World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

Climate change will have different effects in different parts of the world.  Most of the developed world worries more about warmer winters, but in the Middle East the concern is warmer summers.  The Economist summarizes the work of several research studies that have analyzed the effects of climate change on the region:

“Daytime highs, notes an academic study published in the Netherlands in April, could rise by 7ºC by the end of the century. Another UN study predicted Iraq’s sandstorms would increase from 120 to 300 per year. The region also has fewer coping mechanisms than before. Population increase has exhausted water supply, leaving two-thirds of the countries in the Arabian Peninsula and the “fertile crescent” without the minimum viable for human survival, according to UN figures. Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, is set to run out of water in 2019 or perhaps earlier. In Taiz, 160 (260km) miles to the south, the water table has already collapsed. Some people have air-conditioners, but power cuts—of up 16 hours a day in southern Iraq—make them useless.”

Needless to say, these types of changes will only increase the volatility of the politics of the region.

The European Union and Turkey are playing a dangerous game of chicken.   Earlier this year, the two sides reached an agreement that Turkey would keep many of the refugees fleeing from turmoil in the Middle East from going to Greece (at which point the refugees can travel visa-free throughout the Schengen Agreement area) as long as the Union allowed visa-free travel for Turkish citizens by this October (and a payment of about 3 billion euros).  The Union is balking at the agreement because of the human rights situation in Turkey which has deteriorated further.  Turkey raised the possibility of trashing the agreement which led the German Vice Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, to state today that the Union would not be “blackmailed”.  Who will blink first?  Probably not Turkey.

For the first time, the US has coordinated military strikes on Daesh (the Islamic State) with the UN-backed coalition government in Libya.  It is actually the third time the US has conducted air strikes in Libya, but the first two times were without the sanction of the Libyan government.  These strikes indicate that the US is now committed to the new Libyan government–a significant increase in commitments and suggest that the US is now engaged in its 4th war in the Middle East and Southwest Asia (Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria).