President Trump delivered a speech today at Florida International University in which he made statements directly to the Venezuelan military. Reuters quotes the President as saying: “if the Venezuelan military continues supporting Maduro, ‘you will find no safe harbor, no easy exit and no way out. You’ll lose everything.’” The threat comes as the US continues to send humanitarian aid to points just beyond the Venezuelan border. The apparent hope is that the promise of aid could lead younger members of the Venezuelan military to defect from the military officers who continue to support Maduro. Alex Ward, writing for Vox, describes the horrific economic conditions in the country:
“Inflation in the country now hovers above a million percent, and could reach 10 million percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Food and medicine are too expensive for many to purchase. And since 2015, more than 3 million Venezuelans have left the country in search of better opportunities elsewhere, primarily in Colombia. (It’s expected that another 2 million will become refugees in 2019 alone.)”
There does not appear to be a coordinated response among the US and its allies about what the next step should be. It does seem clear that while many states would like to see a more forceful response, many fear that stronger US action will only reinforce Maduro’s position.
Suresh Naidu, Dani Rodrik, and Gabriel Zucman are economists who have studied economic inequality for many years and they have written a fascinating essay for the Boston Review. The essay attacks the current infatuation with neoliberalism and argues for an alternative focus in economics for “inclusive prosperity.” They define this new perspective in this way:
“While prosperity is the traditional concern of economists, the “inclusive” modifier demands both that we consider the whole distribution of outcomes, not simply the average (the “middle class”), and that we consider human prosperity broadly, including non-pecuniary sources of well-being, from health to climate change to political rights. To improve the quality of public discussion around inclusive prosperity, we have organized a group of economists—the Economics for Inclusive Prosperity (EfIP) network—to make policy recommendations across a wide range of topics, including labor markets, public finance, international trade, and finance. The purpose of this nascent collective effort is not simply to offer a list of prescriptions for different domains of policy, but to provide an overall vision for economic policy that stands as a genuine alternative to the market fundamentalism that is often—and wrongly—identified with economics. “
In rejecting neoliberalism, the authors argue that its embrace has been fundamentally flawed and has damaged the economics profession:
“Many of the dominant policy ideas of the last few decades are supported neither by sound economics nor by good evidence. Neoliberalism—or market fundamentalism, market fetishism, etc.—is not the consistent application of modern economics, but its primitive, simplistic perversion. And contemporary economics is rife with new ideas for creating a more inclusive society. But it is up to us economists to convince our audience about the merits of these claims, which is why we have embarked on this project.”
The authors then go through research that is being conducted by a number of economists that do not share the same assumptions about the nature of the market economy. By and large, this new research looks carefully at the way market assumptions dictate the final conclusions of any analysis. Challenging these assumptions is a long overdue task for liberal economists.
“Our generation will no longer accept catastrophic changes that are negatively impacting our future. Years of limited action against climate change, years of covered up information on the climate crisis, and now we are finally saying enough is enough.
“However, our anger is not inarticulate and misdirected. It’s organised, coordinated and passionate, and we’re using it to ask for change. We deserve better from the people we’re supposed to place our trust in. We can’t even vote yet, but we will be faced with the consequences of politicians’ inaction for decades, despite the fact that we have no say in parliament….
“We demand the government declares a climate emergency, taking active steps towards climate justice; we demand reform of our education system so it teaches all young people about the extent of the climate emergency; we demand the government warns the public about the peril that we face and the urgency that is required to act; and finally, we demand the government recognises that we have the biggest stake in our future, and so lowers the voting age to sixteen.”
The US is hosting a “Ministerial To Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East” in Poland which is being attended by almost 60 states. The meeting is designed to foster multilateral perspectives on the security questions facing the Middle Eastern states and is specifically structured to encourage dialogue between Israel and Arab states. But it seems clear from the speeches thus far that the meeting is primarily designed to focus on what the US, Saudi Arabia, and Israel consider to be the Iranian threat to peace in the Middle East. The question and answer period between the press and US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, highlights how central the Iranian issue is to the US:
“QUESTION: Secretary Pompeo, does this summit deals with ways to combat or to fight Iran, like Prime Minister Netanyahu said yesterday?
“SECRETARY POMPEO: Yeah, look, you can’t achieve peace and stability in the Middle East without confronting Iran. It’s just not possible. They’re a malign influence in Lebanon, in Yemen, in Syria, in Iraq, the three H’s: the Houthis, Hamas, and Hizballah. These are real threats; there are others as well. But you can’t get peace in the Middle East without pushing back against Iran.”
“Pence sounded incredulous and angry as he called the European banking workaround a scheme designed to ‘break American sanctions against Iran’s murderous revolutionary regime.’
“‘It’s an ill-advised step that will only strengthen Iran, weaken the E.U. and create still more distance between Europe and America,’ he said. Pence warned that U.S. sanctions against Iran, already characterized as the toughest ever, ‘will get tougher still’ if Iran does not change its behavior and foreign policy in the region.
“The convening of the conference has been a cause of tension from the start, and efforts by the United States to assuage the concerns of European allies did little to improve the situation.
“Major European powers were not consulted before Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the conference last month. The agenda was broadened after allies suggested that the Trump administration would end up showcasing division rather than unity over Iran, European and U.S. diplomats said. The United States and Poland also shelved tentative plans to circulate an agreement that conference attendees would all sign, two diplomats said.”
It is very difficult to think that such harsh words about the most important allies of the US would accomplish much. Sovereign states do not usually respond well to such open criticism.
Richard Youngs has written a fascinating and insightful essay on non-Western support for democracy. He outlines the difficulties of making the argument that liberal states, located primarily in North America, Europe, and Japan are always supportive of democracy and points out many situations in which countries outside of those geographic areas have been stronger supporters of democracy than the rich states we usually identify.
“Despite these trends, analysts still commonly assume that Western powers’ international support for democracy is of a completely and qualitatively different order to that of non-Western efforts. Yet, while these emerging powers’ commitment to democracy is undoubtedly patchy and less than fulsome, it is worth noting that Western democracy support increasingly shares many of these limitations and this tepidness. That is to say, much Western democracy support today has itself become relatively indirect, largely second-order, and merely declaratory. The standard assumption that Western countries’ commitment to democracy is qualitatively distinctive and of a completely different magnitude to that of other powers can easily be overstated.
“This problem of unexamined assumptions runs both ways. The perceptions that Western and non-Western democracies have about each other tend to be rather caricatured. Non-Western powers often accuse Western governments of forcefully seeking to impose democracy on other countries. Western governments, in turn, tend to accuse non-Western powers of unconditionally cozying up with even the most authoritarian regimes. Non-Western democracies sometimes insist that, unlike Western powers, they strive to disassociate their democracy support from particular political models and geopolitical interests; these emerging democracy supporters tend to claim that they link democracy support to issues of social justice, peaceful mediation, and local values to a greater extent than Western policymakers do.”
The argument is incredibly important. We tend to overestimate the willingness of rich states to support liberal values. Non-Western definitions of democracy are critically important to any rethinking of the international liberal order. Varieties of democracy are possible and the Western template is not the only one possible.
The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science has published a study which indicates how much the climate of North America will change by the year 2080. According to the study:
“Scientists analyzed 540 urban areas that encompassed approximately 250 million inhabitants in the United States and Canada. For each urban area, they mapped the similarity between that city’s future climate expected by the 2080s and contemporary climate in the western hemisphere north of the equator using 12 measures of climate, including minimum and maximum temperature and precipitation during the four seasons….
“The study found that by the 2080s, even if limits are placed on emissions, the climate of North American urban areas will feel substantially different, and in many cases completely unlike contemporary climates found anywhere in the western hemisphere north of the equator. If emissions continue unabated throughout the 21st century, the climate of North American urban areas will become, on average, most like the contemporary climate of locations about 500 miles away and mainly to the south. In the eastern U.S., nearly all urban areas, including Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, will become most similar to contemporary climates to the south and southwest. Climates of most urban areas in the central and western U.S. will become most similar to contemporary climates found to the south or southeast.
Map of How Climate Will Change North America by 2080
It is incredible how much things might change in a single generation if we do not address the issue of climate change in a substantive manner.
Nigeria will hold its national election on 16 February and the Pew Research Center has conducted a poll on how Nigerians view the state of their democracy. The poll was conducted in the summer of 2018 and the Center describes the context of the poll:
“Nigeria is home to the largest population in Africa, which is almost evenly split between Muslims and Christians. Incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) will be running against multiple candidates including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), John Gbor of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Usman Muhammed of the Labour Party (LP) and others. Tensions in the country have grown in the final weeks before elections because of Buhari’s controversial decision to suspend the country’s chief justice.”
The poll found a wide discrepancy between the views of Christians and Muslims in Nigeria.
Nigerian Attitudes Toward Democracy
What happens in Nigeria is critical to the future of Africa and of the world. Many Nigerians are leaving the country and the religious and ethnic divisions continue to be very difficult to address.
Even though there is little clarity about the proposed US withdrawal from Syria, there seems to be little question that it will occur. As it does, it will be very interesting to watch how Russia, Iran, and Turkey manage their relations. Up to this point, all three had an interest in dislodging ISIS from Syria as well as a common interest in countering US influence in the Middle East. ISIS has lost territorial control within Syria although it still remains a somewhat inchoate terrorist threat to the world and the US withdrawal means that the common interests of all three states have been satisfied.
That means that the three states can pursue other interests. For Turkey, the most important objective is to reduce the threat of Kurdish nationalism. For Iran, the most important objective to to remove the Sunni and US threat to the continued survival of the Islamic Republic. For Russia, the most important objective to secure Russian dominance in the region which translates into support for Syrian President Assad (to make sure that Russian military bases in Syria remain) and for Israel (as the other militarily dominant state in the region). The main cleavage in these objectives is policy toward Israel: Israel supports the Kurds which alienates Turkey; Israel fears Iran which alienates Russia from Iran; and Israel needs to curry favor with Russia as it begins to doubt the willingness of the US to maintain its role as counterweight to Russian dominance in the region.
There is no necessary reason why these three states cannot work out a sustainable accommodation, but it is clear that there are possible points of deep disagreements. Whether these disagreements lead to conflict depends to a great deal on how Israel decides to define its most important objectives with respect to all three of these states. At this stage of the conflict, Israel seems to be taking the road of countering Iranian influence even if that means that it takes military action which weakens Russia’s main objective of supporting Assad.
The Pew Research Center has conducted a poll within 26 countries to determine how citizens define their top international threat. In a majority of countries, climate change was identified as the major concern, but there were a number of other concerns articulated:
“Broadly speaking, people around the world agree that climate change poses a severe risk to their countries, according to a 26-nation survey conducted in the spring of 2018. In 13 of these countries, people name climate change as the top international threat.
“But global warming is just one of many concerns. Terrorism, specifically from the Islamic extremist group known as ISIS, and cyberattacks are also seen by many as major security threats. In eight of the countries surveyed, including Russia, France, Indonesia and Nigeria, ISIS is seen as the top threat. In four nations, including Japan and the United States, people see cyberattacks from other countries as their top international concern. One country, Poland, names Russia’s power and influence as its top threat, but few elsewhere say Russia is a major concern.”
The concern over climate change has increased considerably since Pew started conducting the poll in 2013: “For example, in 2013, well before the Paris climate agreement was signed, a median of 56% across 23 countries surveyed said global climate change was a major threat to their country. That climbed to 63% in 2017, and in 2018 it stands at 67%.”
Another finding of the poll that is quite interesting is that many people in world regard the US as a major threat to their interests. That shift in sentiment is quite dramatic.
“The largest change in sentiment among the global threats tracked are for those who see U.S. power and influence as a major threat to their countries. In 2013, only a quarter across 22 nations saw American power as a major threat to their country, but that jumped substantially to 38% in 2017, the year after Trump was elected president, and to 45% in 2018.
“In fact, in 18 of the 22 countries surveyed in both 2013, when Barack Obama was the U.S. president, and 2018, there has been a statistically significant increase in those who name the U.S. as a major threat. This includes increases of 30 percentage points in Germany, 29 points in France and 26 points in Brazil and Mexico.
“There is also a strong connection between seeing America as a threat and lack of confidence in U.S. President Donald Trump. In 17 of the countries surveyed, people who have little or no confidence in the U.S. president are more likely than those who do have confidence in Trump to name U.S. power and influence as a top threat. This difference is most acute among America’s traditional allies, such as Canada, the UK and Australia, where overall views of the U.S. and its president have plummeted in recent years.
The survey was quite extensive and I recommend the report to anyone who wishes to take a snapshot of global public opinion on a large number of global issues.
“’The relevant actions of the US warships violated Chinese sovereignty and undermined peace, security and order in the relevant sea areas,’ Hua said. ‘The Chinese side expresses strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition.’
“‘China has indisputable sovereignty over islands in the South China Sea, including the Second Thomas Shoal, Mischief Reef and the adjacent waters,’ Hua said.
“’China has always respected and safeguarded freedom of navigation and flight based on international laws in the South China Sea, but resolutely opposes any country falsely using these harm the sovereignty and security of coastal countries.’”
The confrontation comes as the US and China restart their trade negotiations to stave off new tariffs that the US has threatened if an agreement is not reached by 1 March. Stirring both pots simultaneously does not seem to be an optimal negotiating strategy.
“The experiment aims to test Russia’s cyber defenses and ensure the nation’s internet service, known as Runet, can continue to function in the event of a foreign attack. Officials will verify whether Russia can continue to operate its web service without passing data to and from the outside world. Russian telecom companies will have to re-route all internet traffic to exchange points managed or approved by the Russian telecom supervisor Roskomndazor….
“The experiment is part of a new draft law known as the Digital Economy National Program. The law will also obligate Russia to create its own Domain Name System (DNS) so it can continue to operate if it loses connection to international servers. The DNS is what translates domain names into Internet Protocol (IP) addresses so that people surfing the web can access them.”
Such an experiment might be highly controversial as it suggests that the Russian government could try to block all outside information from coming into the country. Other states exercise a great deal of control over outside sources of information, but a physical block would represent a major step forward in complete state control of information. The BBC outlines the worst case:
“The test is also expected to involve ISPs demonstrating that they can direct data to government-controlled routing points. These will filter traffic so that data sent between Russians reaches its destination, but any destined for foreign computers is discarded.
“Eventually the Russian government wants all domestic traffic to pass through these routing points. This is believed to be part of an effort to set up a mass censorship system akin to that seen in China, which tries to scrub out prohibited traffic.”
Such a move would also make it very difficult to penalize Russian users of the internet for Russian government efforts to spread disinformation abroad.
A new study published in the journal, Biological Conservation, has indicated that global insect populations are declining at a precipitous rate, signalling a likely serious agricultural crisis in the future. The Guardian summarizes the new study:
“More than 40% of insect species are declining and a third are endangered, the analysis found. The rate of extinction is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.
“The main drivers of species declines appear to be in order of importance: i) habitat loss and conversion to intensive agriculture and urbanisation; ii) pollution, mainly that by synthetic pesticides and fertilisers; iii) biological factors, including pathogens and introduced species; and iv) climate change. The latter factor is particularly important in tropical regions, but only affects a minority of species in colder climes and mountain settings of temperate zones. A rethinking of current agricultural practices, in particular a serious reduction in pesticide usage and its substitution with more sustainable, ecologically-based practices, is urgently needed to slow or reverse current trends, allow the recovery of declining insect populations and safeguard the vital ecosystem services they provide.
The economist, Gabriel Zucman, of the University of California, Berkeley, has done pioneering work measuring wealth inequality in the United States. Wealth is notoriously difficult to measure since there are no official statistics measuring wealth (unlike income which is officially measured by the Internal Revenue Service in the US) and also because much wealth is hidden in offshore banking centers (perhaps as much as 8% of all wealth resides in those centers). Zucman has just published a new study on wealth inequality in the US. Zucman found that
“U.S. wealth concentration has followed a marked U-shaped evolution of the last century. It was high in the 1910s and 1920s, with a particularly fast increase in the second half of the 1920s. The top 0.1% wealth share peaked at close to 25% in 1929. It then fell abruptly in the early 1930s (in the context of the Great Depression) and continued to fall gradually from the late 1930s to the late 1940s (in the context of the New Deal and the war economy). After a period of remarkable stability in the 1950s and 1960s, the top 0.1% wealth share reached its low-water mark in the 1970s, and since the early 1980s it has been gradually rising to close to 20% in recent years. U.S. wealth concentration seems to have returned to levels last seen during the Roaring Twenties.”
The market does not correct this trend except in one circumstance: if the wealth available to the lower groups drops below a level that can sustain consumption, then market demand will collapse leading to a depression. That is precisely what happened in 1929 and we are at similar levels now.
The US has nominated David Malpass to lead the World Bank once the current President, Jim Yong Kim steps down. By tradition, the US gets to choose the head of the World Bank and Europe gets to choose the Director of the International Monetary Fund. That process was initiated when the US and Europe were the largest contributors to each institution. But that is no longer the case. Nonetheless, the Trump Administration is acting as if the tradition should continue.
But Malpass is not a good choice for an international organization, although he does represent the views of President Trump. Stewart Patrick assesses Malpass:
“Malpass, for his part, has at times been critical of the Bank, characterizing it as obsolete in an era of accessible private capital markets. While he played a role in shepherding the recent U.S. funding increase, he has also criticized the Bank’s failureto “graduate” countries no longer needing its resources (not least China), which he made a stipulation of the recent capital infusion. More generally, he regards the Bank as overly “intrusive” on its member states, part of a “multilateral system that often drifts away from our values of limited government, freedom, and the rule of law.”
There is much to criticize about the operations of the World Bank, but those criticisms suggest that the world would be better served by someone who takes the idea of economic development as something that departs from the traditional notion of a “bank”. Malpass wrote that the US economy was in great shape in 2007, just before the financial disaster we call the Great Recession of 2008-09. Malpass wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal entitled “Don’t Panic About the Credit Market”.
France has recalled its Ambassador to Italy, an extraordinary event usually reserved to the penultimate step to breaking off diplomatic relations. That it has occurred to two of the most important members of the European Union is difficult to explain. But the rupture reflects the deteriorating relations between the Italian government and the European Union over the Italian budget. It also reflects the populist character of the current Italian government dominated by the eurosceptic 5 Star Movement and the right-wing League Party. The antipathies between Italy and France are deep and complicated, but this immediate action was precipitated by the visit by Luigi Di Maio, the leader of the 5 Star Movement with members of the “yellow vest” movement in France. The Washington Post lists the other issues facing the two states:
“The war of words between the Italians and Macron has touched on immigration, nationalism, neocolonialism and European values. It has spilled over into culture, threatening a planned loan of works by Leonardo da Vinci for a major exhibition at the Louvre in October.”
As Politico describes the da Vinci dispute: “The Louvre wants to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo Da Vinci’s death in October. In 2017 the Italian government agreed to lend the Paris museum much of the work it owns by Da Vinci. But that might now not happen. “Leonardo is Italian, he just died in France,” said Lucia Borgonzoni, Italy’s undersecretary of state for culture, in November. “He’s not called Leonardò, as they call him, but Leonardo,” she added while announcing her intention to renegotiate the deal.” Such is the stuff of world politics today.
The Trump Administration has indicted that it will not meet the deadline to report to Congress on the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi last October. The deadline is one imposed by the Magnitsky Act which requires the President to respond to a request by Congress on certain human rights abuses within 120 days of receipt from the Congressional request. According to Bloomberg:
“The former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker of Tennessee, and the senior Democrat on the panel, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, sent a letter to the administration in October invoking the Magnitsky Act of 2016 to demand an investigation of Khashoggi’s death and determine whether new sanctions should be imposed on Saudi Arabia….
“The New York Times reported Thursday that the crown prince once told another top aide, Turki Aldakhil, that he would use a “bullet” on Khashoggi if the columnist didn’t return to the kingdom and stop his criticism. The Times, citing unidentified current and former U.S. intelligence officials, said the 2017 conversation was intercepted by U.S. spy agencies.”
President Trump has consistently refused to blame the Saudi Crown Prince Salman for the murder despite the CIA’s assessment that the Crown Prince was definitely responsible. Politico points out: “Last year, CIA intelligence overwhelmingly implicated Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the plot to kill Khashoggi, who had criticized the crown prince and members of the royal family. Khashoggi was living in exile in the United States.”
The Magnitsky Act does not seem to offer the President discretion in not responding to a request from Congress, but I am not a lawyer. But it would be difficult for President Trump to deny Salman’s responsibility–and the consequent sanctions on Salman demanded by the Act–in the face of the CIA’s finding.
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