World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

Bernard Avishai has written a short essay for the New Yorker that fleshes out the political dynamics behind Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to appoint Avigdor Lieberman as his Defense Minister.  Apparently the move came after attempts by Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, to resuscitate the peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians collapsed.  In trying to secure the support of the most right-wing members of the settler movement, Prime Minister Netanyahu has succeeded in alienating the Israeli army, unquestionably the most revered element of Israeli society.

The US and NATO have announced plans to deploy an anti-missile system in Poland and Romania, ostensibly to protect Europe from Iranian missiles.  Such a threat is hard to imagine despite the fact that Iran has been testing ballistic missiles–there seems to be no reason why Iran would be contemplating an attack against European states.  Russia, on the other hand, considers the deployment an attempt to cancel out Russia’s strategic arsenal as leverage over Europe.  Russian President Putin made clear his concerns about the deployment:

“If yesterday in those areas of Romania people simply did not know what it means to be in the cross-hairs, then today we will be forced to carry out certain measures to ensure our security….It will be the same case with Poland.”

The threat was explicit and it will be interesting to see how these two states respond.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have failed to come to an agreement on Hajj travel this year.   The Hajj is the fifth pillar of Islam and all Muslims who are physically and financially able are  required to visit the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia and to perform several rituals including circling the Ka’abah in the Holy Mosque seven times counter clockwise.  Saudi Arabia and Iran broke  off relations last year after hundreds of Iranians died during the Hajj and Iranians stormed the Saudi Embassy after Saudi Arabia executed a Shia cleric.  The inability of Iranians to make the Hajj is a very serious matter.

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A team of IMF economists has published a paper that suggests that the policies known as neoliberalism–reduced taxation, reduced governmental regulation, and reduced government spending–are counterproductive and harmful.  Neoliberalism has been the main policies employed by governments and enforced by international organizations for the last thirty years, since the administrations of US President Reagan and British Prime Minister Thatcher.  While neoliberalism did foster economic growth, the consequences of neoliberalism, notably rising economic inequality, offset those benefits.  The economists argued that:

“Increased inequality in turn hurts the level and sustainability of growth. Even if growth is the sole or main purpose of the neoliberal agenda, advocates of that agenda still need to pay attention to the distributional effects.­”

This reassessment is long overdue and let’s hope that the insight is followed.

For some time doctors have been warning that the overuse of antibiotics, in medicine and agriculture, would lead to the development of bacteria that are immune to the current panoply of antibiotics.  It appears as if that time has come as doctors have diagnosed a patient in Pennsylvania with a bacteria that is resistant to colistin, the antibiotic of last resort.   Colistin is widely used in China in breeding pigs and the first cases of colistin-resistant bacteria were detected there last November.  It has since spread worldwide.  The Director of the US Center for Disease Control (CDC), Tom Frieden, is quoted as saying:

“It basically shows us that the end of the road isn’t very far away for antibiotics — that we may be in a situation where we have patients in our intensive-care units, or patients getting urinary tract infections for which we do not have antibiotics.”

Climate is weather over the very long-term.  If the climate is indeed changing, then at some point the weather has to change beyond its “normal” parameters.  Since weather does vary quite a bit, it is difficult to tell when those parameters are being violated in a systematic manner.  Some meteorologists, however, are beginning to think that weather is finally changing in a manner consistent with predicted climate change.  In other words, climate change is already happening.

US President Obama’s foreign policy will go down in American diplomatic history as one of the most paradoxical.  He ran for President promising to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; he will end is Presidency with American troops still fighting in both countries as well as in Syria.  He also pledged in 2009 to work for a nuclear-free world; he is ending his Presidency by developing even more lethal nuclear weapons with “a new class of ballistic missile submarine, a new stealth bomber, upgrades to the current stock of nuclear weapons, a new cruise missile and billions of dollars of other programs.”   Yet he is hardly known as a bellicose or warlike President.  Time, however, will tell.

Russia has released Nadiya Savchenko from prison.  Svachenko was a Ukrainian  helicopter pilot who was captured while fighting Russian forces in Ukraine and sentenced to 22 years in prison. Her early release, after two years in prison, was part of a prisoner exchange, and Ukrainian politicians greeted her as a hero–she was elected to the Ukranian Parliament in absentia.   Her presence, however, will complicate efforts for a peaceful resolution of the Russian-Ukrainian dispute since she has no sympathy for the peace process.  She was quoted on her release as saying: “We can achieve peace only through war.”

Nadiya Savchenko while in a Russian prison

The Centre for Research on Globalization is a reliably lefty organization which publishes intelligent critiques of contemporary politics and economics.  It has published an essay on the rise of right -wing parties in Europe and ties that development to the politics of anti-globalization.  The essay relies on a distinction between nationalism and neo-nationalism that I find unnecessarily abstract, but the argument itself is solid.  The essay quotes theleader of the National Front in France, Marine Le Pen, as saying:

“Globalization is a barbarity, it is the country which should limit its abuses and regulate it [globalization].”…Today the world is in the hands of multinational corporations and large international finance” …Immigration ‘weighs down on wages,’ while the minimum wage is now becoming the maximum wage”

The essay is wroth a close read.

France is experiencing widespread labor protests which threaten to bring the economy to a standstill.  The Hollande government has proposed massive revisions to the labor laws in France and workers are upset by the changes.  The most crucial stoppages right now are in the transportation sector where strikes at oil refineries threaten to cut off the supply of petroleum-based fuels.  Now the workers at the nuclear power plants, from which France receives 75% of its electricity, are threatening to shut down the reactors.

French Protests

Shareholders at the ExxonMobil annual meeting in Dallas, Texas, pushed for stronger action by the company to address the problem of climate change.  Management was not sympathetic to the proposals, and projected that oil and natural gas would provide about 60% of the world’s energy needs by 2040.  Nonetheless, the dissident shareholders scored some impressive support. According to The Guardian:

More than 38% of Exxon’s investors rebelled against the company by voting for a proposal that would have required the company to publish an annual study of how its profits may be affected by public climate change policies, following the Paris climate agreement, to limit the global temperature rise to less than 2C (3.6F).

Similar pressures were applied at the annual meeting of Chevron, a competing energy company.   It appears as if change is possible.

The Iraqi army is mobilizing to retake the city of Fallujah from the control of Daesh (the Islamic State).  The city is only 30 minutes from Baghdad and is crucial to the security of the central Iraqi government.  But the Iraqi army is also relying on Shia militias to retake the city from Sunni control and thus the offensive raises the prospect of increased sectarian violence.  The way the battle is controlled is just as important as the outcome of the battle.

The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre had released its annual Global Report on Internal Displacement.  The report covers the people who have been forced to leave their homes because of violence or natural disasters.  At the end of 2015 there were 40.8 million people who were displaced by conflict violence, the highest level ever recorded.   There were 19.2 million who were displaced by natural disasters.  The graph below shows the new displacements in 2015.

At the other end of the spectrum, the Pew Research Center has conducted a poll that suggests that the economic conditions in the US are causing a major shift in the housing patterns of young adults.   According to the Center:  “In 2014, for the first time in more than 130 years, adults ages 18 to 34 were slightly more likely to be living in their parents’ homes than they were to be living with a spouse or partner in their own households.”  The Center describe the move back to the parents as part of what it called the “private safety net.”  The Great Recession continues to reverberate.

The US conducted a drone strike that it claims killed the Taliban leader, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour.  The drone strike occurred in Baluchistan which is Pakistani territory and it was the first time that the US conducted such a strike without the consent of the state on whose territory the strike occurred.  The Pakistani government has protested the strike, but the US State Department refuses to acknowledge that the strike occurred on Pakistani territory.  The press exchange in yesterday’s press briefing at the State Department is a real exercise in sophistry (Mr. Toner is the State Department Representative):

QUESTION: One more. You said that – when he mentioned Pakistan’s complaints about violation of sovereignty, you said it happened in the Af-Pak border region.

MR TONER: Yeah.

QUESTION: Are you denying that it happened on Pakistani territory?

MR TONER: I don’t have any more clarity of where the actual strike took place. What I can say was in that border region. I just can’t say on which side of the border it was.

QUESTION: So you don’t know if – so are you doubting the claim from Pakistan that it was in their territory?

MR TONER: I’m not going to speak – I mean, the Pakistani Government is able to speak on behalf of itself. I’m not going to doubt its claim. I’m just saying the information that we have right – are able to share.

QUESTION: But this was a – this is a —

QUESTION: So you don’t know where you targeted him? You just guessed? I mean, how could you fire something out of the sky and blow something up and kill people and not know what country it’s in? Come on.

MR TONER: I understand what – your question, Brad. All I’m saying is what we’re able – I said what we’re willing to share is that it was in —

QUESTION: You check these things before you fire, usually, right?

MR TONER: — the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. We certainly do.

QUESTION: On that, what impact this has on the Taliban itself? Can you say it’s defeated now?

MR TONER: No, by any means I wouldn’t say that, and I don’t mean to imply that if I said that. What I think it does send is a clear message, as I said, that if you’re going to carry out attacks, if you’re going to lead attacks against our forces and against Afghan’s forces – Afghanistan’s forces – then you’re going to be targeted and you’re not going to have safe haven. And I also think that it sends the message that the Taliban must decide what its future is going to be and whether it’s going to be part of a peaceful political future for Afghanistan. And there is a path towards that. They can sit down with the Afghan Government and begin negotiations and talks. We’ve encouraged that; we support an Afghan-owned, Afghan-led process.

QUESTION: But how can you expect someone to come to peace talks when you have just killed their supreme leader?

MR TONER: Well, again, I think it presents them with a clear choice. And Lalit, you know that there’s ways to engage and identify the fact that you’re willing to engage in a peaceful way. And, frankly, Mansour showed no – absolutely no predilection towards engaging in any kind of peaceful political process.

QUESTION: From the public statements that’s coming from Pakistan, it’s very much evident that they are very upset with your action. Do you see any kind of retaliatory measures coming out of Pakistan?

MR TONER: No, we – look, Lalit – I mean, I’m – again, I’m not going to speak on behalf of the Pakistani Government, what they may or may not do. We have been in touch with them, obviously. We’ve talked about this airstrike. We continue to talk to them about how we can collaborate and cooperate on rooting out these terrorist organizations and these organizations or these groups that continue to use Pakistanis – Pakistan’s territory to carry out attacks.

On the basis of absentee ballots, Alexander Van der Bellen, a member of the Green Party running as an independent, beat out the far-right candidate, Norbert Hofer, for the presidency of Austria. The vote was 50.3% to 49.7% and the turnout for the election was 72.7% suggesting that voter interest was quite high.  The results point out the strength of populist rhetoric in the current political environment, a genuine concern across the spectrum of polities in the world from Russia to the US to the Philippines and to Europe.

One of the last vestiges of the Vietnam War ended today as US President Obama lifted the arms embargo on Vietnam that had been put in place because of the war.  Vietnam has become an important economic partner to the US, but the move signals growing apprehension in both the US and Vietnam over the growing power of China.  Human rights still remain a sticking point between the two countries, but the strategic concerns over Chinese moves in the South China Sea have overridden those concerns.

We tend to focus on the anti-immigrant sentiment in the US and Europe, but that sentiment pervades many societies.  One of the most long-standing examples of this hostility is the attitude of many in the Dominican Republic toward Haitian immigrants.  The two countries share the island of Hispaniola and both have long histories of despotic regimes.  But the Dominican Republic has made a great deal of economic progress in the last few years while Haitians are still trying to recover from a devastating earthquake, cholera, and a non-existent political system.  One can see the difference in the two countries by looking at the boundary line between them  Those Haitians who try to enter the Dominican Republic are often repatriated with little due process.

Sunday’s Presidential election in Austria was too close to call and it is likely that absentee ballots will decide the outcome.  Preliminary results gave the far-right candidate, Norbert Hofer,  51.9 percent and the Green candidate, Alexander Van der Bellen, 48.1 percent.   The Social Democratic and People’s Party, the once dominant parties in Austria, were eliminated in the initial voting last month, signalling the end of “politics as usual” in Austria as seems to be the case in other elections in the world.  Hofer is strongly nationalist, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigrant, and is closely aligned with the eurosceptic constituencies in Europe.

Norbet Hofer–Show the Flag:  Truth, Freedom, and Love of Home

The Greek Parliament has approved a fresh round of austerity measures, including tax increases of €1.8 billion.  These measures are among the most punitive yet exacted on Greece and they were passed in hopes of receiving debt relief and additional bail-out money from the EU and the IMF.  The measures include the sale of about 71,500 pieces of prime public property, a humiliating concession by any sovereign state.  As with the previous two austerity programs, I suspect that this one will only drive the Greek economy deeper into debt.  The austerity programs are nothing less than complete lunacy.

The first-ever World Humanitarian Summit starts tomorrow in Istanbul.  The current humanitarian system was developed 75 years ago and there is little question that it is inadequate for the crises the world currently faces.   Various international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and emergency relief organizations are attending the summit, and the issues on the agenda for the summit can be found at this home page.  A rethinking of humanitarian aid is long overdue, but I am not certain that a “summit” is the best way to start the process.

The town of Phalodi in Rajasthan state in India experienced the highest temperature ever recorded in India: 51° C (123.8 ° F)  Different areas of India have experienced abnormally high temperatures over the last few months.  The heat is expected to last until the monsoons come sometime in mid-June.

Amnesty International has conducted a survey of citizens in a variety of countries about their attitudes toward refugees.   The chart below is a compilation of the results to the proposition:  “People should be able to take refuge in other countries to escape from war or persecution.”  The results of the survey are quite striking, indicating that ordinary citizens do not necessarily share the attitudes towards refugees of their governments.  There are wide variations among the countries surveyed, but, by and large, ordinary citizens believe they have responsibilities toward refugees.

As the Chinese economy has slowed down, Chinese producers have been tying to export the oversupply of products at reduced prices.   The strategy is called “dumping” and it usually elicits protests from countries whose prices are higher than the exporting countries.  If the prices are in fact artificially (e.g., selling at a loss that is subsidized by the exporter’s government) low, the practice is prohibited by the World Trade Organization.  US steel producers have charged Chinese steel producers with that practice, and the US government has imposed a charge of 522% on imported Chinese steel.  Needless to say, the Chinese are quite unhappy with the US move.

It appears as if Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is going to work out a deal with Avigdor Lieberman to bring Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party into his ruling coalition.  Right now, Netanyahu has a one-seat majority in the Israeli Knesset, and Lieberman would bring 6 additional seats.  Lieberman has a long history of hostility toward the Palestinians and if he is given the office of Defense Minister, he will be in charge of security in the West Bank.  Any meaningful peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians with Lieberman in the Cabinet is inconceivable.

The Pew Research Center has a fascinating interactive map that shows the origins and destinations of global migrants.  One can click on a country and find the number of migrants living in it for the years 1990, 2000, 2010 or 2015.  The pace of migration in the world has clearly picked up in recent years.

Venezuela is inching closer to complete disintegration.  Police are using tear gas against protesters who want President Maduro to leave office.  Ramon Muchacho, mayor of the Caracas district of Chacao, tweeted that people are hunting dogs and cats for food, and there are shortages of virtually every vital necessity.  Venezuela is also suffering from a crippling drought which has cut back on its supply of hydroelecticity, the main source of electricity for the country.

Today is the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia and US President Obama released a statement from the White House asserting that

“All nations and all communities can, and must, do better. Fortunately, human rights champions and good citizens around the world continue to strive towards this goal every day by lifting up the simple truth that LGBT rights are human rights. The United States honors their work and will continue to support them in their struggle for human dignity.”

Bojan Bugaric is Professor of Law at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and he has written on essay on the rising nationalist threat in Europe.  Bugaric’s argument is that the single-minded pursuit of austerity in the European economies since the Great Recession of 2008 is largely responsible for the rise of the right-wing in Europe.  His solution is for left and center-left parties to back stimulus packages to restart the sclerotic European economy.  His solution is unquestionably the right one, but he does not really answer the question of how to mange this dramatic change in policy.