Archive for the ‘World Politics’ Category
The Maersk Tigris, a Marshall Islands-flagged commercial craft, was intercepted by the Iranian navy in the Strait of Hormuz. We do not know what the Tigris was carrying nor why the Iranians intercepted the vessel. The US navy ordered the USS Farragut, a destroyer to follow the Tigris, but we do not know if the Farragut will follow it into Iranian waters. As is obvious in the map below, the Strait of Hormuz is both narrow and highly contested. The relationship between the US and the Marshall Islands is also somewhat opaque. According to the US State Department:
After gaining military control of the Marshall Islands from Japan in 1944, the United States assumed administrative control of the Marshall Islands under United Nations auspices as part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands following the end of World War II. The Marshall Islands signed a Compact of Free Association with the United States in 1983 and gained independence in 1986 with the Compact’s entry into force. From 1999-2003, the two countries negotiated an Amended Compact that entered into force in 2004.
The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) is a sovereign nation. While the government is free to conduct its own foreign relations, it does so under the terms of the Compact. The United States has full authority and responsibility for security and defense of the Marshall Islands, and the Government of the Marshall Islands is obligated to refrain from taking actions that would be incompatible with these security and defense responsibilities.
What we do not know is whether the US is obligated by the Compact to defend ships sailing under the Marshallese flag. A very curious and dangerous situation.
The Greek economic situation has not improved in the slightest, and a much more serious deadline is approaching. In June, the entire Greek government debt, estimated to be about 175% of the Greek GDP, will have to be renegotiated. John Cassidy in the New Yorker has a very pessimistic view of how those negotiations will unfold. The stubbornness of both sides is hard to fathom, particularly when the stakes are so high.
In discussions about climate change we often get confused between climate and weather. Weather is essentially a daily activity: we always have weather. Climate is a statistical probability of what kind of weather one might have at a certain time of the year. Sometimes we get cold days during summer and sometimes we get warm days during winter. Such events are not likely in any given summer or winter, but they do happen. Climate scientists wrestle with this distinction all the time. As climate models have improved, scientists believe that we can now assert that climate change will affect the probability of such unlikely events, making them more likely than was the case in the past. Since extreme events are ones for which we rarely prepare, the effects of these extreme events will likely be more noticeable and devastating. Until, of course, that we begin to expect them.
The US and Japan have clarified some aspects of their defense relationship that will undoubtedly trouble China. First, the US has stated unequivocally that the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands will be considered as the Senkaku Islands under Japanese sovereignty. This statement removes any doubts about whether the US will fill bound to defend the Japanese claim to the islands. Second, the Japanese will now interpret their constitution as allowing them to come to the aid of the US even if Japan itself is not threatened–in other words, the Japanese military will no longer be bound to a strict definition of “self-defense.” In foreign policy, clarity is often quite useful, particularly in alliance matters. Now the question is whether China wishes to test the strength of the US commitment to Japan.
As the deadline for Greek finances continues to come closer with no real resolution, the Greek Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis, has been sidelined. Apparently, Varoufakis has embittered too many of his troika counterparts to be effective. It remains to be seen whether the troika will reward Greece for a more conciliatory approach. We could be watching a variation of the “good cop/bad cop” routine that is so often used in bad crime movies.
Nepal continues to struggle as aftershocks undermine recovery efforts. The death toll is now over 2000, but is likely to climb further as search teams discover more bodies. Few teams have been able to get to the earthquake’s epicenter near Lamjung where the devastation is likely to be even worse than in Katmandhu. Even in the best of circumstances Lamjung is only accessible to four-wheel drive vehicles.
The alliances continue to shift in the Middle East. The death of King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia opened the door to his successor, King Salman, who since becoming King has taken the threat of Iranian power very seriously. King Salman has reinforced Saudi support for the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra which has proven to be quite effective in the fight against Syrian President Assad. The fall of Assad would be a big blow to Iranian aspirations in the region. It would also, however, be a success for the Islamic State, a success for the US, and a defeat for Russia. It would also be a success for Israel and a defeat for Hezbollah. It is amazing how many dominoes are lined up in the region.
Nepal has been hit by a devastating earthquake which registered 7.8 on the Richter Scale. Early reports suggest that at least 1400 people died in the quake, but that number is sure to rise as rescue teams conduct search operations. The quake shook India, Bangladesh, and Tibet, and triggered avalanches in the Himalayas. The world is mobilizing aid missions, but Nepal is a desperately poor country and has likely been set back a number of years in economic development.
Roger Moorhouse has written a book entitled The Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941. The book is reviewed by John Lukacs in The New York Review of Books. The book is a history of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty of 1939 in which Hitler and Stalin sign a non-aggression pact. The deal frees Hitler to attack France without fear of a Soviet counterattack; in return, the Soviet Union gets a huge chunk of Poland and the Baltic States in addition to a brief respite from a German attack. Apparently, however, according to Moorhouse, even after Hitler defeated France and then invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin did not believe that Hitler was actually breaking the treaty. According to Lukacs:
“During the ten days before the Nazi invasion—all kinds of information about the German threat notwithstanding—Stalin did his best or, rather, his worst, to affirm his faith in Hitler and in Germany. I do not know of a single instance of such abject behavior (for that is what it was) by a statesman of a great power.
“The German attack shocked Stalin into silence at first. (Molotov’s words after the German declaration of war were also telling: “Did we deserve this?”) Stalin’s first orders for the Soviet army were not to respond at all. It took him hours after the invasion—until noon—before he ordered the army to resist.”
A remarkable mistake by a master of realpolitik.
The US has been negotiating a trade deal with 11 other countries called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. These twelve countries account for about 40% of global GDP and reducing tariffs and trade barriers among them would unquestionably boost economic activity. It would also, however, cost Americans their jobs as some production would shift to low-wage countries. There is a battle brewing in Congress between Republicans and Democrats over whether President Obama should be given the authority to proceed quickly toward the trade deal.
US President Obama held a press conference yesterday in which he revealed that two hostages held by Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan had been killed in an American drone attack. Drones have been around since 2004 but President Obama has been especially aggressive in using them as their firepower and control have increased dramatically. Nonetheless, the vaunted precision of drone strikes is very difficult to assess since their is little public information about how many innocents have been killed in the strikes. There are solid reasons to be suspicious of the claims of precision.
Spiegel has published a timeline of EU discussions on the problem of migration into the EU by refugees from all over the world. The timeline is fascinating as it reveals the strong humanitarian impulse among virtually all members of the EU to take effective action but contrasts that impulse with the total lack of political imagination and will to take the action steps to resolve the problem. There is no doubt that the problem is very complicated, but one would expect that the obvious moral imperatives would move things along much faster.
Meetings in the Latvian capital city, Riga, between Greece and the troika ended with the sound of the door being slammed on Greek requests for additional delays in scheduled repayments. It seems clear the the troika have decided that a Greek default does not pose the same risks as did the possibility raise in 2012. It is difficult to parse through all the issues being discussed, but it seems as if the Greek pension system is the most contentious issue. It is the Greek policy that the troika would most like to reform, but it is also the most politically sensitive issue for the Greek government.
According to the Washington Post, there are at least 7,102 living languages in the world today, although 2,000 of those languages have fewer than 1,000 native speakers. The Post article has a number of interesting facts about languages in the world, but it also predicts, sadly, that about half of those languages will be lost by the end of this century. Chinese is by far the most commonly spoken language, and English is the language most commonly studied in the world, with about 1.5 billion people currently learning the language.
The controversy over the Obama Administration’s refusal to use the word “genocide” in describing the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 continues. In this phase of the controversy, however, the concerns take the form of a personal attack on the US Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power. Power wrote a brilliant book on the Rwandan genocide that took aim at the Clinton Administration for its refusal to act on the tragedy. Now, in the face of the horror in Syria, Power represents an Administration that is also doing little to alleviate the suffering. The difference between the perspectives of a private citizen and those of an agent of a state is immense.
Calbuco volcano in Chile has erupted after over 40 years of silence. Chile is no stranger to volcanic eruptions since Chile sits on the “ring of fire” that circles the Pacific Ocean. But the eruption is truly spectacular and the photographs are eerily beautiful.
Human smuggling can be a very lucrative business. Voyages from Libya cost each refugee between $1,000 and $2,000: the trade is facilitated by the total chaos in Libya. To go from Senegal to Libya could cost an additional $1,000 and from Ethiopia, another $2,500. Prices vary by the type of transport: the riskier travel by inflatable dinghy costs less than if one wishes to travel on a wooden boat. But in all cases, the smugglers do not guarantee safe delivery, and do not even care if the refugees make the trip alive. These prices are a lifetime of income for many of the refugees, and simply reflects their total desperation. Nonetheless, the head of the EU border agency, Fabrice Leggeri, is quoted in the Irish Times to have said that “that saving migrants’ lives in the Mediterranean should not be the priority for the maritime patrols he is in charge of.” Leggeri believes that rescuing the refugees on a regular basis would only encourage more to undertake the risky trip.
The Gallup poll has done a survey on which groups in the US believe that global warming will occur in their lifetimes. The results are fascinating. The pollsters identified five political leanings: liberal Democrats, conservative/moderate Democrats, non-leaning independents, liberal/moderate Republicans, and conservative Republicans. By substantial majorities, the first four groups all believe that global warming will occur in their lifetimes. Conservative Republicans, however, reject that possibility and 40% of that group do not believe that global warming will ever happen. What the poll does not tell us is what percentage of the electorate is comprised of conservative Republicans.
Over the last few weeks, 40 farmers in India have committed suicide, and about 300,000 farmers have killed themselves over the last twenty years. Despite its impressive economic growth in the last few years, India still has a very large agricultural sector which is quite precarious. The heavy rains over the last few months have destroyed many crops and the farmers, who are usually heavily in debt are the beginning of the growing season, find themselves in an impossible financial situation if the crops fail.
The National Review has a provocative article entitled “Has the Globalization Trend Already Peaked?” The author of the article, Michael Barone, argues that there are many parallels between the world in 1913 and the world after the financial crisis of 2008-09. World War I definitely ended the first phase of globalization and the consequences of that collapse were devastating to the liberal world order. There are scary parallels, such as the drop in world trade after 2008, but the strong growth in nationalism in the early 1900s has not yet happened in the contemporary period. There are, however, signs that nationalism is in fact on the increase, particularly in the growth of right-wing parties in Europe.
The flood of migrants from Libya into Europe and the resulting tragedies of so many drowning deaths in the Mediterranean are a consequence of the total breakdown of order in Libya. That breakdown, in turn, was due to the Western intervention in 2011. The intervention started out as a purely humanitarian mission designed to protect Libyan civilians from the armies of Muammar Qaddafi. The mission changed to one of regime change–a foolish move given that there was no one to replace Qaddafi. Since then, there has been no effective governance in the country and people are desperate to leave despite the very obvious risks.
The recent dispute between Turkey and the Pope over the Pope’s characterization of the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 as a genocide has highlighted the political nature of the term. The US government, in deference to Turkish sentiments, still refuses to call the genocide a “genocide.” The Los Angeles Times has an article that describes the difficulties associated with the use of the term.
The US is beefing up its naval forces near Yemen. The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and its escort, the USS Normandy, arrived to join seven other vessels in the region. ABC News is reporting that an Iranian convoy of eight vessels to the Arabian Sea and the US forces may be used to interdict weapons for Iran destined for the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The UN Security Council voted (14-0-1, Russia abstained on the resolution) to impose an arms embargo on Yemen, so the US could intercept those Iranian vessels and argue that it was enforcing an UN resolution. Needless to say, any such move on the part of the US would be considered an act of war by Iran, the UN resolution notwithstanding. The tensions continue to escalate.
USS Theodore Roosevelt
Peter Beinart has a great essay in The Atlantic in which he argues that the Iranian nuclear deal could actually bring a higher degree of democracy to Iran. The argument is actually quite simple: that the hard line approach that the US had utilized against Iran for many years has given the current Iranian regime the legitimacy necessary to override the desire of the Iranian people for a greater voice in their political affairs. We do know that there is a strong reform movement in Iran (it was called the “green” revolution in the election of 2009), but we do not know how strong it is at this time. The undertone to Beinart’s essay is that a softer line may yield better results than a “hard” line on the issue of democracy.
Chinese President Xi is visiting Pakistan where he is expected to announce a major investment in Pakistan’s transportation infrastructure. The ambitious plan is to build a network of rail and truck lines from CHina’s Xinjiang Province to the port of Gwadar in Pakistan where Chinese goods can be shipped through the Indian Ocean to other areas of the world. The plan is part of the transportation network Xi envisions to construct a new “silk road” to facilitate Chinese trade.
A ship with as many as 700 refugees capsized in the Mediterranean en route from Libya to Italy. Authorities believe that only about 50 of the refugees survived. Last year 219,000 people crossed the Mediterranean by sea and 3,500 died. Smugglers transport the refugees for a hefty price but pay scant attention to the sea worthiness of the vessels used or for the welfare of the desperate people seeking a better life. Despite the fact that this tragedy keeps reoccurring, the world has done precious little to address the problem ,
Iran has rejected any possibility of the International Atomic Energy Agency inspecting military sites in Iran. The NPT refers to civilian nuclear facilities and none of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council allows inspection of military sites. However, in the preliminary agreement, Iran is bound to allow inspections at all “suspicious” sites. This ambiguity in the preliminary agreement may be a real stumbling block in the final agreement.
The person most responsible for the development of the Islamic State was Haji Bakr, a former colonel in the intelligence service of Saddam Hussein’s air defense force. The German magazine, Spiegel, had access to secret documents the Bakr has hidden away and has revealed how Bakr meticulously planned the rise of the Islamic State in Syria in order to regain power in Iraq. Bakr was hardly an Islamist, and it is clear that the Islamic State was nothing more than a ruthless plan for Iraqi Sunnis to regain power in Iraq. How the situation has changed.
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