The US has openly changed its policy on Syria, acknowledging for the first time that it now accepts the continued rule of President Assad in Syria. Sean Spicer, in his White House Briefing on 31 March 2017 made the following comments:
“Q And then can you clear up where the President stands on whether Bashar Assad is the legitimate President of Syria?
MR. SPICER: Well, I think with respect to Assad, there is a political reality that we have to accept in terms of where we are right now. We lost a lot of opportunity the last administration with respect to Assad. And I think that our statement that both U.N. Ambassador Haley gave yesterday and Secretary of State Tillerson reflects the reality that it’s now up to the Syrian people.
We had an opportunity and we need to focus on now defeating ISIS. But the United States has profound priorities in Syria and Iraq, and we made it clear that counterterrorism, particularly the defeat of ISIS, is foremost among those priorities. And that’s why our forces in the global coalition are partnering with local forces against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
But I mean — I think there is a bit of political reality with respect to where we are now versus where we were the last administration in terms of there being a potential — there is not the opposition that existed last time and the opportunities that existed last time.”
This position represents a significant change from the position taken by US President Obama on 18 August 2011:
“The United States cannot and will not impose this transition upon Syria. It is up to the Syrian people to choose their own leaders, and we have heard their strong desire that there not be foreign intervention in their movement. What the United States will support is an effort to bring about a Syria that is democratic, just, and inclusive for all Syrians. We will support this outcome by pressuring President Assad to get out of the way of this transition, and standing up for the universal rights of the Syrian people along with others in the international community.”
Venezuela has experienced years of political turmoil, but in recent days it appears as if the situation has deteriorated to a point where one could easily argue that the country lacks a government. The Supreme Court, filled with judges loyal to President Maduro, had recently ruled that all legislative powers of the Congress were suspended and had reverted to the Court itself. Faced with an incredible backlash from its citizens and from governments all over the world, the Court has backed down and restored most of the powers of Congress. Protests have also broken out in Paraguay, as there were efforts to remove constitutional term limits on the President. Those limits had been created in 1992 in order to avoid a repeat of the 35-year dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner whose rule was destructive of the country’s economy and politics.
Protests in Venezuela
France will be holding national elections in late April and early May and the current top two candidates, Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, offer stark contrasts toward the European Union (EU). In a rrecent campaign speech, Le Pen, the candidate of the right wing National Front Party, said: ““The European Union will die! The time has come to defeat the globalists.” Macron, on the other hand, is a firm supporter of the EU. It to be seen whether other issues, such as immigration, will be more important to French voters, but after the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump, this election will provide some evidence as to how far major liberal powers have swung away from the liberal world order.
One hundred and fifty years ago, the US purchased Alaska from Russia. The Russians and the British were in competition for the region as a consequence of the Crimean War and the press of Canadians who were pushing north and west into a region with very few Russians. Russia also needed the money. The US purchased the territory in hopes of ultimately securing the entire West Coast from California all the way to Alaska, an aspiration which was never realized.
“Thousands of factories have been stolen from our country. But these voiceless Americans now have a voice in the White House.”
“Under my administration the theft of American prosperity will end.”
“We’re going to defend our industry and create a level playing field for the American worker, finally.”
It is not clear what actions President Trump has in mind, but the orders come just a week before he is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. These discussions will likely be quite contentious and it would be a mistake to think that the Chinese would not respond to any actions it feels are unfair or uneven.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is in Turkey, one of the members of NATO and an important US ally. Both sides wish to defeat Daesh (the Islamic State), but have serious disagreements about whether the Kurds should be allies in that fight. The dispute is coming to a head, as anti-Daesh forces are mobilizing to retake the city of Raqqa, Syria, which is a Daesh stronghold. Turkey regards the Kurds as a greater threat than Daesh, but the Kurds have proven to be very effective ground troops against them. In the absence of the Kurds, the US might have to substantially increase its own ground troop support.
The election of Donald Trump has raised serious questions among many US allies about the direction of US foreign economic policy. Not surprisingly, these questions have affected the International Monetary Fund (IMF) dramatically since the US is one of the largest supporters of the Fund and traditionally has been one of its most outspoken supporters. But the decision by US Secretary of the Treasury Stephen Mnuchin to excise all mention of free trade from the recent G20 declaration have left the policymakers in the IMF unsure of future US support. Germany has emerged as the strongest economy willing to speak out forcefully on behalf of liberal economic policies, and the IMF is working hard to nurture German economic leadership. We will have to see if Japan and South Korea decide to move closer to Germany in that role.
The growth on income inequality in the US (and in the world as a whole) since the 1970s is quite striking, but what is also striking is how different the pattern of the growth of income in the US has differed in that period from previous historical periods in the US. Pavlina R. Tcherneva has written a short essay on this phenomenon, and her conclusions are troubling:
“In sum, the growth pattern that emerged in the 80s and delivered increasing income inequality is alive and well. The rising tide no longer lifts most boats. Instead the majority of gains go to a very small segment of the population.”
This disturbing trend is not an accident but rather the consequence of discrete political decisions.
Great Britain has formally initiated the process of leaving the European Union. Prime Minister Teresa May’s letter to the EU triggering Article 50 of the EU Treaty which allows departure can be found here. It seems as if the tone of the letter suggests that May has softened her earlier position from a “hard” Brexit, indicating that she is open to discussions about how Britain can maintain some relationships with the EU as a whole. There is little question that this is an historic moment for the Union and the future of Europe. The Brexit negotiations have a time limit of two years, and it will be interesting to see the pace that Great Britain and the EU decide upon.
The US has admitted that it may have been involved in an attack in Mosul, Iraq which killed perhaps as many as 200 civilians. Non-governmental groups claim that the US military activities have killed about 3,000 civilians in Iraq and Syria since 2014, but the US military puts the figure at closer to 220 civilians. The new information gives special urgency to review whether the military has changed the rules of engagement in the two countries which may put the lives of civilians at greater risk. Civilian casualties undermine the very effort to displace daesh (the Islamic State) from the region.
Last December, the UN General Assembly voted to begin to “negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination“. The vote in favor of these negotiations was 113 for and 35 against, with 13 abstentions. Forty countries have refused to participate in these negotiations, including the United States, Britain, China, Russia, North Korea, India, Pakistan, Albania, South Korea, and France. The states in favor of the treaty are led by Austria, Brazil, Ireland, Mexico, South Africa, and Sweden. Even though all nine of the currently nuclear-armed states oppose the treaty, this discussion is long overdue.
We are getting more information about the protests in Russia. Apparently there were protests in about 90 cities all over the country, and some of them were quite large. The majority of the protests were conducted without permits and young people were the largest demographic in the the protests. These attributes suggest that despite polling number signalling approval in the 80 percentiles, there is significant discontent against President Putin in the country. The media in Russia did not cover the protests and it appears as if social media was the determining factor in supporting the protests. Alexey Navalny is the face of the protests and he was jailed for 15 days for protesting. We will have to see how the discontent in Russia is addressed, and whether it has any staying power.
US President Trump has signed an Executive Order that calls into question the commitment of the US to limit its greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with its Paris Agreement commitments. According to CNN:
“Tuesday’s order initiates a review of the Clean Power Plan, rescinds the moratorium on coal mining on US federal lands and urges federal agencies to ‘identify all regulations, all rules, all policies … that serve as obstacles and impediments to American energy independence.'”
It is hard at this point to measure the significance of the Order since there are a number of laws that constrain environmental damage that cannot be overridden by an Executive Order. But it seems clear that the Trump Administration does not regard climate change as a serious problem.
“A new study by the National Bureau of Economic research has shown that every fully autonomous robot added to an American factory has reduced employment by 6.2 workers…..The study also found that for every fully autonomous robot per 1,000 workers, the employment rate declined 0.18 to 0.34 percentage points and wages dipped 0.25 to 0.5 percentage points.”
These effects are likely to grow as automation and robotization become more pervasive. The world needs to think seriously about how it defines labor and the types of work that merit an income.
Eurofound has released a new study on income inequalities and employment in Europe before and after the Great Recession of 2008-2009. The study demonstrates the steady erosion of the European Middle Class since 2009, a finding that correlates strongly with the growth of right-wing parties in Europe. According to the analysis:
“The Great Recession has resulted in the reduction in the size of the middle class between 2009 and 2014 (income referring to 2008-2013) in all Member States apart from Latvia, Luxembourg, Poland and Lithuania. This has been especially relevant in some of the peripheral Member States hardest hit by the crisis – several Mediterranean countries (Cyprus, Greece and Spain especially) and some countries in the eastern part of the EU (Estonia, Hungary and Slovenia) . Nevertheless, significant reductions in the middle class have also been registered in some countries where its size was relatively large initially, such as the Scandinavian countries.”
The study suggests that this decline will not be reversed until robust economic growth returns to Europe, an outcome that does not yet seem to be on the horizon.
Addressing the issue of climate change is often cast as a question of protecting the environment at the cost of economic growth–the problem is often referred to as decoupling environmental damage from economic activity. The answer to the question of whether decoupling is possible is complicated. The US and China have made progress in reducing their emissions of CO2 while maintaining levels of economic growth. But whether other countries, such as India, can manage this decoupling at their current level of development is not known and those countries have made clear that they will not sacrifice economic growth because their problems of poverty are severe. We need to start asking the question of whether economic growth is the only way to reduce poverty and whether high levels of economic growth are necessary for a high standard of living.
There are reports that the US is thinking about increasing its support for Saudi Arabian efforts to defeat Houthi forces in Yemen. The US and Saudi Arabia believe that Iran is aiding the Houthis in an effort to expand Iranian influence in the Middle East. Yemen is a very poor country which has been ravaged by war since the overthrow of the government in 2014 by Houthi forces. Control over Yemen also gives control over the Bab al-Mandab strait through which large amounts of oil flow. If these reports are true, then it means that the US is stepping up its military activities in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen–virtually without any public discussion or debate.
As we debate the fate of the American-made liberal world order, it may be useful to think about other historical periods when he world order was up for grabs. One such point was the end of World War I when the imperial powers of Europe were too depleted to maintain the balance of power world order of the 19th century. Anton Fedyshin has written an essay about two visionaries of that period–Woodrow Wilson and Vladimir Lenin– who actually had two profoundly different conceptions of the world order that should have been implemented in 1918. Both failed at that time, but their visions reverberated throughout the 20th century.
Carrie Lam has been elected as Hong Kong’s fourth Chief Executive. Lam was the clear candidate of the central government in Beijing and had opposed the Umbrella Movement in 2014 which had demanded greater autonomy for the former British colony. The victory assures that the Communist Party will continue to impose its control over the city which has a number of citizens who would prefer to hold on to the political freedoms guaranteed to them by the agreement signed between China and Great Britain in 1997 promising “one country, two systems.”
Carrie Lam
Although it is very difficult to tell, it appears as if there were very large, unsanctioned protests against corruption in Russia. The protesters had been warned by the government that the protests were illegal and it is impossible to know exactly the size of the protests. But the protesters were certainly aware of the severe consequences for their actions, and one cannot help but be impressed by their courage. According to the Washington Post:
“The privately owned Interfax news agency reported on rallies across Siberia and in Russia’s Far East, where it said two dozen protesters had been detained. The agency cited police as saying that about 7,000 protesters gathered in Moscow, but the crowd, which lined Moscow’s main artery, Tverskaya Street, on both sidewalks for more than a mile, and crammed the spacious Pushkin Square, appeared to be much larger than that. “
Even though there are signs that the Russian economy is beginning to grow again, it is clear that the last few years have seen a dramatic drop in the standard of living for most Russians.
The US is investigating the deaths of about 100 civilians in Mosul, Iraq. The deaths occurred in an area where the US had dropped bombs in an assault on a suspected Daesh (Islamic State) site. Iraqi and other forces have been trying to wrest Mosul for Daesh control for the last several months. There is, however, a suspicion that the rules of engagement for allied forces have been loosened since the election of President Trump in the US and that these laxer rules have resulted in higher civilian casualties. There are non-governmental groups on the ground investigating the strike and we will have to wait for the results of the investigations before any conclusions can be reached.
The European Union (EU) celebrated its 60th anniversary today. In 1957, six European nations signed the Treaty of Rome and the EU now consists of 27 members. The celebration was not especially joyous as the EU has been confronted with all sorts of challenges over the last 9 years: the sovereign debt crisis, a large influx of refugees, the expected departure of Great Britain from the Union, and the rise of anti-EU parties in European politics. There were demonstrations against and in support of the EU throughout Europe.
For the first time since satellites have been able to take accurate measurements, the amount of sea ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic is at the lowest level ever recorded. Temperatures in the Arctic have been unusually warm for the last two years and those temperatures account for the decline of sea ice at the North Pole. But the dynamics of sea ice in the Antarctic are less well understood and the decline at the South Pole is troubling. Climate change is the most likely explanation for the declines.
“While midlife mortality continued to fall in other rich countries, and in other racial and ethnic groups in the US, white non-Hispanic mortality rates for those aged 45-54 increased from 1998 through 2013. Mortality declines from the two biggest killers in middle age—cancer and heart disease— were offset by marked increases in drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related liver mortality in this period. By 2014, rising mortality in midlife, led by these “deaths of despair,” was large enough to offset mortality gains for children and the elderly (Kochanek, Arias, and Bastian 2016), leading to a decline in life expectancy at birth among white non-Hispanics between 2013 and 2014 (Arias 2016), and a decline in overall life expectancy in the US between 2014 and 2015 (Xu et al 2016). Mortality increases for whites in midlife were paralleled by morbidity increases, including deteriorations in self-reported physical and mental health, and rising reports of chronic pain.”
There are serious consequences to ignoring the economic hollowing-out of the American middle class. Those consequences are not simply the rise of right-wing political sentiments and demand redress.
Just a few days after New Zealand declared its Whanganui river a “living entity”, a court in India has followed suit and declared that the Ganga and Yamuna rivers are also living entities. The declaration allows human guardians to be appointed to protect the vitality of the rivers and gives those guardians legal status to sue those who degrade the rivers. The decisions marks incredibly important steps in environmental protection as well as a dramatic shift away from the perspective that humans have the right to exploit natural resources without regard for the sustainability of those resources.
It is a serious mistake to think that imperialism fades away once the once-colonized peoples achieve independence. No where is this more obvious than in the Middle East which continues to be rattled by the territorial lines drawn by the British and French in the middle of World War I. The secret agreement, known as the Sykes-Picot Treaty, divided up the crumbling Ottoman Empire into French and British Zones without regard for the political, ethnic, and religious identities of the people living within those territories. To this day, the territorial lines contribute to the conflict that exists in the region as many nations reside within the political control of states they regard as illegitimate.
The Paris Agreement on Climate Change plots out a path to limit global temperature increases due to human activity to no more than 2°C, and aspires to a 1.5°C increase. The objective is incredibly important, but few are aware of the necessary steps to meet it. The Agreement calls for dramatic decreases in CO2 emissions, changes in land use from agriculture to reforestation, and as-yet untested technologies for removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The chart below gives an idea of when these three steps need to be realized. Given how dramatic these steps are, it is hard to explain why policy makers are not moving more aggressively to protect the global environment.
US President Trump issued a draft executive order last January that would reduce US contributions to the UN by 40%. Such a significant cut would cripple most of the UN’s activities and it is difficult to imagine other countries picking up the slack. It is also not clear how such a cutback would serve US national interests given that US interests would abide even in the absence of a UN presence. The most immediate effect would be to mute the American voice in global affairs.
The US military has a truly global presence with troops deployed in 177 countries. In many respects, much of this global presence is symbolic but it requires 800 military bases abroad and requires very large sums of money to maintain. There are no real competitors to the US in terms of global reach; most other countries are genuinely regional powers.
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