There are encouraging signs that the US-Russia agreement on the destruction of Syrian chemical weapons is actually being taken seriously by both the Russians and Syrians. Many observers, including me, we quite skeptical of the sincerity of those two states, but the Russians seem to have taken on the responsibility to make sure that the agreement succeeds. The initial reports from the US on the list provided by the Syrians of their chemical weapons sites suggest that the list correlates well with US intelligence. And it also seems that there are few actual “weapons.” Most of what has been revealed is that the Syrians have the components for chemical weapons, but have not actually assembled them into usable form.
Stanislav Petrov is not a name that many people know. But Mr. Petrov saved the world in 1983 by ignoring a machine that told him that the US had launched a nuclear attack on the USSR. Mr. Petrov’s job was to alert his superiors in case of a nuclear attack. Fortunately for all of us, Mr. Petrov decided to trust his own gut rather than obey the machine authority, and did not report the purported “attack.” Apparently, he decided to confound Stanley Milgram.
We may (or may not) be facing the re-emergence of a political and economic crisis in Italy. The current government is a strange coalition of center-left and center-right parties, and the center-right party is threatening to pull out if former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is forced to leave his seat in the upper house of the Parliament. The removal was the penalty imposed on Berlusconi after his conviction of fraud. If the center-right party pulls out, it is likely that the Italian government will collapse. If that occurs, investors in Italian debt will get scared, and Italian borrowing costs will skyrocket. The fear that the Italian government may not be able to pay off its debts may precipitate a general economic panic among investors in Europe, which will most certainly slow down economic growth throughout the continent.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN Committee charged with monitoring the state of the world’s climate, will be meeting soon to make final changes to its latest five-year report. Last time, the IPCC stated that it was 95% certain that human activity was leading to climate changes that could have dire consequences for the environment. This time, the report is wrestling with a 15-year pause in the rate of temperature increase that climate change skeptics have argued undermines that central conclusion. Leaked reports suggest that the IPCC will not change that conclusion, but will acknowledge that the pause makes predictions much more difficult.
Many of the world’s garments come from textile mills in Bangladesh, where working conditions are generally very bad. The workers in these factories are currently engaged in a strike to demand higher wages and better working conditions. The strike is causing problems for many US and European retailers who rely on the cheaper products from low wage countries but who are also concerned about being identified with factories that exploit workers to such an incredible degree. Pressure on these retailers are slowly changing the working conditions for the better, but there is still much that needs to be done.
Income inequality is a major issue in world affairs, largely because the rate at which inequality is growing is extraordinary and largely stimulated by the process of globalization. The Washington Post has a graphic of how income inequality in the US has grown since 1977. The graphic is amazing–the more green one sees in the map, the greater the degree of income inequality. It is also an index of either a serious economic problem (the collapse of demand in a consumer-driven economy) or a political problem (a deepening sense that the system is rigged in favor of the rich).
Many people argue about when the process of globalization began (I think it began when the first group of homo sapiens started walking and bumped into another group of homo sapiens). The Economist has a very interesting essay on the question, and adds some provocative insights.
Angela Merkel’s election victory needs to be sealed by building a coalition with other political parties. The most likely coalition would be a center-right Party (Merkel’s Christian Democrats) and a center-left Party (Known by its German initials, SPD). Apparently, however, it seems as if few parties wish to work with Merkel, largely because she has been so successful at overshadowing her previous coalition parties. It is hard to figure out what an acceptable compromise would be to a party that fears becoming irrelevant if it joins the government. The center-left coalition with the SPD would be good for those European countries who are undergoing the austerity programs pushed by Merkel, so non-German related issues might determine the outcome.
There is much discussion about a possible meeting between Iranian President Rouhani and US President Obama at the upcoming UN opening meeting. The pressures for and against such a meeting are quite intense, but all behind the scenes. If the meeting does occur and is more than perfunctory, it may signal the beginning of a new relationship between the US and Iran. Most observers agree that President Rouhani has made more than sufficient overtures to justify reciprocity from the US.
Bo Xilai, a former rising star in the Chinese Communist Party, has been sentenced to life imprisonment on corruption charges. Mr. Bo was once the darling of the “Maoist” wing of the Party, but he was purged from the Party so that China could follow a more capitalist road. In all likelihood, we will probably never hear about Mr. Bo again, but it seems clear that many in the Party believe that his perspective was something that should prevail in China. So it would be a big mistake to think that the matter is settled. Deng Xiaoping was exiled three times, but ended up leading China into its economic revival.
Angela Merkel appears set to secure a third term as German Chancellor with a rather stunning victory in which her party, the Christian Democrats, secured its largest share of votes ever. Merkel will soon be the longest serving female leader of a European state, overtaking Margaret Thatcher’s record in Britain. Significantly, Merkel is the first European leader to secure re-election since 2012, as voters have thrown most leaders out of office for poor economic performance. The critical question is whether this stunning victory will ease up the pressure to pursue austerity policies in the eurozone or intensify it.
At least 78 people were killed in Peshawar, Pakistan as two suicide bombers blew up an area near a Christian church as parishioners were leaving. Christians make up a small minority of the population in the primarily Muslim country, but attacks on them have increased in recent years. The violence is an indication of how fragile the Pakistani government is, as it seems helpless to protect its citizens.
Diplomats from France, Britain, Spain, Ireland, Australia and the EU’s political office converged on the village of Makhul in the West Bank to deliver tents to Bedouins whose homes had been destroyed by the government of Israel. The Israeli High Court had determined that the Bedouins lacked proper building permits for their buildings and therefore the government of Israel had the right to remove the edifices. The Israeli Army had earlier refused to allow the Red Cross to deliver tents to the same people. Demolition of property by an Occupying Power is prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention, which reads: “Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons … is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.”
39 people were killed in an attack on a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya. The Somali militant group al-Shabab has taken credit for the attack, which signals a widening of the violence in East Africa. There are about 4,000 Kenyan troops in Somalia who are trying to bring order to a very violence-prone country, and al-Shahbab claims that it is merely responding to the Kenyan intervention. al-Shabab has been trying to establish an Islamic state in Somalia for many years.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons at The Hague announced on Friday that it has received a list of Chemical weapons sites from the Syiran government and that it was going over the list to check for accuracy. The Syrian government has therefore met the first requirement of the US-Russian agreement on Syrian chemical weapons. The next step is for the government to allow inspectors into the country to verify the list within 30 days.
If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung,
Would you hear my voice come thru the music,
Would you hold it near as it were your own?
It’s a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken,
Perhaps they’re better left unsung.
I don’t know, don’t really care
Let there be songs to fill the air.
Ripple in still water,
When there is no pebble tossed,
Nor wind to blow.
Reach out your hand if your cup be empty,
If your cup is full may it be again,
Let it be known there is a fountain,
That was not made by the hands of men.
There is a road, no simple highway,
Between the dawn and the dark of night,
And if you go no one may follow,
That path is for your steps alone.
Ripple in still water,
When there is no pebble tossed,
Nor wind to blow.
You who choose to lead must follow
But if you fall you fall alone,
If you should stand then who’s to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home.
Against the backdrop of the controversy over Syrian chemical weapons, there apparently has been some progress between the US and Iran on the issue of nuclear weapons. Iranian President Rouhani has made some encouraging moves on the issue, but it has not been clear whether the US has reciprocated on those actions. It now seems that President Obama has chosen to be below the radar, but he has responded favorably to Rouhani. The word “productive” is an especially encouraging word in diplomacy, and it is a good sign that President Rouhani used that word to describe the exchange of letters.
Croatia and Serbia are, in political terms, relatively new nation-states (they emerged after the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in 1991). They are also new entrants into the process of globalization. One negative aspect of the process of globalization is the homogenization of products due to the greater efficiency of large corporations. Sometimes that greater efficiency leads to good consequences. In the area of food, however, the greater efficiency of large corporations like Monsanto and Dupont means that local foods get crowded out by seeds that are specially adapted to corporate, and not taste, values. The loss of these local food products is a very unfortunate outcome.
Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir wishes to come to the US to attend the opening meetings of the United Nations next week. But President Bashir has been charged with international war crimes and all states are expected to extradite such individuals to face trial at the Hague. The US State Department has not announced whether they will issue a visa to Bashir to visit New York for the session (which would amount to a grant of immunity from extradition). It is a difficult decision for the Us, because, as the host to the UN, the US has promised never to interfere with UN business. We will see what the US finally decides in a few days.
A new record has been set. The 400 richest Americans are worth a collective $2.02 trillion. To put that figure in perspective, $2 trillion is roughly the size of the Russian economy. That concentration of wealth is unprecedented in US history. At the same time, the Census Bureau just released data that “In 1989, the median American household made $51,681 in current dollars (the 2012 number, again, was $51,017). That means that 24 years ago, a middle class American family was making more than the a middle class family was making one year ago.”
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has cancelled her state visit to the US to protest the allegations that the US National Security Agency spied on her and other Brazilian citizens. The cancellation is an embarrassment to the Obama Administration since Rousseff’s planned visit was one of only a few state visits anticipated by the diplomatic corps, but it is hard to imagine a productive visit under the circumstances. It is highly likely that the protest will enhance Rousseff’s chances for re-election in Brazil.
For the last four years, Nigeria has faced violent attacks from a radical group that calls itself Boko Haram (“Western education is a sin”). The aims of the group are to establish an Islamic state in the northern part of Nigeria (which has a primarily Muslim population, unlike the south, which is primarily Christian). It would be a mistake, however, to interpret the movement as primarily religious–it is fundamentally a protest movement against the political dominance of the southern parts of the country over the north. The group began an active armed struggle in 2009, but it has been agitating for change for over a decade.
Politics often makes very strange bedfellows. In the current civil war in Syria, both the US and Iran have a strong mutual interest in preventing a takeover of Syria by radical Sunni militants. They also have a strong mutual interest in preventing the use of chemical weapons, since Iran was the victim of chemical attacks by Iraq in their war of 1980-88. What is interesting is that neither side seems interested in building on these common objective. The US should be working harder to work with Iran to find a more manageable alternative to President Assad.
Many in Greece have started a week-long series of strikes and protests against the economic policies being forced upon Greece by the EU and the IMF. The austerity programs imposed by the international organizations have shrunk the Greek economy by almost 25% over the years. Previous protests have done little to change these policies, and it is not clear that these activities will be more effective. But it is also clear that Greek society is close to the breaking point given the incredible rise in the suicide rate in the country–an increase of almost 45%
The International Criminal Court has indicted two Kenyan leaders, Deputy President William Ruto and President Uhuru Kenyatta, for fomenting violence after a contested election in 2007. The International Criminal Court has only recently been established, and its mandate is to enforce laws against crimes against humanity if the national courts in which the offenses occur do not take effective action. What makes this case so fascinating is that both leaders were elected in a recent election which was deemed to have been fair, and there is a sense that the election was itself an opportunity for the Kenyan people to take “effective action” against alleged criminality. The controversy over the indictments has called into question the mandate of the ICC.
The Philippines government has been waging a very long war against an insurgent group, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), in the southern part of the Philippines. The discord reflects the tension between the primarily Christian north and the primarily Muslim south. A peace treaty has been signed in 1996 which ended decades of strife, but that agreement, which ceded a great deal of autonomy to the southern provinces of the Philippines has slowly broken down. The violence has heated up recently, and only shows signs of getting worse right now.
The Los Angeles Times has published a story which gives more context to the US position on the use of chemical weapons. According to the story, for which there are no named citations (which indicates that all the information was provided by Obama Administration officials who did not wish to be identified–always a red flag when one is reading a newspaper story), there were as many as 11 previous uses of chemical weapons prior to the event on 21 August that led to the US ultimatum. The information is tantalizing, but one needs to be careful with such stories. Without attribution, there is no way to verify the accuracy of the report. One cannot, however, simply ignore such stories since the LA Times very likely took serious steps to ensure that the story was reliable.
The German elections will occur this coming week, and the odds are that Angela Merkel will be able to retain her position as Chancellor. There are a number of different possible party coalitions that would endorse Merkel, so her own party does not have to win an absolute majority in the Reichstag. There is, however, an interesting development in this year’s election. A new party, formed only last February, is gaining strength, and polls give it a shot at getting the necessary 5% of the vote to secure representation in the parliament. The Party, Alternative for Germany, is a profoundly anti-European Union party which calls for the orderly dismemberment of the EU. If the party does get representation in the Reichstag, it will undoubtedly make Merkel’s life very difficult in the EU.
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