International Belarus Duterte
Belarus, Duterte, and Hormuz: The Geopolitical Pressures Reshaping Markets and Law
Belarus freed 25 prisoners under a deal brokered by Trump envoy John Coale, a personal injury attorney and long-standing Trump family friend, with Washington lifting sanctions on two Belarusian companies in return. The White House is pressing Alexander Lukashenko — who has ruled Belarus since 1994 and whose political survival since the 2020 crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters has depended on Russian support — to release hundreds of political prisoners in exchange for sanctions relief and gradual international rehabilitation. Coale's selection signals that the administration is routing this diplomacy through personal relationship channels rather than State Department infrastructure, a pattern that has characterized the administration's foreign policy approach broadly. Analysts are divided on whether Putin has quietly sanctioned the outreach or whether Lukashenko is testing the limits of his Kremlin relationship.
From Minsk to The Hague: Rodrigo Duterte made his first in-person appearance before the International Criminal Court this week, a genuinely significant moment in international law. Duterte, who served as Philippine president from 2016 to 2022, was arrested in 2025 and transferred to ICC custody on charges related to his administration's anti-drug campaign, which human rights groups estimate resulted in between 12,000 and 30,000 deaths, many of them extrajudicial killings. The case is historically notable because Duterte is a former head of government of a middle-income Southeast Asian democracy — not a figure from a collapsed state or a regime of the kind the court has typically prosecuted. The current Philippine government under Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has navigated the process with political delicacy, given that large portions of the Filipino public still view the drug war favorably. Duterte's defenders are expected to argue at The Hague that the ICC selectively prosecutes while Western leaders who authorized questionable military operations face no similar scrutiny.
The Strait of Hormuz crisis continues to squeeze global oil supply, with UBS warning in a note this week that markets are being complacent about the disruption. Roughly 14 million barrels per day — nearly 14 percent of global consumption of approximately 102 million barrels per day — are not flowing through the strait as they normally would. China has re-entered global oil markets as a direct consequence, having drawn down strategic reserves to their limit and now bidding up available supply outside the Hormuz corridor. The disruption is feeding directly into the inflation data the Federal Reserve watches most closely, creating an energy-driven price pressure that monetary policy is poorly suited to address.