There have been 2,135 nuclear detonations since the very first one in 1945. Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto made an animation showing each one over time. The video is sobering. It is hard to comprehend how assiduously humans have developed a technology that can never be used without the commission of horrific crimes against humanity.
Violence broke out near the Ukrainian Parliament building in Kyiv as legislators were debating a bill to give more local autonomy to the eastern parts of the state which is controlled by Russian-speaking separatists. The protesters consider the bill a capitulation to the separatists and could signal the end of Ukraine as a unified state. The violence is an indication of how hard and fast the positions are in Ukraine and how difficult it will be to forge some sort of agreement to bring about peace to the people.
NASA has released satellite images going back to 1992 which indicate that sea levels have already risen substantially due to global warming. Many tend to think that the problem of sea levels is a future problem, but the evidence suggests that the phenomenon is already occurring. Interestingly, the rise is not uniform: some parts of the ocean are rising faster than others. But there is little question that the oceans act as the most important sink for warming temperatures.
The economic slowdown and the market decline in China has seriously affected the global economy. But the biggest problem for China is not economic: it is political. China has made promises to both the Chinese people and the investors that invest in China that it will deliver economic growth if its techniques for doing so were not questioned. Now the question is being asked if the government has honored its part of the bargain. If the economic situation in China continues to slowdown, then the legitimacy of the government may come under closer scrutiny.
Imperialism is impossible to reverse or undo. One of the first things new settlers do when territory is claimed by their home country is to give familiar names to the landscape. Many of the indigenous names for mountains, rivers, and other features of the environment have been lost in the process. Today, US President Obama decided to rename a mountain in Alaska (the highest in North America). In the most recent past it has been known as Mount McKinley. Its Alaska Athabascan name, Denali (“the high one”), will return as its official name.
After three years without a parliament, Egypt has set a date for parliamentary elections in October. The country has been ruled in the interim by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a former military general, and his rule has been marked by a sharp decline in freedoms and a crackdown on anyone who could possibly be associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The election will be held in rather desperate economic conditions and a deteriorating security situation in the region as a whole. It is difficult to assess how effective an elected parliament might be in the immediate future.
There are large protests in Malaysia, as people display their outrage over an alleged “slush-fund” held by the Prime Minister, Najib Razak. The money is believed to have come from three bond deals arranged by the US investment bank, Goldman Sachs. The bond deals were brokered by Goldman’s Southeast Asia chairman Tim Leissner who is married to hip hop mogul Russell Simmons’ ex-wife Kimora Lee who, in turn, is good friends with Najib’s controversial wife Rosmah Manso (sounds like a soap opera). The three deals totaled $6.5 billion and the accusation is that about $700 million ended up in Razak’s personal bank account. The pro-democracy organization Bersih(which means “clean” in Malay) has organized the protests and the government banned the wearing of yellow T-shirts which were a symbol of Bersih. As the photo below suggests, however, the ban was not particularly effective.
The protests come at a vulnerable time for Malaysia as its currency, the ringgit, has recently depreciated (almost 13% this year) along with many other currencies from emerging markets. Malaysia has used much of its foreign reserves to prop up the currency and is in danger of running out of those reserves.
Many cultures have not accepted, and do not wish to accept, Western standards of human rights which revolve centrally around the freedom of individuals and the presumed equality of all individuals. For many cultures, it is more important to protect social stability and the sense of the collective and for individuals to find their proper place within the social collective. The difference between these two perspectives is obvious is the decision of a local village in India to punish two sisters because their brother eloped with a married woman. The two sisters were ordered to be raped and paraded around the village naked. The case has been brought to the attention of state courts, but enforcement of a different outcome will be very difficult. Amnesty International, an non-governmental organization dedicated to the Western view of human rights, has intervened in the case.
There are times when studying International Relations is like trying to live out Alice in Wonderland.The Guardian has an article about an Assistant Professor of Law at West Point, William Bradford, who published an essay in the National Security Law Review entitled “Trahison des Professeurs: The Critical Law of Armed Conflict Academy as an Islamist Fifth Column”. The National Security Law Review is a student-run journal at George Mason University. The Guardian article describes the essay in this way:
In a lengthy academic paper, the professor, William C Bradford, proposes to threaten “Islamic holy sites” as part of a war against undifferentiated Islamic radicalism. That war ought to be prosecuted vigorously, he wrote, “even if it means great destruction, innumerable enemy casualties, and civilian collateral damage”.
Other “lawful targets” for the US military in its war on terrorism, Bradford argues, include “law school facilities, scholars’ home offices and media outlets where they give interviews” – all civilian areas, but places where a “causal connection between the content disseminated and Islamist crimes incited” exist.
The idea that such a nutjob is currently teaching young military leaders is incomprehensible to me. Jeremy Rabkin, a Professor of Law at George Mason, has a searing critique of Bradford’s essay which I recommend highly.
Austrian authorities have found an abandoned truck with the bodies of more than 70 migrants. The migrants had obviously been assured of passage to Europe by traffickers who, for unknown reasons, sealed up the truck and left the migrants to die. The episode is just another example of how desperate people are being manipulated and abused as they seek safety in Europe. The information became available as another 200 migrants drowned in the Mediterranean as their ships sank. So far this year, almost 300,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean to seek refuge, a significantly higher number than in all of last year. The Washington Post quotes German Chancellor Merkel on the migrant crisis in Europe:
“This reminds us that we must tackle the issue of immigration quickly and in a European spirit,” she said. “That means in a spirit of solidarity — to find solutions.”
I think that European leaders should adopt a more urgent tone in addressing this unfolding tragedy.
Pakistan is rapidly building its arsenal of nuclear weapons and is on track to become the third largest holder of nuclear weapons, after the US and Russia. Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent is aimed at India which is not increasing its number of nuclear weapons at a commensurate rate. The disparity is based on the relative strength of the conventional arsenals available to both: India has a much larger conventional army and Pakistan seeks to compensate for that inequality with nuclear weapons. That strategy is obviously a high-risk one, since, if Pakistan is on the losing end of a conventional war with India, the resort to nuclear weapons as a deterrent has incredible risks for both countries.
China’s economic slowdown has world markets on edge. But it is difficult to assess how dramatic the slowdown may be because many analysts do not believe the Chinese government’s official figures. Economic statistics are invariably dodgy: keeping track of highly complex economic transactions is very difficult and those difficulties are multiplied in a country as large as China. The suspicion, however, that China’s figures are also shaded by political considerations make analysis of the Chinese economy very problematic. The range is incredible. China asserts that its GDP rose 7%; one investment house, Evercore, asserts that Chinese GDP was actually -1.1%
The New York Times has an important story on the difficulties migrants to Europe are facing. The article does a great job of articulating the reasons for migration and the extraordinary obstacles faced by the migrants as they try to enter Europe for a better and safer life.
Violence has broken out in the Gurarat state of India. The violence comes about as Patidar protesters, led by Hardik Patel, mobilize to be recognized officially within the legally recognized caste definitions of Indian law. The Patidars wish to be recognized as an Other Backward Class (OBC). Time describes the classification in this way:
Patel is at the helm of a protest movement aimed at declaring the Patidar community he belongs to — an affluent and politically dominant section of Gujarati society — as “backward” under India’s quota system for its historically lower castes, legally termed as Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC). This would give Patidars access to the 50% of government jobs and places in educational institutions currently reserved for such “backward” castes under a form of affirmative action.
The Gujarat government is currently led by Chief Minister Anandiben Patel who argues that the 50% requirement has already been met. At least 9 people have been killed in the violence thus far.
As migrants filter in through Macedonia and Serbia, Hungary is building a fence along its 110 mile border with Serbia in an effort to keep them out. Hungary is part of the Schengen Plan and is viewed by many migrants as the entry point to the European Union. Hungary’s President, Viktor Orban, is unabashedly hostile to the migrants believes that they threaten European identity as well as the European experiment. The migrant crisis continues to defy the competence of the European states.
As the Chinese economy continues to show signs of weakness, the central role of China in the global economy becomes more visible. Unfortunately, some of the countries that will be hurt the most are among the most vulnerable in the world. The Chinese slowdown is having a damaging effect on several African economies as Chinese demand for commodities from Africa tails off.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for new elections in hope that his party, the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AK), will win an outright majority in Parliament. The previous election last June was inconclusive due to the strong showing of the Kurdish party and no coalition was possible to secure a majority. Erdogan hopes that the recent outbreak of violence between the Kurds and Turkish forces, precipitated by the Turkish decision to enter the war against the Islamic State, will dampen the vote for the Kurdish parties, allowing the AK Party to secure an outright majority. The gambit is reasonable, but the recent weakness of the Turkish economy, manifested by sharp declines in the value of the Turkish Lira, may make the strategy more problematic than it seems.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has announced that he will not be attending the celebrations in China noting the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II. Troops from other countries that participated in the war will be represented in the celebrations, but Abe’s decision to not attend represents as serious setback to the tentative steps China and Japan have recently taken to normalize relations. Tensions between the two countries have been steadily escalating over the last five years and there is little evidence that any rapprochement is likely in the near future.
The interdependence of the global economy was obvious today as stock markets around the world fell sharply. Much of the selling was due to fears about a slowdown in the Chinese economy that has caused commodity prices around the world to fall. Many economies rely heavily on the sale of commodities and the loss of the Chinese market will cause slowdowns in every region of the world. Stock markets have been quite ebullient for the last five years, so the declines come on top of some rather hefty gains. Nonetheless, the sharpness of the declines today suggest that investors are feeling a slight case of panic–always a dangerous feature of stock market mentalities.
There have been protests in Lebanon since the middle of July. The immediate precipitate for the protests is garbage: it has been piling up in many areas of Beirut since the only landfill for the city was closed since it was filled to capacity. This part of the protests is called the “You Stink” movement. But, as is usually the case with large protests, there are deeper causes, fundamentally rooted in the gridlock of Lebanese politics. Lebanon is running short of cash and may not be able to pay the salaries of its workers and may not even be able to service its international debts. The collapse of such an important country in the Middle East would be highly destabilizing to the region.
Speaking of garbage, researchers are in the Pacific Ocean to assess the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a concentration of garbage that some believe to be twice the size of the state of Texas. According to the Guardian:
“More than five trillion pieces of plastic, collectively weighing nearly 269,000 tonnes, are floating in the world’s oceans, causing damage throughout the food chain, new research has found.
Data collected by scientists from the US, France, Chile, Australia and New Zealand suggests a minimum of 5.25tn plastic particles in the oceans, most of them “micro plastics” measuring less than 5mm.”
The researchers are exploring ideas on how to capture the plastic and remove it from the oceans. Eventually, that plastic will somehow end up in the food chain unless it is removed.
Researchers have begun to measure what we have long suspected but could never really prove: the link between civil and international violence and the environment. Measurements from space confirm that as civil unrest deepens, the air gets cleaner because there is reduced economic activity. Satellites can actually measure the level of pollution and correlate it with increased unrest. While this particular correlation seems strangely beneficial, the net effects of civil and international unrest are more typically bad for the environment.
Thousands of migrants rushed police lines at the Macedonian border in an attempt to enter Serbia. Once in Serbia, the migrants would have an opportunity to move to other members of the European Union under the terms of the Schengen Plan. The migrants had been waiting for days and were without food, water, and shelter. The police attempted to stop them with stun grenades, but the mass of people was unstoppable. In the Mediterranean, the Italian coast guard rescued almost 3,000 refugees. The pressure on the EU is getting more intense as the situation of the refugees becomes more desperate.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is currently the subject of an impeachment movement as the Brazilian economy sinks slowly into a recession. By far, however, the overwhelming issue in Brazilian politics is the issue of corruption. Rousseff is in her second term and her popularity has declined into single digits. The combination of a weakened economy and a weakened President is deadly as Rousseff is unlikely to be able to take effective steps to stimulate the economy. The global economy needs the emerging market economies like Brazil’s to regain the dynamism to bring global economic growth.
Stock markets all over the world are having a really rough time. It’s been almost 5 years of growth in the markets, so it is not a great surprise. But the global economy is in for a rough ride.
The recent disaster in Tianjin has raised serious questions about environmental safety in China. There have been unsubstantiated reports of high levels of cyanide lingering around the site of the explosion and evidence of massive fish kills in surrounding waters. But there is little question that China must face its environmental protection issues more openly: according to Berkeley Earth, an NGO that has done extensive monitoring of China’s air pollution, breathing Beijing’s air is equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes a day.
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