For those of you who are interested in arms control and disarmament, the most recent Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SPIRI) yearbook was publishedearlier this month. You can access it here. It is one of the most reliable and respected sources of global information on arms flows and conflict resolution.
International tensions are escalating over Syria. Turkey is mobilizing forces along the Syrian border and NATO has backed Turkey in its dispute with Syria over the downed Turkish fighter plane. The Russians are trying to explore options with Kofi Annan’s peace plan, and Assad is remaining totally defiant. An escalation of violence would bring in Iran and most likely Israel. If there ever was a time for high-power diplomacy, now is the time; it does not, however, appear to be in the cards.
Stephen Walt has an interesting essay on the strategic consequences of an Iranian nuclear bomb. The argument that nuclear weapons are inherently stabilizing is an idiosyncratic one, but it is certainly intriguing (and not completely off the wall). Give this essay a close read and see where the logic takes you.
There is incredible pressure building on the EU in anticipation of this coming week’s summit meeting of EU heads of state. Economic data from China, India, Brazil, and the US all indicate that the global economy is slowing down much faster than expected. Since many of the EU economies are dependent on exports, there is a sense that European economic growth will slow as well. The EU needs to articulate a long-term plan that seems feasible in order to avoid increased pressure on the weaker economies such as Greece and Spain. The new Greek Prime Minister will not be at the meeting due to eye surgery, but the Greeks still intend to ask for a two year extension on its bail-out conditions.
Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, was named the victor in the Egyptian presidential election. The official announcement confirms what many people had suspected, and an announcement in favor of Shafiq would have been highly controversial. In his first speech, Morsi said all the right things. What remains to be seen, however, is how he can govern under the current strictures of military rule.
Turkey has requested a NATO meeting to discuss its downed fighter jet. The injection of NATO into the Syrian situation ushers in a new phase of the attempt to put together a humanitarian intervention. NATO could offer a viable alternative to the UN mission, currently hamstrung by the Russian and Chinese positions. We’ll see whether NATO official wishes to take the opportunity.
Even though the Greek elections were in some sense indeterminate, one message seemed clear on 17 June: the Greeks may have been divided about whether they wished to stay in the eurozone, they were united against continuing austerity policies. That shoe has now dropped, and the Greeks are asking for a two-year delay in implementing the bail-out plan laid out by the EU. The response of the EU will likely be a qualified “no.” Then hard bargaining will begin.
There have been on-and-off-again violent acts between Israel and residents in the Gaza over the last few weeks. The violence, however, seems to be more regular and sustained as the summer goes on. It is not clear why the violence is escalating, but much has to do with the Israeli desire to delegitimize the policies of Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah in the West Bank. If true, then it’s unlikely that a cease-fire could be easily brokered as long as Abbas pursues some sort of recognition at the UN.
It’s often hard to find humor in world politics. But this blog post from Foreign Policy about life in the Syrian army is hysterical. Makes one wonder how the Turkish fighter plane was downed.
The violence in Syria has been spilling out into the region for some time (Lebanon and Turkey), but there was a dramatic escalation of violence with the downing of a Turkish fighter plane by Syrian forces. We still do not know all the details and Turkey has been diplomatically circumspect so far. Syria claims that it was a “mistake” but such an admission accomplishes little. There will be domestic pressure for Turkey to respond, and it will be a test of Erdogan’s political ability to restrain a nationalist impulse.
The protests in Egypt continue, with both sides claiming victory in the recent presidential election. There are also conflicting reports about whether former President Mubarak is still alive. It seems likely that the military will only tighten its control in the face of the growing protests, but it is unlikely that those measures will be effective. One wonders how long the stalemate can last.
The Rio+20 Earth Conference issued its final report and the universal reaction to the report is disappointment. Think Progress has issued an analysis of why the summit failed and how the report could have been stronger. It is hard, however, to imagine how the summit could have been more successful given the economic weakness that seems to be pervading the global economy.
The negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran in Moscow ended without making much progress at all. The response of Israel’s government was swift: it will not wait much longer for negotiations to succeed. This statement follows a report in the New York Times that suggests that many diplomats believe that Iran is simply pursuing a waiting game so that it has more time to develop its capabilities. The NYTimes is not an especially reliable source on Middle Eastern matters, but many suspect that this particular charge is valid.
Violence has slowly been building up again in central Nigeria. The ostensible cause of the violence is a cleavage between Christians and Muslims and the pattern of deaths follows those lines fairly clearly. But the issues are significantly more complex than that and efforts to limit the violence, such as curfews, do not appear to be very successful.
Much has been made about growing inequality in the world. Perhaps an appropriate example of how extreme matters have become is the purchase of the Hawaiian island, Lanai, by Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison.
The situation in Egypt is massively unclear and uncertain. Both presidential candidates have claimed victory, but most observers believe that Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate won. We should get the official results on Thursday. Clearly, however, the race will be contested. Meanwhile, thousands have gathered in Tahrir Square to protest the military’s actions to assume political control and to dissolve the Parliament. Battlelines are being drawn between the secularists and the supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, although it is unclear to what extent the Muslim Brotherhood wants to establish a theocratic state. One can only hope that the Egyptian people remain firm in their demands for an effective voice and that violence is kept at a lowest level possible given the uncertainty.
The U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development began on Monday with about 50,000 participants. It has been 20 years since the first meeting in Rio de Janeiro and, unlike the first meeting which was full of promise, this meeting is rife with pessimism. The current economic crisis has overwhelmed the willingness of many states to undertake commitments that could compromise economic growth in the short run. Most analysts expect little progress from the current meeting–a great tragedy.
Angus Maddisson is perhaps the world’s most influential economic historian–he is a true wizard when it comes to economic data. Here is his visual portrayal of global economic grwoth from the year 1 to the present.
I was wrong–Syriza did not get the largest plurality of votes in the Greek election. New Democracy, a conservative party that is pro-Europe, got the largest number of votes, but still not enough to get a majority in Parliament. So we will watch how New Democracy woos PASOK, the socialist party which came in third to Syriza, to form a coalition. These are the two parties that brought Greece to this sorry state, so it’s hard to be optimistic about the future. Unfortunately, the neo-Nazi party got enough votes to get seats in the Parliament.
In other election news, the Egyptian military issued a new constitution on its own as soon as the election was over. Essentially, it declared martial law and gave itself the right to write a new permanent constitution. Nothing good can come of this move–we will have to see how violent the reaction to the coup is.
In the third election of the day, French Socialists won an absolute majority in the Parliament, giving President Hollande a very strong hand to deal with Germany. The politics of the European Union have decidedly swung toward a less austere economic policy, and Chancellor Merkel’s own position within Germany seems to be weakening as well. We’ll see how the G-20 meeting in Mexico starting on Monday interprets these political results.
By this time tomorrow (8:30 pm, EDT) we should be beginning to get some sense of how the Greek elections went. Right now, the consensus seems to be that the election will not yield a strong government which would simply prolong the agony of the euro. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England, and the US Federal Reserve all appear to be ready to flood the world with money if the euro starts to tank. I have begun to think that the Radical Left Coalition (Syriza) will win the largest number of votes, primarily as a protest vote against Germany.
We will also be getting some results from Egypt, although the meaning of the election will be difficult to interpret. The military’s dissolution of the Parliament generally means that Egypt will have a President without a constitution or Parliament. If Shafiq wins, it will be almost as if Mubarak never left. I imagine that more protests are highly likely, no matter who wins the election.
On Monday the G20 will be meeting in Mexico and the countries will have much to talk about. I expect the IMF to get promises of more money to lend to indebted countries in Europe. More money is certainly necessary, but what is most important are the conditions attached to the money. I doubt that the European states can endure more austerity without some political fallout.
I try not to link to New York Times articles because of the paywall, but Floyd Norris has written a very provocative essay which has been a strong, unspoken undercurrent to the entire European economic crisis: that Germany maintains its hard-line position because those policies benefit Germany at the expense of its partners in the eurozone. In essence, the argument is that Germany is making sure that all the possible private losses within Germany are shifted to the governments of the indebted countries. In addition, the weakening of the euro benefits German exporters. While no one should underestimate the extent to which German history dictates German policies (the hyperinflation of 1933 and the costs of reunification in 1992), there is a large element of truth to the alternative explanation.
The political situation in Egypt seems even more precarious. The dissolution of the Parliament raises all sorts of questions about who will write the new constitution, and the military has ordered new regulations designed to stifle dissent prior to the elections next week. This essay in Foreign Policy is particularly pessimistic about Egypt’s future.
Brad DeLong and Barry Eichengreen, two of the premier economists in the world, have written a new preface to Charles Kindleberger’s magisterial work, The World in Depression. I recommend it in the strongest possible terms–it is a superb analysis of what’s going on the Europe right now and how we are all perilously close to replicating all the failures of the 1930s. If you want to know why things in Europe look so bleak, then read this essay.
The Egyptian presidential elections are scheduled for Sunday and Monday, and the Supreme Constitutional Court has dissolved the Parliament and ruled that the once close ally of Hosni Mubarak, Ahmed Shafiq, must be allowed to run for President. The ruling is a blow to the Muslim Brotherhood, but Shafiq had already qualified as one of the two top vote getters in the preliminary election. He now can legally run which will make the election more legitimate. But since the Constitutional Court is backed with former associates of Mubarak, the legitimacy of its rulings will now be seriously questioned.
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