The war of words between the US and Russia sharply escalated as both the US and Russia made threats over the continued violence in Ukraine. US Secretary of State Kerry accused Russia of “distraction, deception and destabilization”–strong words in diplomatic language. The Russians claimed that their actions had stopped “regime change” in Russia. The Russians also started new military exercises along the Ukrainian border.
Israel has ended the peace negotiations with the Palestinians as Fatah, the Palestinian faction in the West Bank, and Hamas, the Palestinian faction in the Gaza Strip, announced that they had reconciled their differences. Israel refuses to deal with Hamas because it, unlike Fatah, has not acknowledged Israel’s right to exist. The reconciliation agreement is vague on the issue of Israel, although the Palestinians said that the renewed Palestinian Liberation Organization accepted the earlier decisions (at the Oslo summit in 1992) to recognize Israel’s right to exist. There is a lot of finger-pointing going on right now, but it is safe to say that the negotiations are dead for the foreseeable future.
The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has made a very strong call to get approval for the provision of humanitarian aid to 3.5 million Syrian civilians. The Secretary-General called the behavior of the fighting parties a “flagrant” violation of international law. The UN Security Council had previously approved the provision of aid to the trapped civilians, but the warring parties have not made it possible for the aid to be distributed. The matter is further complicated by the likely non-cooperation of Russia in the Security Council because of the tensions over Ukraine. The failure of the international community in Syria to discharge even the most basic aid to innocent civilians will forever be a blot on the reputation of the UN.
Russia has threatened to intervene in Ukraine if “Russian citizens” or “Russian interests” are threatened by Ukrainian police. The crackdown by Ukrainian authorities was sparked by the murder of a local politician who had tried to take down the flag of Russian separatists in the town of Horlivka. There are reports of 12 Ukrainian citizens being kidnapped by the separatists. Russian Foreign Minister continued to blame the US for the turmoil in Ukraine, saying that ““So I have no grounds not to think that Americans direct this show in the most hands-on manner….They have an excessive influence. Lavrov made the statement after the visit by US Vice-President Biden to Ukraine.
Scientists are predicting a high likelihood that a strong El Niño will develop in the Pacific later this year. If the prediction comes true, then most computer models suggest that 2014 and 2015 will be very warm years. The El Niño effect is strongly correlated with high rates of precipitation on the US West Coast (perhaps bringing relief to the current savage drought in California) as well as very high temperatures across the globe. The last major El Niño was in 1997-98 and 1998 was one of the hottest years on record.
The Guardian ran a very chilling story about US Federal Bureau of Investigation tactics to coerce Muslims to become informants to the Bureau. There are charges that individual Muslims are placed on “no-fly” lists which prevents them from traveling. They are then told that their names will be removed from the lists only if they agree to inform on suspicious activities in local Muslim communities with which they are familiar. If true, the tactic is an egregious abuse of state power. Being asked to be an informant is one thing; being coerced to become an informant is an illegitimate technique.
President Obama is on a tour in Asia, visiting Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The trip reflects Obama’s “pivot” from Europe to Asia, as the US tries to figure out how to juggle its pre-existing military commitments with the rising power of China. China is not a stop on the trip, but China will be on the agenda of every meeting Obama has with Asian leaders. The US has a very difficult balancing act as it tries to accommodate Chinese power without alienating its allies in the region. Given that there are outstanding disputes between China and US allies, the task is extremely delicate. But the commitment Obama has shown to the allies is undoubtedly welcome by them; one would suppose that there are back channels to China going on at the same time to ameliorate Chinese apprehensions.
Uganda has passed draconian laws against homosexuality and liberal societies have expressed disapproval of those laws. The World Bank has gone so far as to withhold funds from Uganda for the presumed violations of human rights of gays and lesbians. The disagreement raises a very delicate matter: is the West’s disapproval of Uganda’s laws an expression of support for human rights, or is it an expression of cultural imperialism?
The New York Times conducted a study of incomes in the United States and the data suggest that the Middle Class in the US is shrinking. The US middle class was in many respects the key to US economic activity as well as its political stability. The decline of the incomes of the middle class have been accompanied by a dramatic increase in the incomes of the very wealthy in the US, indicating that the flow of money has been from the less to the more wealthy–not the direction that is celebrated in what is usually referred to as the American Dream. The decline of the middle class raises some serious questions about the economic policies that have been purused by both the Republican and Democratic Parties over the last 40 years.
The rise of right-wing politics in Europe is a serious concern to liberal society. John Siadhail has written an essay on the right of right-wing politics in Britain, and the essay outlines the roots of the movement in the 21st century. In many respects, the right-wing movement resonates strongly with that of the 20th century, but there are some important differences.
There has been a paper circulating on the internet that suggests that the US is ruled by an oligarchy and is not the democracy it claims to be. The paper is suggestive, but after reading and re-reading it, I am skeptical that the evidence in the paper truly supports such a broad conclusion. John Cassidy of the New Yorker has written a great essay assessing the claims of the paper, and offers some worthwhile insights on how to interpret the claims of the paper.
We have solid evidence on how rapidly military tensions between China and Japan are escalating over territorial disputes. The chart below is disturbing–at some point there will likely be some misunderstanding about the intentions of a particular scramble.
The Ukrainian accord signed last Thursday by the U.S., Russia, Ukraine and the European Union unraveled quickly today as violence broke out between Ukrainian forces and the Russian speaking separatists. Not many gave much hope to the agreement since the Ukrainian separatists were not included in the accord, and it is not clear that they are united or centrally controlled. The Republican Party in the US is pushing for stiffer sanctions on Russia, but the Russians have already reduced their growth forecast for the year to zero. We shall wait to see if President Putin uses the outbreak of violence as a reason to send Russian troops into Ukraine.
In a very dramatic move, the Palestinian Authority warned that if the current negotiations with Israel remain stalemated, it could disband and ask either the UN or Israel to run the Occupied West Bank. It is unlikely that the US would allow the UN to run the occupation, so, if the threat is carried out, Israel would have to take control of the day-to-day running of the territory, including providing security, basic infrastructural needs, and other duties now maintained by the PA. The move would put Israel in the very uncomfortable position of clearly being an Occupying Power. The threat comes as hostilities continue to escalate over the al-Aqsa Mosque, as some members of Israel are trying to assert their religious rights on the Temple Mount.
Turkey has been considering accession to the European Union for a number of years–it is an on-again, off-again process depending on a number of different factors. The European Union, however, has most recently been critical of the administration of Prime Minister Erdogan and, for the first time, has questioned Turkey’s commitment to liberal values which are at the core of the Union. The assessment is significant, and indicative of a growing global sense that liberal values are losing hold in many polities.
Japan started construction of a military radar station on Yonaguni Island, one of the most remote of all the Japanese western islands. It is, however, close to the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, and China is not pleased at what it regards as a military provocation. The territorial status of Yonaguni is not in dispute, but the move gives Japan direct surveillance of the Chinese mainland. A radar station is clearly a defensive military asset, but the Chinese consider the move as designed to bolster Japan’s claim to the disputed islands nearby.
It’s Saturday night. Time to relax. Check out the Penguin Dance, a craze that is sweeping Saudi Arabia. Those Saudis know how to have a good time.
In President Putin’s most recent press conference he used the word “Novorossiya” (New Russia) to describe what he considered to be the true boundaries of the Russian state. The term is actually an old one and it refers to the conquest of the territories once held by the Ottoman Empire and conquered largely by Prince Grigory Potemkin and Catherine the great. If this territory fell under Russian control, Ukraine would lose all access to the Black Sea.
Russia’s actions in Ukraine did not simply appear out of nothing. US-Russian relations have been frosty for some time, and the US shares a good deal of the blame for the sorry state of affairs. US policy under Clinton, Bush, and Obama has consistently pursued interests almost independently of Russian concerns. This assessment does not justify Russia’s actions in Ukraine, but it does place them in a different context.
One of the most urgent issues facing the world is the likely shortage of fresh water in the near future. South Asia is particularly vulnerable to this issue, and the World Bank estimates that India’s aquifers will reach a critical stage in 20 years. Virtually every country treats fresh water as a “free” good and the idea that water should be managed is an idea that raises all sorts of concerns about price and control. Yet it is clear that, unless it is protected, fresh water will become a very scarce commodity.
There are often developments in world politics that truly defy understanding. The European Central Bank just released data on the amount of sovereign [government] debt held by private banks in Europe. Bizarrely, the total amount of sovereign debt has risen since 2012 from about 4.3 percent of bank assets to about 5.8 percent of bank assets. That may not sound like a steep rise, but it is a dangerous increase since it suggests that the welfare of states is now more directly linked to the welfare of private banks. In short, if governments cannot repay their debts, then banks may fail; likewise, if banks fail, governments may be forced to default on their debts. While the percentage has increased most dramatically in what are regarded as the weaker states in Europe (in Slovenia the percentage is close to 14 percent), even in Germany and France the percentage has increased.
It has been difficult to determine with any precision exactly who the armed men roaming the streets of eastern Ukraine represent. They wear no uniforms and have carefully covered their faces with balaclavas. So, depsite strong suspicions, it is difficult to charge Russia with the crime of armed aggression (a clear violation of the UN Charter). The world has become used to this practice in guerrilla wars, even though no solution has been found to identify enemy soldiers. But its use in an invasion is new, and, if it is the case in Ukraine, it signals a very difficult problem for professional militaries that depend on clear identification for the use of massive force. So there has been an incredible effort, some of which is highly creative, to figure out if the armed men are Russian soldiers or merely irregular Ukrainian rebels.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has certified that Iran has complied with all the provisions of the agreement it signed with the P5+1 on its nuclear program. The verification is a positive step validating the negotiations pushed by the United Nations. In return, Iran will have access to billions of dollars which had been frozen as part of the sanctions that helped bring about the negotiations. So far, the diplomatic approach seems to be working well.
As the situation in Ukraine has unfolded, there have been frequent references to a similar situation in Moldova involving the region of that country called Trans-Dniester (or Transnistra in Romanian). I was unaware of the roots of the dispute, although I did know that Trans-Dniester had demanded independence from the newly emerging state of Moldova after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The background to this issue was far more complicated than I knew, and the BBC provided a good background in an article published in July 2007. Since it is likely that Trans-Dniester will figure more prominently in future weeks, it would be good for everyone to appreciate the complexity of the dispute.
NATO has announced that it will step up its presence along Russia’s borders as worries about Russia’s intentions deepen in NATO members with large Russian speaking populations such as the Baltic states. The move is perfectly understandable from the perspective of those member states which feel threatened, but such moves will also amplify Russian fears of encirclement. The situation is a classic case of the “security dilemma” in which genuinely defense moves can simultaneously trigger insecurity. One can only hope that NATO fully informed Russia about the moves before they were announced.
A former Managing Director of Goldman Sachs, Nomi Prins, has written a book, All the Presidents’ Bankers: The Hidden Alliances That Drive American Power. Prins also worked for Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Chase Manhattan Bank, so she is by no means a radical leftist. The book is, however, a devastating indictment of the relationship between financiers and American politicians, both Republican and Democratic. Salon had an interview with Prins and her interpretation of how banks influence policies is truly unnerving.
Russia and China are moving to improve their ties as both countries seek to diminish the US role in world affairs. Both countries seek to establish their positions as great powers and have a substantial set of mutual interests. The diplomatic exchanges since the election of President Xi in China have been frequent and intense. At this stage of their alliance, however, neither country is bringing in any regional allies: China has not really cultivated much support in East or Southeast Asia, and Russia has alienated many potential allies in Europe (although there appears to be a burgeoning relationship between Russia and Europe’s right-wing parties). They are, however, quite adept at exploiting the weaknesses and shortcomings of US foreign and domestic policy.
The Indian Supreme Court has recognized transgender people as a third gender. The ruling is a landmark in the realm of human rights because of India’s prominence in world affairs, but Nepal and Bangladesh had previously recognized transgenders. Unfortunately, the same Supreme Court had reinstated laws prohibiting homosexual sex last December.
Thousands of Chinese workers have been striking at a shoe factory for about 10 days. The strike itself is not unusual–there are many strikes in China–but the size of the strike is quite large and the demands reflect a worsening labor market in China. In many respects the demands mirror many of the demands made by protesters in many other parts of the world.
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