WE are beginning to learn more about why US President Trump cancelled Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s trip to North Korea. Apparently, North Korean Foreign Minister, Kim Yong Chol, sent a letter to Mr. Pompeo which is reported to have stated that “the US is still not ready to meet [North Korean] expectations in terms of taking a step forward to sign a peace treaty,” and that the current negotiations are “again at stake and may fall apart.” Additionally, US Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, indicated that the US is prepared to restart military exercises with South Korea which President Trump had suspended last June as a concession to North Korea. The breakdown of the talks with North Korea leaves the US with few options since both Russia and China have eased up on the sanctions against North Korea and they show no willingness to renew them. It is safe to say that Kim Jong-un has outplayed President Trump. We shall see if North Korea resumes bomb or missile testing to test President Trump.
The Atlantic has published an essay on the apparent breakdown in the will of the US, Australia, and Canada to support efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The author of the essay, Robinson Meyer, is blunt about the failure to address climate change:
“Simply put: This kind of failure, writ large, would devastate Earth in the century to come. The world would blow its stated goal of limiting atmospheric temperature rise. Heatwaves might regularly last for six punishing weeks, sea levels could soar by feet in a few short decades, and certain fragile ecosystems—like the delicate Arctic permafrost or the kaleidoscopic plenty of coral reefs—would disappear from the planet entirely.”
The United Nations has charged that high-ranking military officials in Myanmar should be investigated for charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Since August of 2017, the Myanmar military has been expelling a Muslim minority group–the Royingha–from Myanmar. The Buddhist majority in Myanmar consider the Royingha to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh who threaten the stability of the nation despite the fact that many of the Royingha have been living in the Rakhine province of Myanmar for centuries. The process of expulsion has created around 700,000 refugees and killed thousands. The Royingha are not considered citizens of Myanmar and many are now living in refugee camps in miserable conditions. The Diplomat has satellite images of Royingha villages over time which document the destruction of the Royingha habitats since August of 2017. Human Rights Watch gives an excellent overview of the UN report.
Map of the Rakhine Province in Myanmar
Iran and Syria have signed an economic and military cooperation agreement which will undoubtedly unsettle both the US and Israel. The Syrian civil war has been going on since 2011 and has cost the country nearly $400 billion. The war has killed nearly 500,000 people and displaced over 5 million Syrians. Iran and Russia have been the main backers of the government of Bashar al-Assad. Now that the civil war has been tapering off (although it is far too premature to suggest that Assad is in full control of the country), the reconstruction of Syria is now a top priority. But Israel fears Iranian influence in Syria and has asked Russia to limit Iranian influence. Obviously, Russia has little control over Iranian behavior and it also has little incentive to curtail Iranian help to its Syrian ally. Israel is also moving closer to Saudi Arabia, a Sunni Muslim majority country which is adamantly opposed to the interests of Iran, a Shia Muslim majority country. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia fear the growth of Iranian influence, which now stretches from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.
Iran’s Growing Influence in the Middle East
US President Trump announced that the US and Mexico had reached an agreement on certain revisions to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In his comments from the White House today, the President said:
“It’s a big day for trade, big day for our country. A lot of people thought we’d never get here, because we all negotiate tough. And this is a tremendous thing. This has to do — they used to call it NAFTA. We’re going to call it the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement, and we’ll get rid of the name NAFTA….”
“But I think we’ll give them a chance to probably have a separate deal. We can have a separate deal or we can put it into this deal. I like to call this deal the United States-Mexico Trade Agreement. I think it’s an elegant name. I think NAFTA has a lot of bad connotations for the United States because it was a rip-off. It was a deal that was a horrible deal for our country, and I think it’s got a lot of bad connotations to a lot of people. And so we will probably — you and I will agree to the name.”
The statement is a bit misleading. The changes in the US-Mexico arrangement involve changing the percentage of automobile components that must be manufactured in North America from 62.5% to 75%. Additionally, according to the New York Times: “Under the changes agreed to by Mexico and the United States, car companies would be required to manufacture at least 75 percent of an automobile’s value in North America under the new rules, up from 62.5 percent previously, in order to qualify for Nafta’s zero tariffs. They will also be required to use more local steel, aluminum and auto parts, and have 40 percent to 45 percent of the car made by workers earning at least $16 an hour, a boon to both the United States and Canada and a win for labor unions, which have been among Nafta’s biggest critics.” NAFTA, however, also involves Canada, which has voluntarily agreed to sit out on the US-Mexico negotiations, waiting for a settlement. Canada has to approve the agreement before it becomes official. Moreover, NAFTA was approved by Congress and any revision would have to be approved by Congress. What is interesting about the agreement with Mexico is that it internationalizes Mr. Trump’s tariffs–the net effect will be to raise automobile prices in the US.
The Council of Foreign Relations has published an analysis of the current role of Boko Haram in Nigeria. The group is an extremist Islamist group (Boko Haram roughly translates as “western education is a sin”) located primarily in northeastern Nigeria. At one point it controlled a large tract of territory and claimed allegiance to the ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Recently, however, it has resorted to hit and run attacks as the Nigerian military has tried to get control of the region. According to the Council:
“The United Nations’ refugee agency estimates the conflict has displaced 2.4 million people and put more than seven million at risk of starvation. It has also led to the degradation of infrastructure, including the closing or destruction of more than half of the region’s schools, and the near-complete breakdown of an already weak public health system.”
The group seems be riven by ideological fissures and the pressure from the Nigerian central government: its current strategy of disrupting life in Nigeria reflects that weakness but is nonetheless destructive.
The RAND Corporation has released an essay on the likelihood of an Israeli-Iranian conflict which suggests that the chances for an open conflict are increasing. The US and Israel are clearly concerned about Iranian influence over the Syrian government, and the Israelis have made overtures to the Russians, who also support the Syrian government, to work out a deal for limiting Iranian influence. The authors do not think that such overtures will be successful;
“While Russia may be interested in limiting the Iranian presence over the longer term, it has little interest in pressing for Iranian force withdrawals since both Moscow and Damascus are dependent on Iranian-backed militias to secure and hold territory. As such, neither the Syrian regime nor Russia are likely to acquiesce to U.S. and Israeli demands for the expulsion of Iranian-linked militias. Therefore, viewing any Russian proposition indicating it will secure the removal of Iranian and LH (Lebanese Hezbollah) forces in Syria as genuine would be imprudent.”
The escalation of tariffs between the US and China reflects a profound difference of opinion by each side about which side is more vulnerable. The US has raised its tariffs largely because if believes that China is more dependent on US products than US consumers are on Chinese products. If one looks at the total trade balance, one would suspect that this vulnerability indeed exists. In 2017 the US trade deficit with China was $375 billion: “The trade deficit exists because U.S. exports to China were only $130 billion while imports from China were $506 billion.” In an interview with CNBC on 22 August, US Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, said:
“They are not going to give that up easily. Naturally they will retaliate a little bit, but at the end of the day we have many more bullets than they do. They know it. We have a much stronger economy than they have. They know that, too, and the thing they have been underestimating is how patriotic the Americans, including the ones who have been hit with retaliation really are. They’ll know pretty soon.”
“China knows the US has many more bullets? Chinese tech behemoth Ailbaba’s vice chairman, Joseph Tsai, didn’t get the memo. Speaking to analysts on the company’s quarterly earnings call, as reported by Business Insider on Friday, Tsai said he is not concerned about the trade war.
“’This coming November, China will hold the world’s largest import exhibition in Shanghai that will showcase products from all over the world,’ Tsai said. ‘If US goods become too expensive due to tariffs, Chinese consumers can shift to domestic producers or imports from other parts of the world.’
“Others quoted in the article agreed. Xiaojia Zhi and Helen Qiao, China economists at Bank of America, said they are already seeing the shift.
“’We believe the Chinese government has more influence on how much and where to buy its imports than the US government’s influence on its own importers,’ the economists wrote in a note to clients. ‘In other words, China could shift its imports from the US to purchases from other markets relatively more easily than the US administration pushing businesses to other alternative countries for outsourcing or imports.’”
This fundamental difference in perceptions is not something that is easy to dismiss. Indeed, these perceptions are deeply rooted in the historical memories of both countries, and reflect the belief in the exceptionalism of both.
The US has announced that it will cut a further $200 million from planned humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. In so doing, the US has cut off all pretense of being an honest broker between the Isarelis and the Palestinians, a trend that has been evident since the election of President Trump. President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel destroyed whatever faith the Palestinian leadership may have had in negotiations and the US decision to cut off aid to Palestinian refugees through the the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). But the move to cut off humanitarian aid now makes explicit the US belief that the Palestinian people are legitimate pawns in the effort to buttress the Israeli claims to all the entirety of the Occupied Territories.
Two days ago, US President Trump apparently watched a television news broadcast by Tucker Carlson in which he asserted that the South African government is seizing land from white farmers without compensation. President Trump then tweeted this:
I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. “South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.” @TuckerCarlson@FoxNews
7:28 PM – 22 Aug 2018
It is true that South African began a long process of buying agricultural land and redistributing it to black South Africans. That effort was an attempt to undo the damage done during the colonial period in which the entire land area of what we now call South Africa was claimed by colonizers from the Netherlands and Great Britain with no compensation to the indigenous peoples who lived on and worked the land. As of 2016 in an audit by the South African magazine Landbouweekblad and Agri SA, the distribution of land in South Africa is as follows:
“White farmers’ ownership of agricultural ground declined from 85.1% in 1994 (82.5 million hectares) to 73.3% in December 2016, and altogether 5 million hectares of agricultural ground was bought by black people in this period, as well as 1.7 million hectares for purposes other than agriculture. In the same period, government purchased and redistributed only 2.1 million hectares of agricultural ground.”
The US press questioned US State Department about the President’s tweet. The exchange shows how well informed the press was about the matter and how ill-prepared the State Department was to answer their questions:
“QUESTION: Let’s start with South Africa. You will have seen, I’ll bet – hard to miss – the President’s tweet last night in which he instructed Secretary Pompeo to look into land expropriations and – from white farmers in South Africa. I’m wondering if the Secretary takes this seriously at all.
“Now, the reason I’m asking that is because I went to the Human Rights Report for South Africa, the one that the State Department puts out, and it doesn’t mention anything about this being a problem. I would think that this is the report where it would mention it. In fact, when it talks of discrimination, it says most of it is directed at blacks, and the incidence of racism that it points out are all directed at blacks as well. So does the Secretary actually intend to look into this?
“MS NAUERT: Well, I can tell you that the Secretary and the President certainly discussed it. The President asked the Secretary to look closely at the current state of action in South Africa related to land reform. This is something that has been going on for many decades, the conversation and debate about land reform there. I should mention that the expropriation of land without compensation – our position is that that would risk sending South Africa down the wrong path. We continue to encourage a peaceful and transparent public debate about what we consider to be a very important issue, and the South Africans certainly do as well.”
…..
“QUESTION: So given that, according to the State Department’s own reporting that Matt mentioned, discrimination and actions against blacks in South Africa is a far, far bigger problem than this, what is the Secretary’s view on what is happening right now, and what is he going to do after the President’s tweet?
“MS NAUERT: I can just tell you that it was discussed with the President and he will focus on this issue, and I’ll leave it at that, okay.
“QUESTION: What does focus on it mean?
“MS NAUERT: Well, he will take a look at it, just as he had discussed with the President.”
Mr. Trump’s tweet, alleging “large scale killing of farmers” was completely uninformed and unnecessarily inflammatory. The South African government denounced Mr. Trump’s allegations, according to the Guardian:
“US diplomatic representatives have also been told of Pretoria’s disappointment with “Washington’s failure to use available diplomatic channels”, a reference to Trump’s use of social media.
“A statement from the Department for International Relations said Trump’s tweet was based on ‘lobbying by certain South African lobby groups that seek to derail and frustrate the land redistribution programme’ and ‘serves only to polarise debate on this sensitive and crucial matter’.
“’The government of South Africa wishes to caution against alarmist, false, inaccurate and misinformed, as well as – in some cases – politically motivated statements that do not reflect the policies and intentions of the South African government,’ it said.”
Land Ownership in South Africa, 1994 and 2018
Yesterday, US Secretary of State Pompeo announced that he was going to go to North Korea for another set of negotiations on the process of denuclearization. Pompeo also announced that he was appointing someone to institutionalize the negotiations between the US and North Korea since the US does not have an Ambassador in North Korea (or, as yet, even in South Korea, one of the US’s most important allies): “Pompeo said that Stephen Biegun, the vice president of international governmental affairs at Ford, would handle day-to-day talks with Pyongyang and that the two men would travel to North Korea next week to resume the negotiations.” Today, US President Trump announced that the trip was cancelled, even as the State Department was briefing allies on the status of the negotiations. Apparently, the President was discouraged by the lack of progress in the discussions since North Korea as insisted on formally ending the Korean War as a precondition for further discussions. Additionally, in the tweet announcing the cancellation, the President also cited lack of support from China, reflecting the dissatisfaction between the US and China over trade negotiations which ended yesterday without any progress. According to the BBC:
“The escalating trade row between the US and China has now seen each side impose 25% tariffs on a total of $50bn of one another’s goods
“In his interview with Reuters, Mr Liu said: ‘China doesn’t wish to engage in a trade war, but we will resolutely respond to the unreasonable measures taken by the United States.
“‘If the United States persists with these measures, we will correspondingly take action to protect our interests.'”
NASA has an extraordinary website which uses thermal imaging to detect fires on the earth’s surface. The blog site associated with the images gives the following explanation for all the red dots on the image:
“The world is on fire. Or so it appears in this image from NASA’s Worldview. The red points overlaid on the image designate those areas that by using thermal bands detect actively burning fires. Africa seems to have the most concentrated fires. This could be due to the fact that these are most likely agricultural fires. The location, widespread nature, and number of fires suggest that these fires were deliberately set to manage land. Farmers often use fire to return nutrients to the soil and to clear the ground of unwanted plants. While fire helps enhance crops and grasses for pasture, the fires also produce smoke that degrades air quality.
“Elsewhere the fires, such as in North America are wildfires for the most part. In South America, specifically Chile has had horrendous numbers of wildfires this year. A study conducted by Montana State University found that: “Besides low humidity, high winds and extreme temperatures—some of the same factors contributing to fires raging across the United States—central Chile is experiencing a mega drought and large portions of its diverse native forests have been converted to more flammable tree plantations, the researchers said.” More on this study can be found here: https://phys.org/news/2018-08-massive-south-central-chile.html#jCp
“However, in Brazil the fires are both wildfires and man-made fires set to clear crop fields of detritus from the last growing season. Fires are also commonly used during Brazil’s dry period to deforest land and clear it for raising cattle or other agricultural or extraction purposes. The problem with these fires is that they grow out of control quickly due to climate issues. Hot, dry conditions coupled with wind drive fires far from their original intended burn area. According to the Global Fire Watch site (between 8/15 and 8/22) shows: 30,964 fire alerts.
“Australia is also where you tend to find large bushfires in its more remote areas. Hotter, drier summers in Australia will mean longer fire seasons – and urban sprawl into bushland is putting more people at risk for when those fires break out. For large areas in the north and west, bushfire season has been brought forward a whole two months to August – well into winter, which officially began 1 June. According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (Bom), the January to July period 2018 was the warmest in NSW since 1910. As the climate continues to change and areas become hotter and drier, more and more extreme bushfires will break out across the entire Australian continent.
Heiko Maas, the German Foreign Minister, has written a very provocative essay for Handelsblatt, a German business outlet. The very beginning of the essay raises a very serious question that liberal societies have not asked since 1945:
“The fact that the Atlantic has widened politically is by no means solely due to Donald Trump. The US and Europe have been drifting apart for years. The overlapping of values and interests that shaped our relationship for two generations is decreasing. The binding force of the East-West conflict is history. These changes began well before Trump’s election — and will survive his presidency well into the future. That is why I am skeptical when some ardent trans-Atlanticist simply advises us to sit this presidency out.”
Maas goes further and insists that Europe must take a more active role in filling the vacuum created by the US withdrawal. That position will no doubt make many Europeans uncomfortable. But that strategy also calls for Europe to take a more assertive stance vis-a-vis the US: “And where the USA crosses the line, we Europeans must form a counterweight — as difficult as that can be. That is also what balance is about.” Specifically, Maas called for an alternative financial payment system that will circumvent the US sanctions on Iran. We shall see if this idea is embraced by other European states and the Union as a whole.
James Bradley has written a long essay about the state of the world’s oceans for the Australian journal, The Monthly, He touches on a number of different issues that measure the health of coral reefs, fishing stocks, and the varieties of pollution that threaten the life-sustaining attributes of the oceans. It is a profoundly disturbing essay, set against the backdrop of the fecundity of the oceans before humans began to exploit and misuse its resources:
“It is difficult for us to imagine the oceans before humans transformed them, and how they teemed with life. In Anna Clark’s history of fishing in Australia, The Catch, she describes the “fishing Eden” that greeted early Europeans: “the sea floor off the west coast of Tasmania carpeted red with crayfish; fish so thick that nets could be set at any time of the day; an ‘astonishing magnitude’ of Australian salmon; and mountains of mullet that migrated annually up the east coast”. This accords with James Cook’s and Joseph Banks’ descriptions of the density of marine life they found in Botany Bay, where the crew speared stingrays weighing as much as 152 kilograms and reported catching “about 300 pounds weight of fish” in just “3 or 4 hauls” of the net. In Tasmania, whales congregated in the Derwent River in such numbers they were a hazard to shipping, while on the other side of the globe, off the coast of Cornwall, a shoal of sardines was spotted in 1836 that stretched for well over 100 kilometres. Today there are approximately 90,000 nesting female green turtles left worldwide, but studies suggest that when Europeans arrived in the Americas there were more than 50 million in the Caribbean alone. Reports describe them filling the ocean from horizon to horizon as they grazed upon the seagrass that surrounded the Cayman Islands; as late as the 18th century, ships en route to the Caymans could navigate through darkness by the sound of the turtles’ shells knocking together as they fed. Further back again the Roman writer Oppian describes a Mediterranean so full of fish it was possible to catch tuna by simply dropping a log with a spike on it into the water.”
Bradley then gives statistics on the rapid depletion of fishing stocks and the extensive pollution choking the oceans, and finally concludes:
“Yet while we are accustomed to thinking of the ocean as limitless, it is not. We have pushed many of its inhabitants to the brink of extinction and beyond. We have choked its waters with plastics and other pollutants, leaching poisons into the bodies of fish and other animals as well as ourselves. We have already irreversibly altered its ecology, its biology, even its very chemistry.”
Political action to protect the oceans is very difficult because humans have defined the high seas as a “common”, independent of sovereign control. T save the oceans, that mentality must change.
Saudi Arabia intends to execute Israa al-Ghomgham, a noted human rights activist in the country. If the execution is carried out, al-Ghomgham will be the first woman ever executed for efforts to protect human rights in the country. According to Reuters: “At least 13 women have been arrested since May. While a number have been released, nine remain held without charge.” Human RIghts Watch describes the situation:
“The Public Prosecution, which reports directly to the king, accused the detained activists of several charges that do not resemble recognizable crimes, including ‘participating in protests in the Qatif region,’ ‘incitement to protest,’ ‘chanting slogans hostile to the regime,’ ‘attempting to inflame public opinion,’ ‘filming protests and publishing on social media,’ and ‘providing moral support to rioters.’ It called for their execution based on the Islamic law principle of ta’zir, in which the judge has discretion over the definition of what constitutes a crime and over the sentence. Authorities have held all six activists in pretrial detention and without legal representation for over two years. Their next court date has been scheduled for October 28, 2018.”
Maersk is the world’s largest container shipping company and it has announced plans to send one of its container ships through Arctic waters to test the feasibility of that route. The possibility of a northern shipping route would shave off many days of transport and only recently has become feasible because of the substantial melting of “old ice” on the northern tip of Greenland. The Arctic Sea Ice Blog is a very reliable source of information on climate conditions in the Arctic and one of its most recent posts makes this observation:
“A quite spectacular event took place during the past two weeks, and if it had continued for a while longer, I’m sure it would’ve been reported widely. It’s something I’ve semi-jokingly alluded to when setting up this blog back in 2010, in my third blog post called Dire Straits, and a partial answer to the question commenter fredt34* asked at the time:
“The big hole opening in East Greenland re-activated my interest for this question: will we see Greenland being circumnavigable this year? If not, when?
“That was July 23rd 2010, and now a little over 8 years later, we have almost seen it happen: a corridor of open water between Fram Strait and the Lincoln Sea (where Nares Strait starts).”
NASA released the video below in 2016 and the situation now is even more extreme. We are not sure what the long-term consequences of sea ice melt in the Arctic will be, but many of the possible scenarios are dire.
The Great Recession of 2008-09 damaged many national economies but none as seriously as the Greek economy. The budget deficits that the Greeks had run up prior to the recession were impossible to manage and Greece was forced into three bailouts financed by the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank (commonly referred as the troika). These bailouts required Greece to undertake draconian cuts to virtually every aspect of government spending, including pensions, food and housing subsidies, and government employment. The end result was a dramatic shrinking of the GDP of the country and it does not appear as if the cuts really led to an environment of economic growth as promised by the troika. But the privation imposed on Greece was also a message to other European states with budget deficits, as noted by James Galbraith:
“But the damage done extends far beyond Greece. The cynicism and brutality of what happened there is for everyone to see. The fact that Europe imposed a policy of privation on one of its weakest members—not for its own sake, and not with any expectation of economic success, but to intimidate the Italians and the French, as the German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble conceded to the Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis privately in 2015—was not lost on British voters who chose Brexit in 2016. The Greek debacle helped to turn the French left against Europe, and fueled the inchoate coalition now in power in Italy. The German and east European far right is surely not motivated by sympathy—on the contrary, they despise the Greeks. But they do resent the supposed “solidarity”—a fiction if ever there was one—that Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and her allies invoked to sell their parliaments and voters on the idea of the Greek loans.”
Needless to say, the recent improvement in the Greek economy, as well as for the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese economies, occurred during a period when the global economy was expanding. It is hard to tell what will happen if the global economy slows down, and the debts of these countries will become more difficult to service.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has cancelled two large infrastructure projects being funded by China to implement the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative. (BRI) The Malaysian decision is based on two considerations. First, Malaysia fears the economic costs of the debts involved in the projects. Second, the Prime Minister has voiced concerns over Chinese influence through the BRI. According to the Financial Times:
“Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has warned against ‘a new version of colonialism’, in a pointed expression of Asian unease about China’s increasing economic and political influence in the region.
“‘We should always remember that the level of development of countries are not all the same. We do not want a situation where there is a new version of colonialism happening because poor countries are unable to compete with rich countries, therefore we need fair trade.’”
“Over years of construction and renegotiation with China Harbor Engineering Company, one of Beijing’s largest state-owned enterprises, the Hambantota Port Development Project distinguished itself mostly by failing, as predicted. With tens of thousands of ships passing by along one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, the port drew only 34 ships in 2012.
“And then the port became China’s.
“Mr. Rajapaksa was voted out of office in 2015, but Sri Lanka’s new government struggled to make payments on the debt he had taken on. Under heavy pressure and after months of negotiations with the Chinese, the government handed over the port and 15,000 acres of land around it for 99 years in December.”
The Chinese strategy mirrors the US use of “dollar diplomacy” in the early 20th century to gain control over the economies of several Central American states.
Origins is an online journal for students of history, In the current issue it asked three historians to examine the historical roots of the rise of populism in three countries: the US, the Philippines, and Hungary. The comparative histories make for an interesting read. But perhaps the most important insight of the essays is that “populism” has deep roots and that its rise in the world today should not have been unexpected. The editor’s note to the essays explains the reasons why the world seems to have caught unaware:
“After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western politicians and commentators trumpeted the triumph of liberal democracy. Around the world, it seemed, democracy was on the march—in the former communist regimes of Eastern Europe, in large parts of Africa, and elsewhere in the developing world. Now, even the most optimistic must concede that the democratic wave has stalled and, in many places, is retreating. Voters across the globe have embraced some version of “populism” as a backlash against liberal democracy.”
The histories suggest that the rise of populism will likely not be a permanent feature of future politics, but that is is difficult to predict a turn away from that perspective. David Bromwich has written a long, but highly intelligent, essay for The London Review of Books about how Trump defines his own unique brand of populism–“rich but not refined”. There is a strong ring of truth in the essay:
“Yet in two respects, the authoritarian danger does resemble that of the 1930s in Europe. Trump believes that a unitary bond links him to the real people. He is their voice. And Republican moderates have almost extinguished themselves as a political species. Though party grandees as various as McCain, Romney, G.W. and Jeb Bush declined to support Trump against Clinton in 2016, and the Tea Party favourite Ted Cruz postponed his endorsement until the eleventh hour, congressional Republicans have settled on a policy of co-operation for the sake of party political advantage. Should one apply the word ‘collaborator’ to such people? The word has a certain appropriateness, in spite of the incompleteness of the analogy. The Republican Party began by legitimating Trump and has gone on to normalise the extreme aberration in a way that recalls the passive compliance of King Victor Emmanuel III in 1922 and Field Marshal Hindenburg in 1933.”
1937 Poster Showing King Victor Emmanuel III and Benito Mussolini
1933 Photograph of Field Marshal Hindenburg and Adolf Hitler
It seems as if US President Trump’s approach to foreign policy is highly compartmentalized. That is to say, he does not necessarily see the links between trade policy, strategic policy, or diplomatic strategy. Instead, he pursues each objective as if it were completely independent from other objectives. Thus, he imposes tariffs on China, while at the same time asking for Chinese cooperation in sanctioning Iran. But his policy myopia ignores the way other states perceive US actions as part of a possible coordinated strategy; they tend to link policies as a chess game, not a game of checkers. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Mr. Trump’s trade policy toward China. He sees the issue as purely an economic issue. The Chinese view US policies as part of a larger US strategy to contain the rise of China as a world power. The South China Morning Post explains the perspective:
“Cheng Li, a China expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said that along with trade, a long list of security and other disputes with the US had posed a political dilemma for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“’If it’s only on the economic and trade front, the Chinese leadership would be willing to compromise,’ Li said.
“The escalating trade tensions had not only hit key engines of China’s economic development – including the Greater Bay Area, the Yangtze River Delta and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Corridor – but also had clear implications for the Chinese stock market and even property prices, Li said.
“’That really undermines Xi’s power base – the middle class, which is the most important stabilising force in China – and therefore we began to see criticism and challenges from the intellectuals and the public about Xi’s foreign policy,’ Li said.”
Foreign policy requires a long-term and systemic point of view, not a short-term bilateral transactionalist perspective.
Floods in the Indian state of Kerala have killed more than 350 people and displaced more than 800,000. The floods are the worst in a century and the National Reviewnumber of photographs has a documenting the destruction and the misery of those affected. The rains have begun to subside but it will take years to repair the damage done and millions right now are in desperate straits.
On this day in 1953, the Iranian Premier Mohammed Mosaddeq was overthrown and replaced by the Shah of Iran. Mosaddeq had been elected in 1951 and one of the first acts of the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) was to nationalize the oil reserves of the country which had been leased to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now know as BP). Anglo-Iranian prevented other states from purchasing Iranian oil, claiming that it was stolen, and, since oil exports were the primary source of revenues for the government, the Iranian economy slowly declined. By 1953, after having been rebuffed by the US for economic aid, the Iranian government turned to the Soviet Union for aid. US President Eisenhower interpreted that request as a move toward a Communist state and he authorized the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to force the Mosaddeq government from office:
“A previously excised section of an internal CIA history titled “The Battle for Iran“ released in 2013, reads: “The military coup that overthrew Mosaddeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government.”
The son of the ousted Shah came to power and stayed in power until he also was overthrown by a popular revolution supporting the Ayatollah Khomeini who established the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. Since that time, US-Iranian relations have been intensely hostile. The sanctions that the US wishes to impose on the sale of Iranian oil on 4 November are remarkably similar to the legal actions taken by Anglo-Iranian–they are designed to force a change in the government by fostering discontent within the Iranian population. One could hardly fault the Iranians for believing that the US will also plan to overthrow the government or force a regime change. Americans may have forgotten the role of their government in 1953, but the Iranian people certainly have not.
World Politics News 