Author Archive
The Venezuelan economy is on its last legs as the value of its currency, the bolivar, has cratered. The mismanagement of the economy has been extraordinary, but the underlying problem is the total dysfunction of the Venezuelan government. With less than a month to go, it is not at all clear that President Maduro can be forced from office.
The McKinsey Global Institute has published a report on global migration. More than 90% of the world’s migrants travel voluntarily, usually in search of better jobs. And there is no question that the developed world benefits tremendously from these flows. According to the report:
“In fact, migrants make up just 3.4 percent of the world’s population, but MGI’s research finds that they contribute nearly 10 percent of global GDP. They contributed roughly $6.7 trillion to global GDP in 2015—some $3 trillion more than they would have produced in their origin countries. Developed nations realize more than 90 percent of this effect.”
The truth about migrants differs sharply from the politicized rhetoric about them. India is the source of the largest percentage of global migrants.
The price of oil has gone up quite dramatically in the last few days. The increase is due to a decision by OPEC (the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries) and Russia to reduce production of oil to reduce supplies of oil. The agreement was reached only after Saudi Arabia agreed to make the largest cut in production. It had been reluctant to do so because Iran, Saudi Arabia’s enemy in the Middle East, refused to cut its production, claiming that it had to make up for lost sales during the boycott of Iranian oil over Iran’s nuclear program. Apparently, however, Russian President Putin was able to broker a face-saving agreement for both the Saudis and Iranians which essentially involved fudging the data. We’ll see how long the agreement lasts, but expect that the price of gasoline will go up in the next few days.
I do not always agree with David Ignatius, a columnist for the Washington Post, but he has written an op-ed piece which is truly unnerving. His argument is that social media and sophisticated government efforts to manage information have created what he calls a war on “truth”. In this new world, reality is completely plastic and the strategy of information is not to confront, but to undermine established institutions by spreading seeds of doubt. Combating this new element of our lives is difficult–it is a subversive idea that everything is nothing more than a social construct and that there is no essential reality. In many narrow respects, that observation is unquestionably true, but it appears that those narrow limits have been expanded to cover all aspects of our lives.
Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk have written an essay for the Journal of Democracy which is also unsettling. Their findings can be summarized as follows:
“Over the last three decades, trust in political institutions such as parliaments or the courts has precipitously declined across the established democracies of North America and Western Europe. So has voter turnout. As party identification has weakened and party membership has declined, citizens have become less willing to stick with establishment parties. Instead, voters increasingly endorse single-issue movements, vote for populist candidates, or support “antisystem” parties that define themselves in opposition to the status quo. Even in some of the richest and most politically stable regions of the world, it seems as though democracy is in a state of serious disrepair.”
The data supporting this conclusion are interesting because it is age-dependent: younger cohorts have less of a commitment to democracy.
It also appears to be the case that income has an effect on support for democracy–the richer one is, the more likely it is that authoritarian rule is favored.
The conclusion to the essay is sobering:
“In a world where most citizens fervently support democracy, where antisystem parties are marginal or nonexistent, and where major political forces respect the rules of the political game, democratic breakdown is extremely unlikely. It is no longer certain, however, that this is the world we live in.”
“More than half of the world’s fresh water is frozen in Antarctica” and there is growing evidence that the ice sheets on the continent are melting from the bottom up. Warmer seawater is apparently intruding on the land upon which the ice sheets rest. The American Geophysical Union has released photographs which suggest that the ice sheets are breaking off in ways that were not fully anticipated. Because the melting occurs beneath the ice surface, it is very difficult to determine what the rate of melt is. But the evidence suggests that the rate of melt is higher than initial studies predicted.
Ian Buruma is an exceptionally insightful observer of world affairs. He has written an extended essay on his interpretation of the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump. He views these two events as indicative of what he calls “the end of the Anglo-American era”. He traces the beginning of that end to the elections of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the US and Great Britain in the 1980s. His observation of the extended effects of their policies concludes in this way:
“Radical economic liberalism did more to destroy traditional communities than any social-democratic governments ever did. Thatcher’s most implacable enemies were the miners and industrial workers. The neoliberal rhetoric was all about prosperity “trickling down” from above. But it never quite worked out that way. Those workers and their children, now languishing in impoverished rust-belt cities, received another blow in the banking crisis of 2008. Major postwar institutions, like the I.M.F., which the United States set up in 1945 to secure a more stable world, no longer functioned properly. The I.M.F. did not even see the crisis coming. Large numbers of people, who never recovered from the crash, decided to rebel and voted for Brexit — and for Trump.”
I encourage everyone to read this essay.
As we have suspected, Syrian officials have openly stated that they wish to take full control of the city of Aleppo before President-Elect Trump is inaugurated. The timing is important since the expectation is that Mr. Trump, if presented with a fait accompli, will not challenge President Assad’s control of all of Syria. Both Assad and Putin are certain that Mr Trump will not try to back the so-called “moderate” rebels in Syria who seek Assad’s overthrow but who also oppose Assad. The fate of the Syrian people appears to be sealed. What remains to be seen is how Assad will try to recover any legitimacy in the eyes of the Syrian people.
Fighting continues between Pakistani militants and the Indian Army in the disputed territory of Kashmir. Since last July the violence has been steady but relatively low-level. It is not clear whether the fighting signals an intent to escalate, but these sporadic attacks are clearly attempts to determine weak points in the Indian defense lines. There does not seem to be any high-level talks going on to resolve the tension and both sides seem willing to tolerate the violence. How long that tolerance will last is unknown.
As the Italian constitutional referendum looms large, the fate of Italian banks may hang in the balance. Many Italian banks are undercapitalized: the lack the money to cover all the claims that depositors and bondholders currently have on their assets. The fear is that if voters reject Prime Minister Renzi’s proposed reforms, then Renzi will resign (as he has promised to do). The lack of a stable government may then trigger Italian deposit and bond holders to withdraw their money from the banks which, in turn, will force many of these banks to shut their doors. Since many other European banks are bondholders to Italian banks (Deutsche Bank, for example, holds many bonds from Italian banks), then the fear may spread to other European banks. It is a very delicate moment.
India has the largest percentage of poor people of all the countries in the world. 25.4% of all the poor people in the world live in India. The data from Credit Suisse which analyzes the richest people in the world also contain information about poverty. The growing income inequality in the world continues to worsen as the data from 2010 to 2016 clearly indicate:
There is little reason to believe that the market will, on its own, correct this trend. Indeed, inequality is becoming more deeply entrenched.
There is little question that many outside of Cuba considered Fidel Castro to be a ruthless dictator. But the news reports from Cuba suggest that people in Cuba have been genuinely moved by his death. The media is reporting very long lines of people wishing to pay their respects and the interviews (never a reliable index of true feelings os large populations since one never knows who was not asked, refused to answer, or who were simply ignored by the reporter) all suggest resigned sorrow.
Next Sunday, Italians will vote on a proposed constitutional refirm that would take some powers away from both the Upper House of the legislature and from local governments. The reform, pushed hard by Prime Minister Renzi, are designed to make the Italian more efficient and less prone to gridlock. Today, tens of thousands of Italians protested the reform. Prime Minister Renzi will likely step down if the reform is defeated in the national referendum, and there is no obvious coalition government to take Renzi’s place.
The recent decision of the Indian government to retire large bank notes from circulation has led to a great deal of controversy and there are many in the Indian Parliament that are scheduled to protest the decision tomorrow. But the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has shown no sign of backing down and has indicated that his ultimate goal is to create a cashless society. Moodi argues that the move is designed to limit the possibilities for corruption which he believes disproportionately affects the poor. But the move to an all electronic system of exchange gives the state incredible access to information about all citizens.
The Foreign Ministry of North Korea has sent a memorandum to the newly elected Trump Administration concerning North Korea’s relationship with the US. The memorandum is a brief of all the hostile actions North Korea believe that the US has committed against North Korea during the Obama Administration. The assessment of the memo is that
“The ongoing economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. are indeed the toughest of all times and they are vicious hostile acts seeking to suffocate the DPRK’s overall economy, undermine the people’s livelihood and ultimately isolate and stifle the DPRK.
“As shown by the facts above, during the last five years the U.S. has designated the DPRK as the primary target for attack and regime change in the implementation of their aggressive Asia-Pacific domination strategy and steadily and systematically intensified political, military and economic pressure on it.”
The memo then describes the nuclear weapons program of North Korea as an act of legitimate self-defense:
“All the facts above clearly substantiate the truth that the root cause of escalated tension on the Korean peninsula lies with the U.S. hostile policy and nuclear threats against the DPRK, not the latter’s nuclear and missile tests.
“The DPRK has chosen the road of possessing nuclear weapons as a self-defensive measure to safeguard its state and system from the constant nuclear threat of the U.S. We are strengthening our nuclear forces both in quality and quantity, holding fast to the line of simultaneously developing the national economy and nuclear forces as our strategic line.”
It seems unlikely that President-Elect Trump will agree with this assessment.
Fidel Castro has died at age 90. He led a revolution that overthrew the dictator, Fulgencio Batista, in 1959 and ruled Cuba until his retirement in 2008. Although he was initially greeted as a potential ally by the US, the circumstances changed quite quickly and Castro ultimately embraced the Soviet Union as his primary ally. Throughout the Cold War, Cuba was a flashpoint and the US invaded the country in 1961 in the Bay of Pigs invasion. Hostilities reached a dangerous point in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis. In recent years, US-Cuban relations have slowly thawed and it remains to be seen how the new American Administration will react to the changes in Cuba today.
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara
It is often difficult to rank foreign policy priorities. The mere act of trying to rank such priorities overestimates the degree of choice policy makers actually have–the world constantly intrudes upon the chain of events. But some issues are more immutable. Paul Pillar makes the argument that the irreversible nature of climate change gives it the top ranking. The argument is persuasive, but it is also remarkable how easy it is to ignore. The short term almost always trumps the long term.
Charts from the Economist
The Economist has a very nice essay on the distinction between what it calls “universal, civic nationalism” and “blood-and-soil, ethnic” nationalism. The former is represented best by the aspirations of the French Revolution and the latter by the nationalism ushered in by German unification under Bismarck in 1871. The essay develops the current growth of ethnic nationalism as a response to the process of globalization in the late 20th century. The essay covers much of the world and is definitely worth c very close read.
For a British view of the recent American election. one could hardly ask for a better analyst than David Runciman. In an essay for the London Review of Books, Runciman gives a completely different interpretation of Mr. Trump’s election. The anger that propelled many voters to vote for Mr. Trump is not the type of anger that will lead to protests in the street. The real violence of that anger is manifested in the high rates of incarceration and the high rates of suicide and drug abuse–an anger bred of hopelessness and not rage. Runciman then takes a breathtaking step: that hopelessness cannot be addressed if the political system tries to protect itself and
“Under these conditions, the likeliest response is for the grown-ups in the room to hunker down, waiting for the storm to pass. While they do, politics atrophies and necessary change is put off by the overriding imperative of avoiding systemic collapse. The understandable desire to keep the tanks off the streets and the cashpoints open gets in the way of tackling the long-term threats we face. Fake disruption followed by institutional paralysis, and all the while the real dangers continue to mount. Ultimately, that is how democracy ends.”
While he does not make the point explicitly, Runciman suggests that the correct course of action would be to let the system collapse to force citizen action. Undoubtedly, a risky option.
The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, the group administering Berlin’s state museums, holds more than 1,000 human skulls from the German East African colonies–now Rwanda and Tanzania–controlled by Germany from 1885-1918. The macabre collection is just one measure of the horrific legacy of imperialism and reflects the contemptible attitude of the Europeans toward non-European peoples during the period of European expansion. There are many such collections throughout the developed world, but there finally is an intense campaign to have such remains returned to the homelands of the dead.
Map from 1909
Yesterday the European Parliament voted to temporarily freeze negotiations on Turkey’s accession to the European Union. These negotiations have been going on for years, but the increasingly authoritarian policies of President Erdogan have raised questions in many European minds about Turkey’s commitment to human rights. Additionally, President Erdogan has grown impatient with what he regards as the unfriendly policies of the EU toward Turkey. Today, Erdogan threatened to “open the border gates” to about 3.5 million refugees who wish to emigrate to European states. The threat must be taken seriously, but it is unlikely that the EU would change its decision.
What happens if nationalism defeats globalization?
From the Washington Post
In my career as a teacher, I have welcomed the internet as a way to expand my access to diverse news sources. The dark side of this innovation, however, is that the internet is also a place where there are many misleading or false stories planted by organizations and people who have a vested interest in manipulating public opinion. Researchers at Stanford University have tested the ability of students–at all levels of education–to discriminate between reliable and unreliable sources of information. Their findings are deeply distressing: most students accept information on the web as reliable without assessing the integrity of the source. There is no way for democracy to survive without a well-informed citizenry.
We are all bewildered by the process of globalization, largely because the pace and intensity of cross-border exchanges have increased exponentially in the last thirty years. But one can study globalization in slow motion by studying how the potato moved from what we now call Peru to Europe. The new food genuinely transformed the ability of European farmers to feed a growing population. Prior to its introduction, agriculture was an extremely dicey business:
“The effects of this transformation were so striking that any general history of Europe without an entry in its index for S. tuberosum [the potato] should be ignored. Hunger was a familiar presence in 17th- and 18th-century Europe. Cities were provisioned reasonably well in most years, their granaries carefully monitored, but country people teetered on a precipice. France, the historian Fernand Braudel once calculated, had 40 nationwide famines between 1500 and 1800, more than one per decade. This appalling figure is an underestimate, he wrote, “because it omits the hundreds and hundreds of local famines.” France was not exceptional; England had 17 national and big regional famines between 1523 and 1623. The continent simply could not reliably feed itself.”
I hope everyone had their potatoes for Thanksgiving!
Potato Famine Memorial in Dublin
The revised peace accord was signed by both the Colombian government and FARC rebels and it will be sent to the Colombian legislature for its approval. The accord will not be subject to a popular referendum as was the case with the first agreement. The agreement was greeted more with resignation than with celebration by the Colombian people and one hopes that this accord will prove to be lasting. There are still other rebel groups that need to be brought into the agreement, but the hope is that slowly all parties will accept the terms. The guerrilla war has been going on for 50 years and its end will mark a new page for the Colombian people.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan gave a speech in which he indicated that Turkey does not need to join the European Union “at all costs” and is contemplating joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a security/economic group created in 2001 and comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. India and Pakistan will join the SCO in 2017. Mongolia, India, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan are currently SCO observers. If Turkey does join the SCO it will signal its turning away from the liberal system and will be a sign that the liberal system continues to weaken.
Leila Nasr has written a provocative essay on the liberal conception of human rights, posing the central question of whether these rights are “universal, inalienable, and indivisible”. Western states have asserted these characteristics to human rights in such documents as the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948. Nasr raises insightful questions about these assumptions and in so doing enriches the discussion concerning the centrality of human rights.
John Schindler is a former National Security Agency analyst who has written an essay on Russian foreign policy objectives. It is a hawkish, but incredibly well-sourced point of view. I hasten to point out that the media outlet that published the essay, The Observer, is published by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law. But the essay is definitely worth a close read.
A billboard shows U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the town of Danilovgrad on November 16, 2016.
From the Economist: A Depressing Graphic
More Depressing News from The Economist:
“IF YOU had only $2,220 to your name (adding together your bank deposits, financial investments and property holdings, and subtracting your debts) you might not think yourself terribly fortunate. But you would be wealthier than half the world’s population, according to this year’s Global Wealth Report by the Crédit Suisse Research Institute. If you had $71,560 or more, you would be in the top tenth. If you were lucky enough to own over $744,400 you could count yourself a member of the global 1% that voters everywhere are rebelling against.”
Fortunately, the earthquake near Fukushima, Japan did not cause major damage. There was a fear that a tsunami of up to nine feet might be associated with the earthquake, but the surge was much smaller. There was slight damage to the nuclear facilities that were heavily damaged in the 2011 tsunami, but the quake was a deadly reminder of the earlier devastation.
The Credit Suisse Research Institute has released its Global Wealth Report for 2016. Since 2010 Credit Suisse has published information about the distribution of wealth in the world, concentrating on what are known as as the ultra-wealthy. Its findings are stunning: 0.7% Of Adults Control $116.6 Trillion In Wealth and the bottom 73% (3.5 billion people) control $6.1 trillion in wealth. The world is an extraordinarily unequal place.
Russia announced on Monday that it would deploy Iskander ballistic missiles and S-400 missile-defense systems in Kaliningrad, its enclave on the Baltic. NATO regards the deployment of the missiles, which are top-of-the-line in the Russian arsenal, as highly provocative. Russia claims the deployment is in response to NATO’s deployment of missile defense systems. The war of words continues, even as most NATO countries wonder about the strength of President-Elect Trump’s commitment to the alliance. Kaliningrad was formerly known as the German city of Koenigsberg but the city was transferred to Soviet control after World War II.
World Politics News 