Great power rivalry 

Ukraine: Russian President Vladimir Putin this week sparked threats of further international sanctions after he announced plans to deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, a staunch ally, which neighbours Ukraine and Russia. 

As Russian troops struggled to advance in eastern Ukraine, Putin said storage units to hold tactical nuclear weapons were being built in Belarus and would be completed on July 1. He likened the move to Washington’s stationing of weapons in Europe, saying that Belarus’s leader, Alexander Lukashenko, requested the deployment. 

NATO described the move as dangerous and irresponsible, saying Moscow had repeatedly breached its arms control commitments. The United States said it did not believe Russia was preparing to use nuclear weapons, and analysts said Putin’s timetable for the deployment seemed overly ambitious. 

Putin’s announcement came amid growing concerns about the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine. The plant, the largest in Europe, is under Russian control but is being operated by Ukrainian staff.

Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, visited the region this week to try to reach a deal to secure the plant. He has previously called for a security zone to be set up around the site. 

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky met with Grossi, saying that Russia was “holding a nuclear power station hostage”.

In eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian troops have been battling to defend the front-line towns of Avdiivka and Bakhmut, as Russia has made gradual and costly advances. But Ukraine this week began receiving shipments of German and British heavy tanks – a development that German defence minister Boris Pistorius said “can make the difference on the front”. 

The neighbourhood 

Vanuatu: The government of Vanuatu plans to bring in 1500 foreign workers to address labour shortages that have been caused by outflows of workers to Australia and New Zealand. 

Since border closures were lifted last year, Vanuatu’s economy has grown faster than expected. Gross domestic product is set to increase by 4.1 per cent this year.

But manufacturers and other businesses have struggled to find enough staff, partly due to schemes that allow Pacific residents to work in Australia and New Zealand. Vanuatu is the biggest source of temporary Pacific workers in Australia and New Zealand. The minimum wage in Australia is $21.38 an hour; in Vanuatu, it is $2.76. 

Pacific governments have pushed for their residents to have greater work and residency rights in Australia and New Zealand. But business groups in the Pacific have warned that some skilled workers have been abandoning senior positions and managerial roles to take up higher-paid unskilled work abroad. 

Vanuatu’s minister of finance, John Salong, this week said there was little the government could do to prevent residents taking up jobs under Australian and New Zealand labour schemes.

“In the past couple of years, basically, we have had difficulty in keeping people at their workplaces,” he told the ABC. “They’ve opted to go to New Zealand and Australia and they’re not necessarily coming back.”

Democracy in retreat 

Israel: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, this week suspended a controversial plan to overhaul the judiciary after massive protests threatened to bring the country to a standstill.

Earlier, Netanyahu, who has defied the protesters for weeks, sparked public outrage after he fired the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, who had called for the reforms to be halted. Gallant, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party and a former military commander, said he believed the overhaul posed an “immediate and tangible danger” to the state’s security. Growing numbers of soldiers have warned that the changes, if passed, will make Israel undemocratic and that they would no longer serve.

The sacking of Gallant led to a spontaneous wave of protests as more than 100,000 demonstrators blocked the main highway in Tel Aviv and trade unions and retailers called for an unprecedented general strike that would shut down the country’s economy. Israeli embassies around the world closed as diplomats refused to work.

Netanyahu, who leads the most right-wing government in the country’s history, eventually relented, saying in a televised statement that he supported the reforms but wanted to avoid a civil war. 

“Israeli society is on a dangerous collision course,” he said. “This crisis requires all of us to act responsibly.”

The proposed reforms would give the government control of judicial appointments and allow a parliamentary majority to override Supreme Court decisions. Critics say the moves would allow the government to curb civil and minority rights and could help Netanyahu as he faces trial on corruption and bribery charges. 

The proposals have also risked damaging ties between Israel and the United States, its closest ally.

On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden told reporters he was “very concerned” about recent events in Israel. In remarkably blunt comments about an ally’s domestic policy, he said Netanyahu should abandon the judicial reforms and seek a genuine compromise.

Asked whether Netanyahu would be invited to the White House, Biden said: “No. Not in the near term.”

Spotlight: US mulls TikTok ban

In a plea to prevent the US from imposing its first ban on a social media platform, Shou Zi Chew, the head of TikTok, told a congressional hearing last week: “Let me state this unequivocally: ByteDance [TikTok’s Chinese owner] is not an agent of China or any other country.”

But the five-hour testimony by Chew, a 40-year-old Singaporean and former Goldman Sachs banker, did little to assuage concerns in Washington that the wildly popular short video app poses a threat to national security. 

Mark Warner, a Democrat who chairs the senate intelligence committee, this week said he was pushing ahead with a law that would allow the app to be banned. President Joe Biden supports either banning the app or requiring it to become US-owned.

Security agencies in the US and other countries believe China’s Communist Party could collect data from users or use the app to censor information and promote disinformation. TikTok, which does not operate in China, has insisted that Beijing has never requested data and that it would not hand over information if it did. The app’s user data is stored in Singapore and the US.

The US has already banned TikTok on government devices – a move adopted in various forms by the European Union, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. France introduced a ban this week, and Australia is expected to follow. 

But some Democratic lawmakers in the US have opposed a ban. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat who has a huge social media following, posted her first video to TikTok last weekend, saying the government should not impose a ban until it had released information about the potential threat. 

But the strongest opposition is likely to come from the app’s soaring number of users. In the US, which has 340 million residents, TikTok now has 150 million active users. 

Gina Raimondo, the US commerce secretary, who would potentially be responsible for ordering a ban, told Bloomberg News recently: “The politician in me thinks you’re going to literally lose every voter under 35, forever.”

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