Fdd's overnight brief

Turkey

A roadside bomb planted by Syrian militants detonated near a joint Russian-Turkish patrol in northern Syria on Tuesday morning, injuring three Russian soldiers, the Russian Defence Ministry said. – Reuters

Turkey and the European Union clashed on Monday over Ankara’s decision to change the status of Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque and its continued energy exploration in disputed Mediterranean waters. – Associated Press

Michael Rubin writes: At stake now is not preserving the traditional notion of sovereign immunity on relatively minor issues, such as collecting on diplomatic missions’ parking tickets or prosecuting diplomats for automobile accidents, but rather accepting that a head of state can order thugs and hit men to target Americans exercising their constitutional rights on their own soil. If the court fails to hold Turkey to account for its agents’ deliberate actions in Sheridan Circle, it will effectively greenlight future murder and mayhem on American soil. – Washington Examiner

Libya

The United Arab Emirates wants to see a return of Libya’s oil production as soon as possible but with safeguards in place to prevent proceeds from fuelling further conflict in the north African country, a senior Emirati official tweeted on Monday. – Reuters

Turkey dismissed prospects of any imminent ceasefire in Libya on Monday, saying any deal incorporating the conflict’s existing frontlines would not benefit the Ankara-backed Government of National Accord. – Reuters

A delayed audit of Libya’s central bank is now contributing to a devastating oil blockade, the latest twist to a regional proxy war launched by Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar against the United Nations-backed government in Tripoli. – Bloomberg

China

The U.S. declared its formal opposition to a swath of Chinese claims in the South China Sea, in an unusually direct challenge to Beijing’s efforts to assert control in the strategic waters. – Wall Street Journal

China on Tuesday described a U.S. rejection of its maritime claims in the South China Sea as completely unjustified and accused the U.S. of attempting to sow discord between China and the Southeast Asian countries with which it has territorial disputes. – Associated Press

Professor Wang Yiwei, the Director of the Center for International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, China, said in a July 7, 2020 interview on CGTN Arabic (China) that the U.S. is trying to control other countries and to get them to cut themselves off from China even though they prefer to remain neutral. He said that a “globalization of Man” is taking place and that the WHO must enjoy higher global stature, which he said American withdrawal is preventing. – Middle East Media Research Institute

Editorial: This is one of those Trump-era diplomatic moves—like moving the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem or pulling out of failing arms accords—that a more risk-averse Administration would not have tried. China won’t be happy. Yet the decision brings official U.S. policy in line with international law and geopolitical facts. No matter who wins the White House this year, a key priority of U.S. foreign policy in 2021 will be deterring Chinese lawlessness and expansion. – Wall Street Journal

David B. Rivkin Jr. and Anastasia Lin write: Beijing’s efforts to force American companies to support and comply with its propaganda and deception campaigns and furnish information on Chinese dissidents are similarly inimical to vital American interests. Preventing Western companies from participating in Chinese propaganda campaigns would diminish China’s soft power and impair its ability to use economic blackmail as a tool of statecraft. – Wall Street Journal

Benjamin Brimelow writes: That said, it is important to bear in mind that China does not seek to challenge the US in a military conflict across the entire world or to become the same type of globally-based military as the US. Rather, it seeks to assert its authority in its home territory and waters. China has a massive advantage in that most of the likely conflict scenarios it faces would take place very close to its territory. This means China may not need the same level of competence as the US, as it will be able to bring more troops, ships and aircraft, and weapons to bear in a fight without facing the challenges of operating over distance. – Business Insider

Asia

Defying warnings from local officials that the Hong Kong opposition’s unofficial primary vote could be illegal under a sweeping new security law, hundreds of thousands of people chose avowedly pro-democracy candidates to run in citywide elections this year, results released Monday showed. – New York Times

An American-British member of an advisory body to China’s sovereign-wealth fund has stepped down from her post due to concerns over Chinese restrictions on free speech, including Beijing’s controversial new national-security law for Hong Kong. – Wall Street Journal

The European Union and its member states will take coordinated action to respond to China’s tightening grip on Hong Kong, the bloc’s foreign policy chief said Monday, including looking at export bans for sensitive technologies, widening visa possibilities for the island’s citizens and reconsidering extradition arrangements. – Wall Street Journal

Top advisers to President Donald Trump have ruled out undermining the Hong Kong dollar’s peg to the greenback as they seek to punish China for infringing on the territory’s political freedoms, according to people familiar with the matter. – Bloomberg

China’s projection of its military might into Asian waters and North Korea’s modernization of its ballistic-missile arsenal pose risks to Japanese and regional security, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said. – Bloomberg

China has described a primary by Hong Kong’s pro-democracy parties as a “serious provocation”, warning that some campaigning may have breached a tough new security law it imposed on the city – Agence France-Presse

In the autumn of 2015, on a mission to Beijing that would pave the way for President Xi Jinping’s triumphal state visit to the UK that October, George Osborne employed a phrase that has come to haunt Sino-British relations. […]Five years later, little remains of Mr Osborne’s glittering vision. Despite its straitened finances, the political shock of Brexit and a consequent need for global trade and investment every bit as urgent as Mr Osborne’s, Boris Johnson’s government is taking a much harder look at China. – Financial Times

China is beginning “mass production” of fifth-generation J-20B stealth fighter jets in a bid to seize control of the local airspace from neighboring U.S. allies. – Washington Examiner

Japan’s annual defence review accuses China of pushing its territorial claims amid the coronavirus pandemic and suspects Beijing of spreading propaganda and disinformation as it provides medical aid to nations fighting COVID-19. – Reuters

Armenia and Azerbaijan blamed each other Monday for skirmishes on their volatile border that has left four Azerbaijani soldiers dead and several troops wounded on both sides. – Associated Press

Greta Nabbs-Keller writes: As the strategic environment of the Indo-Pacific deteriorates, Australia’s relationship with Indonesia will assume even greater importance. Canberra must be ready to accept, however, that despite growing strategic convergence, its views will not always align with those in Jakarta, and there are relationship risks ahead that require policy consideration now. As a result, new and innovative modalities of cooperation with Indonesia and other regional states will need to be formulated and adequately resourced if Australia is to achieve its new strategic objectives in the Indo-Pacific. – War on the Rocks

Europe

Poland’s nationalist President Andrzej Duda narrowly defeated his liberal challenger to clinch a second term, a razor-thin election whose results spoke to the European country’s intense political polarization. Mr. Duda, who received the support of President Trump during the campaign and is backed by the nationalist-conservative Law and Justice party, had received 51.21% of the vote with tallies in from 99.7% of polling stations, the country’s National Electoral Commission said Monday. – Wall Street Journal

French judges on Monday ordered two men to stand trial for the brutal 2018 killing of an elderly Jewish woman that prompted an outcry over a rise in anti-Semitic acts. – Agence France-Presse

A 95-year-old former Nazi concentration camp guard has been charged with war crimes during the Holocaust in what could be one of the last cases of its kind, a German court said Monday. – Agence France-Presse

The UK government is preparing to change course over the role of Huawei in its 5G telecoms network. Six months after agreeing it could have a limited role, ministers look set to exclude the Chinese company, with no new equipment installed from next year. The move is in part a result of pressure from Washington. – BBC

A German government official has criticized bystanders for a “lack of civil courage” after a Munich rabbi was verbally accosted last week. – Algemeiner

The Americas

Maduro has leveraged the failed mission as a propaganda coup, claiming it is evidence of an effort by the United States, Colombia and the Venezuelan opposition to kill him. Its action-movie details have provided him with a welcome public distraction from the country’s broken economy and spreading coronavirus outbreak. – Washington Post

As U.S. sanctions scare away the world’s largest shippers from Venezuela’s oil industry, new players are willing to brave the heightened risks and help keep socialist leader Nicolás Maduro afloat, according to a new report. – Associated Press

Far-right white nationalist Canadian politician Travis Patron – leader of the Canadian Nationalist Party – shared antisemitic rhetoric and conspiracy theories involving Jews to the political party’s official social media channels on Saturday – personally labelling the religious group a “parasitic tribe.” – Jerusalem Post

Veteran U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson plans to travel to Caracas to meet with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to discuss the status of several American citizens held as prisoners there, his foundation said on Monday. – Reuters

Defense

The Navy announced several appointments today for high-level jobs, including a new director of warfare integration and a new commander of Naval Information Warfare Systems Command. – USNI News

The Air Force has officially placed an order for its first batch of F-15EXs, awarding Boeing a contract on Monday that puts a ceiling value for the entire program close to $23 billion. – Defense News

That scenario is similar to one the Air Force Research Laboratory plans to test this year using a Collaborative Small Diameter Bomb, one of the two munitions the Air Force is developing in the Golden Horde program. – Defense News

The amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard, which burned through the night while in port in San Diego, was at the tail end of two years of upgrades supporting the integration of the F-35B, according to Navy documents. That means the Navy will now have fewer options to deploy the next-generation fighter in the Pacific. – Defense News

Four National Reconnaissance Office payloads will be launched into orbit July 15, continuing the agency’s efforts to leverage the small commercial launch market for its missions. – C4ISRNET

Josh Campbell writes: As a first step, NATO should establish oversight on the readiness of national forces allocated to the “Four Thirties.” Then, the alliance should adopt additional strategies that support tactical readiness for these forces by standardizing training methodologies and establishing their wartime task organization before a crisis starts, not after. Given the challenges associated with NATO’s land component, the alliance should start with member states’ armies rather than the other services. – War on the Rocks