Written by 
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a dramatic shift in U.S. weapons policy toward the Russia-Ukraine war, climate change negotiations at the G-20 summit, and the European Union considering suspending dialogue with Israel.
ATACMS Get a Green Light
On Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden authorized Ukraine to use the U.S. Army Tactical Missile System (known as ATACMS) for limited strikes inside Russia. According to some U.S. officials, Biden’s approval will “have a very specific and limited effect” on the battlefield, likely just focusing on the area in and around Russia’s Kursk region, to restrain global concerns of escalation. Analysts believe that Russian forces are preparing a major assault to retake Kursk territory that Kyiv claimed during its surprise August incursion.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a dramatic shift in U.S. weapons policy toward the Russia-Ukraine war, climate change negotiations at the G-20 summit, and the European Union considering suspending dialogue with Israel.
ATACMS Get a Green Light
On Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden authorized Ukraine to use the U.S. Army Tactical Missile System (known as ATACMS) for limited strikes inside Russia. According to some U.S. officials, Biden’s approval will “have a very specific and limited effect” on the battlefield, likely just focusing on the area in and around Russia’s Kursk region, to restrain global concerns of escalation. Analysts believe that Russian forces are preparing a major assault to retake Kursk territory that Kyiv claimed during its surprise August incursion.
ATACMS are supersonic ballistic missiles with a maximum range of roughly 190 miles. Although they cannot travel as far as cruise or intercontinental ballistic missiles, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has long argued that they are vital to targeting Russian military sites important to the Kremlin’s war machine. As of September, 90 percent of Russian aircraft launching glide bombs into Ukraine were from airfields outside ATACMS range, according to U.S. Defense Department spokesperson Sabrina Singh.
Despite Zelensky having appealed for U.S. authorization for months, Biden was slow to agree, worried that such allowances would be seen as an escalation. “We’re trying to avoid World War III,” Biden has repeatedly told his staff. Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear that Moscow views the possible use of U.S.-supplied ATACMS as a major red line. On Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov reiterated that view, saying the move shows that the Biden administration “wants to throw oil on the fire and escalate the conflict in Ukraine.” Peskov pointed to Putin’s comments in September, when the Russian president said such authorization “will mean that NATO countries—the United States and European countries—are at war with Russia.”
However, some officials have cited North Korea deploying more than 11,000 troops to Kursk as what pushed Biden to reverse U.S. policy. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un must understand that Pyongyang’s deployment was a “costly” mistake, one official told the Washington Post.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared to outline a similar rationale. “I can tell you that we will continue to adapt and adjust again, to make sure that Ukraine is in the strongest possible position to deal with this aggression,” he said last Wednesday when asked about the North Korean forces deployed to Russia.
Some experts have also described Biden’s latest decision as an effort to Trump-proof U.S. aid pledges to Kyiv before the president-elect takes office in January. “President Biden has committed to making sure that every dollar we have at our disposal will be pushed out the door between now and Jan. 20,” Blinken said while discussing how Donald Trump’s electoral win will affect the war effort.
Biden has long seen U.S. support for Ukraine as a way to cement his presidential legacy. In May, he reversed a broad ban on Kyiv using U.S. military assistance to strike within Russia, after saying Moscow had concentrated its forces along the border regions to take advantage of the U.S. weapons restrictions.
With only two months before he must leave the White House and the war reaching its 1,000-day mark on Tuesday, Biden appears to be preparing U.S.-Ukraine relations so they are in their best negotiating position before peace talks are held, which Trump has said he aims to tackle early in his term. Trump has advocated for quickly ending the war but has only given a few concrete details on how he aims to do so.
Today’s Most Read
The World This Week
Tuesday, Nov. 19: The G-20 summit concludes in Brazil.
Zelensky addresses the European Parliament virtually while European Union defense ministers convene in Brussels.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi begins a three-day visit to Guyana.
Wednesday, Nov. 20: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hosts Chinese President Xi Jinping.
French President Emmanuel Macron begins a two-day visit to Chile while Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni travels to Argentina.
Thursday, Nov. 21: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov begins a two-day visit to Belarus.
Laos hosts defense ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus those from the bloc’s allies.
Friday, Nov. 22: The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) concludes in Azerbaijan.
Sunday, Nov. 24: Romania holds a presidential election, and Uruguay holds a presidential election runoff.
Switzerland holds a quarterly referendum.
What We’re Following
Green waves at the G-20. Climate change financing took center stage at this week’s annual G-20 summit in Brazil. “In turbulent times and a fracturing world, G-20 leaders must signal loud and clear that international cooperation is still the best and only chance humanity has to survive global heating,” U.N. climate change executive secretary Simon Stiell wrote in a letter on Saturday ahead of the two-day summit.
G-20 nations account for 85 percent of the world’s economy—and 80 percent of the world’s carbon emissions. A climate financing agreement remains out of reach at COP29 thus far, with wealthy countries, particularly in Europe, pushing for some richer developing nations such as China and Middle Eastern oil-producing states to contribute more to climate finance. That same debate has arisen in G-20 negotiations, though sources told Reuters on Sunday that G-20 negotiators have reached a breakthrough, agreeing to a text that mentions developing nations’ voluntary contributions to climate finance. However, the incoming Trump administration, which has falsely claimed that climate change is a hoax and has threatened to draw down green energy investments, has cast a shadow over the G-20 summit’s efforts.
Suspending talks? EU foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell confirmed on Monday that he would urge the bloc’s members to pause political dialogue with Israel, citing “serious concerns about possible breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza.” He elaborated that pressure was needed on both Israel and Hamas to help stop the conflict, which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in Gaza since fighting erupted more than a year ago.
A suspension would require approval from all 27 EU member states, which is unlikely. Already, Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said the Netherlands wishes to maintain open dialogue with Israel.
Meanwhile, deadly Israeli strikes against Hamas and its allies continued over the weekend. On Sunday, Hezbollah confirmed that the militant group’s spokesperson, Mohammed Afif, was killed in an Israeli strike on Beirut. His death followed reports that Israeli forces killed roughly 70 people in northern Gaza on Sunday.
Pastef victory in Senegal. Preliminary results from Senegal’s parliamentary election on Sunday show that the ruling Pastef party is on track to secure a major win. Incumbent President Bassirou Diomaye Faye defeated former President Macky Sall, former Prime Minister Amadou Ba, and Dakar Mayor Barthelemy Dias in the snap election, and his Pastef party appears close to claiming a strong mandate in parliament.
Faye was elected in March on an anti-establishment platform. By September, he had dissolved the opposition-led parliament to aim for Pastef majority control in new elections. Experts expect Faye to use his greater influence to deliver on several key campaign pledges, such as cracking down on corruption, reviewing all oil and gas contracts, and improving livelihoods squeezed by high inflation and youth unemployment.
Odds and Ends
The X-Files’s Mulder and Scully would likely be disappointed with the U.S. Defense Department’s latest report on UFOs. Last Thursday, the Pentagon released its findings on a slew of possible extraterrestrial sightings. Instead of Martians and Vulcans, though, the report detailed hundreds of cases of misidentified balloons, birds, and satellites. “It is important to underscore that, to date, [the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office] has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology,” the authors of the report wrote. Some of us still prefer to believe that “the truth is out there.”