World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

Kurdish forces have launched an offensive to retake Sinjar, a town taken over by the Islamic State last year.  Sinjar has great symbolic significance to the control of the Syrian territory close to the Turkish border.  Interestingly, the offensive is manned both by the Peshmerga which is the military arm of the Kurdish Autonomous Region in northern Iraq (supported by the US) and by the Kurdistan Workers Party (the PKK) which is considered a terrorist organization by the Turkish government and therefore not supported by the US.  The US has been supporting the offensive with air power which means that the US is supporting an enemy of the Turkish state.  The bewildering sets of alliances in this battle continue to nettle a systemic response by the US.

A general strike has paralyzed much public transportation in Greece.  The protest is against further austerity measures proposed by the Greek government in order to comply with the bailout demands insisted upon by the troika (the EU, the European Central Bank, and the IMF).  The dissent is long simmering as the Greek government has shuffled its composition several times in order to address the  debt crisis.  This time, however, the protest has erupted into violence as protesters battle the police and are using Molotov cocktails.

The currencies of emerging markets such as China, Brazil, India, and Indonesia are being buffeted by the prospect of a rise in interest rates in the US by the Federal Reserve.  Investors, convinced that the US will raise its rates in December, are pulling their money out of emerging markets and depositing the money in the US in hopes of earning a higher return.  Unfortunately, the emerging markets can ill-afford the outflow of capital right now and the weakness of their economies is aggravated by the loss of money.  The weakness is being manifested by a decline in the currencies of those countries, and the devaluations will lead to an increase of inflation in the markets.  If the outflow of capital increases dramatically, then many of these countries will suffer sharp downturns. This issue is something to keep an eye on for the next 6 weeks.