The protests in Tibet have led Chinese authorities to seal off certain areas from the foreign press. These restrictions will certainly have a short-term effect, but they will likely be evaded over time. But the restrictions suggest how seriously the Beijing government takes the protests. Most likely, the next reports we hear will be of increasingly more organized, less individual protests than self-immolation.
It appears as if another agreement has been reached on the Greek debt crisis. It is being hailed as the last step, but I wouldn’t believe it if I were you. The terms are incredibly onerous on the Greek people and I would be surprised if it lasts. Even if the terms hold, they are so sever that economic growth will not return to Greece anytime soon which makes it highly unlikely that Greece will be able to make future debt repayments. I honestly cannot explain the policies being demanded of Greece by the European Central Bank and the IMF. No one can seriously believe that the Greeks can grow themselves out of this problem.
The China Economic Review (published in Hong Kong) is reporting that three more Tibetans self-immolated in protest against the Beijing government’s policies in Tibet. The China Times, however, is denying these reports. If true, these acts would bring the total number of self-immolations in recent weeks to around 19–a very substantial level of protest. The Beijing government is increasingly concerned as the fifth-year anniversary of the most recent outbreak of violence in Tibet gets closer as March approaches. The Arab Spring continues unabated.
National Geographic has a very informative article on the strategic significance of the Strait of Hormuz.
The quiz on Wednesday, 8 February, in American foreign policy will be on the blog articles from 2-6 February, the Ellis, Huntington, and Woodward readings, and the primary sources: Cherokee Nation v. the State of Georgia, Winthrop, and the Declaration of Independence.
For those who wish a completely different perspective on the Iranian nuclear weapons issue, Glenn Greenwald of Salon offers a benign view. The Russian press also notes the growing Iranian military presence as a response to its growing responsibilities in the region. Finally, Sri Lanka is offered a way to work around the US sanctions on Iranian oil, by none other than the US. So while we’re hearing a loud and united front in the press against Iran, there are multiple layers of activity that belie any sort of consensus.
The talks between Greece and its lenders have been “paused.” Greece must “roll over” much of its debt by 20 March (it must issue new bonds to cover the expiration of old bonds–the difference in interest rates between the old and the new bonds is a critical determinant of how risky investors regard Greek bonds). In order to do so in an orderly fashion, it needs to come to an agreement about how much the old bonds are worth. The investors are demanding very severe austerity measures that Greek politicians are reluctant to concede. I suspect that we’ll see some violence in the streets of Athens this week.
My apologies for not posting yesterday. My cold has settled down into my chest and I’ve spent most of yesterday and today coughing. I think I’m getting better, but it’s very hard to tell.
The Russians and the Chinese vetoed the latest Security Council resolution condemning the violence in Syria. The vetoes are pretty straightforward–neither the Russians nor the Chinese like the idea of interference in the internal affairs of a state. Such principled stands are of little comfort to the many thousands who have died in the rioting. On the other hand, I cannot even imagine how the Security Council could intervene to stop the violence. It seems as if only the departure of Assad will bring an end to the protests. Perhaps someone in Assad’s inner circle will defect and open a door.
The protests in Russia also continued despite sub-minus temperatures. Putin is unlikely to be moved by these protests, but they will erode his authority over time. One should suspect that there will be a tightening of governmental control soon–the Russian government is going to be flush with money as the cold temperatures in Europe riase the prices for oil and gas exported by Russia to Europe.
The pressures on Iran continue to mount, but it is hard to see how the sanctions can be enforced when so many countries are dependent on Iranian oil. India is a case in point–it wishes to support the alliance against Iran, but does not really have many alternatives to Iranian oil. Meanwhile, the rhetorical war between Iran and Israel continues to heat up.
David Ignatius of the Washington Post is an op-ed writer with a wide network of contacts. His most recent piece essentially says that Israel will attack Iran sometime this year (he leaves himself some wiggle-room). There is an increasing sense of inevitability in this very long sequence of articles over the last year. The orchestration of the news has been remarkable in leading many to this conclusion.
A very good answer to my question about why Russia is defending Syria against UN action was provided by Daniel Treisman, a political scientist at UCLA. I wonder what signs will persuade the Kremlin that Assad’s days are numbered.
The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that Iran will have enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb by sometime in August. The article is based on a report by the American Enterprise Institute which is a well-known conservative think tank, so there is the real possibility that the threat is overblown. But the timing mentioned correlates precisely with the US election cycle, so we can be sure that discussions about Iranian policy will be front and center in the Presidential campaign.
Hopes for some outside aid to Syrian protesters were dashed as Russia made clear that it would not support any UN action against Assad’s regime unless intervention is explicitly ruled out. The Russian hardline is intriguing as it cannot be explained by any bilateral relationship of which we have any knowledge. It appears as if Russia is simply playing spoiler, and, in the process, supporting Iran.
Senegal is entering into a period of unusual political turmoil as the President tries to run for an unconstitutional third term. West Africa has seen an unusual increase in political violence over the last few years, but Senegal seemed to have avoided the plague. It appears as if that honeymoon is over.
The United Nations has just released a rather sobering report on the state of the world’s future. These reports are highly general and only deal with the least tractable of global pressures–demography and very basic resources. At that level, however, constraints on economic growth are going to be very severe by the middle of the century. The prognosis is very grim.
The German view on fiscal austerity prevailed within the EU summit today. Only Britain and the Czech Republic voted against the fiscal treaty that would give great authority to the EU over national budget and spending policies. Even at this stage it is hard to imagine the treaty have a significant effect–I cannot believe that the member states would subject themselves to such external authority. But the passage of the treaty gives Angela Merkel some credibility among German voters that she is not going to continue to finance the economically weaker states without some measure of control over their spending habits. We’ll see how much more austerity the European states can handle.
The quiz in American foreign policy on 1 February 2012 will be on the articles posted in the blog from 26-30 January. The syllabus materials on the quiz will be: The Melian Dialogue, The Grand Inquisitor, Jefferson’s Inaugural Address, and sections I and II of Kant’s Perpetual Peace.
Predictably, the Greeks have turned reacted negatively to the EU plan to force a budget commissioner into their democratic procedures. The IMF and the Germans will continue to insist upon this course of action, but it is doubtful that the other members of the EU will be as forceful. So the question now becomes whether the Greeks will leave the eurozone or whether the IMF and Germany will deny the Greeks the money necessary to pay off their debts due in March in order to force them to accept the budget commissioner. Much hangs in the balance in this war of wills. The EU summit tomorrow will tell us a lot about what direction the war will go.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has an inspection team in Iran. It does not have the ability to inspect all of Iran’s facilities, but it will try to corroborate the intelligence from other states with whatever information it is able to glean from its visit. Meanwhile, Iran has indicated that it will stop oil shipments to “some” European states in retaliation for the EU oil embargo.
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