World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

US President Trump’s decision to decertify the Iran nuclear agreement was based, in part, on his assertion that Iran had violated the agreement.  His advisors, notably US Secretary of State Tillerson, had stated previously that Iran was in “technical compliance” with the agreement.  We are left with the difficult question of who to believe, and the answer to that question can be partially found in assessing the rigor of the inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).  The IAEA has 400 inspectors assigned to monitoring the Iran agreement.  It conducted 402 inspections since the agreement was signed, 25 of which were snap inspections (2 snap inspections a month).  If the Trump Administration pulls out of the agreement and reimposes sanctions, there is little question that Iran would leave the agreement as well.  And the world would go from 402 inspections a year to none.  The world would hardly be a safer place under those circumstances.

One thing to keep in mind is that Mr. Trump’s animus toward the Iranian nuclear agreement reflects a broader concern with the growth of Iranian influence in Iraq and Syria.  There are reports that Iran is interested in keeping military units in Syria and in building a seaport along the Mediterranean Sea.  If Iran were to follow through on these reports the shift in the Middle Eastern strategic power would be consider highly threatening by both Israel and Saudi Arabia.  One could hardly expect the Israelis to accept the institutionalization of Iranian military power so close to its borders.

Bright Line Watch held a conference of political scientists on 6 October at Yale University to discuss the state of American democracy.  Their discussion made some troubling observations, one of which was the declining belief that the future will be better:

“But fewer and fewer Americans believe this is true. Due to wage stagnation, growing inequalities, automation, and a shrinking labor market, millions of Americans are deeply pessimistic about the future: 64 percent of people in Europe believe their children will be worse off than they were; the number is 60 percent in America.

“That pessimism is grounded in economic reality. In 1970, 90 percent of 30-year-olds in America were better off than their parents at the same age. In 2010, only 50 percent were. Numbers like this cause people to lose faith in the system. What you get is a spike in extremism and a retreat from the political center. That leads to declines in voter turnout and, consequently, more opportunities for fringe parties and candidates.”

One of the reasons for the loss of faith in democracy is rooted in the economic reality of growing inequality.  For years, workers had enjoyed wage growth that mirrored their productivity.  In more recent years, as the chart below suggests, workers have not shared in the economic benefits of increased productivity.

How serious is this decline in the efficacy of democracy.  One example of how much faith has been lost in democratic institutions is shown by the following:

“Another startling finding is that many Americans are open to “alternatives” to democracy. In 1995, for example, one in 16 Americans supported Army rule; in 2014, that number increased to one in six. According to another survey cited at the conference, 18 percent of Americans think a military-led government is a “fairly good” idea.”

Sebastian Kurz is likely to become Austria’s next Chancellor if the results of today’s national election stand.  According to CNN: “The People’s Party (OVP), which Kurz has led since May, is widely expected to form an alliance with the Freedom Party (FPO), putting the far-right in an Austrian governing coalition.”  Kurz ran on an anti-immigrant promise, not just in Austria but as official European Union policy.  The Freedom Party is an extreme right-wing party similar to Germany’s Alternative for Germany, but the People’s Party has been active in Austrian politics for some time.

Fighting has reportedly broken out between Kurdish and Iraqi forces near the city of Kirkuk.  The Kurdish press is reporting that 70 families were forced to leave their homes by Shiite militias near the city of Khurmatu.  The report identifies the militia as the Asaib Ahl-haq group affiliated with the Hashd al-Shaabi.  These groups are closely identified with Iran and their opposition to the Kurds reflects the Iranian strategic objective of containing the Kurds.  If the reporting is accurate, this battle could be the beginning of the Iraq War, Part III (Part I, the US invasion in March, 2003 and Part II, ISIS takes Mosul, June 2014).

The South Korean newspaper, Dong-A Ilbo, is reporting that US satellites have photographed North Korean missiles being transported on mobile missile launchers.   It may be the case that North Korea is preparing to launch missiles either in retaliation for planned US-South Korean military exercises or in celebration of the 18 October anniversary of the founding of the North Korean Communist Party.  The US-South Korean military exercises include over 40 US naval vessels, including the nuclear submarine, the USS Michigan, and the USS Ronald Reagan, a advanced-class aircraft carrier.

USS Ronald Reagan

NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) is a new tool to record the emissions of carbon dioxide on earth.   The satellite, launched in 2014, “takes about 100,000 direct and daily measurements of CO2 over the tropical forest regions of South America, the tropical forests of Africa and the tropical region of Asia surrounding Indonesia”.   These regions have been under-reported in the past because of the difficulties in taking accurate measurements.  But the satellite was able to measure the effects of droughts in these regions which led to the decomposition of many parts of the forests which in turn led to the release of large amounts of CO2.  According to the report:

“NASA presented new research findings with a teleconference on Oct 12 that featured Liu alongside Michael Freilich, director of the Earth Science Division at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.; Annmarie Eldering, the OCO-2 deputy project scientist at JPL; and Scott Denning, professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University.

“‘In both 2015 and 2016, OCO-2 and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) measured the largest annual increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide in at least 2,000 years,’ Eldering said during the briefing. Using OCO-2 data, Liu quantified that ‘in total, the three tropical land regions released at least 2.5 gigatons more of carbon into the atmosphere than they did in 2011,’ or about a 50 percent increase.”

In the past, many have assumed that the tropical forest have acted as a major sink for CO2.  These findings call that assumption into question.

US President Trump has refused to certify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear agreement.  President Trump accused Iran of violating the agreement:

“Iranian regime has committed multiple violations of the agreement. For example, on two separate occasions, they have exceeded the limit of 130 metric tons of heavy water. Until recently, the Iranian regime has also failed to meet our expectations in its operation of advanced centrifuges.

“The Iranian regime has also intimidated international inspectors into not using the full inspection authorities that the agreement calls for.”

He made this claim despite the finding of the International Atomic Energy Agency on 13 October that:

“The IAEA’s verification and monitoring activities address all the nuclear-related elements under the JCPOA. They are undertaken in an impartial and objective manner and in accordance with the modalities defined by the JCPOA and standard safeguards practice.

“Iran is now provisionally implementing the Additional Protocol to its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA, a powerful verification tool which gives our inspectors broader access to information and locations in Iran. So far, the IAEA has had access to all locations it needed to visit.

“At present, Iran is subject to the world’s most robust nuclear verification regime.

He stopped short, however, of abrogating US participation in the agreement.  Instead, he has asked the US Congress to certify the agreement.  It is unclear what the Congress will decide to do although Senators Cotton (R-AR) and Corker (R-TN) have introduced legislation to renegotiate the agreement and adding new constraints on Iranian behavior in its support for Hezbollah and its missile program.  American allies were quick to denounce the move and the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, noted that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is “not a bilateral agreement. It does not belong to any single country. And it is not up to any single country to terminate it.”

Unfortunately, we have no idea what Trump hopes to accomplish by this move.  There are many possible alternatives, but President Trump gave no indication of what the next step may be.

The US is currently going through another phase of anti-immigrant sentiment, a paradoxical but endemic phenomenon for a country whose population was fundamentally built upon immigration from abroad.  There have been many previous phases about which most of use are aware, such as the anti-Catholic sentiments of the Know Nothing Party in the 19th century.  One phase of which I knew very little was anti-German sentiment during World War I, a curious phase since at the time German-Americans were the single largest population of immigrants.  Indeed, German was the second most common language in the country after English.  The treatment of Germans and German-Americans was documented by photographs maintained by the US Library of Congress.

German-Americans, after years of being forced to live in internment camps, are forcibly deported from the United States and sent to Germany.

Hoboken, New Jersey. September 25, 1919.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has released a new study that is certain to displease many in the world who believe that taxes on the rich are too high and should be lowered.  In fact, the IMF argues that taxes on the rich should be increased in order to address the growing problem of economic inequality in the developed countries.  The study identifies an important connection between tax rates and reductions in economic inequality–in the past higher taxes have increased redistributive measures that reduced inequality, but those measures have been reduced in recent years:

“Between 1985 and 1995, rising fiscal redistribution was able to offset about 60 percent of the increase in market income inequality. In contrast, average fiscal redistribution hardly changed between 1995 and 2010, while market income inequality continued to increase. As a result, average disposable income inequality increased broadly in line with market income inequality. The stability of average fiscal redistribution over this recent period is surprising since, in the absence of policy reforms, progressive tax and transfer systems should have automatically increased the magnitude of fiscal redistribution in response to the increased market income inequality. This suggests that tax and transfer policy reforms have, on net, decreased the progressivity of these redistributive instruments in some countries.

In other words, redistributive measures have been deliberately reduced.  The IMF points out that the decline in corporate taxes all across the world has been a fundamental driver of the reduced ability to finance redistributive measures.  The conclusion of the study is that “there would appear to be scope for increasing the progressivity of income taxation without significantly hurting growth for countries wishing to enhance income redistribution.”

US President Trump is expected to announce tomorrow his decision about the certification of the Iranian nuclear agreement.   Press reports suggest that he does not intend to recertify the agreement.  But there are a number of different ways he could approach the matter.  First, he could simply pass the matter to the US Congress without abrogating the agreement.  That course of action does not necessarily mean that the US has withdrawn from the agreement, and it is difficult to assess right now how the Congress would vote.  My personal view is that the Congress would not abrogate the agreement.  Second, he could argue that the agreement should be renegotiated.  I doubt that Iran would agree to a renegotiation and most of the other partners to the agreement would similarly refuse.  But France under the leadership of President Macron might try to persuade Great Britain and Germany to request renegotiation (China and Russia would not agree).  Third, President Trump may simply announce that the US is withdrawing from the agreement, but I suspect that he lacks the votes in Congress to reimpose sanctions against Iran.  This latter course of action would undermine the credibility of the US for as long as Trump remains President and for some time after he leaves.  No matter which course of action he chooses, I suspect that most analysts will regard any course of action not based upon some evidence of an Iranian breach of the agreement as a setback for American interests.

Researchers have found a hole the size of the US state of Maryland in the sea ice in Antarctica.   Holes in sea ice are called polynas and apparently are quite common.   It is not clear why this hole appeared, but it was last seen in the 1970s.  The polyna is created by warm water coming to the surface and may be part of a normal process.  Scientists are trying to determine whether climate change may be a factor in the creation of this most recent event.

Winter sea ice blankets the Weddell Sea around Antarctica with massive extra-tropical cyclones hovering over the Southern Ocean in this satellite image from September 25, 2017. The blue curves represent the ice edge. The polynya is the dark region of open water within the ice pack.

When the US Congress passes a national budget, a large chunk of the budget goes to military spending, and often that spending ($705 billion in the most recent budget proposal) is justified as spending for “our troops”.  Unfortunately, roughly half of that money goes not to soldiers, but to defense contractors.   According to The American Conservative:

“According to the Federal Procurement Data System’s top 100 contractors report for 2016, the biggest beneficiaries by a country mile were Lockheed Martin ($36.2 billion), Boeing ($24.3 billion), Raytheon ($12.8 billion), General Dynamics ($12.7 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($10.7 billion). Together, these five firms gobbled up nearly $100 billion of your tax dollars, about one-third of all the Pentagon’s contract awards in 2016.”

It is very difficult to measure how much these expenditures actually enhance US security.   But the example of the newest fighter plane, the F-35, in the US arsenal–with an estimated total procurement cost of well over a trillion dollars for 2,400 F-35s–suggests that the US is not getting much value for the money.

NBC News is reporting that at a meeting in July with top military staff, US President Trump indicated that he wanted a ten-fold increase in the number of nuclear weapons possessed by the US.   The report also states that Mr. Trump’s request “rattled” the military staff and represented a return to the arsenal the US possessed in the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War.  The US never needed 30,000 nuclear weapons, even at that time.  That number merely reflects a mindless arms race between the US and the then-Soviet Union in which both sides thought that a willingness to spend and build weapons was a measure of credibility.  The actual number of nuclear weapons to deter a nuclear attack in a world in which the delivery of nuclear weapons is assured, even after a devastating nuclear attack, is probably on the order of about 200 weapons–enough to destroy completely the country that launched the first strike.  The comments, if accurately reported, suggest a terrifyingly dismal understanding of nuclear deterrence and, again if accurately reported, justifies the Secretary of State calling the President a “moron”.

The rescheduled Kenyan elections were thrown into disarray when the leading opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, announced that he would not run.  The Presidential elections held last August were  nullified by the Kenyan Supreme Court because of election irregularities.  A new election between Odinga and the current President, Uhuru Kenyatta, was scheduled for 26 October but Odinga dropped out because he did not believe that enough has been done to assure the integrity of the new election. It is not clear what the next step will be.  Odinga’s National Super Alliance (NASA) party may find a new candidate, or Kenyatta may run unopposed.  Odinga has called for national protests and the uncertainty will roil Kenya for some time into the future.

Raila Odinga

Israel has announced that it intends to build 4,000 new homes in settlements in the Occupied West Bank.  The plans include homes in Hebron which has not been part of the settlement process as of yet.  According to The Daily Star:

“…..if the Hebron housing is approved it would be the first time for the southern West Bank city since 2002.

“Hebron is home to around 200,000 Palestinians, with about 800 settlers living under Israeli army protection in several heavily fortified compounds in the heart of the city.”

The Trump Administration responded to questions about the proposal:

“A U.S. official said ‘while we are not going to respond to every announcement or report, our policy toward settlements remains unchanged.

“‘The administration has made clear that unrestrained settlement activity does not advance the prospect for peace. At the same time the administration recognises that past demands for a settlement freeze have not helped advance peace talks.'”

Most states regard the building of settlements in Occupied Territories to be a violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which reads:

Article 49

Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.

Nevertheless, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a given area if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. Such evacuations may not involve the displacement of protected persons outside the bounds of the occupied territory except when for material reasons it is impossible to avoid such displacement. Persons thus evacuated shall be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased.

The Occupying Power undertaking such transfers or evacuations shall ensure, to the greatest practicable extent, that proper accommodation is provided to receive the protected persons, that the removals are effected in satisfactory conditions of hygiene, health, safety and nutrition, and that members of the same family are not separated.

The Protecting Power shall be informed of any transfers and evacuations as soon as they have taken place.

The Occupying Power shall not detain protected persons in an area particularly exposed to the dangers of war unless the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand.

The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

Occupied West Bank

Andrew J. Nathan has written a very nuanced essay entitled “The Chinese World Order” for the current issue of the New York Review of Books.  The essay reviews several recently written books on the rise of China and the extent to which China represents a serious threat to either American interests or to the liberal international order once supported by the US.  Nathan importantly addresses the major issue concerning China’s return to global power:  what concessions should both sides make to each other as a new balance of power is established in the world?  Unfortunately, he does not answer the question, but poses the risks of the recalibration of power in the world system:

“Some have suggested that the US scale back its position in Asia to accommodate China’s desire for greater military influence in its own region. In his 2011 book On China, Henry Kissinger proposed that the two sides agree on a ‘Pacific Community’—’a region to which the United States, China, and other states all belong and in whose peaceful development all participate.’ Graham Allison’s ideas for how to avoid war are equally anodyne: ‘Understand what China is trying to do,’ ‘Do strategy,’ and ‘Make domestic challenges central.’

“Other strategists have been more specific, proposing that the US and China establish a mutually acceptable security balance by making concessions to each other over Taiwan, the Senkakus, military deployments, and offensive and defensive missile systems. Through such an approach, Washington and Beijing could demonstrate that each does not seek to threaten the other’s core security interests.⁴

“The difficulty with such proposals is that Beijing is likely to interpret them as asking it to accept an intrusive American presence just when the shifting power balance should allow that situation to be corrected. And on the US side, yielding preemptively to Chinese ambitions would destroy its credibility with all of its allies, not only in Asia but elsewhere as well. The resulting destabilization would not serve American or Chinese interests.

The question we all face is whether the Americans and the Chinese are wise enough to respect each other’s interests without compromising their own central interests.  A difficult political task in any circumstance.

Catalan President Carles Puigdemont has asked for talks with Madrid on Catalonian independence.  He thus avoids an immediate crisis over Catalonian secession.  Addressing the Catalonian parliament in Barcelona, Puigdemont said: “We propose the suspension of the effects of the declaration of independence for a few weeks, to open a period of dialogue.”  Whether both sides can now back off from a major crisis remains to be seen.  But the last few days have seen major pushbacks to Catalonian independence by many Catalan protestors as well as by the European Union which stated that Catalonia, if independent, could not be a part of the Union.

A new study by three economists, Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen and Gabriel Zucman, has provided more detailed information on tax dodging in the world.  Using leaked information from two sources (from accounts held in Switzerland by the bank, HSBC, and from a Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca), the economists were able to determine the degree of income hidden from tax authorities by individuals in Denmark, Norway and Sweden.  The Economist summarized the conclusions of this paper in this way:

“First, tax evasion is extremely concentrated. The average Scandinavian household paid around 3% too little in taxes in 2006; the richest 1% of households, with net assets of at least $2m, underpaid by around 10%. The truly rich, though, behave truly differently. The top 0.01% of households, with net assets of over $40m, short-changed the taxman by a whopping 30%.

“Second, the numbers imply that previous estimates of wealth inequality, often based on tax data, have understated the problem. And the Scandinavian statistics may provide a conservative estimate of worldwide tax-dodging: only around 2% of Scandinavian household wealth is held in offshore accounts, compared with the global average of 4%.”

Unfortunately, globalization has made tax evasion more possible, but it favors the owners of capital far more than those who earn their incomes through labor.

Iran is emerging as a central preoccupation of the Trump Administration, yet there is little sustained analysis of Iranian intentions or capabilities beyond flat assertions that Iran is “hostile” to the US.  There is little question that many of Iran’s current policies are at odds with American objectives, but there are also important points of agreement that have never been exploited:  Iran is as hostile to the Taliban in Afghanistan as is the US and Iran also shares concerns over the Wahhabist interpretations of Islam propagated by Saudi Arabia that seems to fuel many extremist groups.  Kenneth Pollack is a centrist on Middle Eastern issues and he has written an well-informed and nuanced interpretation of Iran’s foreign policy objectives that deserves careful attention.

US-Turkish relations continue to deteriorate as Turkey arrested two workers in the US consulate in Ankara on suspicion that they had ties to Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in exile in the US and who is suspected of leading a coup against President Erdogan last year.  In response, the US announced that it would not issue any new travel visas from that consulate to Turks who wish to travel to the US.  TUrkey reciprocated by making a similar announcement to US visitors to Turkey.  The Turkish currency, the lira, fell on hearing the news, as did the Turkish stock market.

Dexter Filkins has written an impressive essay on the tenure of Rex Tillerson as US Secretary of State for the New Yorker magazine.  It is a long and detailed essay, but is particularly well-informed and touches on many aspects of the complicated relationship between multinational corporations, such as ExxonMobil, and home and host governments.  It also provides some important insights into the internecine warfare that seems to be endemic to the current Administration.  If, as I suspect, that Tillerson leaves the State Department fairly soon, the essay will provide an important context to how to interpret what might come after he leaves.  This essay complements an earlier essay in Foreign Policy by Derek Chollet which was published before the current controversy,

There were hundreds of thousands of Catalans in Barcelona protesting the independence movement supported by the regional government.  The protests are a clear sign of how divided the region is on the issue of independence.  Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is playing a hardball game against the secessionists, threatening to remove the autonomous status of the region if independence is declared.   Pro-independence Catalans, however, continue to believe that Catalonia should declare independence.

Pro-Spain Protesters

The Urban Institute has published a study on wealth inequality in the US and it shows that it is worsening significantly over time.  Additionally, the report breaks down both wealth and income inequality by race and ethnicity and the discrepancies among these groups is even more distorted.  The summary from the report reads as follows:

Average wealth has increased over the past 50 years, but it has not grown equally for all groups. Between 1963 and 2016,

• families near the bottom of the wealth distribution (those at the 10th percentile) went from having no wealth on average to being about $1,000 in debt,
• those in the middle more than doubled their wealth,
• families near the top (at the 90th percentile) saw their wealth increase fivefold,
• and the wealth of those at the 99th percentile—in other words, those wealthier than 99 percent of all families—grew sevenfold.

These changes have increased wealth inequality significantly. In 1963, families near the top had six times the wealth (or, $6 for every $1) of families in the middle. By 2016, they had 12 times the wealth of families in the middle.

The trend toward greater income and wealth inequality cannot be sustained politically or economically indefinitely.  At some point, the legitimacy of the system will be completely undermined.

One reason why wealth inequality has deepened so significantly can be found in the chart below.  Those that had enough money to buy stocks have been greatly enriched.  Unfortunately, most Americans do not own stocks directly.  Moreover, globalization has repressed wage growth as the balance of economic power has shifted away from labor and more to those owning capital.

The Catalonian independence referendum did not mysteriously appear.  As this chart from Zero Hedge indicates, the independence movement has a very long and deep history.  Estat Catalá even has its own Facebook Page.  The chart also highlights the historical tension between the regional sentiments and the fascist leanings of the central government although the current Spanish government does not fall into that category.

As Congress begins to debate tax reform and President Trump begins to unravel President Obama’s Climate Change Program, it is instructive to read Oil Change International’s report on fossil fuel subsidies.  The summary of the report suggests that significant revenue could be generated by ending tax subsidies for the fossil fuel industries:

• The United States federal and state governments gave away $20.5 billion a year on
  average in 2015 and 2016 in production subsidies to the oil, gas, and coal industries,
  including $14.7 billion in federal subsidies and $5.8 billion through state-level incentives.
  At the state level, this is likely a significantly conservative estimate, given limits to
  available data.
• Repeated proposals by the Obama White House to remove some of the most damaging
  federal subsidies were thwarted in large part due to the cozy relationship between
  Congress and the fossil fuel industry. In the 2015-2016 election cycle oil, gas, and coal
  companies spent $354 million in campaign contributions and lobbying and received
  $29.4 billion in federal subsidies in total over those same years – an 8,200% return
  on investment.
• The cost of federal fossil fuel subsidies to American taxpayers is equivalent to the
  projected 2018 budget cuts from Trump’s proposals to slash 10 public programs and
  services, including supports for America’s most vulnerable children and families.
  Misplaced priorities, not a scarcity of resources, are driving this administration’s efforts
  to balance the national budget at the expense of the most vulnerable.

The fossil fuels industries receive significantly greater subsidies than do the industries producing renewable energy.

The White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, indicated today that President Trump will give a speech this week addressing what he perceives as the threats from Iran.  Sanders said:

“The president isn’t looking at one piece of this. He’s looking at all of the bad behavior of Iran. Not just the nuclear deal as bad behavior, but the ballistic missile testing, destabilizing of the region, Number One state sponsor of terrorism, cyber attacks, illicit nuclear program”.  Sanders added that Trump “wants to look for a broad strategy that addresses all of those problems, not just one-offing those.  That’s what his team is focused on and that’s what he’ll be rolling out to address that as a whole in the coming days.”

That list is long and apparently Mr. Trump will start out by refusing to certify that the Iranian nuclear deal does not serve the US national interest.  There were no clues about what the new policy toward Iran will consist of.

New polls suggest that Americans increasingly believe that global warming is actually occurring.  For the first time in many years, even a majority of Republican voters believe that global warming is occurring.  But the split between Democrats and Republicans on the issue remains quite large.

A Russian official, Anton Morozov, said today that North Korea intends to test a long-range ballistic missile capable of reaching the American homeland sometime in the very near future.  Morozov is a member of the Russian Parliament and his party is known for its intense nationalism.  North Korea has tested 14 missiles this year, and a missile aimed at the US would have to fly over Russian territory, a trajectory which would complicate American efforts to shoot down the missile.  The Russians have recently stepped up efforts to strengthen North Korean military defenses.