Extract from ABC News
Analysis
The success of the far-right Alternative for Deutschland party in winning 44 per cent of the vote in the state election has shaken national German politics. (Reuters: Thilo Schmuelgen)
The complexity of the differing forms of warfare being employed in conflicts around the globe these days has seen analysts increasingly try to organise them under the headings of 'kinetic' and 'economic' warfare.
Kinetic warfare is the sort that involves shooting things at each other. Economic warfare employs weapons like sanctions.
There's been an escalation in both sorts this week: a resurgence in missile exchanges in Ukraine and the Middle East; and new rounds of sanctions employed against Israel, Iran and Cuba.
The US House of Representatives is also scheduled to vote next week on sweeping new tariffs on countries buying Russian oil and gas, though it is unclear whether the vote will proceed or not.
There have also been developments which represent both kinetic and economic warfare: notably the Iran-backed Houthis gaining control of the strategically crucial city of Mocha on the Red Sea coast of Yemen, just 50 kilometres from the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
Saudi Arabia has been getting around the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz on its eastern flanks by shipping oil via pipeline to its west coast, in order to ship it out through the Red Sea.
The Iran-backed Houthis have gained control of the strategically crucial city of Mocha on the Red Sea coast of Yemen, just 50 kilometres from the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. (Reuters)
Far-right party triumphs in Germany
The spectre of shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait coming under more lethal Houthi fire sent a shudder through world markets on Thursday night.
But the new player that has erupted on the warfare block this week is political warfare.
That is, shifting internal politics within countries which are changing the geopolitical landscape.
The conspicuous latest examples of this came in an election in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, and the equally important shift by the UK government of Andy Burnham in its position on Israel.
The success of the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party in winning 44 per cent of the vote in the state election — while the ruling CDU's vote halved to just 17.2 per cent — has shaken national German politics, even though the rise of the AfD has been underway for some time.
As this week ends, German media is widely reporting that the position of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is in mortal danger, because — like former UK PM Keir Starmer — he has proved both an ineffective communicator, and a disliked leader. He has not been able to fend off the rise of the AfD, after pledging he would see the party's vote halved.
The pressure is also only going to continue on Merz, and on German politics, with two more state elections due next weekend in Berlin and another state that was once part of the old East Germany: Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
The result saw fiery clashes in the Bundestag in Berlin, in which Merz conceded that voters had spoken "pretty clearly" in the state election last weekend with a result that had shocked his "to its very foundations".
"They also sent us, and me personally, a clear message," Deutsche Welle reported him saying.
"We must try, myself included, to reach people more effectively, in the full range of their emotions."
However, a more combative chancellor hit back at the AfD's co-leader Alice Weidel likening the AfD's "remigration" policy —the mass deportation of irregular migrants and foreigners who are required to leave the country — to "nothing other than ethnic cleansing based on skin colour and origin".
AfD's policy makes even right-wing parties anxious
Merz said there was agreement within his governing coalition that many people without a right to remain permanently in Germany should be deported.
"But we distinguish carefully between those who work in Germany, who contribute to our prosperity, who are welcome in Germany, and those who do not have a permanent right to remain and who must leave our country again," he said.
The AfD's remigration policy is only one of the policy positions which leave many in Germany, and in Europe more broadly, deeply anxious, even right-wing parties in other countries.
German media is widely reporting that the position of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is in mortal danger, because he has proved both an ineffective communicator, and a disliked leader who has not been able to fend off the rise of the AfD. (Reuters: Christian Mang)
Le Monde described the AfD's victory as "particularly embarrassing" for Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National (RN).
RN had been part of a coalition in the European Parliament with the AfD until 2024 when it broke away "after ambiguous statements by the German party about the role of the SS during World War II and disagreements over remigration".
But it is the AfD's hostility to Ukraine and calls for closer ties with Russia which is of greatest concern in Europe.
Germany, Europe's largest economy, has been the major European backer of Ukraine under Merz, who has also been overseeing the biggest rearmament of his country since World War II, under the perceived threat coming from Russia.
As the former head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, told the Financial Times this week that "it's been a real testament to European support and solidarity that we've kept the Ukrainians going".
But he acknowledged that with changes in the wind in the politics of Germany, France and Italy in the next year, this could significantly change.
The more prosaic issue of gas supply may have a major role to play in the political warfare over Ukraine in coming months.
Europe currently holds its lowest gas stocks in 20 years. With about one third of the world's LNG supplies knocked out by attacks on Qatari production facilities, and facing another bleak winter, the pressure in Europe to start buying more gas from Russia will be intense, including in Germany where the AfD explicitly advocates for this to occur.
Ukraine will need all the friends it can get as European support wobbles, which is why the recent UK move to announce a defence deal with Ukraine, and now a deal between Canada and Ukraine to provide military support in the form of military drones and air defence interceptors, is so significant.
Under new prime minister Andy Burnham the UK is taking a more assertive position on foreign policy issues. (Reuters: Kin Cheung)
UK takes more assertive stance
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has been the poster boy this year for the call for Middle Powers to take on more active independent roles in world affairs.
This week has seen another shift in the UK's international position which reflects that trend.
The UK likes to still think itself as a 'Great Power' but it is at best a middling one these days, even it does still possess nuclear weapons.
But under new prime minister Andy Burnham, and his foreign secretary Ed Miliband, the UK is taking a more assertive position on foreign policy issues, this week releasing legislation for tougher sanctions against Iran, and most notably announcing trade sanctions against West Bank settlements in Israel.
The importance of the West Bank move is not just about the actual trade sanctions. It lies in the upgrading of the language the UK is using about the actions of the Netanyahu government in the West Bank.
New sanctions placed on Israeli settlements (Jacob Greber, Sarah Ferguson)
Just as Merz attacked the AfD in Germany for a policy he says amounts to ethnic cleansing, Miliband accused Israel of doing the same thing in the West Bank.
What is more, he made explicit the view that the UK regards Israel's occupation of the entire West Bank as unlawful — adopting the findings of the International Court of Justice — rather than continuing with the almost 60-year-old claim that it is just temporarily "occupied".
It is a particularly big turnaround for a party that was defending itself against claims of antisemitism only a few years ago.
Whether the trade sanctions can be implemented by the UK, or the other 11 countries who also indicated this week that they would impose similar measures, is yet to be seen.
Commemorations of the 25th Anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 have seen a number of analysts observe that Al Qaeda had eventually been contained.
But those threats have been replaced with state-sponsored terror, notably from Iran and Russia. And Europe has been confronting the cost of the mass wave of refugees that era of terror unleashed.
Along with the transformation of the United States from global policeman to global disruptor, middle power countries are having to write their own rules rather than just hiding behind America in this new world.
Unfortunately, it is not clear whether Australia has yet mastered the dexterity to engage in this new era of political warfare.
Laura Tingle is the ABC's Global Affairs Editor.
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