World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

I am in St. John, US Virgin Islands, and our average daytime temperature has been around 85 degrees F.  So I have assiduously been avoiding reading any depressing or disquieting news.  But this video came across my email, and it shows a glacier calving event at the Ilulissat Glacier in Western Greenland in 2008.  It is an astonishing video, and forced me to think again about climate change.

http://www.businessinsider.com/largest-ice-glacier-calving-filmed-2015-1#ooid=NqbHJucjpzcqR3obKs3FqeMQRi8yolxr

Italian sailors took control of a drifting cargo ship with more than 450 refugees on board.  The crew had abandoned the ship and set it on autopilot toward the Italian coast.  The traffickers likely made about $1 million from the refugees who are now being cared for by Italy.  The plight of the refugees is tragic evidence of the desperation of many to leave their homes for a better life and the utter callousness of the traffickers who take the money but no responsibility.  The ship was registered in Moldova which is curious given Moldova’s location (a completely landlocked country).

The conflict in Nigeria continues as Boko Haram manages to conduct more kidnappings and bombings.  The roots of the conflict between the Muslim north and the Christian south are long-standing and stem from a British colonial decision to merge Northern Nigeria with Southern Nigeria in 1914 for essentially economic reasons.  Prior to the merger, the two regions had been separate and governed by separate administrations.  The merger brought about the difficulty of ruling the two groups through a single government:  not an impossible task, but one that gave advantages to the richer southern region.

Northern and Southern Nigeria in 1914

Those of you who have been in my classes know how much I love music, largely because it is something that genuinely transcends all the things that cause conflict in the world.  But I never thought I would hear the Red Army Choir singing “Happy.”  Now I know peace is possible.

I am off for a vacation for two weeks (US Virgin Islands) so posts will likely be sporadic.  Keep smiling and be happy.

In a New Year’s address, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sounded a conciliatory note to South Korea.  He indicated that North Korea would be interested in resuming high-level talks to settle differences between the two states.  North and South Korea are still technically at war, since the agreement signed by both to end hostilities in 1953 was only an armistice, not a peace agreement.  President Kim’s only condition for such talks was that South Korea stop its join military operations with the US.  The South Korean leader, Park Geun-hye, welcomed the address, but made no commitments.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 76,021 people died in the Syrian civil war in 2014.  Comparable figures for previous years were 73,447 in 2013, 49,294 in 2012 and 7,841 in 2011 indicating that the conflict continues to escalate.  And even the deaths of over 200,000 people has not been enough to persuade the international community to make any meaningful moves toward securing a cease-fire.  The Syrian conflict ranks among some of the worst UN failures since the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

Francisco Goya painted more than 200 years ago, and much of his work represented the dissolution of the world order occasioned by the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon.  His works, however, testify to much of the disorder that exists in the world today.  Great art is timeless.

The last 6 years of economic stagnation in Europe has led to the rise of various right-wing movements in Europe.  Economic hard times often lead to more extreme politics, but the dominance of the right-wing in expressing economic discontent has been somewhat perplexing:  where is the left-wing?  The left has been slow to rise in Europe, but the prominence of Syriza in Greece may change that.  We may be seeing the growth of some alternative ways of thinking about economic activity in Europe over the next few months.

The Palestinian Authority, fresh from its defeat in the Security Council over a deadline to end Israeli occupation, has moved to join the International Criminal Court by signing the Rome Treaty. The move, strongly opposed by Israel and the US, will allow the Palestinians to sue the Israelis for alleged war crimes in the various wars and occupations.   The move is problematic, since the PA has used tactics that violate the laws of war as well.  But the Israelis do not wish to have the close scrutiny of an international organization they do not trust.

Finally, I wish everyone the happiest of all new years. Remember that we care about all these issues because we care about the future.  We study hard to protect our children–all our children.

There was an anti-Putin protest in Moscow in which Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was involved.  The protest occurred after Navalny and his brother were convicted of crimes in what many regarded as a political trial designed to crush Navalny’s opposition movement.  The protest and subsequent arrest of over a hundred protesters represents strong disquiet within Russia over what some regard as a very corrupt government.  The trial of Navalny conjured up memories of political trials during the Soviet period.

The UN Security Council has voted down a Palestinian resolution to set a 12-month deadline for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.   The vote was 8 states in favor, 2 against (the US and Australia) and five abstentions.  The US did not need to use its veto against the resolution since the resolution did not receive the required nine affirmative votes for passage.  Nigeria had been expected to vote in favor of the resolution but changed its vote to abstain at the last minute.  The vote “called for an independent state of Palestine to be established within the 1967 Mideast borders — before Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem — and demanded ‘a just solution’ to all other outstanding issues, including Palestinian refugees, prisoners in Israeli jails and water.”

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 60,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 22 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

China’s economic progress over the last thirty years has been the most dramatic in human history.  Such unprecedented change is rarely without consequences and often the consequences are not obvious except in retrospect.  One such consequence is the Chinese diet and its focus on pork products.  From a situation where eating pork was once considered a luxury, China now finds itself in a situation where pork is the preferred meat for almost the entire population.  China’s demand for pork products and feed for its pigs are having widespread global effects that may signal difficulties in the future if not properly managed.

James Fallows is one of the US’s pre-eminent military observers, often in the role of critic.  He has published a rather long article in The Atlantic assessing the role of the American military and its relationship to the political economy of the country.  It is a superb essay–judicious and straightforward.  He excuses no one, and raises the fundamental question of whether the US is well-served by maintaining an arms-length military where the activities of the military are carefully insulated from the daily lives of most Americans.

The US is stockpiling a large amount of military hardware in Kuwait.  The material is from Afghanistan, and is being stockpiled in Kuwait as the US makes a decision about its future role against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.  President Obama has promised the American people that the US would not have a combat role against the IS, but the number of troops being deployed in Iraq has slowly crept up from the initial 350 soldiers mentioned by Obama.  According to US News and World Reports:

On Friday, the Pentagon announced Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had ordered 1,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to join other advisers and trainers at headquarters in Baghdad and Irbil, as well as facilities elsewhere in the country. Roughly 1,700 troops are in Iraq already, with as many as 1,300 more to deploy.

The ProSavana Project is a joint agricultural project in Mozambique funded by Brazil, Japan, and Mozambique.   It calls for almost 100 million acres of “underutilized” agricultural land to be transformed into a massive soybean producing region.  The soybeans will be exported to the rapidly growing export market for soybeans in Asia, and is modeled after the Brazilian program to transform its cerrado into a soybean exporting region.  Unlike the poor soils in the Brazilian cerrado, however, the soils in the Nacala Corridor in Mozambique are very fertile and already being farmed by many rural people.  Thus, there is tremendous opposition to what is perceived as a horrific “land grab”.

The release of secret documents has raised serious questions about the drone strikes employed by the US in its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.  The US has systematically assured the world that its drone strikes were scrupulously targeted to avoid civilian casualties, a claim often denied by locals on the ground.  These secret documents suggest that the controls over the use of drone strikes have been less stringent than we have been led to believe.

Greece is going through a slow-motion crisis.  The Prime Minister has nominated Stavros Dimas as his President, but has failed to secure the necessary votes in Parliament to secure his election. After two tries, Samaras will try for the third and final time on Monday to get the 180 votes to confirm Dimas.  If that vote fails, then Samaras will be forced to call a snap election.  The polls for a new election are close, but some suggest that a leftist coalition known as Syriza may win the election.  If Syriza does win, then its leader, Alexis Tsipras, may repudiate parts of the austerity program imposed on Greece by the EU.  That repudiation would create a serious crisis for the European Union.

More than 100,000 have been forced from their homes in severe flooding in Malaysia.  Flooding is not unusual in Malaysia in the Monsoon season, but these floods are unusually severe.  There is much criticism of the Malaysian government, stemming from a lack of preparedness, a tepid response, and the absence of the Prime Minster (who was playing golf with President Obama in Hawaii).  The Malaysian government has been much criticized in recent months, and the floods will only fuel the political discontent in the country.

In an encouraging sign, Ukraine and Russian separatists in the eastern part of Ukraine have exchanged prisoners.   A 12-point peace plan is being floated to end the nearly year-long battle between the Kiev government and those who wish to break off of Ukraine and join Russia.   Nonetheless, tensions also increased as Kiev stopped transportation links to Crimea which has been illegally annexed by Russia.  It seems unlikely that Crimea will ever return to Ukraine.

A political crisis in Sweden has been avoided as the center-left government has reached a budget agreement with opposition parties that excludes the far-right Sweden Democrats Party.   The Sweden Democrats Party is strongly anti-immigrant and it seemed as if all the major parties had earlier agreed not to cooperate with it.  That arrangement collapsed month ago, and Sweden was confronted with the possibility of a snap election in order to pass a budget.  The revived agreement not to participate with the Sweden Democrats will undoubtedly be tested again.

Russia has issued the latest version of its strategic military doctrine.  It is largely unchanged from previous versions, but it now specifically lists NATO and the US as global enemies.  Interestingly, it lists NATO because it perceives a new NATO mission as the preservation of “global functions realized with violation of international law.”   Presumably the doctrine regards the UN as the only legitimate protector of international law, but the doctrine does not spell out that obligation.  If the UN fails to defend international law, the doctrine does not specify an alternative.  Mark Galeotti, a professor at New York University, suggests that Russia will actually only function as a spoiler to international law.

Ceremonies were held all over Asia today as the region remembered the Tsunami that swept through the region 10 years ago.  The Tsunami was the largest ever recorded by human beings and the devastation stretched from Indonesia to Sri Lanka to Somalia. Tens of thousands were lost, and whole villages disappeared.  The recovery in some areas has been robust, but there are still many areas that are desolate.  There have been some improvements in detecting tsunamis, but the world still remains largely unprepared for a similar event.

Egypt is probably further from democracy now than at any other time in its recent history, including the regimes of Sadat and Mubarak.  Unlike Tunisia, which has made rapid progress toward creating a liberal civic society, the current Egyptian regime has thwarted the Arab Spring revolution and returned to authoritarian rule.  The Guardian lists the laws that have been promulgated by the regime without participation by the Parliament.  Unfortunately, the outside world, including most dramatically the US, has offered few objections to this betrayal of democratic principles.