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Soriek  11mo ago (text post)   1872 thread views

Transnational Thursdays XXX

This is the thirtieth weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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As a quick follow up to my previous post about the Canadian real estate crisis, we have officially entered the "escape debts using arson" phase of the problem.

A new Toronto mansion under construction was listed for 13.8 million dollars and didn't sell. Shortly after it burnt down.

Unfortunately we are also in the age of cheap home cameras, and a neighbour recorded four men dressed in black carrying gas cans.

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2023/12/14/house-fire-north-york-york-mills-construction-toronto-fire/

https://twitter.com/ShaziGoalie/status/1736155226883621121

Ireland

Yet another hotel earmarked for housing asylum seekers has burned down during the night. The asylum seekers were due to move in on Thursday, protesters blockaded the entrance of the hotel on Saturday and it was set alight that same night. It's unclear whether the local protesters were involved in starting the fire, the hotel is very isolated so once the protest made the news pretty much anyone could drive up during the night and get away with it.

Rosscahill is a 7 minute drive from Oughterard, a town that gained some notoriety back in 2019 after an Irish Times article suggested that the town meeting on and protests over a proposed 250 person direct provision centre (asylum seeker accomodation) in a town of 1300 was hijacked by the far-right. The protest and arson took place very quickly but it makes sense if it didn't take long for people to act given that this type of thing was already rejected by the local community 4 years ago.

Down in Argentina, I've been shocked at how quickly and decisively Milei has been moving. I don't really have anything insightful to say about it, but I've gotten so used to gradualism that it's a real eye opener when a guy comes in and eliminates half the ministries on his first day, enacts government spending cuts equivalent to 5% of GDP, fires huge numbers of bureaucrats, etc. We'll see how it all plays out, but chainsaw man is not messing around.

Same here, I significantly underestimated how much direct power the President has for reforms without asking permission from the leg branch. At the same time, the reforms don't seem that drastically different compared to Macri's last term, which may be intentional to gain JxC support for legislative initiatives.

For third party onlookers, here's a small recap of specifics:

He announced a devaluation of the peso by over 50% (see chart), and promised to slash electricity and transport subsidies, halve the number of government ministries from 18 to nine, suspend public works and reduce federal transfers to Argentina’s 23 provinces. The government reckons these cuts amount to almost 3% of gdp.

Alongside this, however, the administration will increase taxes on imported goods from 7.5% to 17.5%, and extend a tax of 15% on all exports (an existing tax of 30% on soyabean exports will be maintained). Child benefits will double, as will the value of a government food card for the country’s poorest. The idea is to cut spending while temporarily increasing taxes to raise revenue, in order to lower the annual deficit from over 5% of gdp today to zero by the end of 2024. “We have come to solve the addiction to fiscal deficits,” said Mr Caputo, noting that Argentina has been in the red for 113 of the past 123 years. The imf, which is owed $43bn by Argentina, applauded the “bold initial actions” and promised to work “expeditiously” with the new government in the coming months. In a statement the fund admitted that the deal it signed in March 2022 with Argentina’s government to restructure its loan had suffered “serious policy setbacks”.

Many political observers underestimate how great the challenge is for Milei. $44bn owed to the IMF alone, $400bn overall, like $15bn maturing next year alone. Just to stay ahead of default will require being the best performing economy in the developed (air quotes optional) world under best-case global macroeconomic conditions. What makes Argentina so tough is that the pain of fiscal discipline would be (or will be) so substantial and so long-lasting that voters would have to reaffirm their commitment to it multiple times despite significant material declines in quality of life.

And it’s hard to understate that. I think a lot of Milei’s voters expect the liberalization efforts to yield short term economic improvements when in reality the opposite is likely.

There've already been large increases in meat prices and a devaluation of the peso by 50%, so you'd expect his popularity to crash fast if that's the case.

I am not sure if you know that, but the real peso value has barely budged. Nobody sane used the official currency exchange rate when having any chance to avoid it; this is probably the country with the highest black market currency exchange share, couriers developing piles of cash for USDT everywhere. Milei has simply forced compliance with reality.

Price hikes are real, though.

There’s a difference between a few months of pain and years of it, too. Their patience will need to be immense.

People are generally able to discern between the hardships of climbing a mountain and running in circle in a quagmire. Usually the direction the economy is moving to is what determines voters sentiment. Crash now and then steady improvement would yield good electoral outcomes.

Also while global interests are high right now - there is a lot of capital looking for investment - especially after the west is hell bent on sanctioning everyone. A business friendly Argentina is probably not a bad place to do investments in.

Down in Argentina, I've been shocked at how quickly and decisively Milei has been moving.

Yeah, it surprised me, too. Because there were three main positions/narratives on Milei in the right-wing circles I frequent, and this pretty much seriously undermines one of them — at least with respect to Argentina — and somewhat weakens another.

Japan

Japan’s longtime dominant Liberal Democratic Party has been caught in a scandal where politicians were receiving kickbacks from fundraisers. Some of this was already known and the party responded by updating their previously unreported funds, but recently it was revealed that Shinzo Abe’s faction1 has been doing this for years. The size of this scandal is apparently enormous; the LDP’s popularity is at a staggering 17%, remarkable considering they have basically run the country with few interruptions since World War 2.

Prime Minister Kishida is apparently considering replacing “all” of the Abe faction who currently enjoy ministerial posts. This would include “Matsuno, the top government spokesman [Chief Cabinet Secretary], and Nishimura [he Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry,]...two other ministers, five senior vice ministers and six parliamentary vice ministers from Abe's faction…Tsuyoshi Takagi, who is currently the LDP's chief of Diet affairs…LDP policy chief Koichi Hagiuda and Hiroshige Seko, secretary general of the party in the House of Councillors”

It sounds like a lot, but it might not be enough - quite a few people have called for Kishida himself to step down (for his responsibility as the Executive; Kishida is not in the Abe faction). Formally he doesn’t have to call an election till 2025 but he could be voted out by his own party if the public mood is bad enough. Japan is notorious for sacking PMs at the drop of the hat (I think only Italy has them beat for most leaders since WW2) but Kishida has proven prickly and survived several scandals that would have ousted other PMs.

1The LDP is made up of five (arguably six) different “factions,” or cliques, that are somewhat tied together on policy and somewhat by the personality and influence of the leaders of those cliques. During the Abe era his own faction was a mix of nationalists and people who thought (often correctly) they could ride his coattails to influence. Kishida’s is the same for the more liberal/pacifist wing of the party.

This was all over the news last night. Japan seems to me to be quite different from the US in that although this is "big news," it's also shameful and embarrassing and I think you'd have to really press to get people to talk about it. My Twitter is mostly filled by Japanese and it reminds me of the old days of 2012ish Twitter where people would just tweet some joke about the humidity. The long, Kulak-like screeds of dubious reasoning calling for whatever revolution (or even political change) just don't seem very common at all in Japanese, even in matters such as this where the scandal is clear and no one is denying it (also unlike the US). Of course my Twitter feed may not be very representative.

You have any impression on the ground how things will shake out from all this?

Too early (for me) to tell, but after damage control does its thing, a few heads will undoubtedly roll (figuratively) if only for the sake of show. Admitting and taking responsibility even for fairly heinous crimes is seen as honorable. Most of this will occur in the elite political realm, and the general populace will probably carry on without taking too many notes. I'm a permanent resident (legal status) and pay taxes but cannot vote, so I'm largely a spectator. The biggest non-natural disaster scandal here was a bit over a year ago when the assassination occurred (and I was, as it happens, out of country for that). The National Police Agency chief resigned , then you heard some people whingeing about the cost of Abe's funeral, but then not much. The assassination itself is little remarked upon these days, and the pipe bomb tossed near PM Kishida in April still didn't stir much debate on homemade weapons. Oddly. At least not to the rabid degree such things would back home.

Poland

A follow up to the TT from two weeks ago on PiS PM Morawiecki being allowed to form a government as the top vote getting party. He has now (to nobody’s surprise) failed a vote of no confidence by 266 to 190, bringing an end to Pis’ long dominance.

With the formalities out of the way, this paves the way for Donald Tusk to be sworn into power, with 248 votes in favor vs 201 opposed in his first vote.

Besides rebuilding bridges with Brussels, Tusk’s campaign pledges included promising to allow abortion – subject to a near-total ban under PiS – until 12 weeks, declaring termination, IVF and contraception fundamental rights, and allowing civil partnerships for same-sex couples…

Brussels has withheld billions of euros in Covid-19 recovery funds in an increasingly bitter row over Poland’s rule of law, and has required reform on issues such as judicial independence and green energy.

Tusk has now officially been sworn into office with his cabinet:

Tusk’s Cabinet includes a former foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, taking up that role again. Adam Bodnar, a respected human rights lawyer and former ombudsman, was tapped as justice minister, tasked with reversing the previous administration’s actions that gave it more control of the judiciary.

Tusk named Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, an experienced politician and agrarian party leader, as his defense minister. For Kosiniak-Kamysz, 42, Poland’s security is safeguarded by its membership in NATO and the EU. In the face of war across Poland’s border, he has vowed to focus on strengthening the defense potential of the armed forces.

The new culture minister is Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz, a former interior minister under Tusk and the great grandson of “Quo Vadis” author Henryk Sienkiewicz, a winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. His first task will be to free state media from political control that the previous government exerted.

Also

The confidence vote was delayed when a far-right lawmaker, Grzegorz Braun, used a fire extinguisher to put out the candles of a menorah during a Hanukkah celebration dedicated to Poland’s Jewish lawmakers of the 1920s and 1930s.

what?

Radek Sikorski

lol

he is well known for "Thank you, USA" tweet he posted after Russia's Nord Stream 1 and 2 exploded.

sadly, he may end with more such high-quality and careful diplomacy

Yes, he has a strong tendency to speak quickly and without much forethought, which is especially bad for a diplomat. That's why I don't put him in the first row of polish politicians, he is too careless, otherwise he would be truly heavyweight player. But his very impressive bio speaks for itself. I hope that Sikorski, as a conservative will counterweight left-leaning ministers in the new cabinet. Otherwise we would have the most woke government in the history of Poland.

His kids may become American politicians, his wife is Anne Applebaum

His first task will be to free state media from political control that the previous government exerted.

and put under control of a new one, again

and put under control of a new one, again

I so fucking hate being right. One party called "Law and Justice" and was fiddling with laws as much as they could, opposition complained all the time and harped on about following rules and went already off the rails with media takeover. And PIS proudly defends pro-PIS propaganda station as independent, while opposition will just take it and turn into own propaganda tube.

I had almost no expectations whatsoever and I am still disappointed.

Bunch of clowns and alternative is bunch of cretinous pro-Russia clowns. Really.

Do you have any general predictions for the coming months / years under the new government?

Not really - but I do not expect influence in any direction that would require changes to my life.

I just hope they will not screw up things to much in fields like real estate (so far basically all parties have stupid ideas how to handle rising housing costs, all will make things worse - and there is one party that had actually sane proposal but they are bunch of cretinous clowns[1]), energy, economy in general, Russia, EU, immigration, smog etc

[1] like that guy with fire extinguisher

what?

this description undersells level of chutzpah involved. Example video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5-P4opDdIcw (with overlay from some random TV station, but well... Yes, music is as recorded.)

got quite strong reaction (Sejm gave the highest internal penalties like docking 6 months of pay, part of subsidies for running office and so on, there is possibility of criminal charges)

and yes, far-right is justified here. He is a leader of monarchist party for start.

Any suggestions maybe as to which parties we can expect to form the future governing coalition?

It's Donald Tusk's Civic Coalition, the centrist Third Way, and center left/left wing (appropriately named) The Left. All of them in turn are alliances of smaller parties but have been behaving as united fronts.

coalition is formed already

The confidence vote was delayed when a far-right lawmaker, Grzegorz Braun, used a fire extinguisher to put out the candles of a menorah during a Hanukkah celebration dedicated to Poland’s Jewish lawmakers of the 1920s and 1930s.

The sheer level of chutzpah involved makes him an honorary Jew, by linguistic transference.

Henryk Sienkiewicz

I very much adore his Trilogy. Recommended reading; great fun if you're into historical adventures.

Azerbaijan & Armenia

In the time since Azerbaijan fully reconquered Nagorno-Karabakh, there have been worries that they would proceed to invade Armenia proper as well. Those worries did not seem to materialize at first, and the two countries even began peace negotiations. However, Azerbaijan has now reiterated an earlier claim to 8 Armenian villages which it considers “under occupation.”

At the same time Baku announced that Azerbaijani forces will conduct military drill is occupied Stepanakert on Wednesday.

In a statement issued Tuesday, Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry accused Armenia of “once again hindering peace agreement negotiations, continuing military-political provocations, as well as threats from landmines.”...

While official Baku has not specified which eight villages it is referencing [???], Aliyev’s website has listed them as seven villages in Armenia’s Tavush Province and one village in the Ararat Province, that borders Nakhichevan.

Last month, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan touched on Baku’s claims about the eight villages in Armenia, by reminding Azerbaijan that the Armenian region of Artsvashen, once part of Armenia’s Gegharkunik Province, continued to remain occupied by Azerbaijan since the 1990s.

However, a few days later [the BBC reported that peace negotiations(https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67655940) are continuing:

In a joint statement released on Thursday night, the two countries said they saw a "historical chance" for "long-awaited peace".

Both countries said they hoped to sign a peace treaty by the end of the year. Hopefully cooler heads prevail.

Hasn’t Iran pledged to defend the territorial integrity of Armenia proper?

Iran’s relationship with the situation is super tricky. Historically they were allied with Armenia while Azerbaijan bought weapons from Israel. But potentially as much as a quarter of Iran is ethnically Azeri, with a ton of them living right next to the border. A lot of them are really well integrated (people say the Ayatollah may be half Azeri) but there’s also been an issue of growing Azeri nationalism within Iran.

The last President Rouhani made it a major initiative to try to douse those fires, campaigned in Azeri towns a lot, allowed their language to be taught in schools, and reestablished diplomatic relations with Azerbaijan to keep them from fanning the flames of Turkish pan nationalism right over the border. He even switched Iran’s position and formally recognized Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan.

Iran has a huge vested interest in stability in the region. They still have their historic ties with Armenia and they really don’t want the Zangezur Corridor to be built and unite Azerbaijan and Turkey and cut them off from Armenia. This is all the more pressing because that could jeopardize their access to the north-south transit corridor through the caucuses that they’ve heavily invested in (the highway section in Armenia is being built by Iranian companies). At the same time, Iran is super not happy about Armenia’s deepening ties with the US or the presence of US troops in the area or American influence over the outcome.

So Iran has said “they won’t tolerate any border changes”. But all the same constraints that forced them to make nice with Azerbaijan are still at play, so it’s hard to say exactly how free they have to intervene. With the conflict in Israel keeping up their focus and repeated clashes between their proxies in Iraq and the US, I also imagine they really don’t want another conflict to potentially get wrapped up in.

Iraq, Iran, and America

Another follow up to a previous post on tensions between the US and Iranian aligned forces ramping up in Iraq. While President Al-Sudani (raised to power by the pro-Iranian parties the Coordinated Network) publicly condemned the attacks against America - and the counterstrikes - they have unfortunately continued and worsened.

Dozens of attacks on U.S. military facilities by Iran-backed factions in Iraq over the past two months as the Israel-Hamas war has raged have forced Baghdad into a balancing act that’s becoming more difficult by the day.

A rocket attack on the sprawling U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Friday marked a further escalation as Iraqi officials scramble to contain the ripple effects of the latest Middle East war.

Washington has sent messages that its patience is wearing thin.

After the embassy attack, the Pentagon said that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “made clear (to al-Sudani) that attacks against U.S. forces must stop.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told al-Sudani that Washington expects Iraqi officials to take more action to prevent such attacks, and believes they have the capability to do so, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.

During a recent trip to the region, CIA Director William Burns warned al-Sudani of “harsh consequences” if Iraq doesn’t act to stop the attacks, an Iraqi official said.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong held elections on Sunday, the first since the 2019 elections that elevated pro-democracy candidates and set off the whole conflict between HK and the mainland. Needless to say, the results this time were quite different:

Voter turnout plunged below 30% in Hong Kong’s first district council elections since new rules introduced under Beijing’s guidance effectively shut out all pro-democracy candidates, setting a record low since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997…

Beijing loyalists are expected to take control of the district councils after Sunday’s elections, with results showing big pro-government parties winning most directly elected seats…

The district councils, which primarily handle municipal matters such as organizing construction projects and public facilities, were Hong Kong’s last major political bodies mostly chosen by the public.

But under new electoral rules introduced under a Beijing order that only “patriots” should administer the city, candidates must secure endorsements from at least nine members of government-appointed committees that are mostly packed with Beijing loyalists, making it virtually impossible for any pro-democracy candidates to run.

An amendment passed in July also slashed the proportion of directly elected seats from about 90% to about 20%.

Many prominent pro-democracy activists have also been arrested or have fled the territory after Beijing imposed a harsh national security law in response to the 2019 protests.

Hong Kong always makes me sad. If ever there was a modern poster child for the axiom that the only rights you have are the ones you can enforce, it's Hong Kong. All the peaceful protest in the world won't sway an unsympathetic tyrant.

Egypt

Speaking of fake elections, Egypt just held elections on Monday and Tuesday. We should know the results on the 18th, which will with overwhelming likelihood produce a victory for El-Sisi. Are people happy with his rule? At least from a bird’s eye view, things on the ground seem pretty rough:

Beyond Egypt’s frontiers, its neighbours are locked in seemingly intractable conflicts, with civil war raging in Sudan, and in Libya, rival governments vie for power on Cairo’s doorstep.

In 2022, public debt in Egypt stood at above 88 percent of the country’s GDP, more than double the region’s average. Inflation has consistently been above 35 percent since June.

Across the country, as household finances shrink, record numbers of Egyptians are reportedly searching for a second job while cutting back on household spending, including less and cheaper food. However, many analysts expect el-Sisi to win the upcoming election.

However, the whole kerfuffle to the west has definitely complicated things a bit. Egyptians are by and large extremely opposed to Israel and strongly dislike that their leaders won’t take a stronger stance:

"Before the 7th of October of this year (Hamas’ attack on Israel) the main issue was really economic: people were not happy with inflation, rising prices, the rising foreign debt, which is over $166 billion. Then, the 7th of October occurred and this idea that [Israel] will transfer Palestinians into the Sinai, so the issue of national security began to overtake [that of] the economy."

Most of this doesn’t matter all that much for the outcome of the election though. Sisi took power in a coup, held one rigged election since then, and called for this one randomly as well after banning numerous independent voices and orgs criticizing his administration and intimidating his main opposition, the leftist Ahmed el-Tantawy, into dropping out of the race. And thus:

El-Sissi faces no serious challenger, although there are three other candidates: Farid Zahran, head of the opposition Social Democratic Party; Abdel-Sanad Yamama, chairman of the Wafd Party; and Hazem Omar, head of the Republican People’s Party.

For now Sisi is here to say, for better or for worse.

Guinea Bissau

Following the thwarted possible coup attempt in Sierra Leone, gunfire also broke out at the capital in Guinea Bissau, and President Umaro Sissoco Embalo has formally called it a coup. Apparently parliament didn’t take him seriously enough about it, so Embalo decided to just literally dissolve parliament as well as the government. This is actually not the first time he has dissolved parliament in the last year (the first following an actual coup attempt, so needless to say he’s not a man much bothered by an absence of a legislative branch. The opposition party is in power anyway and previously blocked an attempt for him to aggregate more power to the office of the President, so who’s gonna miss them). Embalo has not yet said when or if there will be new elections.

Zimbabwe

I covered the Zimbabwean election this summer which secured President Emmerson Mnangagwa (who took power from Mugabe via coup in 2017) yet another term. However, his opposition, the Citizens Coalition for Change, ended his party, the Zanu PF’s, supermajority in the legislature. They didn’t become a minority or anything, they just can’t do like whatever they want at all. For instance, they can’t amend the constitution to end the two year term limit that would technically mean Mnangagwa can’t run again. Mnangagwa and ZANU-PF responded wisely and proportionally by vacating 15 of CCC’s seats. The story is honestly pretty great:

The crisis was sparked by a letter laden with spelling mistakes penned in October by Songezo Tshabangu, a little-known politician claiming to be the CCC’s interim secretary-general.

Addressed to the ZANU-PF parliamentary speaker, it stated that 15 CCC lawmakers elected in a bitterly contested August election had ceased to be party members and should lose their seats.

CCC leader Nelson Chamisa, 45, protested that Tshabangu was not a CCC member, the party had no secretary general and had not expelled any MP.

The speaker ignored him and ordered the by-elections, except in one seat where Tshabangu had misspelled the name of a lawmaker.

Political strategists, take note.

Have ZANU actually won their supermajority back yet? It wasn’t clear a few days ago when I last checked.

Zimbabweans are as pessimistic as the English about their country, but on the ground there are improvements and I thought things were looking upward last time I was there early this year. Yes, the recall incident is pathetic, but Ncube is undoubtedly one of the smartest African officials I’ve ever met or even heard speak, and he knows where the risks and opportunities are. As long as Mnangagwa keeps him, they’re probably in a better state than under someone else.

I also couldn't find anything on the results so I figured they weren't out yet, but wikipedia has a page saying ZANU-PF won 7 of the 9 by elections. All of their references are from before the election so I'm not sure where the numbers come from. From what I've read they were 10 seats short so they couldn't really win the supermajority on this move alone either way, but they've already been talking about stripping potentially another members of their seats.

on the ground there are improvements and I thought things were looking upward last time I was there early this year. Yes, the recall incident is pathetic, but Ncube is undoubtedly one of the smartest African officials I’ve ever met or even heard speak, and he knows where the risks and opportunities are.

You have any insight either to the current state of the country, or Ncube personally?

Guatemala

I’ve covered the Guatemalan election escapades for a while here, with the powers that be pulling every dirty trick in the book to hang onto their position, including somehow ruling that the party that won is illegal. Well now the Attorney General’s office has announced the nullification of the election due to irregularities. This is beginning to look less like an establishment flailing and more like a standard coup. The National Electoral Tribune has rejected the claim so it’s far from clear that there’s consensus among government institutions to crush Arevalo. He is nominally supposed to take power in a month on January 14; it’ll be a nail biter till then.

Modest correction: the Attorney General did not announce the nullification of the election, the Attorney General asked the electoral court to nullify the election, which the court has not done (yet).

You are correct in that this is the anti-Arrevelo establishment attempting a coup, but I'd disagree that it doesn't involve flailing. This is not the first time by any means that the prosecutor's office has tried to invalidate the election, and while the Government already targeted the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (4 of whom are in exile), it has virtually no regional or extra-regional public backing, including from the US (which sanctioned a few hundred influential Guatemalans over the weekend).

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