World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

It was a bad year for the world’s stock markets.  According to the Financial Times today, global stock market capitalisation dropped 12.1 per cent to $45.7 trillion.  Asian stock markets were hit quite hard, with “Japan’s Nikkei index losing 17.3 per cent this year, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index 20 per cent, and the Shanghai Composite 22 per cent.”   Losses in stock markets are not unusual, and most investors accept them as a matter of course.  But these losses have to be made up somehow, or productive investments will suffer.  What is unusual about these losses is that there aren’t many markets that offer any promise of long-run profitability so investments will likely stagnate.  If that happens, then a return to robust economic growth any time soon is highly unlikely.  The best returns for the were in US Treasuries–a good thing for the US government.

The Obama Administration has waged an aggressive war against those it regards as terrorists using drone strikes.  We don’t know very much about the drones or how they are used, but many are beginning to question how drone warfare is changing American foreign policy.  Joshua Foust asks some very important questions about drones in an article in The Atlantic.

There has been a continuing protest in the village of Wukan in China.  The protest is unusual in that there has been a vigorous internet discussion of the issues, a somewhat counterintuitive event in China.  Here’s an interesting essay on why the Chinese government has been so willing to allow open discussions of the protest.   The essay suggests that open discussions are the way that the government gets “real” information about what is going on in the country.  Obviously, there are limits to this openness.

Egypt’s military cracked down on non-governmental pro-democracy groups today.  The move is puzzling since the military must have known that the international reaction to such a move would be profoundly negative, and that the action would dishearten the liberal sectors of Egyptian society.  It appears as if the move is designed to protect the position of the military in any new government.

China’s rise to world power has been relatively smooth, compared to similar historical power changes.  But 2011 was a somewhat contentious year, as many of China’s neighbors began to bristle at some of China’s activities.  Such difficulties are not unusual, and one should not blow them out of perspective.  There is an added complexity since many of China’s neighbors are US allies and look to it as a counterweight to Chinese power.  The US must navigate these waters carefully so that China is not persuaded that the Americans are boxing it in.

A great article by Paul Wood of the BBC on the protests in Syria.  It is both insightful and quite revealing about what is going on in that country.

Through MEMRI, a foreign language translation service, we have access to an Iranian website that outlines how Iran will close the Strait of Hormuz.  It is quite detailed but probably overestimates the effectiveness of Iran’s weaponry (all military plans share this very common defect).  It seems fairly clear that Iran could cause serious problems to the oil tankers passing through the Strait–it need not be 100% effective to make insurance rates for those tankers to become prohibitively expensive.  The Washington Post had an article today, downplaying the likelihood of any blockage of the Strait.  If you read the article carefully, however, there is nothing that substantiates the headline.

The Italians were able to seel two-year bonds at greatly reduced yields today which was a very good sign.  The euro, however, suffered a major crisis of confidence in the day.

It’s not immediately clear what really happened, but these bolts out of the blue are worrisome precisely because they don’t seem to have a reason.  We’ll have to keep an eye on this.

There is a growing tendency in many parts of the world for some to demand the right to deny rights to others.  The decline of tolerance is a worrisome ancillary to the decreased legitimacy of government.  Such acts have taken center stage in Israel as ultra-orthodox Jews have tried to enforce the segregation of sexes and certain codes of conduct on other, more secular Jews.  The situation has boiled over in a series of protests.  Since the current government of Netanyahu depends upon Parliamentary support from some of these ultra-orthodox parties, it will be interesting to see whether it will protect the rights of secular Israelis.  Fortunately, there have been some victories for liberal rights in the region.  In Egypt, there was a victory for women as the high court there prohibited the military from conducting virginity tests on female detainees.

Stephen Walt has written a brilliant short essay eviscerating one of the neoconservative proponents of an attack on Iran.   Pressures are rising in the region as the EU meets to determine whether to embargo Iranian oil.  Iran has responded by threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz if the EU measure is passed.

The Syrian protests are getting larger, but there seems to be little movement toward any resolution of the crisis.  Arab League monitors are expected to be in place by Wednesday, but it seems unlikely that they will have any real effect.

Historical analogies are always good ways to tickle one’s brain.  They are useful analytical tools as well: trying to compare and contrast similarities and differences is a great way to uncover things one might have otherwise missed.  The Asia Times ran an interesting essay by an Italian journalist comparing the rise of Germany on the 19th century to the rise of China in the 20th.  I had a great time thinking about the rise of the US and the rise of China as well.  Both analogies are intriguing but also highly misleading.  The US attitude toward China is profoundly different from the British attitude toward Germany.

A very upbeat article on the state of the world in the Christian Science Monitor.  A good read, but only with a critical eye.  The points made are worthy of attention; they may be, however, only part of the picture.

The situation in Iraq remains volatile.  Sadr is a very powerful voice in Iraq, but a complex one.  He is intensely nationalistic–adamantly opposed to the US, but also opposed to the Iranian influence in Iraq (although he is a Shia cleric).  In some sense he is both a powerful enemy of the US, but also a powerful ally to the American interest in curtailing Iranian influence in the Middle East.  We’ll have to see how the US navigates this setback/opportunity.

Tensions have flared up once again in Nigeria.   The violent attacks on Christian churches were carried out by a group which calls itself “Boko Haram” (“Western education in forbidden”) that appears to have some measure of contact with other Muslim groups opposed to western influence in Africa.  The violence seems to map closely with the demographics of Nigeria–Christian populations in the south, Muslim populations in the north.  These simple categories, however, mask deep socio-economic cleavages in Nigeria.  Do not attribute the violence to religion alone.

Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, issued a rather stark warning on the health of the global economy.  The longer term view presented by her is sharply contrasted with the more benign short term view of the markets.  For my money, I would go with Lagarde’s view–the global economy does not appear to be heading in a good direction.

We should expect some cat and mouse games between the US and Iran as Iran begins naval exercises in the Straits of Hormuz.  Ships will pass too close to each other and accusations will fly.  Let’s hope that the games do not get out of hand.

The economic and political situation in Hungary has been deteriorating for several months.  The country’s debt has achieved a “junk” credit rating, and the Fidesz Party has been slowly concentrating power at the expense of political rights.  The slow move toward a right-wing non-liberal state is reminiscent of the rise to power of Miklós Horthy in 1920, the first of what would become a long line of right wing nationalist leaders in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.  Let’s hope that the parallel remains superficial.

The Russian protests against the rule of Vladimir Putin continue, adding yet another dimension to the year of protests.  Starting with Tunisia, popular dissatisfaction with government has been highly visible in many countries this year.  Much of this anger is stimulated by the sense that governments have become corrupt and out of touch with the public at large.  We should watch this trend next year to see if it continues or even deepens.

Violence continues in Iraq, fueled primarily by the Sunni-Shia sectarian split.  The political power of the Sunni (20% of the population) was established long ago by the British, and it only ended after Saddam Hussein was overthrown by the US invasion.  The Shia (60% of the population–Kurds are the other 20%) are now in power, and the transition is going to be very difficult.  The removal of American troops has opened up the possibilities for greater violence as the country tries to find a comfortable political equilibrium.

Eric Hobsbawm is one of the world’s great historians.  His views on the events of 2011 are worth paying attention to.  Those who live through revolutions are usually unaware of the fact that they are in the midst of something significant.  Moreover, one can never really predict what the outcome of social movements might be.  We all need to be aware of what’s happening and to look for dots to connects that others fail to see.

The spreading of a social movement is a very complex process, although we have tended to obscure its compelxity by attributing mass movements to technologies such as Facebook and Twitter.  The Economist published an interesting essay thinking about the Reformation as a social movement and looking at how Luther’s message was transmitted throughout Europe in such a short period of time, unleashing one of the most powerful social movements ever experienced by humanity.

A new development in the euro crisis.  The European Central Bank is lending money to European banks at an interest rate of 1%–a half trillion was lent out today.  In theory, the banks are turning around and buying sovereign debt (the banks are actually free to do whatever they wish with the money).  The increased demand for sovereign debt reduces the interest rates of the governments, in the Spanish and Italian cases dramatically (from about 5% to around 2%).  So the banks make a hefty profit (borrowing at 1% and getting 2% in return) and the ECB gets around the prohibition against lending directly to sovereign governments.  A very nice strategy as long as none of the governments default, in which case both the banks and the ECB take it on the chin.  The other concern is whether this scheme will reduce the incentives toward austerity programs, a development that would discourage the Germans.

Climate change is unquestionably one of the most important issues facing the world in the long run.  Its effect over the short-run is less certain, but there are a number of new studies that link violent conflict with patterns associated with climate change.  Obviously more work is needed in this area, but we should treat climate change as a national security issue as well as an environmental issue.

Foreign Policy has some interesting videos from North Korea on the death of Kim Jong-il.  Some interesting windows into the closed society.

I try to stay abreast of the news and generally only post news reports after I think they have a solid basis.  Generally this means that I wait a few days after I read some snippets of things going on to assess whether the stories are substantive.  But I very often get surprised, as was this story about action in the Security Council condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank.  This report cam out of the blue and now you all get a chance to assess with me whether it develops into something more.

The less surprising news was the death of Kim Song-il in North Korea.  We knew he had a stroke in 2008, and he appeared to have only partially recovered from it.  But he died last Saturday, and the news was only released on Monday.  It is unlikely that the external powers (the US, China, Russia, South Korea, or Japan) will take any action to destabilize the situation.  We will have to see, however, how the North Korean military responds to the new 28 year old Dear Leader.

Violence in Cairo continues to escalate.  Today there was massive protest by women, outraged at the treatment of female protesters at the hands of the Egyptian military.  I can’t figure out what the military objectives might be–there is no clear end game to trying to repress the protests.  We will have to see if the military backs off from this strategy and decides to become more conciliatory to the liberal elements of the protest movement.