For Washington and Brussels, the IMEC trade corridor linking India, the Gulf and Europe is an effort to mold the resulting partnerships in line with Western interests. However, for India, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, their participation in the project does not reflect a desire to choose sides amid an era of great power competition.
Many observers have turned a critical eye to pre-invasion predictions about Russia’s war on Ukraine, given how wrong they turned out to be. But the reason they were wrong is inherent to the nature of warfare itself. Our ability to accurately predict the course of a war is compromised by the inherent uncertainty of war.
Today at WPR, we’re covering potential fault lines in Europe’s far-right movements and Slovakia’s upcoming elections this weekend.
But first, here’s our take on today’s top story:
Spain: Conservative leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo failed today to secure enough votes in Spain’s lower house to become prime minister, a little more than two months after Feijoo’s People’s Party, or PP, won the most seats in an inconclusive election in July. (Reuters)
Our Take: The fact that the right-wing coalition made up of PP and the far-right Vox party failed to gain enough additional backing among lawmakers to get Feijoo’s bid over the line suggests that acting PM Pedro Sanchez’s gamble in calling for snap elections earlier this year has paid off—at least when it comes to keeping Feijoo out of the prime minister’s office.
Following regional elections in May that saw a surge in support for the PP and Vox, Sanchez bet that the specter of a national government that includes Vox would deter Spaniards from voting for a conservative majority. Vox is, after all, the most extreme of Spain’s national parties, and it pledged before the election to ban abortion, effectively dismantle Spain’s federal system and sweep away 20 years of progressive legislation on LGBTQ+ rights and gender equality.
Feijoo will get one more attempt to become PM on Friday, which will likely fail as well. After that, Sanchez will get his chance, though his bid is also a long shot, as it requires tacit support from a handful of regional nationalist parties. Sanchez has already met some of their demands, but has so far stopped short of one party’s ultimatum: amnesty for the separatist leaders who staged an illegal independence referendum in Catalonia in 2017.
But as Alexander Clarkson wrote in a column last week, the fact that Sanchez is even in this position is a testament to his willingness to pursue high-risk gambits with confidence in his party.
