World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

NATO has begun to supplies weapons to Ukraine as it attempts to regain its territory from Russian-speaking separatists.  The shipments are definitely a provocative move, but Ukraine has been unable to match the arms supplied by Russia to the separatists.   The action/reaction policies are a classic example of the security dilemma.  Both sides truly believe that their actions are purely defensive, but the net effects of the actions are highly destabilizing.  It is likely that Russia will increase its support for the separatists in response.

Polls in Scotland point in contradictory directions as the referendum on Scottish independence nears.  Both “yes” and “no” voters are being assiduously mobilized, and the stakes in the outcome seem to loom larger every day.  The vote will have a tremendous effect on the economic health of the European Union, as a “yes” vote would likely signal British exit from the Union.  Similarly, independence movements in other areas of Europe, such as Catalonia in Spain, are watching the outcome for signals that point to greater autonomy for smaller nations within larger states of Europe.

The Islamic State (IS) has beheaded a British national and the British response has been robust.  The murder was the third that was videotaped by the IS, and the group is threatening to execute yet another British national.  The Islamic State is certainly goading the Western powers into intervening in Iraq and Syria.  The strategy seems to be designed to increase the number of foreign fighters to join the IS and to enhance the credibility of the Islamic State as the legitimate heir to al Qaeda.  The Western powers have not been able yet to formulate a plan to counter this strategy.

The media has a tremendous influence on foreign policy, and one of the most common techniques of news reporting on foreign conflicts is to cite the opinions of former military officers.  There is little question that informed military opinion contributes to the substance of the debate, but what is often unknown is the extent to which these retired military officers have links to think tanks that receive a great deal of funding from military contractors.  The likelihood of bias under such circumstances is quite high, but most of the time the public is never informed about these economic relationships.  We should all be careful to inquire about such possible distortions in our information.

The Ebola virus continues to spread in West Africa (as well as another strain in Central Africa) and the international response has been virtually non-existent.  It seems as if the world has decided that the disease can be confined to Africa and that there is therefore no need to work hard to eradicate it.  That response is both selfish and stupid.  As is true in virtually all other crises, we can choose to believe that things will work out on their own.  Or we can decide to prepare ourselves for the worst case.  The latter course of action is expensive and intrusive, but it seems the only reasonable course of action with a virus as virulent as Ebola.

Politics is often difficult to untangle, but the election in Sweden is particularly difficult to interpret.  It seems clear that after 8 years of center-right policies that emphasized free market solutions and privatization, that Swedish voters will turn to the left.  But the Social Democrats, the party of the traditional left, has not conducted a sterling campaign, and the lefty voters seem to be turning to the Greens and a new party called the Feminist Initiative.  What the policies are that these parties can support is unclear.  We’ll have to wait for the final votes to determine Sweden’s direction.

The Obama Administration engaged in a silly semantic debate today over the question of whether the US is “at war” with the Islamic State.  US Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Susan Rice chose to characterize the air campaign against the IS as a “counter terrorism” activity, while the Defense Department referred to the actions as “war.”  Obviously the distinction is meaningful only in the context of the US Constitution because only the US Congress can declare “war.”  But the more salient concern for both the President and the Congress is who takes responsibility for the war if it does not go well.

Spiegel has an informative article on what is likely to happen in Ukraine.   Unfortunately, the tenor of the article suggests that Russian President Putin is just playing a waiting game, deliberately provoking and then pulling back.  Each time, however, he incrementally gains greater control over eastern Ukraine.  His goal is nothing less than to establish a Russian-controlled corridor all the way to Crimea.  He seems fully prepared to endure the price of the economic sanctions imposed by Western powers.  What we don’t know is how willing are his supporters to endure the pain of the sanctions before they withdraw their support for this nationalist move.

The United Nations does not have its own military force.  Instead, it relies on troops from the member countries to enforce the resolutions of the UN Security Council.  UN Peacekeepers are all over the world and, for the most part, they have upheld peace conditions well.  Since 1974, UN Peacekeepers have been stationed in the Golan Heights, a parcel of territory which is part of Syria but which was occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.  With the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, the Golan Heights has become more volatile, and the UN Peacekeepers were attacked by some of the rebel forces.  Interestingly, the UN commanded the Peacekeepers to withdraw from their positions and not fire their weapons, but the national commander of the troops (which were from the Philippines) ordered them to defend themselves.   I suspect that the Filipinos did the right thing militarily, but the discrepancy between national and international orders is quite stark in this case.

The United Kingdom is not the only state facing a secessionist movement (Scotland):  Many in Catalonia are demanding their independence from the Spanish state.   Catalonia was an independent state until 11 September 1714 when Spain conquered it and integrated its territory into the Spanish state.   The Catalonians believe that they have a sufficient economic base for independence  and a culture that is truly different from Spanish culture.  They are demanding a referendum in November, but the Spanish government is trying to block that option.

The states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates), Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and the United States have signed what is known as the Jeddah Communique.  The communique is a mutual pledge to staunch the  flow of funds and foreign fighters to the Islamic State.  Most interestingly, the communique also contains the following clause: “as appropriate, joining in the many aspects of a coordinated military campaign against ISIL.”  The cooperation is an initial step toward implementing the policy of containing the Islamic State, but the additional steps are highly problematic.

Uri Friedman has a very thought-provoking piece in The Atlantic on President Obama and the problem of a perpetual war.   I think that it is safe to say that the US is finding itself in a foreign policy situation that defies simple explanation or solutions.  Friedman refers to Obama’s speech last night as “bewildering” and, as I have read the speech several times over, I agree with the characterization.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has announced that many Russian troops have left Ukrainian territory, raising hopes that the current cease fire may yet deepen and take hold.   Despite violations of the cease fire, Poroshenko has announced plans to give the eastern parts of Ukraine far greater autonomy, although not the independence that many of the rebel separatists have demanded.   The pullback comes as the EU announced a waiting period before implementing new sanctions on Russia, so we will have to see whether or not the withdrawal can be fully verified.  But if true, it will be hard to dismiss the possibility that the threat of sanctions actually achieve its objectives.

A new poll suggests that 71% of the American people support air strikes against the Islamic State, a dramatic increase from similar polls in the last few months.  The widely publicized beheadings conducted by the Islamic State no doubt contributed to the change in sentiment, but it is hard to articulate a dramatic change in the possible threats posed by the Islamic State to the US homeland.  The discrepancy between real and imagined threats in this case is quite striking.  The change also reflects an easier path for US President Obama, although the  obstacles to effective military actions against the Islamic State remain.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino has asked the Congress to approve a law that would extend create a more autonomous province for the Muslims in the southern part of the country.  The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has waged a long struggle against the central authority of the Philippines for many years, and the death toll of the war is likely more than 120,000.  The new agreement will replace a previous experiment in greater autonomy that proved unsatisfactory to both sides, so it is difficult to be optimistic about the new agreement.

US President Obama is going to speak on television on Wednesday evening (9 pm) to outline his strategy on dealing with the threat posed by the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria.  The speech will be a critically important one as intervening in yet another Middle East conflict is clearly not consistent with his own personal inclination nor with the current mood of the American people.   We should all listen carefully to the speech since the threat of terrorism has in the past been used to justify interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq which did not necessarily advance US foreign policy objectives.   How he characterizes the threat to the US is going to be the point on which we all focus.  The pressure Obama is getting from conservatives in the US–including members of the George W. Bush Administration–is intense.

Fawaz A Gerges is a scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science who has followed the growth of the Islamic State.  He has written a piece for the BBC that asks the question, “why is the Islamic State so violent?”  Gerges traces the roots of the movement and positions the Islamic State in a line of opposition movements within the Muslim world that makes the organization more comprehensible.  His overview is worth reading.  Michael Ignatieff offers a comparative view of the Islamic State in the context of the array of Muslim opposition groups in Spiegel which gives the organization a valuable baseline for analysis.

Some Socialist Parliamentarians in France are threatening to abstain in a vote of no-confidence in President Hollande.  It’s unclear how many Ministers may abstain from the vote, but the Socialists currently have only a one vote majority in Parliament.  If the no-confidence vote does pass, then the French government may collapse next week, and it’s anyone’s guess how a new government will be constituted.  The National Front, a right-wing Party under the leadership of Marine Le Pen, has been making steady inroads into the French electorate, but probably not enough to secure a majority.  The last thing France needs right now is a broken government.  With economic growth slowing dramatically, the government needs to be viewed as strong and capable.   Additionally, the Scottish referendum is due to be held on 18 September, two days after the no-confidence vote in France.  So Europe as a whole may be severely jolted next week.

Polls indicate that Scottish nation may vote to secede from the state of the United Kingdom, and economic markets with exposure to Scottish investments dropped precipitously on the news.  Investors do not believe that Scotland can survive as an independent state, and pulled their money out those investments.  The tension between the political drive for independence and sovereignty and the economic drive for globalized markets is very obvious in this situation.  As the news settles in on Scottish voters, we shall have to see whether the economic imperative overrides the political sentiment.

The World Health Organization is warning that Liberia may experience a dramatic increase in the number of Ebola virus cases.   Liberia already accounts for over half of all the deaths from the virus in the West African outbreak, and the medical infrastructure is already almost completely broken to deal with the crisis.  I have a personal, as well as humanitarian, interest in this horrible situation:  one of my college roommates serves with Doctors without Borders and is currently in Monrovia, Liberia helping to set up hospital facilities for those infected with the virus.

Monsoonal rains have devastated areas of Kashmir, an area in South Asia claimed by both India and Pakistan and a source of incredible tension between the two states since the time of partition in 1947.  Despite recent fighting in the province, both India and Pakistan have decided to work together to alleviate the misery caused by the intense flooding.   One should not expect too much from this limited cooperation, but any attempt at conciliation is to be welcomed.

A book published  in 1972 predicted that humanity would face a collapse sometime in the 21st Century due to population growth, resource depletion, and environmental degradation.  The book, The Limits to Growth, was the first to harness the new power of computers to model human processes and their interaction with the environment.  At the time it was dismissed as a scare-mongering, Malthusian polemic.  But the book changed the way we all thought about anthropomorphic change.   Unfortunately, the predictions of the book seem to be tracking reality.

The Nigerian army has been unable to enter the capital city of one of the nation’s states because it is tightly held by the Islamic group, Boko Haram (“Western Education is a Sin”).  The group has been active in the northern, mostly Muslim, part of Nigeria, and its objective is to establish an Islamic State independent of the mostly Christian southern part of the country.  The central government has been unable to maintain control over the area, and Boko Haram has been active consolidating its control, not only through military activities, but also by taking on economic and social actions to help the poverty-stricken area.

There are rumors in the press that the EU will announce very tough new sanctions–including ones against the oil and gas industry on which Europe is highly dependent–against Russia in response to its actions in Ukraine.  One interesting dynamic of the sanctions debate is the relative quiescence of China.  By all rights, China should be very concerned about outsiders supporting separatists given the dissent within the Uighur and Tibetan populations–it clearly does not wish their own groups to be supported by outsiders.  On the other hand, China will be the beneficiary of these sanctions:  they will weaken both Europe and Russia, and Russia will turn to China for aid, giving China the advantage of both Europe and Russia.

Al-Shabab in Somalia confirmed that Ahmed Abdi Godane was indeed killed in an American operation, but also announced that its new leader would be Ahmad Umar.  Further, the radical group confirmed that it remained allied with al-Qaeda and would not ally itself with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.  The Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta, expressed satisfaction that Godane, the man who had planned a terrorist attack in Kenya last year, had been killed.  It is highly likely, that al-Shabab will attempt another attack as soon as possible to prove that it has not been weakened by the loss of its leader.

Sierra Leone has imposed a four-day lockdown of residents in an attempt to control the spread of the Ebola virus.  The lockdown will begin on 18 September and residents will not be allowed to leave their homes.   About a quarter of the deaths recorded this far have occurred in Sierra Leone, and the lockdown is a last-ditch attempt to prevent further spread of the virus.  Unfortunately, the lockdown is unlikely to succeed since most new cases will probably be concealed from the authorities.

Since the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, there has been a dramatic spike in anti-Semitic incidents in Europe.  European public tend to be more sympathetic to the Palestinian position than is the case in the US.  But the rise in anti-Semitic acts unfortunately resonates with a terrible history in Europe.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel is taking a very strong position to oppose the trend.

Chrystia Freeland is a very perceptive analyst, and she has written an op-ed piece on Ukraine that merits a close analysis.  As a cease-fire is announced, we are still uncertain of its terms and many doubt that it will last.  But the 5 month-old conflict has been beset by confusion, misleading statements, and outright falsifications.  In world politics, we should assume that most diplomatic statements should be only loosely interpreted and that the words are generally a cover-up for other activities.  It is always best to pay closer attention to actions rather than the rhetoric.

At the close of the NATO summit in Wales, US President Obama announced the creation of a “core coalition” of ten countries who are prepared to fight the Islamic State, initially in Iraq.  The countries in that coalition include the US, Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark, but only one of the ten (Turkey) is a Muslim country.  The coalition is not prepared yet to fight the IS in Syria since that would be implicit support for the Assad regime which the coalition countries oppose.  Additionally, the coalition did not announce any plans to work with Iran which also opposes the Islamic State.  The traditional alliances in the Middle East are slowly changing very dramatically.

A few weeks ago, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff seemed assured of re-election.  But when one of her opponents died in a plane crash, he was replaced by Marina Silva who is a noted environmental activist in Brazil.  Since that time Silva has steadily climbed in the polls, largely on a platform of anti-corruption and transparency.   Silva is hard to categorize: she is an activist who has emphasized the free market in an attempt to allay the fears of corporations in Brazil.  The election will be held in October, and right now the race is very tight.