The Trans-Pacific Partnership and other trade deals such as NAFTA and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) have been controversial issues in world politics and have figured prominently in the current American presidential election. I suspect that trade negotiations will be placed on the back-burner for a while because of the controversies (both the French and the German governments think that the TTIP is dead). One key part of these deals is a method of dispute arbitration that sidesteps the normal judicial review of sovereign states–the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clause. The clause gives companies the right to seek damages if the laws or regulations of a state change in a way that damages the profits of the company. But instead of going to court, the ISDS clause creates an arbitration panel that is comprised usually of corporate lawyers. These clauses undermine the integrity of law and should not be adopted by any state.
The Indo-Gangetic Basin stretches east to west over 618 million acres and supplies fresh water to Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. 750 million people rely upon this water, but scientists have found that 60% of the water is too contaminated by either salt or arsenic to drink safely. Moreover, the groundwater is being pumped out at an unsustainable rate. Addressing the problem of access to safe water is going to be the most important issue facing the people in this region for the foreseeable future.
Most Americans do not think very much about how the US military is staffed. Since the onset of the volunteer army, most citizens no longer worry about the draft (even though men at age 18 must register for the draft). Unfortunately, the composition of the US military has changed dramatically in recent years and the trend is for lower-income individuals to join. This change has gone unnoticed, but it has important effects on how the country cares for its veterans, most of whom lack the necessary financial resources to afford the medical care they require. Secondly, lower-income individuals also lack the political clout to make sure that sufficient resources are allocated toward the medical conditions of veterans. When Americans are polled very few are aware of the socioeconomic reshaping of the American military in ways that are significantly different from previous militaries.
The International Geological Congress will be debating whether to declare a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. We are familiar with earlier epochs such as the Jurassic period or the Cretaceous period. These epochs are determined by some sort of a sharp break with a previous period. For example, the end of the Jurassic period is marked by a dramatic increase in the geologic presence of Iridium, a residue of a meteor strike on the planet that ultimately led to the demise of large dinosaurs. The beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch might be marked by the presence of radioactive elements associated with the development of nuclear weapons, the presence of plastics, or the ubiquity of chickens which could not have survived in such numbers without the careful cultivation by human beings. If the Congress decides to label the present period the Anthropocene Epoch, it will mark the end of the Holocene Epoch which has lasted about 12,000 years and was characterized by a warmer climate which allowed humans to become a dominant species. The determination would also indicate that humanity has become a primary shaper of the earth’s geology.
If climate changes develops the way scientists believe it will unfold, the consequences for animal life will be serious. Just like humans, animals will have to move to more hospitable areas if temperatures rise. Nature Conservancy cartographer and analyst Dan Majka has put together a map showing the most likely migration routes and it is an extraordinary graphic. But for these migrations to succeed, humans will have to make sure that the animals can move freely.
The Congressional Budget Office has issued a new report, “Trends in Family Wealth, 1989 to 2013”. Its analysis of the distribution of income in the US is grim:
“In 2013, families in the top 10 percent of the wealth distribution held 76 percent of all family wealth, families in the 51st to the 90th percentiles held 23 percent, and those in the bottom half of the distribution held 1 percent. Average wealth was about $4 million for families in the top 10 percent of the wealth distribution, $316,000 for families in the 51st to 90th percentiles, and $36,000 for families in the 26th to 50th percentiles. On average, families at or below the 25th percentile were $13,000 in debt.”
This maldistribution of wealth is now worse than it was in 1929, just before the onset of the Great Depression. And the trend is toward even greater inequality.
The lefty publication, Jacobin, has published an interview with the economist Elias Ioakimoglou about the unending crisis in Greece. The perspective is Marxist and the analysis is instructive. The European Union has imposed a neoliberal framework on Greece and it has led to a Depression much deeper and more extended than the Great Depression of the 1930s. Sadly, there is almost no chance of an economic recovery in Greece unless the neoliberal policies are rejected.
Rodrigo Duterte, the new President of the Philippines, has been accused of waging a relentless vigilante war against alleged drug dealers and gangsters. The death toll has surpassed 1,800 extrajudicial killings so far, and there does not seem to be any end in sight. There are many in the Philippines that oppose such action, but so far it appears as if Duterte has strong support, even among the most educated classes. What support for working outside of the law means for the future of democracy in the Philippines is unknown, but it is a very dangerous idea.
One possible solution to the growing problem of income inequality is to enact redistributive tax mechanisms. In many respects, most modern societies employ this method by implementing social welfare programs, such as food stamps, for the very poor. But these mechanisms only address the symptoms of poverty and not the underlying inequality responsible for the poverty itself. Curiously, Robert Shiller, an economist at Yale, has written a short essay on the obstacles to a more full-throated approach to solving the problem of inequality and finds that support for using taxes to address that problem is remarkably thin across cultures and among the poor themselves.
The US and China are both facing the same economic problem: the move toward high-end manufacturing that will require far fewer workers than previous industrial processes. These advanced processes will continue to generate great wealth but few jobs, and the competition for markets among those countries that can develop these processes will be fierce. No country will be able to avoid taking all necessary steps to secure markets, such as currency manipulation, selling products below costs, and imposing regulations that will exclude some competitors, and those steps will likely lead to incredible friction.
The world is confronting an unusual circumstance: many of the world’s sovereign states are issuing bonds with negative interest rates. Essentially, investors are so concerned about future economic growth that they are willing to pay sovereign states to protect their money. A clear signal that a country is regarded as a bad economic risk is a rising interest rate–the country has to pay investors to buy its bonds because the investors are afraid that the country might be unable to repay its debts. By that measure, Portugal is in serious trouble since its bonds now command more than a 3% interest rate. We should keep an eye on what happens in the European economy as a whole by watching what happens to Portugal.
The uranium used to create the bomb dropped on the city of Hiroshima by the US in its war against Japan was mined in what was then known as the Belgian Congo and now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. The mine was called Shinkolobwe and it was also a casualty in the bombing of Hiroshima. The miners worked in primitive conditions with no protection against the radioactivity of the uranium (it was 65% uranium, significantly more concentrated than the 1% ore in the US and Canada) and the miners suffered grievously. The significance of the mine was one reason why the US and the USSR competed so vigorously in the liberation of the Belgian Congo in 1960.
Protests have occurred almost daily since early July in the disputed territories of Kashmir and Jammu. Those two states are the only Muslim-majority states in India and they have been disputed since the partition of the British colony into India and Pakistan. The two states have fought three wars over the territories, and Pakistan has been accused of fostering violence in the territories to break them away from Indian control.
Geert Wilders leads the Dutch Freedom Party and is currently one of the more popular politicians in the Netherlands. On Thursday he published his ideas for the upcoming 2017 elections and they are profoundly anti-Islamic. The platform calls for the closure of all mosques and Islamic schools, a ban on the Koran, a ban on Islamic headscarves, and immigration from all Islamic countries.
Geert Wilders [What is it about right-wing hair? Donald Trump? Boris Johnson?]
US President Obama signed into law legislation creating the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, the world’s largest marine refuge. The Monument, comprising 442,000 square miles north of Hawaii, will protect marine life and allow many species to replenish themselves. The refuge is twice the size of the state of Texas and includes many areas considered sacred by native Hawaiians.
Colombia has apparently reached an agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a rebel group that has been waging a war against the government for almost 50 years. The struggle has killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions, and been particularly nasty as it was also wrapped up in the drug trade. The cease-fire was reached about a year ago and the government is pushing for a referendum to solidify the deal.
The US and Iran are playing a cat-and-mouse naval game in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian fast-attack naval craft have been buzzing American vessels this week, and the US finally fired a warning shot at one of the vessels. The tension comes at a time when there was hope that the US and Iran were finally beginning to thaw their relations after the nuclear agreement with Iran was signed. These tensions indicate that issues between the two states are clearly compartmentalized.
Turkey has warned Syrian Kurds who have been fighting Daesh (the Islamic State) along the Turkish border to withdraw to territory east of the Euphrates River. Turkey gave the Kurds a week to withdraw as Turkey maintained its fight to recover control of the city of Jarablus. If Turkey and the Kurds come to blows, we will witness two US allies fighting each other. Apparently the Turks regard the Kurds as more of a threat than Daesh.
Turkey has sent in an armored column of tanks into Syria to take control of the city of Jarablus from Daesh (the Islamic State). The move follows a devastating bombing of a Kurdish celebration that killed many in the city of Gaziantep on 21 August including 22 children. While the move is a welcome one in the fight against Daesh, it is clear that Turkey also has another motive. As one can see in the map below, Kurd forces (the YPG) control territory to the west and east of Jarablus. Turkey is desperate to make sure that Kurdish forces do not control contiguous territory in northern Syria, fearing that the Kurds there will push for their own state. Even though the Kurds are US allies, the US is supporting the Turkish offensive.
Researchers have come up with evidence that human-induced climate change may have started earlier in the industrial age than previously believed. If this interpretation is valid, then the findings suggest that climate is more sensitive to greenhouse gas warming than assumed in most of the climate models. That interpretation is contested and further research is warranted. For the actual paper, click here (it is a very technical paper).
This post has little to do with world politics, but it is about the issue of governance and why so many people around the world are questioning the legitimacy of the system. The Mylan Corporation recently raised the price of a life-saving drug delivery system called the EpiPen. The drug itself, epinephrine, is a very inexpensive generic drug but Mylan bought the rights to the delivery system, an autoinjector that delivers a carefully calibrated dose. When Mylan bought the rights to the EpiPen in 2007, the pens cost about $57 each; the company now charges more than $500 per pen. To make matters worse, many insurance plans do not cover the cost of the EpiPen. What is reprehensible is that the compensation for Mylan’s CEO, Heather Bresch, went from $2,453,456 to $18,931,068, a 671 percent increase between 2007 and 2015 even though the pen changed not one bit.
In a very curious case, the German government has a recommendation on the legislative table that would require all citizens to “stockpile five days of drinking water and 10 days of food supplies.” The report was prepared by the German Interior Ministry and is predicated on the assumption that the country might face developments that could “threaten our existence.” This policy is unusually dramatic and based upon some sort of existential threat that would suggest the complete collapse of the German state for a period of time. The question is what kind of threat is the Interior Ministry worried about?
In September, China will be hosting the G20 meeting, an annual meeting of the heads of the largest economies in the world to discuss the state of the global economy. The upcoming Beijing Review is devoted to the issues that will be on the table. One of those articles addresses the need to rethink globalization. I sincerely doubt that the issue as such will be discussed since it is too cosmic for a useful conversation. But I have no doubts that the issue of globalization will be part of every discussion about every aspect of the global economy such as trade, investment, and migration. The article is a useful overview of ways to think about how globalization should be managed.
Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize Laureate economist and he is quite critical of the ideology of neoliberalism. He has written an essay on the European Union which is pessimistic about the future of the Union. There are seven policies he believes must be changed, and those policies all point to less austerity.
Antarctica looks poised to lose part of one of its ice shelves. That ice is floating on the ocean so if it does break off, it will not raise the sea level. But the chunk of ice that appears likely to break off is roughly the size of the US state of Delaware. Antarctica’s ice shelves are not completely understood so it is hard to determine what the effect of such a large calving might be. The situation, however, does attest to some degree of climate change.
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