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The US and China are both facing the same economic problem: the move toward high-end manufacturing that will require far fewer workers than previous industrial processes. These advanced processes will continue to generate great wealth but few jobs, and the competition for markets among those countries that can develop these processes will be fierce. No country will be able to avoid taking all necessary steps to secure markets, such as currency manipulation, selling products below costs, and imposing regulations that will exclude some competitors, and those steps will likely lead to incredible friction.
The world is confronting an unusual circumstance: many of the world’s sovereign states are issuing bonds with negative interest rates. Essentially, investors are so concerned about future economic growth that they are willing to pay sovereign states to protect their money. A clear signal that a country is regarded as a bad economic risk is a rising interest rate–the country has to pay investors to buy its bonds because the investors are afraid that the country might be unable to repay its debts. By that measure, Portugal is in serious trouble since its bonds now command more than a 3% interest rate. We should keep an eye on what happens in the European economy as a whole by watching what happens to Portugal.
The uranium used to create the bomb dropped on the city of Hiroshima by the US in its war against Japan was mined in what was then known as the Belgian Congo and now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. The mine was called Shinkolobwe and it was also a casualty in the bombing of Hiroshima. The miners worked in primitive conditions with no protection against the radioactivity of the uranium (it was 65% uranium, significantly more concentrated than the 1% ore in the US and Canada) and the miners suffered grievously. The significance of the mine was one reason why the US and the USSR competed so vigorously in the liberation of the Belgian Congo in 1960.
Protests have occurred almost daily since early July in the disputed territories of Kashmir and Jammu. Those two states are the only Muslim-majority states in India and they have been disputed since the partition of the British colony into India and Pakistan. The two states have fought three wars over the territories, and Pakistan has been accused of fostering violence in the territories to break them away from Indian control.
Geert Wilders leads the Dutch Freedom Party and is currently one of the more popular politicians in the Netherlands. On Thursday he published his ideas for the upcoming 2017 elections and they are profoundly anti-Islamic. The platform calls for the closure of all mosques and Islamic schools, a ban on the Koran, a ban on Islamic headscarves, and immigration from all Islamic countries.
Geert Wilders [What is it about right-wing hair? Donald Trump? Boris Johnson?]
US President Obama signed into law legislation creating the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, the world’s largest marine refuge. The Monument, comprising 442,000 square miles north of Hawaii, will protect marine life and allow many species to replenish themselves. The refuge is twice the size of the state of Texas and includes many areas considered sacred by native Hawaiians.
Colombia has apparently reached an agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a rebel group that has been waging a war against the government for almost 50 years. The struggle has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions, and been particularly nasty as it was also wrapped up in the drug trade. The cease-fire was reached about a year ago and the government is pushing for a referendum to solidify the deal.
The US and Iran are playing a cat-and-mouse naval game in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian fast-attack naval craft have been buzzing American vessels this week, and the US finally fired a warning shot at one of the vessels. The tension comes at a time when there was hope that the US and Iran were finally beginning to thaw their relations after the nuclear agreement with Iran was signed. These tensions indicate that issues between the two states are clearly compartmentalized.
Turkey has warned Syrian Kurds who have been fighting Daesh (the Islamic State) along the Turkish border to withdraw to territory east of the Euphrates River. Turkey gave the Kurds a week to withdraw as Turkey maintained its fight to recover control of the city of Jarablus. If Turkey and the Kurds come to blows, we will witness two US allies fighting each other. Apparently the Turks regard the Kurds as more of a threat than Daesh.
Turkey has sent in an armored column of tanks into Syria to take control of the city of Jarablus from Daesh (the Islamic State). The move follows a devastating bombing of a Kurdish celebration that killed many in the city of Gaziantep on 21 August including 22 children. While the move is a welcome one in the fight against Daesh, it is clear that Turkey also has another motive. As one can see in the map below, Kurd forces (the YPG) control territory to the west and east of Jarablus. Turkey is desperate to make sure that Kurdish forces do not control contiguous territory in northern Syria, fearing that the Kurds there will push for their own state. Even though the Kurds are US allies, the US is supporting the Turkish offensive.
Researchers have come up with evidence that human-induced climate change may have started earlier in the industrial age than previously believed. If this interpretation is valid, then the findings suggest that climate is more sensitive to greenhouse gas warming than assumed in most of the climate models. That interpretation is contested and further research is warranted. For the actual paper, click here (it is a very technical paper).
This post has little to do with world politics, but it is about the issue of governance and why so many people around the world are questioning the legitimacy of the system. The Mylan Corporation recently raised the price of a life-saving drug delivery system called the EpiPen. The drug itself, epinephrine, is a very inexpensive generic drug but Mylan bought the rights to the delivery system, an autoinjector that delivers a carefully calibrated dose. When Mylan bought the rights to the EpiPen in 2007, the pens cost about $57 each; the company now charges more than $500 per pen. To make matters worse, many insurance plans do not cover the cost of the EpiPen. What is reprehensible is that the compensation for Mylan’s CEO, Heather Bresch, went from $2,453,456 to $18,931,068, a 671 percent increase between 2007 and 2015 even though the pen changed not one bit.
In a very curious case, the German government has a recommendation on the legislative table that would require all citizens to “stockpile five days of drinking water and 10 days of food supplies.” The report was prepared by the German Interior Ministry and is predicated on the assumption that the country might face developments that could “threaten our existence.” This policy is unusually dramatic and based upon some sort of existential threat that would suggest the complete collapse of the German state for a period of time. The question is what kind of threat is the Interior Ministry worried about?
In September, China will be hosting the G20 meeting, an annual meeting of the heads of the largest economies in the world to discuss the state of the global economy. The upcoming Beijing Review is devoted to the issues that will be on the table. One of those articles addresses the need to rethink globalization. I sincerely doubt that the issue as such will be discussed since it is too cosmic for a useful conversation. But I have no doubts that the issue of globalization will be part of every discussion about every aspect of the global economy such as trade, investment, and migration. The article is a useful overview of ways to think about how globalization should be managed.
Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize Laureate economist and he is quite critical of the ideology of neoliberalism. He has written an essay on the European Union which is pessimistic about the future of the Union. There are seven policies he believes must be changed, and those policies all point to less austerity.
Antarctica looks poised to lose part of one of its ice shelves. That ice is floating on the ocean so if it does break off, it will not raise the sea level. But the chunk of ice that appears likely to break off is roughly the size of the US state of Delaware. Antarctica’s ice shelves are not completely understood so it is hard to determine what the effect of such a large calving might be. The situation, however, does attest to some degree of climate change.
Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former ruler of Yemen and ally of the US, has offered the use of Yemeni territory to Russia to aid in the fight against Daesh (the Islamic State). Saleh was overthrown in 2011 and currently leads a political council that champions the cause of the Houthi rebels. While it is not clear how much power Saleh has to make good on this offer, it represents yet another diplomatic coup for Russia in the Middle East after its overtures to Turkey and Iran. The move comes two days after the US was pulling out of its support for the Saudi-led coalition that is bombing the Houthi rebels who it regards as Iranian allies. The bombing campaign has been ruthless, killing more than 6,500 civilians, prompting outrage among many and leading to the American withdrawal of support.
China, Japan, South Korea Foreign Ministers Meeting has been an annual event since 2007, although it was once suspended for three years due to diplomatic differences. It is an opportunity for the three countries to discuss openly their disputes in hopes of avaoiding misunderstandings that could lead to conflict. Apparently, the three countries are close to deciding to suspend the meeting yet again due to growing tensions in the East and South China Seas. South Korea’s decision to deploy US-developed anti-missile systems is also a source of contention.
It appears as if the efforts of the US and its coalition partners, Russia, and the Kurds are close to undermining the territorial basis for Daesh (the Islamic State). Key cities have been retaken from Daesh control and there is mounting evidence that Daesh forces are becoming less well-organized and effective. The critical question is what happens once Daesh loses its protected base of operations. It is unlikely to disappear and it is unclear how the retaken areas will be governed. It seems likely that Syrian President Assad will be restored to power in Syria, but that leaves key questions about what happens to the Kurds in both Syria and Iraq. Moreover, Daesh will start its operations in a more decentralized manner–its threat does not require it to control territory or cyberspace. It does not appear as if much thought has been given to this question, but it will become more urgent as Daesh dissipates.
Neoliberalism is roughly defined as strict adherence to a certain interpretation of market capitalism: a very limited role for government in the economy enforced by policies that minimize both taxes and budget deficits. It has been the dominant economic ideology since the 1980s for many countries and one implemented by the major economic organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank. In the minds of many analysts (including me), it has been the major cause of the dramatic increase in income and wealth inequality in the world since that time. It now appears as if the ideology of neoliberalism is finally being contested by some of its primary adherents.
In the 1950s, Britain waged a relentless war on the people of Kenya who had begun an uprising against colonial rule. At that time people regarded what was termed the “Mau Mau Uprising” as a necessary war against primitive “savages”. The world actually knew very little about what happened in Kenya because the British destroyed most of the records of the actions against the Kenyans. But the tireless work of one historian, Caroline Elkins, has uncovered the brutality of the British behavior and her work ultimately led to a complete revision of our understanding of the horrible period of imperial savagery.
Britain in Kenya
The video of Omran Daqneesh has indeed gone viral, but, unlike earlier videos of atrocities in other conflicts, it has failed to move any of the great powers involved in the civil war to declare a cease-fire. I am deeply troubled by the absence of outrage–it is the only way to move great powers if the great powers do not force each other to change policy. It now appears as if the remaining innocents in Syria have been completely abandoned–in the same way the people of Rwanda were abandoned in 1994.
Turkey has undergone incredible changes since the coup attempt last month was put down. Many have been arrested on suspicions of complicity with the plotters and many schools and charitable organizations have been shut down. President Erdogan has taken complete control of the government apparatus and he seems to be oblivious to concerns over due process or human rights. It is hard to imagine Turkey returning to democratic government any time in the near future.
The Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) operates in the Xinjiang Province of China and it claims to represent the interests of the Uighur ethnic group. Over the last few years the Uighurs have been demanding greater autonomy from the central government in Beijing. There have been an increasing number of violent actions and there is much evidence that the TIP has been receiving support from Daesh (the Islamic State). Additionally there are many Uighurs fighting in Syria in defense of Daesh. Ultimately, these fighters will end up back in China to work against the central government.
One of Mount Holyoke’s best graduates, Katie LaRoque, has co-authored a piece for the International Republican Institute about the current situation in Ukraine. It is a great piece of analysis and I recommend it highly.
World Politics News 