Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at the possibility of a European drone wall, day one of the U.S. government shutdown, and a deadly earthquake in the Philippines.
Build the (Drone) Wall
Following a slew of alleged Russian incursions into European airspace, European Union leaders gathered in Copenhagen on Wednesday to discuss strategies to protect the continent from future aggression out of Moscow. Their proposal: Build a drone wall.
“Russia will continue, and we have to be ready,” Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said. “We have to strengthen our preparedness.” Although several European nations have already committed troops and anti-drone systems to Copenhagen to protect the summit—and with all drone flights over Denmark banned until Friday—EU leaders maintain that more must be done to stop Moscow from advancing farther into Europe.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen first floated the idea of a drone wall during her annual address last month—the same day that some 20 Russian drones violated Polish airspace. Like in Poland, Moscow has repeatedly stepped up its brazen incursions into European territory. In recent months, two Russian Gerbera drones (one of which was carrying explosives) crashed into Lithuania, a Russian Mi-8 helicopter and three armed Russian MiG-31 fighter jets separately violated Estonian airspace, two Romanian F-16s detected a Russian Geran drone over its territory, and Denmark shut down several of its airports over sightings of unidentified drones.
The Kremlin has denied responsibility for the drones over Denmark, disputed several other drone and fighter jet sightings, and maintains that it did not intend to send unmanned aircraft into Poland. At the same time, though, Russia has increased its military spending to about 7 percent of its GDP and continues to push for greater control of Ukrainian territory—largely via drone warfare.
This is “essentially a hybrid war against Europe,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said. “And that is what we need to respond to.”
The EU’s proposed drone wall would not be a physical structure. Instead, the bloc’s members would deploy a network of sensors and weapons to detect, track, and intercept drones that violate European airspace. Although it is still unclear whether the drone wall would involve shooting down unmanned aircraft, creating a system to jam Russian drones so they are inoperable, or simply boosting Europe’s defenses, the proposal would improve information- and data-sharing among EU members and their allies.
Such a development would address U.S. President Donald Trump’s demands that Europe take greater responsibility for its own security. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte praised the idea, calling it “timely and necessary.” “In the end, we cannot spend millions of euros or dollars on missiles to take out the drones, which are only costing a couple of thousand of dollars,” Rutte said on Tuesday.
However, Moscow has warned that creating a drone wall would only worsen Russia’s relationship with Europe. “As history has shown, erecting walls is always a bad thing,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.
According to the European commissioner for defense and space, the drone wall could be operational within a year.
Today’s Most Read
- How Military Leaders Should Respond to Trump’s Norm-Busting by Peter D. Feaver and Heidi A. Urben
- Donald Trump Will Never Be a Restrainer by Stephen M. Walt
- The ASEAN Plan for a Post-American World by Joseph Rachman
What We’re Following
Government shutdown. Many U.S. federal services ground to a halt on Wednesday after Congress failed to pass a funding bill by the midnight deadline. Democrats opposed the Republican-backed proposal over concerns about health care; they seek to reverse Trump’s Medicaid cuts and wish to extend tax credits that would make health insurance premiums more affordable for millions of people. However, Republicans have called the Democrats’ countermeasure a nonstarter that would cost taxpayers more than $1 trillion.
“There’s nothing to negotiate,” U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Wednesday. “There isn’t anything we can do to make this bill any better for them.” The country’s longest partial shutdown occurred during Trump’s first term; it lasted 35 days due to an impasse on funding Trump’s border wall.
Experts expect the U.S. government shutdown to have adverse effects on the global economy. Already, markets opened lower on Wednesday, reflecting fears of how long this shutdown might last. Meanwhile, Trump has threatened massive layoffs to hurt the Democrats’ bargaining position, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of federal workers. “We can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them and irreversible by them, like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like,” Trump said.
Ring of Fire. A devastating 6.9 magnitude earthquake struck near the Philippines’ Cebu island late Tuesday, killing at least 69 people, injuring more than 150 others, and decimating local infrastructure. Emergency services working alongside military forces, police officers, and civilian volunteers continued to search for survivors on Wednesday. However, authorities expect the death toll to rise.
Tuesday’s quake was the deadliest to rock the Philippines since 2013, when a 7.2 magnitude earthquake off of Bohol island killed 222 people. The Philippines sits on the Pacific Ocean’s Ring of Fire, a geological zone known for its intense seismic and volcanic activity. A minor eruption from the country’s Taal volcano was also recorded on Tuesday. Cebu island declared a state of calamity on Wednesday following repeated aftershocks.
The earthquake comes barely more than a week after the Philippines suffered back-to-back typhoons that killed more than 20 people, caused extensive flooding, and destroyed homes.
Increased intervention. The United Nations Security Council voted on Tuesday to authorize an up to 5,500-person international force to help quell gang violence in Haiti. The U.S. and Panamanian resolution will transform the Kenya-led multinational effort (set to expire on Thursday) into a “Gang Suppression Force,” more than doubling the mandated force’s size as well as expanding its powers to allow its personnel to arrest suspected gang members, which the current mission does not have the ability to do.
Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said the new force “offers Haiti hope.” “It is a hope that has been rapidly slipping away as terrorist gangs expanded their territory, raped, pillaged, murdered, and terrorized the Haitian population,” Waltz said. Violent gangs currently control around 90 percent of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, and have expanded their control into the country’s countryside. Fighting has displaced more than 1.3 million people.
Although the resolution’s backers touted the new force as a means to eventually hold democratic elections in Haiti, China and Russia both abstained from the vote, arguing that further U.N. involvement risks exacerbating the country’s already precarious security situation and accusing the United States of failing to stem the illegal flow of weapons into Port-au-Prince. Pakistan also abstained from the vote.
Odds and Ends
Be careful with how you express your feelings. As part of North Korea’s latest crackdown on freedom of speech, officials from a factory’s Socialist Patriotic Youth League last month reportedly condemned the contents of a personal letter discovered during a bag search, in which a young person wrote, “I love you” and “The only thing I think of is you.” The officials have turned the message into an ideological issue, calling such language evidence of a “decadent lifestyle imbued with capitalist views of love.”