden and Mr. Yoon are expected to hold out the possibility of pursuing a diplomatic solution toward what a succession of administrations have called the “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” But the North, administration officials say, has declined to respond to a series of public and private messages from Mr. Biden and his aides.
And what seems irreversible now is North Korea’s entrenched and advanced program.
With China expanding its arsenal to 1,500 weapons by around 2035, according to Pentagon estimates, and Russia threatening to use tactical weapons in Ukraine, “this is not an external environment in which it’s easy to have a conversation with North Korea,” said Victor Cha, a professor at Georgetown University who directed policy toward the North during the George W. Bush administration. “They look around their neighborhood and they say, ‘I don’t think so.’”
Mr. Trump vowed “fire and fury like the world has never seen” when North Korea greeted his presidency with missile launches; he ultimately tried the innovative approach of direct diplomacy with Mr. Kim. He emerged at one point predicting that Mr. Kim would begin disarming within six months and declaring at another that the North was “no longer a nuclear threat.” The arsenal just kept growing.
On Friday, North Korea’s foreign minister, Choe Son-hui, repeating a line that has been uttered by her government frequently in recent months, said the North’s status “as a world-class nuclear power is final and irreversible.”
Few experts believe the shift in rhetoric or the threats about first strikes indicate a greater willingness by the North to employ nuclear weapons. The response would be devastating. But gone are the days when American officials thought that the arsenal was a bargaining chip, something to be bartered away for trade deals, or for the string of hotels that Mr. Trump said America would help build on the North Korean beaches.
There was a mistaken belief, said Joseph S. Nye, who oversaw one of the first intelligence estimates of North Korea for the U.S. government, “that they would try to cash in their chips and get something” for the nuclear weapons. But rather than developing the country, he said at the Harvard conference, the North’s highest goal was “to preserve the dynasty,” and that meant holding on to the arsenal, and expanding it.
North Korea’s new confidence in expanding the arsenal, American officials said in interviews, is partly explained by a change in the relationship with China. Previously, the United States worked with Beijing — the supplier of critical energy and trade to the North — to rein in the country. In the mid-2000s, the Chinese even hosted the so-called six-party talks — North Korea, along with Japan, Russia, the United States and South Korea — to resolve the nuclear issue. When Pyongyang conducted nuclear tests, Beijing often voted for sanctions, and imposed a few.
Now, rather than view North Korea as an unruly, angry neighbor, China has welcomed it, along with Russia and Iran, as part of what White House officials call a coalition of the aggrieved. While Chinese officials presumably fear North Korea’s nuclear tests could go awry, creating a radioactive cloud, it appears perfectly happy to have the North unsettling the United States and its allies with regular missile tests.
Pyongyang’s most recent tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles — including one powered by solid fuel, which makes it quick to roll out of hiding and launch — suggest that North Korea can now almost certainly reach American territory, even if its ability to hit specific targets is imprecise. And over the past year, the North has enshrined its nuclear capability in its laws and started talking about its first-strike capabilities, rather than casting its arsenal as purely defensive.
On March 27, North Korea also released photos of Mr. Kim inspecting Hwasan-31, a small standardized nuclear warhead kit that can be mounted on its various nuclear-capable missiles and drones.
If the module was a real thing, the photos mean that the North is showing off an ability to mass-produce standardized nuclear warheads, said Hong Min, an expert on North Korean weapons at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. Mr. Kim has also called for mass-producing nuclear warheads for an “exponential” increase in the country’s nuclear arsenal. Last month, he ordered his government to step up the production of weapons-grade nuclear materials.
South Korean officials said that some of the North’s claims, like the purported capabilities of its underwater drones and supersonic missiles, were exaggerated. The reaction in Washington and Seoul has been to vow to strengthen their alliance — made easier by the fact that Mr. Yoon takes a far more hawkish view of how to deal with the North than did his predecessor, Moon Jae-in, who visited Mr. Biden in May 2021.
So the two leaders are expected to speak at length, publicly, about “extended deterrence,” with Mr. Biden offering more regular, visible visits of nuclear-armed submarines and aircraft to South Korea, bolstering the recently reinstated and expanded joint military exercises. (The exercises were variously suspended and scaled down under Mr. Trump.)
Kim Tae-hyo, a deputy national security adviser for Mr. Yoon, said that a top agenda item at the summit was how to boost South Korean confidence in Washington’s commitment to protect its ally with its nuclear umbrella. But Korean officials say that is more dependent on their confidence in the sitting American president — and whether, in the midst of a North Korean attack on the South that employed tactical nuclear weapons, Washington would be willing to take the risk to enter nuclear combat.
Mr. Biden’s words at a news conference on Wednesday will be picked apart for what they may, or may not, say about his determination to take the risks of nuclear engagement.
A new cyberinitiative will also be announced: The North funds the nuclear program with thefts of cryptocurrency and attacks on central bank reserves, and the South, though it rarely discusses it, has developed a skilled offensive cybercorps loosely based on the U.S. Cyber Command.
Outsiders will also be looking for signs of temporary or permanent damage from the leaks of Pentagon and C.I.A. documents in recent weeks that made clear the United States was listening in on top South Korean national security officials as they debated whether to send artillery rounds to Ukraine. The revelation was highly embarrassing for Mr. Yoon, because it suggested an absence of trust by his biggest ally.
But officials say they believe Mr. Yoon will move past it, celebrating cultural ties with the United States and booming investment by South Korean companies in semiconductor plants.
There is one thing South Korean officials say they will not ask for: a return of American tactical nuclear weapons to their country. They were withdrawn in 1991.
Mr. Yoon’s aides say they do not want them back.
Image: Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire arrives at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) headquarters in Washington, DC, on April 12, 2023. STEFANI REYNOLDS / AFP/ Editing by Germán & CoFrance to continue subsidizing electricity bills until 2025
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced the extension as the country's electricity providers continue to suffer the effects of Russia's war in Ukraine.
Le Monde with AFP, TODAYThe French government will continue subsidizing electricity bills into 2025 as prices suffer from Russia's invasion of Ukraine and part of the country's nuclear reactor fleet remaining offline, the finance minister said on Friday, April 21. With bills still "very high" compared to late 2021, "I'm giving us two years to end" electricity subsidies by early 2025, Bruno Le Maire told broadcaster LCI – a day after vowing to slash France's debt and deficits with cuts to public spending.
State-owned energy firm EDF produced its lowest amount of electricity in 30 years last year, as many nuclear reactors – the heart of France's energy system – have been taken offline due to corrosion discovered in emergency cooling systems. Energy prices have also been mounting across Europe from the throttling of the flow of Russian gas since Moscow attacked Ukraine last year.
Increases in electricity bills have been less sharp in France thanks to government subsidies, at 4% in 2022 and 15% this year – at a projected cost of €45 billion in 2023. But Le Maire said there was "no longer a need to keep up" subsidies for gas, as prices have fallen back, vowing to end them this year.
The finance minister had on Thursday said it was time to cut public spending to rein in annual budget deficits and France's overall debt, one of the highest burdens in the 27-member European Union.
Both figures had swollen from Paris' "whatever it takes" response to the coronavirus crisis and the energy price surge. "It's vital to speed up debt reduction" between now and the end of President Emmanuel Macron's second term in 2027, Le Maire insisted in an interview with regional daily Courrier Picard.