Hostage Diplomacy, NSIA scrutiny, Western Australian lithium
A Beijing to Britain briefing
Hello,
Your partner is abroad, visiting a country they have worked in for years. The country - let’s call it Chussan - currently has a tense and deteriorating relationship with the United Kingdom, and an even worse one with the United States. Last week, Washington issued an arrest warrant for Jhoe Blogs, who runs one of Chussan’s largest state-linked telecoms companies, alleging he had lied about cash flows and funding illegal groups. Mr Blogs was in London at the time of the warrant being issued, and is now, therefore, being held by the British Government awaiting the next steps.
Tomorrow, your partner will stop answering their phone. You’ll text them a couple of times, try WhatsApp, perhaps even Signal. No response. You ring some of their friends, their colleagues. They haven’t heard anything either. Another day passes. You alert the British Embassy in Chussan, who acknowledge your concerns and promise to look into it. Two days pass, and you learn via the Embassy that a senior Chussan official will hold a press conference later that evening. At the conference, the Chussan Government announces your partner is being detained under suspicion of “engaging in activities that threatened Chussan’s national security.” Is your partner a victim of state-led hostage diplomacy, a pawn in a much wider geopolitical battle? What do you do next? What does the British Government do?
As I explore in today’s briefing, this loose scenario is an aggregate of several experiences and cases underpinning a new report by the Foreign Affairs Committee on state-led hostage diplomacy. These types of incidents are on the rise, and countries are struggling to work out appropriate responses. I thoroughly recommend reading the main recommendations, which point to Canada’s response to the ‘Two Michaels’ as being one of the more successful approaches.
— Sam Hogg, Editor
In this week’s Briefing Note, we look at:
A new report on State Hostage Diplomacy with recommendations for the British Government
A Government promise to open up about the National Security and Investment Act
Britain doubling down on efforts to get closer to lithium-rich Western Australia
Annual letters from Jamie Dimon and Evan G. Greenberg