Novak Djokovic’s 4-star prison

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Jan 07, 2022 View in browser   By Ryan Heath Send tips and thoughts to rheath@politico.com. Follow Ryan on Twitter. Happening Today 'SIMPLY A MATTER OF FOLLOWING THE RULES': If you think Germans like rules, I instead present to you my fellow Australians. The quote above is from Prime Minister Scott Morrison about his decision to lock tennis superstar Novak Djokovic out of the country for refusing to take a Covid vaccine. We won't spend long on this morality take as Kazakhstan burns, but as Djokovic enters his third day in an Australian immigration detention, it's worth a brief stop. Djokovic is detained at a hotel where one refugee has been detained for nine years, which itself is a step up from where many unauthorized arrivals are locked up. Djokovic showcases how modern Australia is built on the tension between mass incarceration and equality. What started as a series of prisons in 1788 developed into workers paradise in the late 19th and 20th centuries … if you were the right sort of worker. Determining that depended on serious, brutal border management. Even today, If you arrive the wrong way in Australia (usually by boat) you'll end up in a desert prison or an island prison. Djokovic's treatment is not unusual: only the wealthy white subject is. One reason why Australians love rules so much is that their application helps them stomach a now pervasive inequality in the country. Adopting egalitarian stances — like no special treatment for Djokovic — is one way for Australians to cling to their cultural identity, and it's a way for new Australians (one quarter of the population was born overseas) to prove how Australian they've now become. Coming off two years of Australians being locked into their own country, and family members being locked out of it, making Djokovic follow the law neatly allows everyone to feel better about their pain. As your host's own mother, who lives north of Sydney, said: "He would have been booed off the court if they'd let him in." What won't move the needle: this performance from Djokovic's family, and this complaint by Serbia's foreign minister. Second player now detained: Czech tennis player Renata Voracova has been detained by Australian Border Force officials and asked to leave the country. GLOBAL RISKS AND TRENDS IF KAZAKHSTAN SNEEZES, WHO WILL CATCH A COLD? DOZENS DEAD IN KAZAKHSTAN PROTESTS: Internet shutdowns make it hard to verify the full extent of the trauma, but at least 2,000 have been arrested in addition to deaths of both protesters and law enforcers. Around 2,500 foreign troops — mostly Russian — have been dispatched by the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to help the authoritarian Kazakh regime restore order. The U.S. Embassy ramped up security, as officials urged calm. What is CSTO? A 20-year-old Russian-led regional security alliance of Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (all former Soviet states). Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is chairing CSTO in 2022. This is the first time the alliance's Article 4 (the equivalent of NATO's Article 5 collective defense clause) has been activated. It's about more than fuel prices: While spiking prices triggered this week's protests, the smartest observers of the region concur that there are much bigger underlying tensions that center on a corrupt political and business elite funneling much of the country's wealth into their personal coffers. Elites have been fleeing by private jet. London is where the Kazakh elite store their wealth, where the long-time ruling Nazarbayev family own close to $500 million in property. Check out their status symbols, courtesy of Open Democracy. More on the U.K.'s major kleptocracy problem. REGIONAL AND GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS Is Almaty 2022 any different to Budapest 1956 or Prague 1968? That's the question posed by Russian dissident businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky. There are similarities to Crimea and Ukraine in 2014, including Russia's deployment of its 76th Guards Air Assault Division and a Special Purpose Detached Brigade. Other factors to consider: — Discontent does not live far below the surface in many former Soviet states. While some (the Baltic states) found ways to integrate with Europe and grow rich, most remained corruption-ridden. The Oxus Society for Central Asian Affairs says that more than 2,500 protests have taken place in Central Asia since 2018. — Russia and China share long borders and deep interests with Kazakhstan. In addition to generally wanting stability in neighboring countries, Russia has its space-launch facility, the Baikonur Cosmodrome, to protect. China has energy investments and is hyper-conscious of separatist sentiment in the Xinjiang region that borders Kazakhstan. — Kazakhstan is the world's biggest uranium producer, responsible for about 40 percent of supply, well ahead of second-placed Australia (Iran buys from Kazakhstan, for example). WHAT BEIJING THINKS: After the Foreign Ministry called the protests an "internal affair," President Xi Jinping on Friday slammed Kazakh frustrations at the government as a "color revolution" by "foreign forces" and pledged "necessary support" to Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. "You took forceful measures … calmed down the situation, showed a statesman's responsibility and commitment," Xi said. WHAT MOSCOW IS SAYING: Maria Zakharova, a spokesperson for Russia's Foreign Ministry, compared the uprising to the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. Emma Ashford and Matthew Kroenig debate whether the unrest will inflame tensions between Russia and the West. WHERE THINGS STAND WITH PUTIN: Biden talks tough, but European allies are less ready for a fight , my POLITICO colleagues report. While officials warn of "massive" or "enormous" consequences of a Ukraine invasion, the bloc is divided on how far to go. Complicating the European stance: uncertainty about how long the tough U.S. stance on Russia will last. "If Trump wins the next election, we're on our own," one European official said. "And then what?" MEANWHILE IN UKRAINE … COURT FREEZES EX-PRESIDENT'S ASSETS: A Ukrainian court froze property owned by former President Petro Poroshenko as part of a formal investigation into alleged high treason by the former head of state, the Prosecutor General's office said on Thursday. Poroshenko denies the allegations, which he says are politically motivated. NEW PODCAST EPISODE — DEMOCRACY'S NEW FRONTLINE Listen to POLITICO Global Insider Established democracies around the world face deep threats to their authority and reputations. In this episode, we road-test a proposal for a new Alliance of Democracies, with both key backers and a more skeptical view on how such an alliance could work. ITALY TO PICK A NEW PRESIDENT: The Italian Parliament will meet on Jan. 24 to choose a new president, the lower house confirmed. Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who has led a technocratic government for almost a year, is in pole position for the role, after restoring stability to Italy, but such a switch would be a first in Italy. The alternatives would all be ground-breaking in their own ways: two women mooted in Rome are Economy Minister Daniele Franco, and Justice Minister Marta Cartabia, a former president of the Constitutional Court. Meanwhile, the convicted tycoon and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is also eyeing the post. A more traditional route would be Parliament recycling a Brussels-based Italian, such as Italy's EU Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni or outgoing European Parliament President David Sassoli. FRANCE'S EU PRESIDENCY KNOCKED SIDEWAYS BY OMICRON: The French presidency is strongly built on pomp and theater. Covid makes it hard for Emmanuel Macron to capitalize on that foundation in his reelection bid, but making matters worse is that Macron was counting on using France's EU presidency to double the political theater — only to find event after event must be canceled or shifted online. France, which has been hit particularly badly by the latest coronavirus variant, registered 332,000 cases Wednesday. The equivalent number in the U.S. would be around 1.7 million cases a day.   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.     GLOBETROTTERS PRINCE ANDREW LINKED TO ANOTHER SCANDAL: He sold his Sunninghill mansion to Timur Kulibayev, the son-in-law of Kazakhstan's long-time dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev ... for $4 million over its asking price, per Open Democracy. BILL & MELINDA GET POLITICAL: After decades on the political sidelines, the billionaire former couple are weighing into politics via their checkbooks, with donations to candidates ranging from Nick Kristof to Elise Stefanik. Side note: Kristof is ineligible to run for governor of Oregon because he does not meet a residency requirement, the state's top elections official said on Thursday. HOW MUCH DOES AN EMBASSY EMPTY CHAIR MATTER? There's a lot of what my colleague Alex Ward labels as "WTF-laden whispers" circulating in Washington around the Biden administration's lack of ambassadorial nominees to capitals such as Kyiv, Ukraine. It's bad that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) held up dozens of nominees for months (and continues to veto others), but it's inexplicable to not even try to surmount those obstacles, the thinking goes. What if Washington has it wrong? Sure, the lack of ambassadors is a pain for the top-tier figures in post, such as U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield and NATO Ambassador Julie Smith, who've spent 2021 filling in for the president and their absent colleagues at times. But foregoing the hunt for the right embassy picks gives the White House and State Department more control of messaging, and more time to focus on immediate domestic problems. The current chargé d'affaires in Kyiv, Kristina Kvien is highly regarded, for example, and my Brussels colleagues report that while there may be bruised egos about the slow appointment process, there are no substantive gripes from allies. BRAIN FOOD PODCAST: A new series from the European Council on Foreign Relations — The Age of Unpeace: Therapy for internationalists. The first three episodes are with Marietje Schaake (a friend of Global Insider), Parag Khanna and Dan Drezner Thanks to editor John Yearwood, Jordan Wolman, David Herszenhorn and Stuart Lau.   DON'T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO's new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE.       Follow us on Twitter Ryan Heath @PoliticoRyan   Follow us

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