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An editorial in the Chinese news service, Xinhua, has blasted reports that US President-Elect Trump wishes to impose tariffs on Chinese products. Such editorials reflect the official view of the Chinese government and it does not mince any words:
“Trump’s campaign rhetoric has suggested that the future leader in Washington would be no friend to free trade, while his lashing-out at the TPP bodes ill for the trade pact.
“What is more alarming is that the incoming U.S. president may backtrack from other free trade deals in the area and beyond.
“In exactly two months’ time, Trump will be at the helm of the world’s largest economy. Turning his trade-bashing campaign talks into actual policies could bash any hope that the Asia-Pacific will finally have its much-wanted free trade deal. Worse, it could drag his country and the wider world into deeper economic distress.
“The billionaire-turned-politician needs to prove that derailing the global economy has not been one of the reasons why he ran for U.S. president.”
Mr. Trump does have the unilateral authority to impose punitive tariffs on China. Doing so, however, would unquestionably bring about a trade war with China.
The meeting between Mr. Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Abe was notable since it was Mr. Trump’s first formal meeting with a head of state and because it was conducted without any coordination or consultation with the US State Department. The meeting also reflects Japan’s concern that Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on American alliances during the campaign suggests that he is willing to see formally strong ties loosen considerably. Japan has already begun to diversity its connections with other countries, notably Russia. But the more urgent question is the extent to which Japan might compensate for a reduction of an American commitment with a build-up of its own military capabilities. Such a move would trigger off the Security Dilemma for other countries in the region.
The Pew Research Center has conducted an interesting study in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya. The questions asked to respondents were about economic problems, economic aspirations, and societal cleavages. One of the more interesting questions concerned the role of internal divisions (race, ethnicity, or religion) and government bias. The responses revealed that many in these countries believe that economic benefits are unfairly allocated on the basis of these societal differences,
The Economist has an excellent article on what it calls the “new nationalism.” It outlines how different Donald Trump’s conception of nationalism is from previous American Administrations, and then it goes on to connect Trump’s understanding of nationalism with the other manifestations of nationalism in the world today. The article is rich with examples and insights and makes a genuine step forward in understanding what is going on in the world.
Something strange is going on in the Arctic. Temperatures there are almost 36 degrees above average. As a consequence, sea ice is not building up as quickly as it usually does. The departures from average are clearly anomalies and it is impossible to extrapolate throughout the entire winter. But for temperatures to be so high at a time when the sun barely shows during the day (if at all) is clearly something to be concerned about.
Spiegel has another great article on the link between globalization and political anger in the world’s middle classes. The article has a simple point:
“The belief that politics doesn’t serve the body politic and that the economy doesn’t serve the people has taken firm hold. That only corporations and the rich profit. And that globalization, with its open borders and freedom of movement for both goods and people, is to blame for it all. “Globalists” is the word Trump derogatorily uses for people who promote these values.”
It remains to be seen how firm this conviction has become. It is a point of view that was almost inconceivable just 10 years ago before the Great Recession.
The International Energy Agency has assessed the effects of the Paris Agreement on climate change. Unfortunately, the assessment finds that the Agreement will fall short of its objective of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5° C:
“While this is a significant achievement, it is far from enough to avoid the worst impact of climate change as it would only limit the rise in average global temperatures to 2.7°C by 2100. The path to 2°C is tough, but it can be achieved if policies to accelerate further low carbon technologies and energy efficiency are put in place across all sectors.
“It would require that carbon emissions peak in the next few years and that the global economy becomes carbon neutral by the end of the century. For example, in the WEO-2016 2°C scenario, the number of electric cars would need to exceed 700 million by 2040, and displace more than 6 million barrels a day of oil demand. Ambitions to further limit temperature gains, beyond 2°C, would require even bigger efforts.”
It is unlikely that more aggressive efforts to limit climate change can be forged in the immediate future.
A French software company, AirVisual, has produced a remarkable visual representation of air pollution in the planet. The representation is both stunning and scary–pollution hotspots are pervasive and often occur in unexpected places. But the danger of air pollution is real. According to the World Health Organization, “7 million people died in 2012 from breathing polluted air, either outdoors or inside their homes.”
Business Insider has a great article on the various aircraft carriers in the world. Aircraft carriers are the best index of how “global” a state’s military power is. They are incredibly expensive, difficult to build, and are unquestionably the most powerful single weapon in any weapon’s arsenal. But the varieties of carriers is also rather astounding and can tell a great deal about how a state perceives it role in the global power structure.
The Chinese Aircraft Carrier, the Liaoning
The USS Gerald Ford
We are just now getting information which was actually available some time ago about the hacking of the Democratic National Committee files during the election. For those readers who have the technical expertise (I certainly don’t), the security firm Crowdstrike has a detailed account of the hack and the evidence supporting its claim that the hacks were conducted by individuals associated with the Russian government. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security released a statement on 7 October 2016 which stated:
“The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”
Interestingly, Senators McCain (R-AZ) and Graham (R-SC) want to investigate this intrusion. But the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Corker (R-TN) does not think the intrusion warrants an investigation.
Russia has apparently taken the election of Donald Trump as a sign that it has a freer hand in Syria. Just hours after Trump and Putin talked on the telephone, Russia stepped up its air attacks on the city of Aleppo. There are hints that the new US President will move back toward its traditional allies in the Middle East–Israel and Saudi Arabia. But at this point it is very difficult to discern a clear plan or orientation. In the meantime, the people of Syria will likely endure even greater horrors with no relief at all in sight.
Syrian Government Forces in the City of Aleppo
Spiegel has published an essay with the title, “America Has Abdicated Its Leadership of the West“. The essay tracks American involvement in world affairs from the efforts of President Woodrow Wilson to establish an American presence in the League of Nations. And it asserts that the American pivot away from the world started with the attacks on 11 September 2001 and that the election of Mr. Trump signals the abrupt turning away of the US from the world.
A day after the UN General Assembly voted to condemn Russia’s occupation of, and human rights violations in, Crimea, Russia announced that it was withdrawing from the International Criminal Court (ICC). The vote in the UN was 73 votes for to 23 against with 76 abstentions. Russia slammed the vote, saying that it had “nothing to do with reality“. The Russian departure from the ICC follows the departure of several African states.
Doctors Without Borders, a non-governmental group that provides medical assistance in emergency situations all over the world, has conducted a survey of children in northeast Nigeria, the area of the country that has been ravaged by Boko Haram, an Islamist rebel group. In their analysis, about a quarter of all the children in this region have died of starvation. In the 7 year insurgency, about 2.6 million people have been displaced and an estimated 20,000 have died. The Nigerian government has not been able as of yet to establish order in this region of the country.
The election of Donald Trump has emboldened certain hard-line members of the Israeli Cabinet to believe that the new Administration would not stand in the way of an Israeli annexation of most of the West Bank. Naftali Bennett, leader of the Jewish Home Party and the country’s Education Minister, is quoted as saying:
“Trump’s victory is a tremendous opportunity for Israel to immediately announce its intention to renege on the idea of establishing Palestine in the heart of the country – a direct blow to our security and the justice of our cause. This is the president-elect’s outlook as it appears in his platform, and that definitely should be our way. Salient, simple and clear. The era of the Palestinian state is over.”
The Ministerial Council of the Israeli government has voted unilaterally to give the government the right to expropriate land privately held by Palestinians so that more settlements can be built. The measure was opposed by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, but it seems likely to pass in the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament.
The Oxford Dictionaries have declared “post-truth” to be its word of the year. According to The Guardian:
“Defined by the dictionary as an adjective “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”, editors said that use of the term “post-truth” had increased by around 2,000% in 2016 compared to last year. The spike in usage, it said, is “in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States”.
I would have preferred Stephen Colbert’s word, “truthiness”, but I guess they mean the same thing.
There is a long standing conflict between ethnic Burmese and the Bengali-speaking Rohingya minority in the Rakhine area of Burma. The Rohingya are primarily Muslims and are regarded by the Buddhist majority in Myanmar (Burma) as illegal immigrants. Indeed, many Burmese object to the word “Rohingya“, insisting that those who claim the name are actually Bengalis and should not be regarded as part of the ethnic heritage of Burma. The violence is increasing and Human Rights Watch has documented the human rights violations by the Burmese government.
US President-Elect Trump has made clear that he wishes to pull the US out of the nuclear agreement with Iran. That agreement, now a year old, created a framework whereby Iran could maintain a peaceful nuclear energy program but set up serious obstacles to a nuclear weapons program. Trump disagrees with the agreement, but it required the cooperation of the four other Permanent Members of the UN Security Council (Britain, France, Russia, and China) as well as Germany. All of these countries have relationships with Iran that require the agreement to remain in force. If the US wishes to renege on the deal, Trump will likely face strong opposition from all these countries.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released a report which states that global temperatures in 2016 averaged 1.2° C above pre-industrial averages. That is the hottest year on record and the third year in a row setting a record high temperature. According to The Guardian:
“The record-smashing heat led to searing heatwaves across the year: a new high of 42.7C was recorded in Pretoria, South Africa in January; Mae Hong Son in Thailand saw 44.6C on 28 April; Phalodi in India reached 51.0C in May and Mitribah in Kuwait recorded 54.0C in July. Parts of Arctic Russia also saw extreme warming – 6C to 7C above average”
The target for the Paris Agreement was to stabilize temperature increases to 1.5°C. It seems unlikely that the planet can avoid going well above that temperature increase.
Just six weeks after it was narrowly defeated in a referendum, a peace accord has been reached between the Colombian government and FARC rebels. The accord was revised to accommodate some of the objections leveled at the accord. A key part of the revision was that the rebels would be required to turn over all their assets to the government for reparations to the victims of rebel violence and that rebels who admit their guilt will still avoid jail time but will instead be required to remove land mines and work to undo the damage unleashed by the civil war. Former President Alvaro Uribe, who led the opposition to the first referendum, indicated that he still was not pleased with the revisions but wanted time to study them more carefully. Perhaps there will be a way forward.
My personal interpretation of Donald Trump’s election victory is that he framed the political and economic issues in a dichotomous framework: globalization versus nationalism. In many (but not all–the racial element in the election does not fit into this framework) respects both his campaign, as well as Bernie Sanders’s campaign, was a referendum against free trade. But there is considerable evidence that globalization had already begun to retreat before the election. If one looks specifically at trade flows, the decline in global trade was quite pronounced long before 2016.
Alexander Neill of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) has written a piece for the BBC on how relations in the Pacific region are likely to change in the near future. The region is already undergoing dramatic transformations and the election of Mr. Trump will likely accelerate those changes. In many respects, Neill suggests that acceptance of China as the dominant regional power is a foregone conclusion. The real question is how the other powers in the region, including the US, adapt to that reality.
It is always useful to establish a baseline at the beginning of a new administration to determine the views of the electorate at the time of the election. That baseline gives a sense of how things change, for better or worse, over time. The Pew Research Center conducted a poll over the two weeks just prior to the election and the results fit pretty well with what we think happened on election day. The report has a number of questions asked and different issues posed. The charts are graphs are definitely informative.
The IMF has approved a $12 billion loan to Egypt in an attempt to save the struggling economy. The IMF demanded a number of measures before the loan was approved including a devaluation of the currency and the cutting of fuel subsidies. These measures will reduce the Egyptian budget deficit but the costs of the measures include higher inflation (14% a year) and higher unemployment (13%). The loan became urgently necessary as Saudi Arabia has decided to cut its aid to Egypt as relations between the two countries have deteriorated over warming Egyptian relations with Russia. Saudi Arabia opposes Russian support for President Assad in Syria.
Daesh (the Islamic State) has taken credit for a deadly bombing at a shrine in the Balochistan province of Pakistan. The blast killed at least 43 people who were participating in a ceremony at the shrine of a Sufi saint, Shah Noorani. Sufi is a Western term for the Islamic practice of taṣawwuf which stresses the inner or spiritual nature of Islam. Daesh regards Sufism as heretical.
Today is Armistice Day–the day Germany signed the Armistice Agreement with the allies to end the fighting in World War I. US President Wilson signed a proclamation identifying today as Armistice Day in 1919 and the day officially became a national holiday in 1938. In 1954 the holiday was renamed Veterans Day to honor US veterans of all wars. In Europe, however, the day still resonates as a memorial to World War I.
Various media are reporting that Myron Ebell is likely to be appointed the head of the Enviornmental Protection Agency. If true, the appointment would place a prominent climate change denier in charge of US efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many are concerned that the Paris Agreement on curbing emissions will be neutered by the Trump Administration. Some scientists have labeled the Trump election as a “disaster” for the planet.
The election of Donald Trump likely signals the end of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), one of Obama’s two signal free trade deals with Europe and Asia. One distinctive feature of the TPP was that it excluded China. China has countered with its own trade proposal, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RECAP), which includes 16 Asian countries, including 7 signatories to the TPP: Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. Significantly, RECAP does not include the US which would stand to lose billions of dollars of trade deals if it is finally approved as it currently stands.
Der Spiegel is one of the most influential news magazines in Germany (and in the world). Here is the cover of its most recent issue. I don’t think one needs to know German to understand the message.
World Politics News 