Writing in the British magazine, Prospect, Matthew Goodwin outlines the reasons why the right-wing in Europe is achieving such electoral success. In many respects, Goodwin blames the progressive wings of European politics for not taking the right-wing seriously and failing to respond to the rhetoric of the right that increasingly appeals to larger numbers of citizens:
Across Europe the radical right is connecting because it recognised early on that public anxieties over migration, refugees and Islam are as much about perceived threats to their cultural security, values and ways of life as they are about welfare states and the distribution of resources. By pitching unequivocally to this feeling of cultural angst, however fluid and abstract it might seem, the likes of Wilders and Le Pen are drawing strength from voters who stand firmly on one side of a value divide in Europe—between liberal progressives who celebrate social change, cosmopolitanism, open Europe and have little patience for those who think otherwise, and cultural conservatives who feel fundamentally under threat from this change, want to assert the values of their own group and worry about the capacity of Islam to accommodate central aspects of democratic life, such as the freedom of expression and gender equality.
The French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, has introduced a new security bill which would allow the state to close mosques if they became “too radical.” Goodwin’s argument can be made for progressives in the US, although it is probably harder to take Trump and Carson seriously.
Russia is taking serious steps to assure that the world takes its military capabilities seriously. Russian authorities have issued a video of two Russian Tu-160 Blackjack bombers flying a 13,000 km journey from Russia to Syria and back, escorted by three Su-30SM Flankers launched from Latakia. The bombers launched cruise missiles on unspecified targets in Syria. The You Tube video was for political purposes, but I sincerely doubt that anyone in the know doubts Russian military prowess.
The UN Security Council has passed Resolution 2249 exhorting member states to take action against the Islamic State. The text reads as follows:
Reaffirming the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations, Reaffirming its respect for the sovereignty, territorial integrity, independence and unity of all States in accordance with purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter,
Reaffirming that terrorism in all forms and manifestations constitutes one of the most serious threats to international peace and security and that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable regardless of their motivations, whenever and by whomsoever committed,
Determining that, by its violent extremist ideology, its terrorist acts, its continued gross systematic and widespread attacks directed against civilians, abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law, including those driven on religious or ethnic ground, its eradication of cultural heritage and trafficking of cultural property, but also its control over significant parts and natural resources across Iraq and Syria and its recruitment and training of foreign terrorist fighters whose threat affects all regions and Member States, even those far from conflict zones, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as Da’esh), constitutes a global and unprecedented threat to international peace and security,
Recalling that the Al-Nusrah Front (ANF) and all other individuals, groups, undertakings and entities associated with Al-Qaida also constitute a threat to international peace and security,
Determined to combat by all means this unprecedented threat to international peace and security,
Noting the letters dated 25 June 2014 and 20 September 2014 from the Iraqi authorities which state that Da’esh has established a safe haven outside Iraq’s borders that is a direct threat to the security of the Iraqi people and territory, S/2015/890 2/2
Reaffirming that Member States must ensure that any measures taken to combat terrorism comply with all their obligations under international law, in particular international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law;
Reiterating that the situation will continue to deteriorate further in the absence of a political solution to the Syria conflict and emphasizing the need to implement the Geneva Communiqué of 30 June 2012 endorsed as Annex II of its resolution 2118 (2013), the Joint Statement on the outcome of the multilateral talks on Syria in Vienna of 30 October 2015 and the Statement of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) of 14 November 2015,
1. Unequivocally condemns in the strongest terms the horrifying terrorist attacks perpetrated by ISIL also known as Da’esh which took place on 26 June 2015 in Sousse, on 10 October 2015 in Ankara, on 31 October 2015 over Sinaï, on 12 November 2015 in Beirut and on 13 November 2015 in Paris, and all other attacks perpetrated by ISIL also known as Da’esh, including hostage-taking and killing, and notes it has the capability and intention to carry out further attacks and regards all such acts of terrorism as a threat to peace and security;
2. Expresses its deepest sympathy and condolences to the victims and their families and to the people and Governments of Tunisia, Turkey, Russian Federation, Lebanon and France, and to all Governments whose citizens were targeted in the above mentioned attacks and all other victims of terrorism;
3. Condemns also in the strongest terms the continued gross, systematic and widespread abuses of human rights and violations of humanitarian law, as well as barbaric acts of destruction and looting of cultural heritage carried out by ISIL also known as Da’esh;
4. Reaffirms that those responsible for committing or otherwise responsible for terrorist acts, violations of international humanitarian law or violations or abuses of human rights must be held accountable;
5. Calls upon Member States that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures, in compliance with international law, in particular with the United Nations Charter, as well as international human rights, refugee and humanitarian law, on the territory under the control of ISIL also known as Da’esh, in Syria and Iraq, to redouble and coordinate their efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by ISIL also known as Da’esh as well as ANF, and all other individuals, groups, undertakings, and entities associated with Al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups, as designated by the United Nations Security Council, and as may further be agreed by the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) and endorsed by the UN Security Council, pursuant to the Statement of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) of 14 November, and to eradicate the safe haven they have established over significant parts of Iraq and Syria;
6. Urges Member States to intensify their efforts to stem the flow of foreign terrorist fighters to Iraq and Syria and to prevent and suppress the financing of terrorism, and urges all Members states to continue to fully implement the above – mentioned resolutions;
7. Expresses its intention to swiftly update the 1267 committee sanctions list in order to better reflect the threat posed by ISIL also known as Da’esh;
8. Decides to remain seized of the matter.
Strangely, however, the Resolution does not invoke Chapter Seven of the UN Charter that authorizes the use of force. Perhaps the Russians (and the Chinese) were willing to go that far in the resolution.
Glenn Greenwald is one of the sharpest and most persistent critics of American foreign policy. Democracy Nowheld an interview with him about the rise of the Islamic State and the reluctance of the US media to question seriously US policy in the Middle East. Both sources are well-known critics from the left so readers should keep that bias in mind. The exchange is remarkable, particularly the part which deals with a secret, but now-leaked memo, which suggests that the US actually encouraged the rise of the Islamic State to overthrow Assad in Syria. The memo is quoted and it is particularly disturbing.
A luxury hotel in Mali has been attacked by extremists, although no group has as of now claimed responsibility for the attack. Mali has been wracked by a number of different extremist groups and it is not at all clear that this attack, which left 27 dead, is associated with the terror attacks in Paris. Suspicion has fallen on an Algerian radical, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who was the leader of al Qaedain the Islamic Maghreb. If that turns out to be the case, then the group has successfully revived itself after a period of relative quiescence.
Today is the 105th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution which began on 20 November 1910. The revolution raged for a decade and resulted in perhaps as many as 1.5 million deaths. Mexico became an independent state in 1821, but it was ruled by wealthy landowners who were largely of Spanish descent. The poor, called mestizos because of their roots in the indigenous peoples of Mexico, rose up in the revolution. The revolution was likely the bloodiest conflict on the North American continent to date.
We live in a period of extraordinary transition as we move from the industrial age to the digital age. Unfortunately, those who are living in the period of transformation are often unaware of what is actually happening as we try to live in a familiar world even as the topography of that world requires a new and completely perspective. The Economist has an article of how this transition is affecting German manufacturing. The Germans have distinguished themselves as one of the giants of the manufacturing world. But the challenges of digitization will require a complete rethinking of what it means to produce for consumers who think about objects in a completely different way.
The tenor of political rhetoric surrounding the issue of Syrian refugees coming to the US has sunk to a reprehensible level, with one of the Republican candidates comparing the refugees to “rabid dogs”. I wish that I could say that such rhetoric is an aberration in American politics, but, unfortunately, it is closer to the norm. As I have indicated in an earlier blog post, Americans were strongly against admitting Jewish refugees in 1938. The Washington Post ran that article, and it has posted a follow-up article which relates reader responses to the first post. The fears of a helpless population are unworthy of a great nation. We should remember the ill-fated voyage of the SS St. Louis and how the Jewish refugees on board were turned away from the US in 1939.
The temperature of the Eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America has increased by 3 degrees Centigrade–the highest level ever recorded since records started being kept in 1990. The reading suggests that this year’s el Niño might be the strongest we’ve ever seen. According to The Guardian, el Niño can “cause droughts, heatwaves and fires in south-east Asia and Australia, while on the eastern edge of the Pacific, it may trigger warmer, wetter weather and flooding.” It might be an interesting winter.
This image from NOAA shows the satellite sea surface temperature for the month of October 2015, where orange-red colors are above normal temperatures and are indicative of El Niño. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
The New York Times has published an article on the rise of the Islamic State, tracing its roots back to the turmoil in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein and the American occupation of Iraq. The background is useful in tracing the politics and ideology of the IS. The article makes clear that the group’s potential was never fully appreciated by the US, a condition that prevented the US from taking the initiative. As a consequence, the US is only reacting to events and has lost the ability to control those events. Scott Atran and Nafees Hamid have written an essay for the New York Review of Books which outlines how the Islamic State has been able to exploit this vulnerability.
The overall effects of terrorism in the world have grown dramatically over the last few years. The Atlantic reports:
“More broadly, this year’s index reports that 2014 was the worst year yet for terrorism, with an 80-percent increase from 2013 in fatalities, to 32,658. Sixty-seven countries experienced at least one or more deaths from terrorism, as opposed to 59 countries in 2013. Some things stayed the same, though: Just as in 2013, the vast majority of deaths from terrorism occurred in one of five countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Syria.”
A growing number of state governors–including, to my dismay, Governor Baker of Massachusetts–have announced that they will not take in any Syrian refugees. That decision is based on fear and not on any clear understanding of the nature of refugees and the overwhelming moral imperative to take them in no matter what the risks may be. It may be instructive to remember how the US opposed the admission of Jewish refugees in 1938. We should never let our fears override our responsibilities as human beings.
A bomb blast killed 32 people in the Nigerian city of Yola. The bombing had all the hallmarks of an attack by Boko Haram, the radical group in the northern part of the country. President Muhammadu Buhari, who took office last May, has vowed to stop the group but has been unable thus far to limit the violence. Since he took office, Boko Haram has killed about 1,000 people. The group has also declared its allegiance to the Islamic State and considers itself to be part of the Caliphate established by the IS.
France has invoked Article 42.7 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty which triggers off a mutual defense clause among all 27 members of the European Union. According to reports, all members of the EU have responded positively to the request, but it is not at all clear what commitments have been made. Interestingly, France has yet to invoke Article 5 of the NATO charter which has a much more binding mutual defense commitment:
Article 5
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security .
Article 5 has only been invoked once since 1949 after the attack on the US on 11 September 2001.
But understand that one of the challenges we have in this situation is, is that if you have a handful of people who don’t mind dying, they can kill a lot of people. That’s one of the challenges of terrorism. It’s not their sophistication or the particular weapon that they possess, but it is the ideology that they carry with them and their willingness to die. And in those circumstances, tracking each individual, making sure that we are disrupting and preventing these attacks is a constant effort at vigilance, and requires extraordinary coordination.
Indeed, such a task is impossible. The real question facing the world right now is whether it can accommodate the threat posed by this relatively small group of individuals without sacrificing liberties or humanity.
This year’s el Niño is proving to be one of the strongest ever recorded, and according to the World Meteorological Organization “its effects are already being seen in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Malawi, Indonesia and across Central America.” The most immediate problem is food shortages, but both an excess and a dearth of rainfall is having sharp effects throughout the planet. Many of the states affected are already precarious and the human tragedy we might be facing over the next few months could be overwhelming.
Pankaj Mishra has written a fascinating and insightful essay for The Guardian on how best to understand the rise of the Islamic State. The argument advanced is elegant and rooted in the forces of globalization and how it seems to be taking control of the choices we can make for the future. He rightly identifies the power of ideology for both the Islamic State and the great powers that are dedicated to maintaining control of the course of globalization. The most revealing sentence of the essay is:
Clashing in the night, the ignorant armies of ideologues endow each other’s cherished self-conceptions with the veracity they crave. But their self-flattering oppositions collapse once we recognise that much violence today arises out of a heightened and continuously thwarted desire for convergence and resemblance rather than religious, cultural and theological difference.
In other words, the Islamic State is simply one manifestation–out of many other contemporary movements–of the desire to retain a sense of uniqueness and solidarity in a world that seems to demand nothing less than total conformity and submission.
The negotiations in Vienna about how to end the civil war in Syria took an interesting turn today as the Russians indicated that they do not consider Hezbollah to be a terrorist organization. The US, Europe, and Israel consider Hezbollah a terrorist group because of its adamant opposition to Israel. But Hezbollah has elected representatives in the Lebanese Parliament and has worked with that government on a variety of projects. By its announcement, Russia moves closer to Iran which considers Hezbollah to be an important ally.
There really is no accurate count of how many Muslims live in Myanmar. Official statistics suggest that Muslims comprise 4% of the total population, but that figure is certainly too low. Nonetheless, no Muslims were elected to the new Parliament and no party in Myanmar fielded a Muslim candidate. The election was the first free election in many years and that one was held at all is cause for celebration. But the lack of effective representation in this Buddhist-majority state is something to regret and something that must change.
The horrific attacks in Paris yesterday has unfortunately unleashed some rather predictable backlashes: the strident calls for a more intense war against the Islamic State, foul characterizations of Islam, and self-serving promises of greater security by all governments. No one seems to be willing to ask the very simple question: what conditions make some individuals so willing to undertake such brutal actions? It seems to be a very obvious first step to solving the problem but I have yet to hear anyone in the media pose the issue. At the risk of stating the obvious, we should all remember that the issue is not “Islamic” extremism. The issue is extremism.
To reinforce the point, there was an attack by the Islamic State in Beirut the day before the Paris attacks. The bombings in Lebanon killed 43 people, but they were Shi’a Muslim (the Islamic State is comprised mainly by Sunni Muslims). Lebanon has been without a President for over a year and the government is virtually impotent. And Lebanon has been hosting about 1.5 million refugees from Syria. Lebanon is far more fragile than France at this time and the bombings have shaken the country tremendously, reminding many of the civil war that decimated the country from 1975 to 1990.
There is a lot of evidence that many economies around the planet are slowing down but we do not have a good idea of why the slowdown is happening. One prime factor for the slowing may be the downturn in trade which is predicted to fall to about 2% of last year’s rate this year. Trade is a prime generator of growth as it contributes to greater production at lower costs. Currency fluctuations, many of which have been deliberately engineered by governments, may be behind the trade decline. Governments are trying to stimulate their exports by letting their currencies devalue. But what works for one country is completely counterproductive if many countries follow suit. Right now there does not seem to be any concerted effort to stop these currency wars.
There is an on-going series of attacks and hostage-taking in Paris. At this time we have only scattered and incomplete information about the death toll or even the scale of the attack. There were at least three and perhaps four simultaneous attacks. Simultaneous attacks suggest a high level of coordination and capability which is particularly worrisome. More than likely, I will be providing additional posts in the future as more information becomes available. The Washington Post has a live blog that is posting new information every few minutes.
Chris Whipple has written a fascinating–and devastating–report in Politico on how much information the Bush Administration had prior to the attacks on the US on 11 September 2001. We knew about the 6 August memorandum before, but much of Whipple’s information was unknown to me. The conclusion seems to be inescapable: the US government was negligent in not taking stronger measures prior to a clearly obvious threat.
Opposition parties in Burundi have asked the UN to send peacekeeping troops as the situation there continues to deteriorate. The parties oppose President Pierre Nkurunziza, who ran for an unconstitutional third term, and they have been mobilizing against him. Burundi experienced a civil war from 1993 to 2005 in which 300,000 people died and the fissures that led to that crisis are still powerful in Burundi. They are the ethnic cleavages between Hutu and Tutsi, the same as that led to the 800,000 who died in Rwanda in 1994.
Kurdish forces have launched an offensive to retake Sinjar, a town taken over by the Islamic State last year. Sinjar has great symbolic significance to the control of the Syrian territory close to the Turkish border. Interestingly, the offensive is manned both by the Peshmerga which is the military arm of the Kurdish Autonomous Region in northern Iraq (supported by the US) and by the Kurdistan Workers Party (the PKK) which is considered a terrorist organization by the Turkish government and therefore not supported by the US. The US has been supporting the offensive with air power which means that the US is supporting an enemy of the Turkish state. The bewildering sets of alliances in this battle continue to nettle a systemic response by the US.
A general strike has paralyzed much public transportation in Greece. The protest is against further austerity measures proposed by the Greek government in order to comply with the bailout demands insisted upon by the troika (the EU, the European Central Bank, and the IMF). The dissent is long simmering as the Greek government has shuffled its composition several times in order to address the debt crisis. This time, however, the protest has erupted into violence as protesters battle the police and are using Molotov cocktails.
The currencies of emerging markets such as China, Brazil, India, and Indonesia are being buffeted by the prospect of a rise in interest rates in the US by the Federal Reserve. Investors, convinced that the US will raise its rates in December, are pulling their money out of emerging markets and depositing the money in the US in hopes of earning a higher return. Unfortunately, the emerging markets can ill-afford the outflow of capital right now and the weakness of their economies is aggravated by the loss of money. The weakness is being manifested by a decline in the currencies of those countries, and the devaluations will lead to an increase of inflation in the markets. If the outflow of capital increases dramatically, then many of these countries will suffer sharp downturns. This issue is something to keep an eye on for the next 6 weeks.
World Politics News 