Scott Ritter was one of the UN inspectors prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. At the time he did not believe that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction, the argument used by the George W. Bush Administration to justify the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. He has written a very detailed analysis of the evidence used by the US, France, and Great Britain used to justify the recent attack on Syria. Ritter has an extraordinary amount of information that raises serious questions about the way the evidence to support the attack was assembled and interpreted. The article is a great example of investigative reporting which will likely not receive the attention it deserves. Another analyst, Paul Pillar, who worked at the US CIA at the time of the Iraq invasion and who argued that the evidence supporting the invasion was “cherry-picked” has written an essay on the “non-accomplishments” of the Syrian strike. He argues that:
“But a glaring fact in the recent history of the Syrian war is that one year ago the Trump administration fired a salvo of cruise missiles for the same ostensible purpose, and that attack evidently failed to have much, if any, deterrent effect on Assad. The administration is emphasizing that the new attack, which used 105 missiles, is larger than the earlier one, which used 59. So 46 more cruise missiles is supposed to make the difference between deterring or not deterring a regime fighting to defeat rebels and regain control of its country’s territory?”
The two essays together raise serious questions about whether the US has anything close to a policy on the conflict in Syria.
Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said that one of Iran’s options if the US pulls out of the nuclear agreement–the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action–signed with Russia, China, Great Britain, France, and Germany, would be to restart its nuclear program. US President Trump has threatened to pull out of the agreement unless the parties can fix what he describes as “flaws” in the agreement: 1) that Iran stop its missile development program; and 2) that Iran stop funding Hamas and Hezbollah which the US considers terrorist organizations. Zarif made the statement in an interview with CBS News. A resumption of nuclear enrichment by Iran would likely precipitate a harsh reaction from Israel, an ominous development since the two countries are already at the brink of war. The oil markets are also nervous if the US re-imposes oil sanctions on Iranian oil if the US pulls out of the agreement.
A Poster of Fadi al-Batsh being Hung in the Gaza Strip
Every year the World Bank publishes the World Development Report which summarizes the Bank’s views on the global economy particularly as it affects poorer countries. The Guardian has published an article on a working draft for the bank for this year’s Report which proposes “lower minimum wages and greater hiring and firing powers for employers as part of a wide-ranging deregulation of labour markets deemed necessary to prepare countries for the changing nature of work.” Labor groups have sharply criticized the draft which apparently regards the diminishing power of labor as an inevitable consequence of globalization and automation. Let’s hope that this draft is significantly changed before it is adopted by the Bank as official policy.
Adam Mount and Ankit Panda have written an excellent article raising many questions about North Korea’s declaration that it would stop nuclear bomb and missile testing. The article outlines all the issues that were not covered by the declaration and some of them–like the issue of enriching uranium for additional nuclear bombs–are likely to be highly contentious. If the negotiations with US President Trump are to be effective, these issues have to be very specifically and tightly nailed down.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has announced that North Korea will suspend all nuclear testing and that it will also shut down the testing site at which its previous atomic bombs had been tested. The statement comes after his meeting with Chinese President Xi and prior to his proposed meeting with US President Trump. He is also scheduled to meet with South Korean President Moon next Friday for the first visit by a North Korean leader to South Korea. It is difficult to interpret this statement. The simple fact that it was announced was an important symbol of intent and, as a symbol, it should be warmly embraced. But it was highly unlikely that North Korea would conduct any tests prior to the meeting with President Trump since Trump would likely have refused to meet under such circumstances. The US Administration will likely interpret the statement as proof of the correctness of its hard-line strategy. That may ultimately be the case, but it is too soon to make that conclusion.
We still do not have hard evidence that chemical weapons were used against Syrian citizens in Douma two weeks ago. Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were invited into Syria to collect evidence, but so far the inspectors have not been permitted to investigate the site of the alleged attack. Every day that passes reduces the chances that evidence can be collected since the chemical agents were volatile liquids.
The deaths of Iranian militiamen in Syria in an Israeli air attack two weeks ago have raised fears that the Iranians will feel obliged to retaliate. Fortunately, that retaliation has yet to occur, but Iran has a number of options to pursue: they can retaliate from Iran or through their proxies in Syria or Lebanon. Dror Michman and Yael Mizrahi-Arnaud have written an essay on those options and how to evaluate their costs and benefits. The decision to retaliate is highly consequential since Israel will undoubtedly counterattack with a vengeance.
China has conducted a live-fire naval drill, including its aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, around the island of Taiwan. The exercise was designed to dampen any thought of independence on the part of Taiwan’s government as well as to protest the passing of the Taiwan Travel Act. by the US. Asia Times characterized the drills in these terms: “Chinese papers said the number of vessels assembled was ‘the largest of its kind in 600 years’, following fleet admiral Zheng He’s expeditions to Southeast Asia and further afield during the Ming dynasty era.” Zheng He’s expeditions reached the east coast of Africa and occurred during 1405 to 1433, long before the European expeditions which were similarly far afield. The exercises were clear messages to Taiwan, the US, and those states who are concerned by Chinese activities in the South China Sea. The exercise was also a message of concern about the proposed visit of the US National Security Adviser, John Bolton, to Taiwan in June.
The Liaoning Carrier Group
The Washington Posthas a fascinating article on the demographics of China and India which discusses the consequences of both countries having roughly 70 million more men than women. That imbalance is extraordinary and is a result of cultural attitudes toward favoring male children over female children as well as governmental policies governing reproductive freedom. The imbalance is stark:
“Out of China’s population of 1.4 billion, there are nearly 34 million more males than females — the equivalent of almost the entire population of California, or Poland, who will never find wives and only rarely have sex. China’s official one-child policy, in effect from 1979 to 2015, was a huge factor in creating this imbalance, as millions of couples were determined that their child should be a son.
“India, a country that has a deeply held preference for sons and male heirs, has an excess of 37 million males, according to its most recent census. The number of newborn female babies compared with males has continued to plummet, even as the country grows more developed and prosperous. The imbalance creates a surplus of bachelors and exacerbates human trafficking, both for brides and, possibly, prostitution. Officials attribute this to the advent of sex-selective technology in the last 30 years, which is now banned but still in widespread practice.
“In the two countries, 50 million excess males are under age 20.”
The article is very substantive and has some very dramatic graphs–definitely a fascinating read.
Researchers have found that glaciers are melting and receding at an increasingly rapid rate due to global warming. Glacier melt is a very important source of fresh water for many societies in the world so the health of glaciers is of profound importance. The Guardian has published a graph (below) which shows the rate of glacier melt which is very worrisome.
A Photograph of the Lagoon Nebula from the Hubble Telescope
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for snap elections a year and a half before they are required. He has led the country for 15 years, both as President and Prime Minister, and is riding a wave of popularity that seems to assure his re-election. If he is elected, he will become President with enhanced powers due to constitutional changes approved in an earlier referendum. The opposition parties seem to be disorganized at this time and the Parliament has approved the extension of a state of emergency which has increased Erdogan’s powers considerably. Even though the decision was a surprise, the initial reaction of the markets in Turkey was quite favorable.
President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, made a secret trip to North Korea to make arrangements for negotiations between the US and North Korea. At this time it is not clear at what stage the negotiations are, but it seems as if the process is moving much faster than usual given the complexities of the issues. But North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unquestionably achieved what he and his predecessors have longed desired: recognition by the Great Powers. Since his meeting with Chinese President Xi, there is no question that Kim has accomplished a great deal and has given up very little in return. At his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Abe today, US President Trump declared that he was prepared to walk away from the negotiations with North Korea if he was dissatisfied with the progress of the negotiations. That very well may be the case, but it will be Mr. Trump who leaves and Mr. Kim will have the implicit recognition of the US.
Recent research indicates that up to a third of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia has died because of global warming. The research was conducted after the record-breaking heat wave in 2016 and, according to Nature:
“‘The world’s largest coral reef is unlikely to recover soon. The damage is a harbinger of what a warming future might hold for a wealth of tropical reef ecosystems’, says lead study author Terry Hughes, director of the coral-reef centre at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia.”
The Washington Post has an op-ed piece which features a podcast by Robert Kagan entitled “The liberal world order is an ‘artificial construction.’ And now it’s in trouble.” I disagree with Kagan far more than I agree with him, but this podcast is quite good. If one can listen to the podcast and ignore Kagan’s assertions about US superiority and focus instead on his analysis of the liberal world order, then one can appreciate more fully the threat that the world faces with the decline of that world order without having a clear and acceptable replacement on the horizon. The liberal world order was far from perfect, but the absence of a world order, as occurred between 1918 and 1939, is a far more dismal world.
“There seems to be a certain European civil war: national selfishness and negativity seems to take precedence over what brings us together. There is a fascination with the illiberal, and that is growing all the time…
“In the future, we must struggle to defend our ideals … This is a democracy that respects individual minority fundamental rights, which used to be called liberal democracy, and I use that term by choice. The deadly tendency which might lead our continent to the abyss, nationalism, giving up of freedom: I reject the idea that European democracy is condemned to impotence.
“I don’t want to belong to a generation of sleepwalkers, I don’t want to belong to a generation that’s forgotten its own past”.
French President Emmanuel Macron
Israel has been carrying out military strikes in Israel for quite some time, but it has been careful to avoid striking Iranian militia forces in Syria directly. That changed two weeks ago when Israeli jets bombed a suspected Iranian military base after Iran sent a drone into Israeli airspace. That attack reportedly killed 7 members of the Iranian Quds force. Israel is now preparing for a counterattack by Iranian forces which, if it occurs, will signal a dramatic escalation of the wars in Syria. The Iranian forces have vowed retaliation for the deaths of their soldiers. The Israelis have called many of their fighter jets on a military exercise with US forces in Alaska in case they are needed to fend off an Iranian attack. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times has written an op-ed piece outlining the dynamics underlying this possible escalation.
Satellite Image of the Iranian Military Base in Syria Destroyed by Israeli Forces.
We continue to get information about the chemical weapons attacks in Syria that raises questions about the possible effectiveness of the coalition strike against the Syrian weapons facilities. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is the agency entrusted with investigating chemical weapons use in the world. The OPCW was created when the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) came into force in 1997. It is not an arm of the United Nations, but rather an independent international organization that works closely with the US. The OPCW is trying to investigate the incident in Douma, Syria but there are reports that Russia and Syria are blocking access to the site. On the news program, Face the Nation, US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, made this statement about further efforts to punish the regime for its use of chemical weapons, notably additional sanctions on Russia for not enforcing the agreement made with the OPCW to eliminate all chemical weapons in Syria in 2014:
“So, you will see that Russian sanctions will be coming down. Secretary Mnuchin will be announcing those on Monday, if he hasn’t already. And they will go directly to any sort of companies that were dealing with equipment related to Assad and chemical weapons used.”
“Sometime after Haley’s comments on CBS, the Trump administration notified the Russian Embassy in Washington that the sanctions were not in fact coming, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said Monday.
“The Trump team decided to publicly characterize Haley’s announcement as a misstatement.”
Again, we have little guidance to determine what the US policy toward Syria actually is.
There is another area of policy confusion in US foreign policy. One issue that Mr. Trump made central to his 2016 presidential campaign was China’s role as a currency manipulator. The charge is that China artificially manipulated the value of its currency in order to make its exports cheaper and its imports more expensive. The US Treasury is charged with making the decision as to whether a country is in fact a currency manipulator:
“Treasury has established thresholds for the three criteria specified in the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 (the “2015 Act”) that determine whether enhanced analysis is necessary: (1) a significant bilateral trade surplus with the United States is one that is at least $20 billion;2 (2) a material current account surplus is one that is at least 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP); and (3) persistent, one-sided intervention occurs when net purchases of foreign currency are conducted repeatedly and total at least 2 percent of an economy’s GDP over a 12-month period.”
In its most recent semiannual report, the US Treasury found that China was not a currency manipulator (p.3), although it was, along with Japan, Korea, Germany, Switzerland, and India, being monitored for the issue (India is a new addition to the list). Nonetheless, today US President Trump tweeted: “Russia and China are playing the Currency Devaluation game as the U.S. keeps raising interest rates. Not acceptable!” I have no idea how all this translates into a coherent policy.
The microblogging site in China, Sina Weibo, which is similar to Twitter, announced recently that it would ban all content referring to homosexuality. The reaction to the announcement was dramatic. According to the Chinese media outlet, Caixin: “Over the weekend, millions showed their support for China’s gay community, using the five-character Chinese-language hashtag phrase “wo shi tongxinglian” (“I am gay”). It appears as if there is little question that many Chinese people regard gays and lesbians as deserving of the full panoply of human rights. We shall see whether there is follow-through on this movement on issues that confront the LGBT community and its full acceptance into Chinese society.
A bipartisan group of US Congresspeople sent a letter to President Trump asking for the legal justification for his two military strikes on Syria (one in 2017 and one a few days ago). Many of these legislators believe that only Congress has the right to declare war and that a military strike in response to a chemical attack is not covered by Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) which was passed right after the attacks on American soil on 11 September 2001. That AUMF and its update only authorize attacks against groups associated with those attacks and the is no evidence that the Syrian government was involved at all in those attacks. President Trump, like previous US Presidents argues that the authority stems from Article II, Section 2 of the US Constitution which simply reads: “The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States”. Thanks to a tip from my younger son, Zachary, I learned of an interesting article in The Intercept. In The Intercept, Jon Schwarz argues that the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the Department of Justice defends the President’s use of force in a memo which has been classified as secret and has been seen by no one outside of a special group of people which does not include the Congress. According to Schwarz:
“What makes Trump’s actions new, according to several legal experts I spoke with, is that previous presidents appear to have always made public their legal justification for any overt military action on a significant scale. No matter how shoddy their explanations were, this at least made debate possible.
“The only reason the existence of the 2017 OLC memo on Syria is public knowledge is because the organization Protect Democracy filed a lawsuit to compel the Justice Department to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request that the OLC provide “the President’s legal authority to launch such a strike.”
“The OLC refused — but did produce an index of relevant documents. The first on the list is key: As described by the OLC, it is a ‘Legal Memo’ that ‘is currently classified TOP SECRET.’”
“Soon after the 2017 strikes, two prominent Democrats, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia and Rep. Adam Schiff from California, wrote to Trump and requested ‘a detailed analysis of the legal precedents and authorities supporting the action in Syria.’ They have not received any response.”
It seems as if that memo will never see the light of day.
One point should be kept in mind as the world debates the utility or legality of the recent military strikes against Syria: more people have been killed in chemical weapons attacks in Syria this year than have been granted refugee status in the US. According to The Guardian: “America resettled 15,479 Syrian refugees in 2016. Under Trump, only 3,024 Syrians were allowed in during 2017 and only 11 so far in 2018.” About 40 Syrians were killed in the chemical attack against Douma last week, but there have been many hundreds of Syrians killed so far in the civil war and over 500,000 since 2011. And there are 12 million Syrian refugees.
Robert Kuttner has published a new book entitled Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?He is interviewed on National Public Radio by Terry Gross and he links the process of globalization to changes in the conduct of capitalists and how that change affected the politics of liberal societies:
“I think you have to go back to what happened after World War II, which was a quite remarkable moment in history when laissezfaire capitalism, which brought us the Great Depression, had obviously failed. And the capitalism that was prevalent in the 1920s did not just produce the Great Depression, it produced Hitler because unemployment rates were so high and austerity policies were so perverse that people turned to fascists because they were desperate. It’s very hard for democracies to survive 20 and 30 percent unemployment.
“So the people after World War II who founded the post-war system said, we are never going to let this happen again. And so they built a global system that was compatible with a system of managed capitalism domestically so that prosperity would be broadly distributed. Now, globalization, beginning in the ’70s and the ’80s, overturned that system to the point where economic insecurity increased to the point where ordinary people lost confidence in elites to the point where, in country after country after country, the far-right fill that vacuum very much the way it did in the 1920s.”
I suspect that it is not just high rates of unemployment that lead ordinary citizens to lose faith. It also occurs when they believe that the system as a whole is rigged against their interests, no matter what the unemployment rate may be.
The military strike against Syrian chemical weapons facilities by the US, Great Britain, and France appears to have been a very specific and focused one-time military action that did not include among its objectives the overthrow of the Assad regime or an end to the violence being inflicted upon the civilian population. As such, the strikes represent a victory for the Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, and a repudiation of the more hawkish views of Mike Pompeo, the likely CIA Director, and John Bolton, the National Security Adviser. We will not know how to assess the strikes for some time, but here are the issues I think are worth thinking about.
First, the strikes represent a victory for those who believe that the rules against the use of chemical and biological weapons must be supported. But it is a victory tainted by remaining ambiguities. We still do not know what the chemical agents used last week were, and there are important differences among possible agents. If a nerve gas like Sarin was used, then it was very important for the world to take a stand. Sarin is difficult to manufacture and weaponize and a strong message needs constant reinforcement to dissuade people from developing it. But if the agent was chlorine, then we have a serious problem. Chlorine is easy to produce and has some very important civilian uses. It is unlikely that a military strike has any practical effect on anyone who intends to weaponize chlorine–the costs of producing it are significantly lower than the perceived expectations for punishment if used. The inability of the US, Great Britain, and France to specify the chemical agent weakens the deterrent effect of the strike.
Second, it is difficult to interpret a single military strike as an effective deterrent against chemical weapons. The world has refused to classify a number of agents as chemical weapons, notably white phosphorous and napalm. The first wide-scale use of gas as a weapon occurred on 22 April 1915 when Germany used gas in the trenches of World War I. Russia introduced a resolution to the UN Security Council to condemn the attacks on Syria. Three countries–Russia, China, and Bolivia–voted in favor of the resolution. Eight voted against: the U.S., U.K., France, Netherlands, Sweden, Kuwait, Poland and Ivory Coast. But four countries–Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Equatorial Guinea and Peru–abstained, a rather large number given the seriousness of the issue. There does not seem to be an international consensus on the matter.
Third, it is difficult to interpret the future in Syria. This military strike seems completely divorced from anything that might even remotely seem to be a policy toward the civil war in Syria. In truth, the strike was carefully calibrated to completely ignore the many complexities of the civil and international war in Syria. The strike has not moved the world closer to a solution and it seems as if the strike may have reinforced Assad’s hold on power in Syria. The strikes actually reminded many of how the region has been massively destabilized since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. People in the region could not help but be reminded that it was the British and the French that carved out the artificial nation-states of Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq in their last gasps as colonial powers at the end of World War I. Their return as partners in a coalition bombing their former colonies was more than ironic.
The Targets in Syria
International trade is not simply a foreign policy concern; it is also a key determinant of domestic politics. How Much, a website site devoted to things economic, has produced an unusual graph showing how much each state in the US is dependent on international trade as a percentage of its total GDP. Here are the five US states most dependent on international trade:
Here are the top five states where international trade makes up the greatest percentage of the local economy (we included the GDP ($B) of each state for reference):
1. Michigan: $200B – 38.9%
2. Louisiana: $94B – 38.7%
3. Kentucky: $78B – 38.1%
4. Tennessee: $112B – 32.6%
5. South Carolina: $70B – 31.9%
All five states voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. We will see how their economies are affected if his proposed tariffs go into effect.
Surprisingly, US President Trump indicated today that he is thinking about rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement with 11 other Pacific countries negotiated by President Obama. The 12 countries negotiated the agreement without China’s participation on the assumption that if all twelve were to agree on all matters, then, when was invited to join, it would have no choice but to accept the terms of the TPP. The main sticking point was agreement on the protection of intellectual property, an issue on which the Chinese have been notoriously obstreperous. US President Trump savaged the agreement during the presidential campaign (see the video below). Apparently, President Trump now believes that the TPP offers the best negotiating position vis-a-vis the Chinese. But the 11 Pacific countries proceeded with the agreement after Mr. Trump pulled the US out, and it is not a clear bet that they will now welcome the re-entry of the US. Mr. Trump also wants to join the TPP in order to placate US farmers who stand to lose significant markets if the Chinese make good their threats of retaliatory tariffs on US products.
Textiles are one of the major products that essentially tracked the process of globalization. Textile mills started in Great Britain, then moved to the northeast of the US, then to the southern US, then to China, then to Vietnam, and finally to Bangladesh. The manufacturers of textiles basically followed the path to the cheapest labor market. Textiles may no longer follow this track since robotics are being developed to the point where virtually no labor at all will be required. According to the IEEE Spectrum:
“Sometime later this year, dozens of robots will spring into action at a new factory in Little Rock, Ark. The plant will not make cars or electronics, nor anything else that robots are already producing these days. Instead it will make T-shirts—lots of T-shirts. When fully operational, these sewing robots will churn them out at a dizzying rate of one every 22 seconds.”
Robotization of textiles was considered highly unlikely since the raw material of most clothes is impossible to standardize: fabrics are highly pliable and each cut differs from every other. The solution for robots? Don’t measure the fabrics; just count the threads. High-speed cameras, operating at 1,000 frames per second, make it possible to cut and sew based on the number of threads in each piece of fabric. Who knows how many jobs will be lost to this miracle of modern science?
World Politics News 