World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

Joe Cocker is dead at age 70.

“Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.”
– – – – William Shakespeare “Macbeth”

North Korea has vehemently denied any involvement in the hacking of Sony computers.   US President Obama accused North Korea of the act, and the suspicion is that the hacking was designed to prevent the release of a movie about the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jung-un.  Sony pictures has decided to not release the movie to theaters on Christmas Day, raising serious concerns about future problems that may arise from similar extortion attempts  to deny free expression.   Obama has declared that the US will respond “proportionately” to the attack, but it is not all clear what that may mean with respect to North Korea.  On a similar matter, Facebook has been accused of censorship because it has taken down a page calling for mass protests in support of Russian President Valdimir Putin’s most prominent opponent Alexei Navalny.  The suspicion is that Facebook gave in to pressure from Russian authorities.

Tunisia has essentially completed its transition from an authoritarian state to a democratic state as a Presidential election seems to have gone in favor of Beji Caid Essebsi, the candidate for the secular Nidaa Tounes Party.  That party already controls the Parliament, and the country that started off the “Arab Spring” in January of 2011 has completed its transition.  Tunisia stands as the lone Arab state so far that has gone so far.

Today is the Winter Solstice, which many people regard as the shortest period of visible light in the Northern hemisphere.  Curiously, it is not the day of the earliest sunset or the latest sunrise because of the difference between “clock time” and “solar time.”  Unfortunately, it is also not the coldest period of the year.  We have to wait until January before we can expect temperatures to begin to rise.  No matter–we will turn the corner on winter soon.  Get those shorts ready!

Spain has been under an EU/IMF/ECB austerity program for several years as it has tried to reduce its budget deficit to less than 3% of its Gross Domestic Product (as required by eurozone rules). Part of the austerity program requires the withdrawal of government supports or subsidies for poorer individuals.  One such program was rent controls which are scheduled to expire at the end of this month.  The result is that many small businesses are going out of business because the rents are too high.  According to The Guardian:

Up to 20,000 small Spanish businesses could be forced to close when rent controls are abolished at the end of this month, according to the self-employed workers union. Many of the closures will be emblematic shops that shape the urban landscape in cities such as Madrid, Granada and Barcelona.

The Camisería Hernando has been in business since 1857 and has occupied the same shop on Madrid’s Gran Vía for 50 years but is closing after the rent shot up from €3,000 to €30,000 a month.

In their place will come larger retail and chain stores that can afford the rents.  Soon, many Spanish cities will look just like American cities.

Imperialism takes many forms, and the travels of Chinese Admiral Zheng He suggest that overseas exploration need not inevitably lead to colonization.  The Admiral made seven voyages to the Indian Ocean between 1405 to 1433, ultimately leading to the east coast of Africa.  His explorations were the only sustained forays abroad made by China, and the Chinese never followed up on his activities after the last voyage.  His trading patterns contrast sharply with the European patterns in the same areas.

A lesson for all of us:

The shockwaves from the school massacre in Pakistan continue to reverberate.  But the tragedy has also shed light on the issue of terrorism as a serious problem for Pakistani society.  Since 2001, more than 40,000 innocents have been killed by extremists.  And schools are a particular target–more than 800 schools have been attacked since 2009.

Boko Haram has struck again in Nigeria, this time kidnapping as many as 185 women and girls near the town of Chibok.  The attack appears to have been a carefully designed military attack that left many men dead and the village destroyed.  The Nigerian government continues to demonstrate its inability to control the insurgents, and the refugee problem in northeastern Nigeria is very serious and untenable.

Russian President Putin gave his annual press conference, and it lasted over three hours.  He acknowledged the serious economic crisis facing Russia but blamed the West for deliberately trying to weaken the Russian state.   Moreover, he argued that the Russian economy would return to normal in no more than two years.   Putin also indicated that he was willing to discuss a peaceful resolution to the crisis in Ukraine, but did not spell out any concrete steps that he would take toward that end.

After more than 50 years, the US has finally agreed to restore ties to Cuba.  It is safe to say that the embargo placed on Cuba by the US to undermine the regime of Fidel Castro was probably the most futile policy ever implemented.  The reluctance of the US to admit failure, even as some of its most loyal allies (Canada and Mexico) ignored the embargo, was a profound embarrassment. While only the US Congress can fully lift the embargo, President Obama deserves a lot of credit for the decision to restore relations.

Bloomberg News surveyed a number of foreign policy experts and asked them what potential scenarios for 2015 worried them the most.  The list of possible problems is truly depressing.  What is most likely, however, is that the issue that will concern us the most next year is probably not on this list.

Many of the signatories to the Fourth Geneva Convention which outlines the responsibilities of an occupying power after a war has occurred met in Geneva and issued a consensus ruling that Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories violates the Convention.   Israel, the US, Australia, and Canada did not participate in the meeting.  The ruling will likely have no effect, but it comes as there is a movement in the UN Security Council to set a time limit on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

The Pakistan Taliban (Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP)) launched an attack on a school in Peshawar that killed at least 132 people.   The brutality of the attack was without precedent in Pakistani history, and many analysts suspect that this attack will precipitate a backlash against the radical group and strengthen the government’s efforts to isolate the extremists.  The attack was in response to government efforts to eradicate the strongholds of the group in some of the frontier areas of the country.

There is still no hard information on the 43 student teachers that went missing in the town of Iguala in Mexico.  However, those missing students are just the tip of the iceberg in a terrible situation in Mexico where an average of 8 people a day “disappear.”   Sadly, the country suffers from drug wars between various cartels and innocent people (invariably) are the primary victims of this chaos.

Jon Stewart’s brilliance is the perfect antidote to the pablum being spewed by news media all over the world.  In this episode he eviscerates those who doubt that the US tortured human beings in the “Global War on Terror.”

Denmark has laid claim to the North Pole based upon an extension of the continental shelf from Greenland, which is administered by Denmark.   Denmark will submit its claim to the UN which will adjudicate the matter.  Both Canada and Russia have made similar claims.  All five countries that abut the Arctic Circle has expressed keen interests in developing what are believed to be significant petroleum reserves in the region.  The obsession with territoriality continues in world politics.

At 1 am on Monday, the Russian Central Bank raised its interest rates from 10% to 17%.  The move was an attempt to prevent the further decline in the value of the Russian ruble, which has lost more than half its value in recent days.  I suspect that the effort will be in vain.  Even high interest rates will not entice investors to send money to a rapidly deteriorating economy.  The Russian Economics Ministry is predicting that the Russian economy will contract by 0.8% next year.

Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s coalition won a super-majority of seats in the snap election Abe called a few weeks ago.   The outcome assures that Abe will be able to pursue his economic policy of stimulus and his bid to beef up the Japanese military.   Interestingly, although Abe’s coalition won a super-majority, his party, the Liberal Democratic Party, actually lost seats.  Moreover, turnout for the election was significantly lower than the turnout in 2012 when Abe last won a majority.  Those two facts suggest that the outcome of the election is a little more nuanced than the final count suggests.

Shinzo Abe

Haiti’s Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe has resigned after a presidential commission raised serious questions about his effectiveness.   He and the government have received serious criticisms after the failure to hold scheduled elections last October.  That failure has led to a completely ineffective Senate since it has led to repeated failures to achieve a quorum.  Haiti cannot afford to have such a dysfunctional government–its people need much more effective governance.

The US Congress has passed the Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014 which authorizes President Obama to provide lethal military aid to Ukraine.  Fortunately, the bill does not require President Obama to provide such aid–such a move would have been outrageously provocative, as opposed to the moderately provocative move endorsed by the bill.  The last thing that should be done in the current Ukrainian crisis is for another outside power to contribute to the lethality of military action.

One of the more curious arguments against the publication of the Senate’s report on US torture during the “Global War on Terror” was that the information would add fodder to the extremists who wish to bring harm to the US.  It is unclear why this argument received any credibility at all:  much was already known about the US use of torture.  Moreover, groups such as the Islamic State hardly believe in human rights, and have proudly displayed behavior which clearly belong in the same barbaric category of torture.  More likely is the argument that those who opposed publication were more afraid of the reaction of the American people.  Unfortunately, the American people are actually divided on the legitimacy of torture.

The climate change talks in Lima, Peru, have ended and the conference failed to reach any meaningful agreements on restraining the emissions of greenhouse gases.  According to The Guardian:

“By the time the final draft text appeared, it had been stripped of language that would have required the emissions cuts offered by countries to keep warming below the two-degree target. It was even unclear whether those targets would be subjected to a serious review.”

The failure to reach an agreement is a major setback to efforts to prevent a rise in global temperature of less than 2° C.

For the first time China has commemorated the anniversary of the Japanese massacre of over 300,000 Chinese in the city of Nanjing in 1937.   The willingness to commemorate the tragedy is an index of the extent to which China is willing to admit its weaknesses in the early 20th Century.  Chinese President Xi took the occasion to denounce the rebirth of Japanese militarism, but also suggested that the massacre was caused by a small group of individuals in Japan.

The US Congress barely passed a budget today.  The passage of the bill was threatened, in part, by the opposition of economic progressives to a part of the bill that repealed part of previous legislation that exempted Federal Deposit insurance for bank holdings known as “derivatives.”  Derivatives are not physical assets such as a bank deposit.  They are, rather, bets on the expected future value of certain physical assets.  For example, you can make a deal with someone else that the price of oil will go up by $10.  If the price does go up by that amount, you get paid.  If the price fails to go up by that amount, you must pay.  Such bets are fine in a casino, where one has to pay immediately when a game is over.  The problem with financial derivatives is that people buy and sell those derivatives even before the outcome of the bet is clear.  So, in essence, banks can now use the Federal Deposit Insurance money to get bailed out if their derivative bets fail.

The problem with the legislation is that it takes away the pain of making a bad bet.  It therefore encourages riskier behavior.  It hardly seems appropriate to use public money to insulate banks from bad bets, particularly since if the bet turns out to be a good one, all the benefits accrue only to the bank.  Additionally, however, the size of these bets is huge.  Banks  currently have about $303 trillion in derivatives;  at the same time, the banks have only about $14 trillion in physical assets.  The following chart breaks down the distribution of assets vs. derivatives for major banks:

It is not at all clear how the Federal Deposit Insurance Company (FDIC) can handle the magnitude of these risks.

The climate talks in Lima, Peru, are entering the final day of the conference.  As of yesterday, the delegates had successfully written one paragraph, and the obstacle to progress is an old one.  The idea that rich and poor countries should have different standards for climate change responsibilities (an idea known as “common but differentiated responsibilities”) is entrenched in the 1992 UN Convention on Climate Change.  The idea is rooted in the truth that rich countries should shoulder the heaviest burdens for ameliorating climate change, but also rests on a partial truth that rich countries are principal polluters.  With the economic emergence of India and China, it is no longer the case that only rich countries are polluters of global dimensions.  The UN needs to come to grips with the fact that exemptions for poor countries that also contribute to the global problem no longer make environmental sense even if the exemptions make sense in terms of economic justice.

Poland has expressed deep concern over Russian military activities in the Baltic region.  On Monday, there were more than 30 Russian flights in the region.  Although none of the flights intruded upon national airspace, the level of activity is unprecedented, signalling a level of preparation that seemingly has no training objective.