The climate talks in Durban were a classic case of kicking the can down the road: an agreement in principle is not necessarily progress when so many specific details have to be worked out before an agreement is actually reached. But here’s an interesting article assessing the talks in a more optimistic manner.
For a little sober background on the downing of the US spy drone over Iran, see this article in Foreign Policy. Appropriately, the author simply asks the question: what else would one expect? It’s not clear how long it will take Iran to decipher the drone’s secrets, but such an outcome is inevitable. After that, the information will be on sale to the highest bidder. Iran also roiled the oil markets by announcing that it was going to conduct war games near the Strait of Hormuz, an essential access route for all the oil coming out of the Persian Gulf. 
Another photograph of the pollution in Beijing. Winter is always the worst time of year, but these levels are intolerable.
The very long presence of American troops in Iraq is winding down. We will be assessing the conflict for a very long time as events unfold. Importantly, about 14,000 US troops will remain in Iraq and the US diplomatic presence there is huge. So it’s not as if the US will be leaving a huge power vacuum in the region. But the internal and external coalitions of which Iraq is a part remain unstable and fragile. One can only hope for the best since there is no center of power within Iraq right now.
Canada has withdrawn from the Kyoto Protocol, signaling a major change in attitude toward the problem of climate change. The withdrawal suggests a serious loss of confidence in the multilateral process occasioned by the poor showing at Durban. Clearly, governments no longer feel the need to respond to the threat of climate change as long as the economic situation is so unsettled.
I’ve had a little time to think more deeply about the Brussels summit and what was achieved. Germany emerges as the big winner in that tough fiscal rules will be in place in a manner consistent with a non-inflationary environment. What remains to be seen is whether these rules are truly enforced, and, if they are, what effect they will have on future economic growth in Europe. As I have indicated before, the immediate crisis facing Europe is insolvency: governments lack the money to honor their commitments to repay debts to those who own government bonds–banks, private investors, and other governments. The plan adopted on Friday essentially does nothing to address this problem.
Indeed, the plan enforces austerity as the official economic policy of the European Union. Such policies will only make the repayment of debts more difficult over time–economic activity will only decline as wages are depressed within the indebted countries. We’ll have to watch what happens to the yield rates on Italian, Spanish, Greek, and Portuguese debt as short-term indicators of how investors view the prospects for economic growth in those countries. If the rates rise, the investors are betting that economic growth will decline, thus reducing the likelihood of timely repayment of those bonds. In the longer run, we’ll have to watch the yield rates of French and German bonds as an indicator of the overall economic growth rates in Europe.
I don’t usually comment on US domestic politics, but Newt Gingrich’s comments about the Palestinians being an “invented” people deserves a small degree of attention. As we’ve discussed in class, all nations are determined by a sense of self-identity. That process, however, should not suggest that nations are not “real.” National identity is one of the most powerful emotions in politics.
The global protests against governments continue, this time in Russia. One should examine the protests that have gone on (in the Arab world, in Europe, in the United States, over the last year first in terms of the local conditions that precipitated the protests–each protest is unique. But there is also a pattern to these protests that suggests that there is a unifying, underlying current of discontent in the world, focusing on the question of political legitimacy. One can make a strong argument that many in the world are increasingly looking at their governments with a jaundiced eye. The charge of corruption crosses all these protests and it is a worrying sign. Losing faith in one’s government is a precondition of a willingness to think more seriously about alternatives that offer quick or forceful responses.
The Climate Change Conference in Durban seems to be falling apart as its end grows near. Rather than narrowing the disagreements, states seem to be widening them. Perhaps something will come together by Friday, but the outlook looks bleak for an international agreement.
The EU (with the exception of Great Britain) has agreed to enforce more rigorously its rules about government budget deficits. This solution does really address the short term pressures on the euro, but it does relieve some of the psychological pressure on the markets in that the governments can now say that a similar crisis will not happen in the future.
I did not post any articles about the recent elections in Russia–I apologize for the oversight. The elections were a stunning repudiation of Putin (although not a defeat). Putin’s reaction, however, is an interesting attack on the West which suggests that he doesn’t really know how to interpret the results. It will be interesting to see whether this pique extends to other areas of US-Russian relations. If so, the stand-off with Iran will certainly become more complex.
Tension is clearly building in the European Union. For a variety of reasons, the tension is entirely warranted. Germany has made clear that it believes that the only solution to the crisis is to legally restructure the Union, a long-term solution that addresses none of the immediate concerns in the eurozone. Mario Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank said that there was no plan to purchase European government debt, leaving all the sovereign debt up in the air.
Cyberwar has been going on for some time, but now it appears that hackers are interested in disrupting the world’s oil supplies. This particular article talks about a new virus called stuxnet as the culprit. Sutxnet is a virus allegedly designed by the US and Israel to disrupt the Iranian nuclear program. It would be a cruel irony if it turns out that the virus is turned against the most vulnerable point of the American economy.
Check out the photograph of the air quality in Beijing.
The chatter about an Israeli attack on Iran continues. Events are moving very fast, which tends to amplify the ststements by governmental officials. The attack on the Iranian missile site, the taking of the British Embassy, and the shooting down of the American drone all tend to create a context in which miscalculation and misperception become more likely. The EU has threatened a ban on imports of Iranian oil–a move that would injure the EU and the global economy much worse than it would hurt Iran. We should watch this confrontation carefully.
There was a bit of good news from the climate conference in Durban. The Chinese have indicated a willingness to sign a treaty limiting greenhouse gas emissions (a Kyoto-like Treaty). This is a change from the previous Chinese position. Apparently, the Indians (the 3rd largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the US) are still unwilling to sign such a treaty.
The trade-off between economic activity and protection of the environment is one of the chief dilemmas facing the world. The BBC has run an article which poses this dilemma in the starkest terms possible. It is impossible to determine how one should come down on these choices.
Dear Colleagues in the Mount Holyoke world politics course,
The quiz on Wednesday, 7 December, will be on the articles by Rothkopf and me, and the news articles from 1-5 December. This quiz will be the last one of the semester!
Best,
Vinnie
The German approach to the eurozone crisis (greater fiscal austerity) gets a boost from Sarkozy. It appears as if Angela Merkel has held fast against lending by the ECB and/or the issuance of eurobonds. Sarkozy’s move is likely to lead to the end of his government–the French economic position will now only deteriorate more quickly. How fast France slows down is the key determinant of when the eurozone splits. The meetings scheduled for Thursday and Friday will tell all.
Iran claims to have shot down a US drone flying over its territory. That the US is spying on Iran is not unexpected. The loss of a high-tech weapon to Iran (and presumably, its close ally, Russia) is a serious setback for the US. The covert war against Iran continues.
A rare public criticism of Israel by Secretary of State Clinton. There are a number of laws being considered by the Israeli Knesset that would alter some fundamental principles of liberal democracy. These concerns follow an ad campaign launched by Israel to American Jews warning them of the dangers of assimilation. Tensions between Israel and the US continue to simmer below the surface.
The violence continues in Syria, with little sign that Assad is thinking about stepping down. The Arab League deadline to Assad is Sunday, 4 December. Interestingly, Russia and China have isolated themselves from the Arab League with their refusal to consider sanctions–an index of how seriously both countries take the principle of non-intervention in internal affairs. The other outlier in this standoff is, of course, Iran, who stands to lose an important ally if Assad is forced out of office. The chess pieces are being moved every day.
As I have indicated in class, there are many issues surrounding the status of labor in the world. The Guardian, a reliably lefty British newspaper, published a very dismal article about who produces the toys for Christmas and the conditions in which those toys are made. Don’t get carried away by the fact that the story addresses the status of labor in China–the article could have been written about a lot of places in the world.
The question concerning German objectives in the current economic crisis in the eurozone is whether it will choose to exert hegemonic-like leadership. It seems very clear that the internal domestic politics of Germany push it away from this role. It is unclear, however, whether Germany can prosper without taking the necessary action to preserve the euro. It’s a classic case of short vs. long term interests.
I am posting this article about how to use Google search more effectively as a public service. There won’t be any questions on the quiz about this particular article.
The pressures on Iran continue to build. The US Senate passed a very tough sanctions bill (very similar to the British sanctions that precipitated the takeover of the Embassy in Tehran). What’s notable about the bill is that President Obama opposed the bill, but it still passed 100-0. Jennifer Rubin, a conservative blogger at the Washington Post, interprets the bill as a sign foretelling a tougher policy vis-a-vis Iran. The Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, generally a lefty-leaning paper, puts the sanctions in the context of an already ongoing war against Iran. I won’t even speculate about how this stand-off will evolve–there are far too many variables. But the situation is clearly getting more intractable.
The US hands over its largest military base in Iraq to the Iraqis. It is hard to believe that the war seems to be winding down, although the difficulties facing the Iraqi people are extraordinary. One hopes that the United States can maintain a helpful presence, one that genuinely speeds up the process of reconstruction.
A revealing chart from The Economist showing the correlation between corruption and development. Finally, the world is beginning to take the issue of corruption seriously.
World Politics News 