World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

Christian Aid has published a report on the vulnerability of coastal city populations to rises in sea levels due to climate change.  According to the report:

“In 2014, 54% of the global population lived in cities (up from 34% in 1960). In absolute numbers, most of this urban population growth is concentrated in the less developed regions of the world. It’s estimated that by next year, even in the least developed countries, the majority of people will be living in urban areas.”

Many of these people will be living in coastal cities highly vulnerable to sea level increases, and these people will have no option other than to migrate to safer areas.  The expected migrations will lead to social, political, and economic pressures that will likely be as volatile as today’s refugee crises.  Unfortunately, most of these cities are in Asia.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has written a letter to the United Nations which effectively blocks 11 gay and transgender organizations from attending a UN meeting on HIV/AIDS.  The letter does not specify the reasons for barring the participation of these organizations from the meeting, but the US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, also wrote a letter protesting the exclusion of groups that have clear reasons for wishing to participate.  There does not appear to be any recourse to change the decision.

Twenty-five countries have decided to provide arms to the new unity government in Libya so that it can defend itself against attacks from extremists.  The country has been wracked by violence since the overthrow of its former leader, Muammar Gaddaffi, who was killed in 2011.  The current government, led by Prime Minister Fayez Serraj, only arrived in Libya six weeks ago (by boat) and there are other groups who claim to be the government of Libya.  One hopeful sign is that all five permanent members of the UN Security Council have signed the pledge, which has yet to be formally ratified by the Security Council, which indicates that there will be no great power dispute over the legitimacy of the new government.  The move also suggests the importance of the participation of Libya in solving the refugee crisis in Europe.

Yet again the past month has set a new record for global temperature.  April averaged 1.11° C warmer than the average for the period 1951-80.  The record surpasses the records set in January, February, and March, marking the 4th consecutive month of temperatures that have averaged more than 1° C higher.  Andy Pitman, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science at the University of New South Wales in Australia, noted that these temperatures cast doubt on the effectiveness of the recent Paris agreements on carbon emissions:

“The 1.5C target, it’s wishful thinking. I don’t know if you’d get 1.5 C if you stopped emissions today. There’s inertia in the system. It’s putting intense pressure on 2 C.”

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in China a ten-year period in Chinese history instigated by Mao Zedong in order to purify the Communist state.  The current President Xi Jinping’s father, Xi Zhongxun, was imprisoned for 16 years and Xi himself was sent to the countryside to perform hard labor.   Groups of young people, known as the Red Guard, conducted purges of people who were considered unreliable or dangerous and there was virtually no accountability of their behavior.  To this day, it is unclear how many people died as a result of the savage treatment, but the most likely numbers are in the millions.  The current government talks little about the Cultural Revolution. 

The US Department of Defense released its annual report on Chinese military preparedness, and the report emphasized the pace of Chinese military expenditures and the dangers of its activities in the South China Sea.  The Chinese response to the report was sharp.  It asserted that the report was a “deliberate distortion” and that it had severely damaged mutual trust.  The exchange is an index of the extent to which US-Chinese relations have soured recently.

The high-stakes standoff between Turkey and Germany over the movement of Syrian refugees is moving close to a break-off point.  Turkey insists that it will not honor the agreement to take in one refugee for every one that enters an EU country unless its citizens are given vise-free access to the EU.  The EU insists that Turkish citizens will not be granted that status unless Turkey dismantles many of its draconian terrorist laws that severely restrict human rights in Turkey.  Turkey believes that the EU has to break down because the political ramifications of unrestricted refugee access to the EU is unmanageable for European countries.  The EU believes that Turkish citizens care more about visa-free access than they do about the restrictive laws.  At some point, one side has to capitulate.

US President Obama gave the commencement speech at Rutgers University today and his message was highly political, although he did not mention any of the candidates by name.  But his message to the supporters of Donald Trump was clear:

“In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue….It’s not cool to not know what you’re talking about. That’s not keeping it real or telling it like it is. That’s not challenging political correctness. That’s just not knowing what you’re talking about.”

Truer words have never been spoken.

Venezuelan President Maduro has imposed a 60-day state of emergency which will allow him to seize property and to enforce draconian laws against protesters.  Most observers expect that the state of emergency will last much longer than 60 days and most likely will extend throughout 2017.  Venezuela has been experiencing electrical blackouts and economic activity in the country has plummeted while the inflation rate is exploding.  The nationalization of property will allow the government to continue production of necessary foodstuffs and other household goods, as long as the government can find the people necessary to run the factories.  Venezuela is clearly approaching a breakdown.

Last Thursday, NATO declared that its anti-missile base in Deveselu, Romania was operational.  Anti-missile technology has a mixed record, but  countries ignore their potential at their peril.  In this particular case, Russia is very worried that its nuclear arsenal could be made obsolete if NATO’s anti-missile technology actually works (NATO is also working on a similar base in Poland).  Russia therefore views the system as a highly provocative act, while NATO claims that it is purely defensive:  a classic case of the Security dilemma.

The top 25 hedge fund managers in the world made collectively more than $13 billion, more than the GDPs of many countries in the world.  The incredible income was earned despite the fact that many hedge funds did not have decent returns to their investors.  Much of this money is contributed to political campaigns for candidates who campaign to lower taxes on the rich.

The economic situation in Venezuela continues to deteriorate.  There are reports of widespread looting as many essential supplies and food have become increasingly unavailable.  The government of President Maduro seems to be incapable of responding effectively to the crisis and Venezuelan society seems close to collapse.  The country is under very tight currency and price controls that make it unlikely that food and supplies can be produced or imported profitably.

The Director of the International monetary Fund, Christine Legarde, has made her views on the possible British exit (“Brexit”) from the European Union quite clear. The outcomes for her range from “pretty bad to very, very bad.”  The  complexity of a British exit–undoing years and years of agreements upon which many corporations and governments have made long-term decisions–would likely freeze economic activity for an extended period of time.  Investors will likely be unwilling to make any commitments until such uncertainties are resolved.

US, Canadian and European representatives left the inauguration ceremonies of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.  Museveni was elected to his fifth term in office, but the abrupt departure of the Western officials was due to Museveni’s mocking criticism of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as well as by the presence of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir who is under indictment by the ICC.   The US itself is not a member of the ICC and has not signed the Rome Statute that created it.

The Pew Research Center has released its latest findings which indicate that the American middle class is shrinking in many of the metropolitan areas of the US.  The report finds that “[f]rom 2000 to 2014 the share of adults living in middle-income households fell in 203 of the 229 U.S. metropolitan areas” and “The shrinking of the middle class at the national level, to the point where it may no longer be the economic majority in the U.S.”  This economic data goes a long way to explain the popularity of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the current presidential cycle.  In the Financial Times, Roger Altman writes that:

“This economic pressure is not temporary either, because the trends undermining incomes — technology and globalisation — are in their early stages and still accelerating. All the talk from Mr Trump and Mr Sanders about building border walls and killing trade agreements misses the point. Such steps would have no discernible impact on these powerful trends. What is needed are bolder income support policies to cushion workers against them.

How weak are incomes? Today’s real median household income is $53,600, down nearly 7.5 per cent from the peak seen 20 years ago. And real median wages per hour have fallen 4 per cent since the financial crisis.”

The Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920) was an attempt by the allied powers to divide up the Ottoman Empire after World War I.  Few talk about the treaty today because it was superseded when Turkey repudiated the treaty and declared its independence which was ratified in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923).  But other parts of the Treaty were maintained in other treaties such as the Sykes-Picot Treaty.  The significance of the treaty is that it represents a colonial failure as Britain and France tried to redraw the map, only to fail because of the opposition of the Turks and the Kurds.  Interestingly, the Kurds were granted nominal independence in the Treaty of Sèvres but they rejected their own “state” because it was under British control.

The Brazilian Senate has decided to move forward in the impeachment process of President Dilma Rousseff.  Impeachment is a singular process:  it is not necessarily a legal trial since there really are no set procedures for the process (no “due” process); it is not supposed to be a political trial since simple political disagreement is not grounds for impeachment (otherwise, there would be no need for “votes” or “elections”).  It is historically a messy process and that is precisely what Brazil is facing.  Such degree of certainty augurs ill for the Brazilian economy and the Olympics.

The US guided missile destroyer the USS William P. Lawrence sailed within 12 nautical miles of the Fiery Cross Reef, a built-up island claimed by China.  In response, China scrambled fighter jets and three Chinese warships shadowed the US vessel.   US President Obama is scheduled to visit Vietnam soon, a country that also claims the area around the Fiery Cross Reef.  The dispute between China, which claims the South China Sea as its national territory, and virtually every other state on the planet, which believe that the area should be demarcated according to the UN Conference on the Law of the Seas, continues.   China is clearly not backing down from its claim.

The Kew Botanic Gardens in Great Britain has issued its annual report on The State of the World’s Plants.   Its conclusions are stark:  one in 5 plant species is in danger of extinction.  The report indicates that”there are currently 390,900 plant species known to science, not including algae or moss” and that human activity is the greatest threat to the survival of many of these species.  Given the dependence of the human species on plants for food, medicine, and other uses, the loss of 20% of the world’s plants could be devastating.  On another front, the US Department of Agriculture reported today that more than a quarter of the bee colonies in the US were lost in the winter of 2015-16.  The loss of the pollinating bees could be another threat to the food chain.

The US and 28 other countries have signed on to the “Kigali Principles” under the auspices of the UN.  The Kigali Principles give UN peacekeeping forces the right to use armed force to protect civilians even without formal authorization from the UN or the country from which the peacekeepers hail.   The principles help the UN avoid the humiliation of having peacekeeping troops in a conflict region that cannot protect civilians because they are not authorized to do so.  The UN endured that humiliation in the conflicts in Bosnia in 1992-94 and in Rwanda in 1994 because members of the UN Security Council refused to authorize the use of force by the peacekeepers.

Later this month, US President Obama is going to be the first sitting President to visit Hiroshima, the Japanese city that was destroyed by an atomic bomb at the end of World War II.  At the time, few Americans, and, for that matter, relatively few people in the world, had strong negative feelings about the bombing.  Both World War I and II had unleashed horrific violence and there were bombings during World War II that actually killed more people than were lost in Hiroshima. But over time, attitudes toward the bombing have changed.  It is doubtful that Obama will apologize for the bombing, but it is clear that the weapons can never be used again.

Rodrigo Duterte was elected President of the Philippines, marking yet another right-wing populist leader in the world.  Duterte had been the mayor of the city of Davao in the southern Philippines where he earned the nickname of the “punisher” for his vigilante-style approach to governance.  At the same time, however, the Philippines elected its first transgender member of Congress, Geraldine Roman.

Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading in Great Britain has created a stunning animation showing how global temperatures from 1850-2016 have spiraled out of control.  The graphic is compelling and dramatic evidence of how quickly things can change.

The political situation in Brazil became murky today as the acting speaker of the lower house of Congress annulled the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff because of procedural irregularities.  The Senate had already approved the impeachment bill and had been moving toward a trial of President Rousseff.  It was unclear whether the Senate would return the impeachment bill to the lower house or what the possible steps forward would be.  Investors were spooked by the move as political uncertainty is a certain enemy of financial stability.

Kenya has announced that it intends to close all refugee camps in the country in “the shortest time possible.”  There are about 600,000 refugees, mostly from Somalia and South Sudan, in Kenya and virtually all of them fled the widespread violence in their countries.  If the refugees are force to go back to their former countries, they almost certainly will experience retribution.  The international community, both governmental and non-governmental, have protested the decision, but Kenya believes that the refugee camps have become locations from which those opposed to the Kenyan government can launch attacks.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has released a searchable database of almost 320,000 offshore companies and the names of people associated with those companies.  There are many legitimate uses of an offshore company and it is a serious mistake to assume that an offshore company is automatically involved in illegitimate activities.  But the secrecy shrouding these companies makes it very difficult to separate good from bad activities.  Secrecy is a way to launder drug money, sex trafficking money, arms deals, and other nefarious activities.  Secrecy also enables people to avoid paying taxes on their wealth.  It is difficult to imagine that the beneficial uses of offshore companies outweighs the detrimental uses.  The estimates of how much money is hidden away in these companies varies widely:  low estimates are about $7 trillion; high estimates are about $42 trillion.

Another human rights activist, Khurram Zaki, has been assassinated in Karachi, Pakistan.  Zaki was a prominent blogger who maintained a prominent Facebook site, Let Us Build Pakistan.  He had argued against religious extremism and promoted a religiously liberal society.   The Hakimullah faction, named after Hakimullah Mehsud who was killed by an American drone strike in 2013,  of the Pakistan Taliban took responsibility for the murder.

The rise of populist politics in the US and Europe is one of the dangerous consequences of the Great Recession that began in 2008.  The argument, to which I subscribe, is that globalization has economically and politically disenfranchised workers by lowering wages, and that the populist anger is directed toward the elites who have profited from globalization.  The evidence supporting this argument, however, is mixed, and Daniel Gros notes the discrepancy in Europe between more- and less-educated citizens in Europe, and how some of the best performing economies in Europe are witnessing the strongest populist response. 

Greece has passed the tax and pension reforms demanded by the European Central Bank, the European Union, and the International  Monetary Fund as preconditions for additional loans to help the country repay its international debts.  The reforms will exact additional pain on Greek citizens as the austerity measures reduce the spendable incomes of most of them.  Protests broke out in Greece prior to the Parliamentary vote and one should expect that the protests will only deepen.