The Pew Foundation has a research center that is one of the most reputable polling agencies in the world It has just released a study of American attitudes toward US engagement with the rest of the world. The evidence suggests that most Americans believe that American global power is declining and a large number of Americans believe that the country should “mind its own business” internationally. The findings are not surprising, but the rate of decline for US engagement abroad is quite sharp.
The World Trade Organization is soon to meet in Indonesia to try to resuscitate trade negotiations that have been stalled for many years. There is, however, a new issue is emerging that has been more or less a “stealth” issue for a few years: whether fresh water can be considered a private commodity that can be traded like any other commodity, like petroleum. Traditionally, fresh water has been considered a public good to be distributed along lines that serve the public interest. But the fear of increasing scarcity of fresh water, much of which is associated with the fears of climate change, has led many to think that selling fresh water may be necessary to conserve the resource. Unfortunately, that line of thinking also leads to the possibility that water may only be available to people with access to money.
The National Resource Council has issued a report on “tipping points” in the climate change debate. The climate change debate has usually taken place in the context of long-term gradual change (usually in terms of “by the end of the century”). The NRC, however, has raised an alarm about how abrupt climate change can take place, sometimes in a matter of years. These abrupt changes are not events that are global, but are seemingly local (like the melting of the North Pole ice cover). These “local” events can occur quite quickly and have definite systemic effects.
The protests in Ukraine have continued, but there is a sense that President Yanukovich will likely not change course or resign. Ukraine is highly dependent on supplies of Russian natural gas, and, with winter coming, the Russians have a very strong bargaining chip on whoever runs the Ukrainian government. Maintaining a sustained protest in the face of such significant leverage will be very difficult. President Yanukovich seems to be very confident of his position since he left for a three day diplomatic trip to China.
One of the legacies of the nation-state system is that everyone needs to be a citizen of “someplace.” Even displaced people and refugees have a citizenship based upon their place of birth (even if they do not have a home). There are some exceptions to this rule (occupied territories have a somewhat ambiguous status), but it is a useful fact of life for most people. There are, however, some problems with citizenship–the most obvious one is the fact that citizens are expected to pay taxes. However, if one is rich enough, there is a looming possibility to avoid paying any taxes at all: the “Freedom Ship.” If you can buy your way onto the Freedom Ship, you can perpetually avoid taxes: just choose a state that will grant you citizenship that does not impose taxes on you if you do not reside in the country (the US will try to track you down no matter where you are, but the US is an exception to the rule. If you are an American citizen, you will have to also renounce your citizenship to avoid paying taxes). Apparently, Benjamin Franklin was only half right: you still can’t avoid death, but you can avoid taxes.
The protests in Ukraine have rattled financial markets as holders of Ukrainian bonds fear that the instability of the government has made their investments much riskier. As many as 350,000 people protested in the main city of Kiev demanding a general strike and the overthrow of the government of President Yanukovich. Much of the anti-government sentiment is due to the perception that Yanukovich has moved much too close to Russia and Valdimir Putin. Putin was in Armenia and said that the protests have little to do with anti-Russian or Pro-EU sentiments, but rather are the product of intra-Ukrainian politics.
The United Nations Commissioner on Human Rights, Navi Pillay, has accused Syrian President Assad of authorizing war crimes. This is the first time that the UN has accused Assad directly of criminal behavior. The death toll in the more than two years of fighting in Syria has reached 125,000, about a third of whom are civilians. Pillay referred to both war crimes and crimes against humanity which are two of the three conditions supposed to invoke the “Responsibility to Protect.” Unfortunately, there was no movement in the UN Security Council to protect the people of Syria.
Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, is engaged in an intense diplomatic foray to the Persian Gulf Arab states, trying to mollify their fears of the nuclear agreement Iran signed with the P5+1. The effort is a rather dramatic turnaround from the diplomacy of the last 30 years in which relations between the Sunni Arab states and the Shia Persian state of Iran have been negligible. It is hard to believe that an Iranian-Saudi rapprochement is possible, but a nuclear agreement between Iran and the US was also hard to imagine.
The bloody crackdown by the government has led the opposition in Ukraine to demand Western sanctions against the government of President Viktor Yanukovych. The protests followed Yanukovych’s decision to seal a trade agreement with Russia instead of opting for closer relations with the European Union. The protests follow a familiar pattern in Ukrainian politics, beginning with protests in 1990 against the Soviet Union and another set of protests in 2004 after the election of Yanukovych. The division in the country between the eastern (which looks to Russia) and western parts (which looks to the EU) of the country is deep and longstanding.
Croatia’s citizens voted to ban gay marriage in a referendum. The vote will actually amend the constitution to enforce the ban and it was passed by a 65% vote in favor of the ban. Croatia is the European Union’s newest member, and it will be interesting to see how the other countries in the Union react to this vote. The Union struggled with Croatia to force the country to allow extradition of its citizens who had committed war crimes prior to Croatia’s entry to the Union.
Today is World AIDS Day. About 1.7 million people die every year from this disease, even though the world has made significant progress in developing effective treatments. It has proven to be very difficult to alter risky behaviors and even more difficult to figure out how to get the treatments to the most affected populations. One of the great success stories in the world is Rwanda which has made incredible progress is addressing the disease. We should take hope from the fact that a very poor country has proven that the will to conquer the disease can be decisive.
The Israeli government began implementation of the Prawer-Begin plan, officially known as the Bill on the Arrangement of Bedouin Settlement in the Negev. Bedouins are an indigenous people who live a nomadic life in the Negev Desert which is part of the state of Israel. The Negev does not involve any of the Occupied Territories. The plan seeks to move about 200,000 Bedouins into government approved villages out of the approximately 35 villages in which they currently live. The Israeli government argues that the current living conditions of the Bedouin are unsafe and it wishes to place them in villages that can offer better circumstances. The Bedouin, who are Israeli citizens, argue that their land is being expropriated and that their way of life is threatened. The Israeli government intends to settle Jewish families in the region.
The Negev Desert
Protests have broken out in Ukraine against President Viktor Yanukovich’s decision not to build stronger ties with the European Union. The authorities responded with force to the protests and many people were injured. The protests reflect a long-term discontent with the policies of Yanukovich and the division within Ukraine of those who wish to have closer ties with Russia and those who wish to move closer to the EU.
The 7th day of protests in Thailand saw gunshots and a large number of injured Thais. The protests seek the ouster of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the sister of the exiled former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. The military has been mobilized, but it seems reluctant to intervene. With the prospect of greater violence, the hand of the military may be forced.
China scrambled fighter jets into its Air Defense Identification Zone as US and Japanese fighters continue to probe into the Zone without filing flight plans or radio frequencies. Both sides are testing each other’s intentions and the situation is certainly delicate. No one is looking for a shooting war but this is a classic test of wills. The burden is on China since it unilaterally declared the Zone so the probes are designed to find out how serious China is on insisting on its air control. Chinese leaders really have more important interests to protect, but it is difficult to tell whether the Chinese military is the driver of this confrontation.
The P5+1/Iran six-month agreement is itself highly significant, but there have been a host of ancillary moves by other countries eager to take advantage of the thaw in relations. India has rushed a special team to Iran to speed up the building of a port in southern Iran that would serve as a conduit for closer economic relations between India, Iran, and Afghanistan. The project has been on the books for a number of years, but India did not push it for fear of offending the US who was leading the sanctions against Iran. The port is designed to skirt Pakistani territory, but it also has the effect of challenging the Pakistani port of Gwadar which has been boosted by China as an economic center. Turkey also moved quickly to restore trade with Iran. All of these moves have the effect of validating the nuclear agreement and making it more difficult to unravel. They also have the effect of increasing Israel’s costs if it were to take unilateral action against Iran.
Protests have been ongoing in Thailand for over three months, and have recently increased in both size and intensity. The controversy is over an amnesty bill that would allow a former Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, to return to Thailand after a three year exile abroad. Mr Shinawatra was accused of several crimes and was ousted from office by the Thai military, but he remains a polarizing figure. The split in Thailand is multi-faceted, but the rural vs. urban is quite evident in this dispute.
Angela Merkel has reached a possible agreement on a new coalition government five weeks after the German gave her Christian Democratic Party a strong, but not majority, vote. The proposed coalition includes the Christian Democrats, the Christian Social Union, and the Social Democrats. The agreement needs the approval of the Social Democrat membership before it can go into effect. The deal that brought the parties together includes an increase in the minimum wage in Germany, revisions to pension rules, and an expansion of the laws requiring renewable energy. The wage increase was the most difficult pill for the Christian Democrats who generally dislike government interventions in the market. It also rhetorically undermines the German position in the European Union which favors austerity approaches to market management.
James Fallows is an exceptionally astute defense analyst who write for the Atlantic. He posted an article on the Chinese Air Defense Identification Zone which has aroused so much controversy. He does an excellent job of explaining some of the intricacies of the Zone (which I did not know before) as well as some interesting interpretations of why the Chinese decided to make the unilateral announcement of the Zone. The US has come out with a categorical statement affirming the Japanese claim to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. Not a surprise at all, but the Chinese cannot be pleased.
The P5+1 agreement with Iran signals a rather dramatic shift in world politics. If the temporary agreement does lead to a permanent agreement in 6 months, the tectonic plates of the Middle East will change all previous alliances in the region. The one country that seems to be left out in the cold in this shift is Israel; Saudi Arabia does have other allies in the region. There is pressure building within Israel for at least a major change in tone toward the US and the other permanent members of the UN Security Council.
In what can only be described as a provocative act, the US has flown aircraft through the maritime zone earlier claimed by China without registering a flight plan or registering the frequencies of the aircraft. In short, the US flew through the territory as if it were genuinely international (as most of the world currently regards it). To make matters worse, according to the Reuters report, the Pentagon spokesperson referred to the islands as the Senkakus, and not the Diaoyu as they are called by the Chinese. This is a photograph of what the Chinese and Japanese are sparring over (and which might be the occasion for war).
Many media outlets, most of them non-US outlets, are commenting on the document released by the Vatican today. It is an “Apostolic Exhortation” written by Pope Francis. The media have focused on a certain part of the document which severely criticizes certain aspects of market capitalism. I was intrigued by these excerpts, not for their religious significance, but rather for how the words resonate with many of the protests that we have witnessed in the world in recent years (Bulgaria, Greece, the Occupy Movement, and many of the protests associated with what is termed the “Arab Spring”). The language of section 54 is particularly pertinent to the roots of these political protests:
“In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase; and in the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.”
The fourth Sahel Festival is taking place in the village of Lompoul in the north of Senegal. The Festival is notable this year because it is taking place in the midst of extraordinary turmoil in the region. Music triumphs over everything! Here is a video from last year’s festival:
Sadly, the US uses the prison system to a far greater extent than most other industrialized countries. It currently has a record number of incarcerated people, and over half of those people are in jail for drug-related offenses. In fact, if being an inmate were considered a profession, it would be one of the most popular professions in the US. The following graph is a terrible commentary on how the US cultivates its human resources.
Some people have begun to refer our current geologic age as the “Anthropocene” as a way to underline the pre-eminent influence human beings have on “background” processes (meaning how the world would develop if there were no human beings on the planet). The most obvious manifestation of the effects of human activity is, of course, climate change. But by the end of this century, there will be about 11 billion people living on the planet. The effect on animal habitats will likely be devastating without some major behavioral changes.
The Swiss turned down the referendum that sought to limit the compensation of executives to no more than 12 times that of the lowest paid worker in any given firm. The defeat was expected, but supporters of the measure took comfort in having raised an important issue not only in Switzerland but all over the world.
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