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Argentina's peso collapses after central bank raises interest rate to 60%
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A US court has awarded Citgo, the Houston Texas based subsidiary of Venezuela's nationalized state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), to a Canadian mining firm Crystallex.
Allowing Crystallex to seize Citgo gives the mining company a kind of revenge against the Socialist government of Venezuela. In 2008, when Hugo Chávez was running Venezuela, Chávez ordered the seizure and nationalization of Las Cristales, the local mining operation run by Crystallex.
In 2016, a World Bank arbitration tribunal awarded Crystallex $1.2 billion plus $200 in interest, totaling $1.4 billion, which is the amount that a US court judge is ordering Venezuela to pay to Crystallex. In lieu of that payment, the judge has awarded Citgo to Crystallex.
Citgo is valued at $8 billion, a lot more than the amount owed to Crystallex. However another nationalized state-owned oil company, Russia's Rosneft, claims that it owns 49.9% of Citgo. Rosneft received the stake in Citgo in 2016 as collateral for a $1.5 billion loan to Venezuela. Rosneft is asking the judge to split up Citgo into pieces, rather award the whole thing to Crystallex. Venezuelanalysis and OilPrice.com and Mining.com and Reuters and Boston Globe
As we reported in June, Argentina forced to beg the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $50 billion loan to prevent the country from going bankrupt. The IMF is extremely unpopular in Argentina, since the people blame the IMF for causing a major economic crisis in 2000, when the IMF pulled the plug on another load because Argentina was failing to live up to the austerity commitments it made as a condition for receiving the loan.
Argentina is heavily in debt, having gone on a spending spree the last decade. Since it's now impossible for Argentina to pay its debts, the value of the peso has been falling continually against the dollar all year. When the IMF agreed to loan the $50 billion in June, it was hoped that the value of the peso would stabilize, but it hasn't. People have been selling their Argentina bonds, denominated in pesos, for US dollars to prevent personal losses, which has caused the peso to fall.
On Thursday, the government increased its astronomical 45% interest rate to an even more astronomical 60% interest rate, in the hope that investors would stop selling bonds, since they could get 60% interest. Furthermore, president Mauricio Macri announced that he was going to ask the IMF to provide the $60 billion loan earlier than had been previously agreed. Macri had hoped that these two announcements would stabilize the peso.
Instead, investors seemed to have decided that the government was desperate and panicking, so the peso ended the day down an additional 12% against the dollar.
IMF managing director Christine Lagarde says that revisions to the timeline for the loan are being considered favorably, because of "the more adverse international market conditions, which had not been fully anticipated in the original program."
She added: "I am confident that the strong commitment and determination of the Argentine authorities will be critical in steering Argentina through the current difficult circumstances, and will ultimately strengthen the economy for the benefit of all Argentines." CNBC and NPR and Forbes
Turkey's lira currency fell another 4% against the dollar on Thursday, totalling 40% since the beginning of the year. Thursday's loss was triggered by reports that a Turkish central bank deputy governor is about to resign.
Like many countries, Turkey is deeply in dollar-denominated debt that it can't repay, and investors holding Turkish lira are exchanging them for dollars to preserve value. However, as we reported earlier this month, Turkey's economic problems are exacerbated by president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who says that interest rates are "evil," and who believes that lower interest rates cause lower inflation, which is the opposite of the case, and who is imposing his delusional economic theories on the central bank. No wonder a central bank government may resign.
When we say that Turkey's lira currency has fallen 40% against the dollar, we can say it a different way: that the value of the dollar has been rising against Turkey's currency, as well as other national currencies.
Developing country currencies have been particularly hard hit by the strengthening dollar. Many of them have borrowed heavily in dollar-denominated loans, which they can't repay with their weaker currencies.
The following table shows the amount that different emerging country currencies have fallen against the dollar this year:
Argentine peso -53.9%
Turkish lira -43.5%
Brazilian real -20.2%
South African rand -16.1%
Russian ruble -15.6%
Indian rupee -9.7%
Chilean peso -9.3%
Hungarian forint -7.7%
Indonesian rupiah -7.6%
Philippine peso -6.6%
Polish zloty -5.6%
The United States has one of the worst borrowing and spending records in the world, but so far investors haven't punished us for this. When investors decide to do that, it won't be pretty. CNBC and Bloomberg and Daily Express (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 31-Aug-18 World View -- US court seizes Venezuela's Citgo, as Argentina's peso crashes thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(31-Aug-2018)
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Former Balkan diplomats say that land swap proposal ignores 1,000 years of bloodshed
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The breakup of Yugoslavia led to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, which were the bloodiest European wars since the end of World War II, and have not been completely settled. In particular, there is still a border dispute between Kosovo and Serbia, and there are still Nato peacekeepers in the region.
Neither Serbia nor Kosovo is a member of the European Union, although Serbia is going through the accession process. Kosovo claimed its independence in 2008 and is recognized by the EU, Nato and the US, but five countries -- Russia, Greece, Cyprus, Serbia, Spain, and Azerbaijan -- consider it to be a "fake country," and do not recognize its independence.
But now the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia have say that they have reached a peace agreement between the two countries.
Serbia president Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo president Hashim Thaci announced an agreement on Saturday to swap some territories and reach a permanent peace agreement. Part of the deal would involve unspecified "border corrections" or "territory swaps" between the two countries. It's believed that the proposal is that four municipalities in the north of Kosovo which host a majority Serbian population could be given to Serbia while Bujanovac and Presevo, municipalities in Serbia with mainly ethnic Albanian populations, might be divided and given to Kosovo.
This proposal has caused something of a panic among the people living in the areas involved. For example, a Serb living in a mostly Albanian region of Serbia would suddenly find that suddenly he's a citizen of Kosovo, and no longer in Serbia.
Another issue is that the deal could set a precedent that other countries might try to follow, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro.
Kosovo's president Thaci said on Saturday:
"Kosovo is determined to reach a binding legal agreement with Serbia. The time to do this is now. We have a short window of opportunity. It is not easy at all; it is very, very difficult. That’s why everybody has to be behind it."
Despite the widespread opposition to the idea, it may be adopted anyway because it would allow both Serbia and Kosovo to join the European Union. The (laughable) theory is that once both countries are in the EU, then the border adjustment won't make any difference because borders will no longer matter. Euro News and B92 (Serbia) and Bloomberg
There are certainly plenty of historical examples to show that setting borders to separate different ethnic groups doesn't always work, and may never work. An example that comes to mind is the 1947 agreement to partition the Indian subcontinent, supposedly putting all the Hindus into India and all the Muslims into Pakistan. The result was the Partition War, one of the bloodiest wars of the twentieth centuries, when Muslims in India traveled to Pakistan, and Hindus in Pakistan traveled to India, with any property disputes settled by murder. That war has not been settled to this day, with the threat of a new war in Kashmir and Jammu.
Another example is the United Nations partitioning of Palestine in 1948, creating the state of Israel. That led to the extremely bloody war between Arabs and Jews. That war also has not been settled to this day, with the threat of a new war between Arabs and Jews.
So it's not surprising that three former High Representative’s for Bosnia and Herzegovina -- Carl Bildt, Paddy Ashdown, and Christian Schwarz-Schilling -- are expressing strong objections to the land swap proposal. In the letter they wrote jointly, they said:
"We know Bosnia and Herzegovina well enough to know that this will give comfort and support to those who would break up the country, who are already calling for a return to the status quo ante in Dayton, unravelling all we and our Bosnian partners have worked for over more than two decades.We know the EU and Europe well enough to know that our principles and our bloody history teach us that sustainable peace can only come when we learn to live in multi-ethnic communities, rather than re-drawing borders to create mono-ethnic ones;
We can in short, think of no policy more likely to lead us back to division and conflict in the Balkans than the one which some are apparently now supporting."
Paddy Ashdown, interviewed on the BBC, added the following about the border adjustments (my transcription):
"But in reality, I think it will set in train a series of events that will certainly add to those who want to destabilize Bosnia Herzegovina, certainly undermine the possibility of the solution in Macedonia, and if it should happen, it will certainly institute a movement of population of minorities from all of those areas back to their home territory, and by the way it will be hugely comforting to Vladimir Putin who is trying to do exactly the same thing in Ukraine. It's a very, very very bad thing, and a very dangerous one.I've been the high representative in Bosnia for four years in this matter, and I could have always, in a heartbeat, in a murmer, have got all of the national leaders, the ethnic leaders of their populations, to divide the country up into little ethnic pockets to preserve their ability to exercise control over their people. But the founding principle of Europe, one that we have learned for over a thousand years of bloodshed, is that we do not redraw borders to make nationally or ethnically homogeneous areas. We can make peace in a multi-ethnic spaces that are already there. And this is going exactly against what the practice in the Balkans have so far been, it will institute a round of border changes and I have no doubt whatsoever that it will destabilize states, it will move towards more ethnically pure states that are bound to come into conflicts with each other, and will offend the European principle that we do not redraw borders.
The positive suggestion is that we continue to try to make sure that the borders that have been drawn in Kosovo are ones in which everybody across the whole of Kosovo can join the European Union, and if they achieve standards to do so, then borders won't matter."
It's interesting that those who support territory swaps and those who oppose territory swaps predict the same outcomes -- that borders will no longer matter. I know of no historical precedent to support that assumption, and it's hard to believe that Ashdown or anyone who is familiar with the history of the Balkans could possibly believe that.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, The Balkans region, which has been the site of repeated crisis wars throughout history between the Christian civilization and the Muslim civilization, may well provide the start of the next major European war. Balkan Insight and Paddy Ashdown and N1 (Balkans) and Map Universal
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 30-Aug-18 World View -- Diplomats fear that proposed Serbia-Kosovo peace deal will lead to Balkans war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(30-Aug-2018)
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China evaluates the failure of the two-child policy
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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For four decades, China has been attempting to control family planning decisions for individual families through the "one-child policy," announced in 1979, which called for forced abortions, forced sterilizations, and harsh fines to prevent families from having more than one child, and which was revised to a "two-child policy" in March 2016, allowing two children instead of just one.
Early in August, China's government announced new postage stamps to be used starting in the Year of the Pig, next year. One of the stamps displays a happy family of five pigs, a mama pig, a papa pig, and three little baby pigs.
To many Chinese, these Year of the Pig stamps appeared to confirm long-rumored plans to eliminate even the two-child restriction. This claim was reinforced by the memory that in 2016, the Year of the Monkey, China had released a similar stamp showing two baby monkeys.
However, Chinese officials denied this claim about the 3-piglet stamps when they were announced three weeks ago. In particular, the designer of the stamps, 81-year-old Chinese folk artist Han Meilin denied this claim through his spokesman, who said that Han decided to draw three piglets because they made the composition of the painting more balanced. Moreover, the five pigs on the stamp echo an auspicious Chinese proverb "five blessings gathering together" and the design is set to bring good luck to the public in the coming year, according to the spokesman.
Well those denials are now turning out to be false. China announced in a Weibo social media post on Monday that all family planning matter has been removed from the new draft civil code that is scheduled for enactment in March 2020.
This means that all family planning controls should end. There will be no more one-child policy, no more two-child policy, no more forced abortions, no more forced sterilizations, and no more harsh fines.
According to Zhang Juwei, director of the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of Population and Labor Economics, "It has become an irresistible trend to allow people to make their own decisions on fertility, which will be the direction for the adjustment of population policy in the future." Daily Mail (8-Aug) and Reuters and South China Morning Post
The one-child policy was arguably a disaster for China's society. Women who had unapproved pregnancies could be violently dragged from their homes and forced to abort and be sterilized. If an unapproved child was born, then the child could not be registered, and essentially did not exist, so could not get schooling or other social benefits.
The negative consequences of the one-child policy were apparent almost as soon as it was adopted in 1979. The policy accelerated the aging of the population, and a decline in the working-age population, which threatened economic growth. Furthermore, with fewer children, fewer elderly people could be cared for by their children.
The one-child policy did have an effect on the demographics of China's population. The most well-known is that many parents aborted their unborn babies when ultrasounds showed that the babies were girls, because many parents wanted a boy who would take care of his parents when they got old, something that girls rarely did. The sex ratio peaked at 121/100 (121 boys for each 100 girls) in 2005, with recent estimates at 116/100, and as high as 140/100 in parts of rural central China.
Aborting girl babies creates a vicious cycle. The number of births in a population grows exponentially based not on the total size of the population, but rather on the number of females in the population. So if there are fewer girls, then there will be fewer females, and fewer births. This vicious cycle is in fact occurring, as statisticians are predicting a sharp fall in China's population in the next decade for exactly this reason.
The two-child policy did little to improve these figures. Many couples chose not to have a second child simply because they don't trust the authorities, and feared reprisals. For those who do have a second child, the birth ratio problem is exacerbated. Those with a daughter, knowing that they could have only one more child, almost universally aborted a female baby.
The population growth rate is below what was promised, and is far from satisfactory. In fact, in some regions the number of births is decreasing. In the first six months of this year, the number of births in many provinces in mainland China fell by 15-20% from the year before. East Asia Forum and US National Institutes of Health
With the failure of the one-child policy and the two-child policy, one of the proposals being considered, sometimes called the three-child policy because of the three piglets, is receiving massive outrage in China.
The proposal is to impose a brand new tax on all working adults under age 40, and put the money into a "reproduction fund." The money would go to subsidize families with more than one child.
Although it's only a proposal, many women fear that it's a return to forced family planning by China's government. Whereas the Chinese government used fines, forced abortions and sterilizations to prevent unapproved births under the one-child policy, under the new policy the Chinese government would use heavy taxes to effectively force women to have a second child, whether she wants it or not. So the government would be back in the family planning business as soon as it got out.
According to one female journalist commenting on the new Year of the Pig stamps, "However, we are not pigs. And when it comes to having babies, we should have free will, and the freedom to choose." South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and Global Times (Beijing) and South China Morning Post
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 29-Aug-18 World View -- China ends two-child policy, but considers a 'wacky' three-child policy thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(29-Aug-2018)
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US Military under pressure to end support of Saudis in Yemen
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The war in Yemen between a Saudi Arabia backed coalition and Iran-backed ethnic Houthis has been going on since 2015, with no end in sight. The Saudis and their coalition partner United Arab Emirates (UAE) have been under increasing international pressure to avoid civilian casualties.
Now the United Nations says that airstrikes launched by Saudi Arabia on Friday killed at least 26 children and four women in al-Hodeidah seaport, which is controlled by the Houthis. Two weeks earlier, another airstrike killed dozens of children traveling in a school bus.
UN official Mark Lowcock wrote:
"I echo the recent statement by the Secretary-General on Yemen, condemning such attacks on civilians and calling for an impartial, independent and prompt investigation into these most recent incidents. I am also deeply concerned by the proximity of attacks to humanitarian sites, including health facilities and water and sanitation infrastructure. The UN and partners are doing all they can to reach people with assistance. Access for humanitarian aid workers to reach people in need is critical to respond to the massive humanitarian crisis in Yemen. People need to be able to voluntarily flee the fighting to access humanitarian assistance too."
On Monday, Lise Grande, another UN official, called for an “independent and impartial investigation” into the attacks on civilians. Grande stated that “what is happening in Yemen is unimaginable” and added that “the time has come to wake up to the terrible reality of the war and its human cost and the need to work together to end hostilities.”
According to unnamed "informed sources," Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) ordered his coalition military generals to ignore the international pressure:
"Do not care about international criticism. We want to leave a big impact on the consciousness of Yemeni generations. We want their children, women and even their men to shiver whenever the name of Saudi Arabia is mentioned."
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, whether MBS actually uttered this statement or not, it's quite likely that it reflects his attitude. MBS is young, 32 years old, and has been extremely aggressive and belligerent since taking power two years ago. Furthermore, the world was shocked in years past when video emerged of atrocities, such as the beheading of a civilian by a jihadist, or by the abduction of numerous girls to serve as sex slaves. Today, as we've gone deeper and deeper into a generational Crisis era, these kinds of atrocities are the new normal, and do not shock people anymore.
One thing that characterizes a generational Crisis era is that the value of an individual human life goes down continually, while increasingly the only thing that matters is the survival of the entire nation and its way of life. So, for example, in 1944 Americans were willing to send tens of thousands of their soldiers onto the beaches of Normandy, despite knowing that thousands would be immediately killed.
Both the Saudis and the Houthis have been increasingly willing to use civilians, including women and children, s cannon fodder in the cause of fighting the Yemen war. The Houthis use children as human shields to protect military installations, and the Saudis kill the children in order to strike at the military installations. That's what always happens in a generational crisis war. Relief Web and NY Magazine and Bellingcat (9-Aug)
Although the US military is not part of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, the US military does provide help in the form of air refueling for Saudi aircraft and intelligence support. In addition, the US sells weapons to the Saudis.
The recent spate of news stories about civilian deaths in Yemen has caused international pressure on the US to reduce or end military support to the Saudis. In addition, there are claims that the weapons that have killed civilians in recent weeks are American made, but this claim has been challenged, as the Saudis also obtain weapons from other sources.
Reports indicate that the Pentagon is warning the Saudis that the US will reduce military and intelligence support if the Saudis don't demonstrate they are attempting to limit civilian deaths in airstrikes. And Democrats in Congress want to amend the defense appropriations bill to make American support contingent on the U.S. defense secretary certifying that the coalition air campaign is not violating international law and U.S. policy related to the protection of civilians.
However, reducing American support to Saudi Arabia would probably just hand a victory over to Iran and the Houthis. In fact, the Saudis have provided evidence to the UN Security Council that Iran is sponsoring Hezbollah militants in the Yemen war, so that a Houthi victory in Yemen would give Iran almost complete effective control of the country -- insofar as it's possible for anyone to control Yemen.
It seems unlikely that President Donald Trump, who views the Saudis as an essential ally, would agree to a reduction of military support. In fact, because of the strategic importance of the al-Hodeidah seaport, whose recapture is the current objective of the Saudi coalition's current military operation, Trump is said to be considering increasing U.S. military support for that operation.
The UN has repeatedly described Yemen as the world's worst humanitarian crisis. The al-Hodeidah seaport is crucial to whatever humanitarian efforts are possible in Yemen. NGOs use this seaport to import badly need humanitarian aid, including food, water and medicines, for 8 million Yeminis, out of a total population of 22 million. Many Yemenis are already on the verge of starvation, and the closure of the port for even a few days could be disastrous. Defense News and CNN and The National (UAE) and Gulf News
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 28-Aug-18 World View -- Saudis target women and children in Yemen to make them 'shiver' for generations thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(28-Aug-2018)
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Syria, Cameroon, Sudan Darfur genocides follow the same pattern
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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If a government wants to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing against an ethnic or religious population, then the old ways that our grandfathers' generations used are no longer practical. Sending people to concentration camps and setting up an elaborate extermination system is way too expensive these days. And starving an entire population, as Stalin did to the Ukrainians in the 1930s and Mao did to the Chinese in the Great Leap Forward, could not be kept hidden from the global media, as it was in those days.
Today's generations of genocidal leaders have new, modern ways for a government to commit genocide now, and we've seen them practiced in Syria, Chechnya, Cameroon, and elsewhere. The basic technique is to make up some excuse to selectively target members of the group to be exterminated with bombs, missiles, jailings, rape, torture and slaughter, saying that the people being targeted are ordinary criminals. Then when activists in the target group do something in retaliation, then the government can declare the entire target ethnic group to be terrorists, including women and children, and use massive force to kill as many of them as possible, and force the rest to flee to other countries.
These new techniques appear to be spectacularly successful in Myanmar (Burma).
Since 2011, Burma's mostly Buddhist security forces have been committing mass atrocities on mostly Muslim ethnic Rohingyas living in Rakhine State, in what the United Nations says is "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing," and which some Western governments are calling genocide. The atrocities by Buddhist security forces include gang rape, violent torture, execution-style killings and the razing of entire villages, in a scorched earth campaign.
In August of last year, the Buddhist security forces got the excuse that they wanted, when a group of activists calling themselves the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and armed with machetes killed several Burmese security forces in attacks against 30 Burmese police outputs. Using this attack as an excuse, the Burmese army began conducting massive slaughter and atrocities against the Rohingyas, causing hundreds of thousands to flee across the border into Bangladesh.
Today, there are about 700,000 Rohingyas living in refugee camps in Bangladesh -- the world's largest population of stateless people, not citizens of Burma, not citizens of Bangladesh.
The Buddhist army in Burma burned down Rohingya villages as part of the atrocities, and after the population left, the army bulldozed the villages. This was a purposeful act to make it impossible for the Rohingyas to return.
So you have these farcical situations where Burmese authorities claim that the Rohingyas burned down their own villages, or even bulldozed them.
However, in September of last year, BBC reporter Jonathan Head was on a trip through Rakhine state sponsored by Burma's government. The reporters were closely monitored by Burmese minders, but he happened to see smoke rising through the trees and was able to escape his minder and arrive at the village. He actually interviewed the Buddhists who were burning down the village, who said that they were helped by the Burmese police. He was able to see one house after another go up in flames, as the Buddhists burned them down.
It was really a pathetic sight. And yet we hear from Burmese officials that the Rohingyas burned down their own villages, and mainstream media reports dutifully report this as if it were some kind of reality. That's how far the farce of fake news has gone today.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel prize winner, has played an important role, a kind of 21st century Hitler. She sweetly tells reporters, "Oh, it's not so bad" or "No that's wrong, it isn't ethnic cleansing," and so Adolf Aung San Suu Kyi Hitler is just part of the genocide farce. She previously spent several decades under arrest by the army, but today it seems that the reason they let her go is because she promised to support the genocide.
Bangladesh and the international community are demanding that the Rohingyas be permitted to return to their homes in Burma. But of course that's impossible, since the homes have been burned down and bulldozed.
In fact, Human Rights Watch has been interviewing Rohingyas who are newly arrived in Bangladesh. They report that the Buddhist security forces in Burma are still raping, torturing, mutilating, and killing Rohingyas.
So the Burmese genocide and ethnic cleansing has been wildly successful. They "cleansed" the area of hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas, who will no longer be around to ignore them. It's the modern way of doing things, and the results speak for themselves. Reuters and United News of Bangladesh and Dhaka Tribune and Economist
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Over the past few years, we've reported Generational Dynamics analyses of countries following exactly the same kind of pattern. The government targets an ethnic or religious population with rape, torture, jailings or other violence, in order to provoke some kind of violent reponse, even an extremely minor one. Once that happens, the government declares the entire population to be terrorists, and launches full scale genocide and ethnic cleansing.
After peaceful protests began in Syria in 2011, the country's president Bashar al-Assad launched air attacks on women and children in schools and markets. Once there was a violent reaction, al-Assad could do what he wanted. He began by massacring thousands of innocent women and children in a Palestinian refugee camp in Latakia in August 2011. He used missiles and barrel bombs, including Sarin gas and chlorine gas, to kill his hated Sunni enemies, and to destroy their homes, markets, hospitals and schools. In 2015, Russia's president Vladimir Putin joined in with his "Grozny strategy," where warplanes attack hospitals, schools and markets with the objective of creating millions of refugees, who can then be attacked while they're out in the open. Between the two of them, al-Assad and Putin have destroyed and flattened villages and cities, and has forced millions of innocent Syrian civilians to flee the violence into Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and Europe. There are six million internally displaced refugees in Syria, and five million that have fled to other countries, with 3.5 million in Turkey, almost one million in Lebanon, another million in Iraq and Jordan, and over a million in Europe.
Then, to complete the ethnic cleansing, al-Assad in April passed "Law #10," which requires anyone wishing to return to Syria to provide paperwork immediately proving ownership of his or her property. The obvious intent is to make it impossible for these millions of people to return to their homes.
In Cameroon, the Francophone (French-speaking) government has used extremely repressive measures to marginalize the Anglophone (English-speaking) population in the region known as the Southern Cameroons. These government atrocities began in November 2016, when the Francophone (French-speaking) Cameroon government security forces began beating and killing peaceful anti-government demonstrators in the South Cameroons, the Anglophone (English-speaking) regions of Cameroon. The demonstrators were protesting systematic bias, discrimination and marginalization towards Anglophones by the Francophone government.
The government got what it wanted in November 2016, when Anglophone Cameroonians began peaceful protests. The Francophone security forces began violently attacking Anglophone protesters. In September of last year, activist separatists began using small bombs to target local security forces.
The government announced that "President Paul Biya has declared war on these terrorists who seek secession." In the increasingly violent Francophone government crackdown that followed, hundreds of people were arrested, and helicopter gunships were used to fire on innocent civilians and kill them. At least 5,000 people have fled across the border to neighboring Nigeria to escape the violence.
Back in 2006, I wrote a generational analysis of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, following the statement by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, that the Darfur genocide was caused by global warming, and therefore by America and Europe.
That fatuous reasoning led me to write an extensive generational analysis of what happened in Darfur, starting in the 1970s and continuing forward. That analysis is still correct, but I now realize that a part of it is in exactly the same pattern we've been talking about in Burma, Syria and Cameroon.
In April 2002, a Darfurian farmer complained to the local authorities that they were being harassed by a local herder militia group. Instead of listening, the farmers were jailed. This had the effect desired by Sudan's government. The farmers were infuriated, activists attacked a police station. The response from Sudan's government was to unleash the Janjaweed militias for a full scale genocide of the Darfurians.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 27-Aug-18 World View -- Genocide of Rohingyas in Burma (Myanmar) appears to be almost complete thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(27-Aug-2018)
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Trump pursues risky strategy, trying to avoid a greater risk
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
President Donald Trump announced on Friday morning that he was canceling the planned meeting of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with North Korea's president Kim Jong-un in three tweets:
"I have asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to go to North Korea, at this time, because I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula......Additionally, because of our much tougher Trading stance with China, I do not believe they are helping with the process of denuclearization as they once were (despite the UN Sanctions which are in place)...
...Secretary Pompeo looks forward to going to North Korea in the near future, most likely after our Trading relationship with China is resolved. In the meantime I would like to send my warmest regards and respect to Chairman Kim. I look forward to seeing him soon!"
This is the first time that I'm aware of that Trump has tied together these two major issues -- denuclearization of North Korea and the trading dispute with China. Significantly, he seems to imply that negotiations with North Korea will be put on hold until some resolution is reached on the trading issue.
Finally, the tweets imply that China is at fault, and that Kim is just doing what China is telling him to do.
By ending negotiations with North Korea, these tweets undercut repeated demands by the North Koreans for the US, North Korea, South Korea and China to sign a peace treaty officially ending the 1950s war in Korea, which ended in 1953 with a ceasefire armistice agreement.
The Chinese would very much like to get an agreement officially ending the Korean war, since such an agreement would then be followed by demands to remove American troops from South Korea, and particularly to remove the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) currently deployed in South Korea. Nominally, THAAD is an anti-missile system deployed to protect South Korea from North Korean missiles, but the Chinese particularly object to the THAAD's powerful radar capabilities that see far into Chinese territory and could provide an early warning of a Chinese missile attack.
China's foreign ministry issued a statement saying the following:
"China's position on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue is consistent and clear. We are committed to achieving denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, and resolving this issue through dialogue and consultation. For all these years, China has been making unremitting efforts for this issue's proper settlement. We have been playing an important and constructive role and comprehensively and strictly implementing the DPRK-related resolutions of the Security Council. All these efforts are witnessed by the international community."
South Korea's foreign ministry issued a statement saying the following:
"It’s most important to maintain a long-term view while maintaining a momentum for dialogue and concentrate diplomatic efforts to faithfully implement the agreements from the summits between South Korea and North Korea and between North Korea and the United States, instead of attaching meaning to each change in the situation.While we consider the delay of the visit to North Korea as unfortunate, we believe it’s most important for the North Korea-U.S. dialogue including Secretary Pompeo’s visits to North Korea to contribute to substantial progress in complete denuclearization and the establishment of a permanent peace regime in the Korean Peninsula."
Regular readers know that Generational Dynamics predicts that China and the US are headed for a major world war with 100% certainty. Furthermore, North Korea will never agree to denuclearization, after decades of having starved, tortured and brutalized the North Korean people, promising that it was all worth it because one day North Korea would be nuclear power and would be a great nation, a peer to the United States. The Hill and Foreign Ministry of China and AP and South China Morning Post (28-Jul) and VOA
The media is filled with the usual statements about Trump's unhinged policies borne out of personal frustration, or about how State Department personnel were blindsided by the announcement. So it's pretty clear that the mainstream media don't have even the slightest clue what's actually going on.
On the other hand, Dear Reader, if you're one of the ones who believe that Trump is the grandmaster at "The Art of the Deal" and you want to learn something, the best way to proceed is from the assumption that there's an actual rational strategy behind the tweets.
If you want to try to make sense of what Trump is doing, then you have to start with the Generational Dynamics predictions that we're headed for a world war with China, and that under no circumstances will North Korea agree to denuclearize, and that their only objective is to get the sanctions lifted while continuning development of nuclear missiles targeting the United States. Donald Trump is aware of these predictions, because he was educated by Steve Bannon, who is an expert on both military history and Generational Dynamics, since I worked with him off and on for a number of years.
What's been obvious from the day that Trump took office is that everything he's done in foreign policy is based on being aware of these predictions and on his determination to keep them from actually coming to pass. And as I've said many times, I'm not going to criticize Trump for taking actions to try to prevent a world war, even if preventing a world war is impossible.
Trump's aggressive tariffs and trade policy toward China makes sense if you understand it as a strategy of trying to throw China's entire entire political strategy off-balance, in order to derail continued preparations for war. China keeps insisting that it wants nothing but stability, in North Korea and in trade, and that's true, because they don't want to be distracted in war preparations. Trump's imposed tariffs are causing significant economic disruptions to China's economy -- which is already in a great deal of trouble -- while North Korea's threats to the United States are keeping US military forces deployed in the region, and THAAD anti-missile and radar systems deployed in South Korea.
Trump's strategy makes sense, but that doesn't mean it's going to work. It's highly risky in the sense that it could trigger an earlier war. I've mentioned on several occasions that we're already in a tit-for-tat escalation pattern with China, and so is Taiwan. This is exactly the pattern that leads to a major war in a generational Crisis era. But the "soft diplomacy" strategy employed by the Obama administration was certain to lead to war as well. Every strategy today leads to unavoidable war.
The negotiations have been completely stalled for weeks. North Korea has shown no sign of denuclearization. According to some reports, Mike Pompeo was demanding that the North Koreans should produce a list of all its secret nuclear and missile development sites, so that inspections can begin. According to another report, Pompeo is asking that North Korea hand over 60-70% of its nuclear warheads, so that another country can remove them from North Korea. Intelligence officials say that North Korea is unwilling to agree to either of these steps, even under considerable concessions from the American side, and furthermore that North Korea has been continuing nuclear and missile development all year.
Furthermore, the US has found that shipping and trading firms based in China, Russia and Singapore have been using clandestine methods to cheat on the United Nations sanctions.
So there was really no point to the Pompeo-Kim meeting anyway, so cancelling the meeting makes sense just from that point of view alone. But it also shows that -- take your pick -- Trump is completely unhinged or a hardheaded negotiator. Whichever one the politicians in Pyongyang, Beijing and Seoul believe, they still have to deal with Trump, and maybe North Korea will be willing to get rid of at a least 10% of its nuclear arsenal. It's possible that's what Trump is hoping for. South China Morning Post and Vox and Politico and Vox (8-Aug)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 26-Aug-18 World View -- China, North and South Korea confounded by cancellation of Kim Jong-un meeting thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(26-Aug-2018)
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The dreaded tribal war zone scenario
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Dr. Peter Salama, from the World Health Organization (WHO), said on Friday:
"For the first time really we have a confirmed case and contacts in an area of very high insecurity. It really was the problem we were anticipating and the problem at same time that we were dreading."
The reason for the statement of concern is that several simultaneous conditions in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have given rise to a situation where an explosion of new infections is likely, in a densely populated tribal war zone.
The new outbreak of Ebola was identified on August 1, just one week after the previous outbreak of Ebola officially ended on July 24.
The earlier outbreak had occurred in far western DRC province of Equateur, centered on a port city on the Congo River. Applying lessons learned from the huge Ebola pandemic of 2014-16 in West Africa, the WHO moved very quickly contain and eliminate that outbreak. WHO medical personnel barely had time to relax when they received word of the new outbreak in the far eastern provinces of North Kivu and Ituri. Both the previous and current outbreaks were caused by the "Zaire strain" of the Ebola virus. However, scientific evidence shows the two outbreaks are unrelated. This means that the virus has again made a jump from the environment (through bats or animals) to people. Daily Mail and BBC and AFP
The earlier outbreak occurred in one large city, but mostly in small villages, where doctors could easily and aggressively use "contact tracing" to prevent the virus from spreading. When an Ebola patient is identified, then all that person's contacts and contacts of contacts are tracked down, and are warned to remain indoors for an incubation period of 21 days. A newly developed vaccine can be given to suspected victims to prevent illness.
So far, 63 people are believed to have died in the outbreak that began on August 1. There are about 103 confirmed and probably cases.
The biggest cause for concern is that one of the confirmed cases is that of an unidentified WHO physician who has been identifying and diagnosing Ebola patients. However, he wasn't infected by one of his patients. He was infected by his own wife when she returned from a nearby city.
The doctor had been in contact with over 100 people in the town of Oicha, about 50 km from DRC's border with Uganda. About 97 of these people have been identified, and WHO officials have been using contact tracing and vaccinations to stop the spread. The problem is that the spreading could go out of control.
North Kivu province is rich in mineral sources, including gold. In August 2007, DRC government forces attacked civilians in order to obtain these mineral sources, creating an enormous refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing intorefugee camps in Uganda. In 2017, the number of refugees has been surging, because of tribal violence between DRC government forces and a rebel coalition known as the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
Currently, the city of Oicha itself is not under ADF control, but the entire region surrounding Oicha is under ADF control, where aid workers, priests and government officials are being held hostage. North Kivu is the most densely populated province in DRC, so there are many scenarios where the virus could spread explosively -- into a region controlled by the AFD, or into a refugee camp in Uganda.
The situation is even further complicated by the fact that the ADF has used violence against US peacekeepers in the region. United Nations officials were stunned in December by the worst attack on United Nations peacekeepers in recent history, when 15 people were killed and 54 wounded in Kivu state, near the border with Rwanda and Uganda. World Health Organization and International SOS
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 25-Aug-18 World View -- In dreaded scenario, Ebola spreads to densely populated war zone in Congo thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(25-Aug-2018)
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Cyril Ramaphosa defends land expropriation policy
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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South Africa's president Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday reconfirmed that the country plans to go ahead with a land reform constitutional amendment that would explicitly permit confiscation of farms without compensation. The amendment is believed to be targeted at farms owned by white farmers, but some in the government dispute that.
Ramaphosa's government was thrown into turmoil on Thursday after president Donald Trump issued a tweet condemning the land reform plan:
"I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. “South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.” @TuckerCarlson @FoxNews"
Trump's tweet is based on a Wednesday evening segment by Fox News analyst Tucker Carlson, which was highly inflammatory and misstated some facts.
The South African government responded with an inflammatory tweet of its own rejecting this claim:
"South Africa totally rejects this narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past. #landexpropriation @realDonaldTrump @PresidencyZA"
I've written a few articles about South Africa's land expropriation issue in the past, so I'm aware of the frequent claims that there's a mass killing or even a genocide of white farmers going on, but I never mentioned that in my articles because the claim is so outlandish, with no basis in fact.
According to published figures, 47 white farmers were killed in 2017, and that was a 20-year low, with a peak in 1998 of 153. Now 47 murdered white farmers might seem like a lot, and indeed it is a lot, but other published figures indicate that 30-40 people in South Africa are murdered every day.
So say what you want about South Africa -- that it's a very dangerous country with a very racist population and a very high murder rate, and even mass killings across the country -- but 47 in one year is a minuscule number compared to the total number of murders, and is nowhere near the level of mass killings or genocide of white farmers.
This controversy has provoked the usual hysterical name-calling on the right and the left. The left claims that Trump's tweet is racist and white supremacist, and the right claims that it proves that South Africa is racist and black supremacist.
Julius Malema, the popular young politician that heads the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), advocating land seizures without compensation, responded to Trump's tweet on Thursday: "They will kill us for that. There’s a group of white right-wingers who are being trained by Jews in Pretoria to be snipers." Times Live (South Africa) and CBS News and Guardian (London, 27-Jun) and The Citizen (South Africa)
While Malema was his usual hysterical and incoherent self, other South Africa politicians said that Trump's tweet raised valid concerns.
Government official Lindiwe Sisulu issued a statement saying that she "has noted the unfortunate comments on Twitter by [Trump]."
The South African Institute of Race Relations (IRR) issued a statement pointing out that the policy of land confiscation without compensation would create enormous problems for South Africa, particularly in trying to attract investment funds:
"Seen alongside South Africa’s decision to terminate its bilateral investment treaties‚ expropriation without compensation has prompted a great deal of concern about the security of their assets‚ particularly among the European investors most directly impacted.Even President [Cyril] Ramaphosa’s investment envoys have referred to the difficulties that expropriation without compensation has created for them in attempting to attract desperately needed funds to South Africa."
Indeed, after Trump's tweet the rand currency weakened against the dollar by 1.7%, and some officials raised concerns that Trump would impose sanctions on South Africa, as he's done with Turkey. Many outside investors are concerned that South Africa will go the way of Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe confiscated white-owned farms and turned them over to his tribal cronies who knew nothing about farming, with the result was that a country that was exporting food in the late 1990s was facing almost total starvation ten years later.
Ramaphosa has been dealing with very explosive land reform issue in South Africa, which is divided not only by race but by tribe. Black South Africans account for 91% of the population, but they own just 1.2% of the land. Since independence in 1994, attempts to acquire white-owned farms with fair compensation and distribute them to black farmers has been an almost total failure.
Ramaphosa has insisted that South Africa has learned from the experience in Zimbabwe, and it would not be repeated. On Wednesday, he told parliament that increasing access to land for the poor would happen in an orderly fashion and would initially focus on making state property available.
Ramaphosa outlined some instances where expropriation without compensation might be justified:
"unused land‚ derelict buildings‚ purely speculative land holdings‚ or circumstances where occupiers have strong historical rights and title holders do not occupy or use their land‚ such as labour tenancy‚ informal settlements and abandoned inner-city buildings."
Ramaphosa insists that the proposed amendment to the constitution would prohibit "the arbitrary deprivation of property."
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, it's highly unlikely that South Africa will ever reach the point where it's confiscating farms. South Africa is in a generational Crisis era, and an explosive racial issue like land reform is more likely to trigger a tribal war. Times Live (South Africa) and Bloomberg and Times Live
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 24-Aug-18 World View -- South Africa politics roiled by Trump tweet on killing white farmers thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(24-Aug-2018)
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Bolton says that Iran must withdraw from Syria
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Ever since the "Arab Spring" began in 2011, Bashar al-Assad, the Shia/Alawite president of Syria, has used peaceful demonstrations as an excuse to use missiles and barrel bombs, including Sarin gas and chlorine gas, to kill his hated Sunni enemies, and to destroy their homes, markets and schools. In 2015, Russia's president Vladimir Putin joined in with his "Grozny strategy," where warplanes attack hospitals, schools and markets with the objective of creating millions of refugees, who can then be attacked while they're out in the open. Between the two of them, al-Assad and Putin have destroyed and flattened villages and cities, and has forced millions of innocent Syrian civilians to flee the violence into Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and Europe.
Now Vladimir Putin is demanding that Europe and the US should pay billions of dollars to rebuild Syria, and to repair all the destruction that Putin and al-Assad caused. Putin combines his demand with a threat: If you don't pay to rebuild Syria, then those millions of refugees that fled to Europe will never go home.
There are six million internally displaced refugees in Syria, and five million that have fled to other countries, with 3.5 million in Turkey, almost one million in Lebanon, another million in Iraq and Jordan, and over a million in Europe. Estimates are that it will cost $250 billion to rebuild Syria.
Lebanon is strongly in favor of the policy of allowing the West to pay for rebuilding Syria, so that the million or so refugees in Lebanon will leave Lebanon and return home.
Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil on Monday thanked Russia “for putting forward an initiative aimed at resolving the refugee issue,” and said Lebanon wants "quick, gradual, safe return of displaced Syrians that is in no way linked to a political solution."
Bassil just wants the EU and US to pour the money in, without demanding a "political solution" in return. The "political solution" would be a process that removes Bashar al-Assad from power. What's the point in rebuilding Syria, if some group is just going to start peacefully protesting, and that will cause al-Assad to destroy Syria all over again?
In fact, Russia is accusing the United States of holding up the process of rebuilding Syria. Russia would get agreement from the US. According to the US State Department, the United States and other countries would not contribute to Syria’s full reconstruction until there was a “credible and irreversible” political process underway to end the conflict.
However, the State Department has also said that it has reached agreement that other countries would provide $300 million to begin rebuilding Syria, including a $100 million commitment from Saudi Arabia. The National (UAE) and Reuters and Washington Post
Vladimir Putin has been particularly applying pressure to Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel has suffered considerable backlash from her 2015 decision to allow over a million Syria refugees to arrive in Germany. Merkel's political position would presumably be helped if many of these refugees could return to Syria.
Last weekend, Vladimir Putin met with Angela Merkel in her elegant retreat at Meseberg Palace north of Berlin.
Saying that the population of refugees is "potentially a huge burden for Europe," he said:
"We need to strengthen the humanitarian effort in the Syrian conflict. By that, I mean above all humanitarian aid to the Syrian people, and help the regions where refugees living abroad can return to. I think it’s in everyone’s interests, including Europe’s."
Unsurprisingly, Merkel made no commitment to aid, but reiterated the need for constitutional reforms that would be opposed by al-Assad and elections in Syria. Merkel said the priority in Syria was "to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe," particularly in the Idlib region, which is held by rebel groups and militants. AFP and iNews (UK) and Middle East Eye
US national security advisor John Bolton is demanding that Iran be compelled to withdraw from Syria before any negotiations on rebuilding Syria can take place, but that Putin on Wednesday said that Russia cannot compel Iran to leave.
Bolton also said that Putin is "stuck" in Syria, and wants to get out:
"But he also told us that his interest and Iran’s were not exactly the same. So we’re obviously going to talk to him about what role they can play.We’re going see what we and others can agree in terms of resolving the conflict in Syria. But the one prerequisite there is the withdrawal of all Iranian forces back in Iran.
[The] Russians are stuck there at the moment. And I don’t think they want to be stuck there. I think their frenetic diplomatic activity in Europe indicates that they’d like to find somebody else, for example, to bear the cost of reconstructing Syria - which they may or may not succeed in doing."
Russia and al-Assad have been announcing, and sending out their trolls to say that the war in Syria is now pretty much over, after the reconquest of Daraa in southern Syria. However, nobody serious believes that, since Idlib province still has some 2.5 million civilians, and is still controlled by thousands of anti-Assad rebels, including both "moderate" rebels and militants in al-Qaeda linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
In each of al-Assad's previous targets, including Aleppo, Ghouta and Daraa, Putin's "Grozny strategy" was used. One particularly effective technique was to drop barrel bombs filled with metals, explosives, and chlorine gas. The metals would kill as many people as possible, and the chlorine gas, which is heavier than air, would fall into basements and bunkers where women and children were hiding. Once they were forced out into the open, additional barrel bombs and missiles or Sarin gas could kill the women an children en masse.
In each of these regions, al-Assad and Putin were forced by international pressure to permit civilians and rebels to leave the region on buses and travel to Idlib. In this way, the horrific slaughter in those regions was brought to an end though a kind of negotiated settlement.
Hundreds of thousands of people who fled to Idlib are trapped there, just south of the border with Turkey. Al-Assad has vowed to recapture Idlib in the same way as Aleppo and the others, and this certainly means the same kinds of attacks with barrel bombs, missiles, chlorine gas and Sarin gas.
But as analysts have been saying, "There is no Idlib for Idlib." This means that the al-Assad will have to kill most of the 2.5 million people living there, since they'll have nowhere to go. This would be a major new humanitarian crisis of gargantuan proportions. In some scenarios, Turkey might open the border and allow the refugees to flow through Turkey into Europe, creating a new European refugee crisis. This is what Angela Merkel, quoted above, meant when she said that the priority in Syria was "to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe."
It's well to remember, as we've been reporting for years, that Bashar al-Assad is a sociopathic monster, the worst war criminal so far this century, comparable to Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot from the last century. Whatever fantasy Vladimir Putin is having to end the war and rebuild Syria, al-Assad will not end the war until either he's forced to or until he's slaughtered most of the millions of people in Idlib. Reuters and Washington Examiner and The National (UAE)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 23-Aug-18 World View -- Russia demands that US and EU pay to rebuild Syria thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(23-Aug-2018)
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El Salvador receives harsh criticism for switching allegiance from Taiwan to China
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
El Salvador's president Salvador Sanchez Ceren announced Monday night in a televised address that his country would end diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and will establish diplomatic relations with China. China refuses to have diplomatic relations with any nation that has diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and force countries to choose.
China has been using a variety of economic incentives, threats and sanctions on numerous countries to force them to switch diplomatic relations from Taiwan to China. Since the beginning of 2016, when Taiwan's current president Tsai Ing-wen took office, four other countries previously switched -- Burkina Faso, the Dominican Republic, Sao Tome and Principe and Panama.
The Pacific Ocean island of Palau, which has diplomatic relations with Taiwan, is under tremendous pressure from China to switch. In order to pressure Palau, China banned tour groups from China from using Palau as a destination. The ban has devastated the tourist industry in Palau, cutting the number of tourists in half.
China's foreign ministry defended their practice of using economic pressure with a statement saying, "The one China principle is the pre-condition and political foundation for China to maintain and develop friendly cooperative relations with all countries around the world."
This wording is similar to statements by Chinese officials with regard to China's illegal activities in the South China Sea. China has militarily threatened other nations and has prevented other nations from exploiting fishing and drilling for oil in their own territorial waters. China says that there's no problem as long as each country maintains friendly, cooperative relations, which is China's way of saying, "Do as I say or we'll kill you."
The announcement by El Salvador's president was particularly contentious, since Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said El Salvador repeatedly asked for a “large amount of funding” to develop its La Unión port, but Taipei declined since it decided it was an unrealistic project and could generate high debts for the two states.
El Salvador's presidential spokesman said that Taiwan's allegations were totally false, but then seemed to confirm the allegations by saying, "We cannot turn our back on the world, ignore that China is the second largest power in the world and the leading export economy on the planet. It is key for our country."
Opposition lawmaker Margarita Escobar said: "The position from Taiwan is that [the El Salvador governing party] asked it for money to finance the campaign in 2019. That is called selling sovereignty and allowing another state to intervene in the internal affairs of El Salvador."
The United States ambassador to El Salvador, Jean Manes, is expressing concern that China plans to use the new relationship with El Salvador to build a Chinese military base there. "Without a doubt, this will impact our relationship with the government. We continue supporting the Salvadoran people." Senator Marco Rubio is planning a bill to end foreign aid to El Salvador. AP and Hong Kong Free Press and Reuters and South China Morning Post
Since 1992, China, Taiwan and the US have adopted the "One China Consensus," which says that there is just one China, be leaves ambiguous what that means. However, since winning the presidential election early in 2016, Tsai Ing-wen has refused to endorse the 1992 consensus, instead saying that she "respected ... the common understanding" between China and Taiwan, without saying what that means.
This refusal has infuriated China, which has mounted a series of increasingly belligerent measures to threaten Taiwan. These measure include staging naval and warplane military drills around Taiwan, and also waging economic warfare by blocking Taiwan from attending a growing list of international events, and by using economic threats to force countries to switch diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China.
In July, China forced the East Asian Olympic Committees (EAOC) to cancel Taiwan as host of the 2019 East Asian Youth Games. The EAOC made the announcement with no prior notice and no explanation.
Last week, the 85C Bakery, a Taiwan coffee chain with stores in America and China, was dropped from all Chinese meal-ordering platforms, after Tsai Ing-wen visited one of its stores in Los Angeles. The firm earns more than 60 percent of its revenue in China, and losing its presence on food delivery apps would be devastating.
In 2005, China passed the Anti-Secession Law, which orders the army to invade Taiwan if any Taiwanese official makes any move toward independence, whether by word or by deed. So Taiwan authorities have been careful since then not to say anything that might trigger the Anti-Secession law although, in fact, over the years of things have been said which could arguable trigger it.
So Tsai's words following El Salvador's announcement were considerably harsher than we usually hear from Taiwanese officials. She vowed to fight China’s "increasingly out of control" behavior:
"China nowadays is not only a threat to cross-strait peace. What China has been doing now globally – interfering in other countries’ internal affairs and destroying the order of the international market – have caused high levels of global instability....We have to remind the international community once again – that this is not only a matter for Taiwan. The situation is so dire that we cannot tolerate it anymore."
The question here is whether Tsai's remarks fit the requirements to trigger a Chinese invasion under the anti-secession law. The statement that China is interfering in "other countries' internal affairs" could refer to Taiwan.
At any rate, it's significant that the level of harshness is increasing. Taiwan is now discussing taking retaliatory measures against China. The particular issue is that China has suddenly begun demanding that any international airline that lists "Taiwan" as a destination must change it to "China Taiwan" or be blocked from landing in China.
This has infuriated the Taiwanese, and has led Taiwan to consider counter-measures against airlines that comply with China's demands. According to Taiwanese media:
"The Civil Aviation Administration of China recently sent a letter to 44 foreign airlines requesting that Taiwan not be reclassified as a "state" and must be named "China Taiwan". 44 foreign airlines have all changed on the July 25 deadline. The Ministry of Communications recently studied the countermeasures against the airlines that added the name of "China" to Taiwan's title, and considered punishing the practice of not allowing bridges and adjusting time zones [forcing airline passengers to board and deplane farther from the terminal, and at less convenient times]....Officials from the Ministry of Communications said that foreign airlines have ignored reality and succumbed to China's political pressure, which has seriously hurt Taiwan's dignity and national sentiments. There are many counter-measures that we can take, and various schemes will be evaluated by the Ministry of Communications....
[Taiwan official] Wu Hongmou said in an interview today that Taiwan is a sovereign and independent country, but it has been renamed by foreign airlines. "We can't accept it, and it is necessary to counter it."
The statement that "Taiwan is a sovereign and independent country" is accepted as truth by many Taiwanese, but saying it represents a major hardening of positions on the Taiwan side, just as China is becoming increasingly arrogant and contemptuous, and taking increasingly offensive and belligerent actions. This is a typical tit-for-tat pattern that leads to a major war in a generational Crisis era, when xenophobia and nationalism are at a peak in all countries.
By the way, I hope that there's nobody left who believes that China will never invade Taiwan because it's bad for business. History has shown that a business relationship makes a war MORE likely, since the business relationship can be used as an additional weapon of war, through such things as tariffs, blockades and boycotts. I doubt that a business relationship has ever prevented any war in history. Hong Kong Free Press and Focus Taiwan and AFP and Hong Kong Free Press and United Daily News (Taiwan) (Trans)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 22-Aug-18 World View -- Taiwan says that China is 'out of control' after El Salvador switches allegiance thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(22-Aug-2018)
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Brief generational history of Chechnya
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
ISIS is taking credit for a series of coordinated terror attacks on security forces in several suburbs of Grozny, the capital city of Russia's autonomous republic of Chechnya.
In one incident, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives near a police station, injuring several policemen. The attacker survived and was hospitalized.
In another incident, two men with knives entered a district police department and wounded two policemen and a female bystander with knives. The two assailants were shot dead.
In another incident, two assailants tried to blow up a truck loaded with gas canisters in a suicide mission, but the vehicle failed to explode. The two were shot dead by police.
In yet another incident, an attacker was allegedly shot dead after hitting a traffic policeman with his car. There were also reports of a shoot-out between police officers and attackers in the street, killing one officer.
All of the assailants were teenagers, aged 11-17. Five were shot dead.
Amaq, the public relations agency for the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh) claimed credit for the coordinated attack. ISIS frequently claims credit for terror attacks in which it didn't participate, and that appears to be true in this case. However, executing several coordinated attacks at separate locations requires a moderate amount of sophistication, and since the terrorists were all teens, they might have had help from someone.
Chechnya is one of Russia's provinces in the North Caucasus region, which is largely populated by Muslims. Xenophobic tensions between the Christian Orthodox ethnic Russians and the Muslim Caucasians have been growing in recent years.
Ramzan Kadyrov is president of Chechnya. He's bloody and brutal, and will use any means necessary to keep the region stable, and he is also extremely loyal to Russia's president Vladimir Putin. International human rights groups, however, have accused Kadyrov of rampant rights abuses, including arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings by his feared security forces.
Kadyrov played down the importance of the terror attacks on Monday, said that extremist propaganda that "confuses the young men" was to blame for the assaults. He said the attacks were staged to "darken" the festivities as Muslims celebrate the Eid al-Adha holiday. Tass (Moscow) and RFE/RL and Al Jazeera and AP
The fact that Monday's coordinated terror attacks were perpetrated by teenagers aged 11-17 is a lot more significant than Chechnya's president Ramzan Kadyrov is saying.
But first, let's briefly look at the terrorist bombings at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.
Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were ethnic Chechens (from Chechnya), but they were born in Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia. What were ethnic Chechens doing in Kyrgyzstan?
Chechnya and Russia had fought numerous wars for centuries, but Russia's dictator Josef Stalin finally decided to adopt a "final solution." In 1944, there was a mass deportation of ethnic Chechens, forced to move from Chechnya to Central Asia, including Kyrgyzstan. It was apparently this forced deportation that radicalized the Tsarnaev brothers, and caused them to carry out the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.
In August 1957, six years ago this month, ethnic Russians living in Chechnya revolted against the authorities when Moscow allowed the Chechens who had been deported from there in 1944 to return and take back property and power that had passed from that ethnic community to Russians the authorities had moved in to occupy the territory. Of course, the returning Chechens found that their former homes were occupied by ethnic Russians.
Going back to the 1990s, there were two major "Chechen wars" between Russian forces and Chechen separatists. In December 1994, the Russian army was sent into the capital city Grozny to take care of some protesters. They expected the operation to take no more than a day or two. Instead, the Russian army forces were ambushed by Chechen separatist forces. A bloody battle ensued that lasted into February, and although the Russian forces finally won, it was extremely humiliating for the Russians, since tens of thousands of combatants and civilians were killed before it ended.
Russian troops got their revenge in 1999, when they had to respond to a new insurgency of pro-separatist activists. In Russia's 1990s war Chechnya, Russian warplanes bombed schools and hospitals in order to create a refugee crisis, and to empty the urban residential areas. Once that was achieved, heavy weapons could be deployed to eradicate opposing forces, entailing widespread destruction of homes and infrastructure.
This is the same strategy, known as the "Grozny Model," that Putin and Syria's president Bashar al-Assad have been using in Aleppo, Ghouta, Daraa and other Syrian battlegrounds, although al-Assad is speeding up the creation and slaughter of refugees by using chemical weapons, including Sarin gas and chlorine gas.
So Monday's terrorist attackers are all teenagers, aged 11-17. Ramzan Kadyrov played down the attack, saying that the attackers were "confused young men," but that's far from the truth. This is a new up-and-coming generation of kids growing up after the Grozny mass slaughter in 1999.
In fact, authorities reportedly identified the 17-year-old attacker as Ali Akhmatkhanov -- a younger brother of Khizir Akhmatkhanov, who was sentenced to a lengthy prison term for his involvement in a terrorist attack in the Chechen city of Gudermes in 2001.
So this is not a generation of confused kids. This is a generation of kids is looking for revenge. It would not be surprising to see more terrorist acts by Chechens in the months to come. Eurasia Review and Global Security and Rand Corp.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 21-Aug-18 World View -- ISIS claims credit for coordinated attacks across Russia's Chechnya region thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(21-Aug-2018)
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Taliban says no peace in Afghanistan until foreign 'occupation' withdraws
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Ashraf Ghani, the president of Afghanistan, gave an Independence Day speech on Sunday announcing a ceasefire with the Taliban, on the condition that the Taliban also announce a ceasefire.
The ceasefire is to begin on Monday, the first day of the Eid holiday, and is to end on November 19, which is Mohammed's birthday.
"As we approach Eid-ul-Adha, and to respect the wishes of different segments of Afghan society including religious scholars, political parties, politicians, women and civil society leaders, youth and members of high peace council in all 34 provinces, and to respect the wishes of the religious scholars of the Islamic world that were gathered in the holy mosques and to respect the wishes of the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) and the custodians of the two-holy mosques, the King of Saudi Arabia, we announce a ceasefire that would take effect from tomorrow, Monday, the day of Arafa, till the day of the birth of the prophet (PBUH) i.e., Milad-un-Nabi, provided that the Taliban reciprocate."
President Ghani further added that peace is one of the main demands of the nation. He said it would not be acceptable that there would be ceasefire in part of the country while that conflict would continue in its other parts.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement approving of the ceasefire, and saying "It is time for peace":
"The United States welcomes the announcement by the Afghan government of a ceasefire conditioned on Taliban participation. This plan responds to the clear and continued call of the Afghan people for peace....There are no obstacles to talks. It is time for peace."
Pakistan's Foreign Office issued a statement saying: "Pakistan fully supports all such efforts that contribute to achieving durable stability and lasting peace in Afghanistan. The people of Afghanistan deserve it."
It sounds like peace for our time. I hope everyone in Afghanistan can now go home and get a nice quiet sleep. Khaama News (Afghanistan) and Reuters and Dawn (Pakistan)
This was the week that the Taliban surprised government forces and captured the strategic town of Ghazni long before the Afghan army could react. It took almost a whole week to recapture the town, and that was possible only because they were supported by US warplanes that conducted dozens of airstrikes.
Even today, Ghazni is still unsafe, with the roads peppered with unexploded IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and mines.
The Taliban conducted numerous other operations across the country in the last week alone. This is the middle of the annual Taliban fighting season, and the Taliban are in the ascendant, and so it's very unlikely that the Taliban will agree to a three month ceasefire.
The Taliban have said for years that they will never negotiate with the "corrupt regime" -- the Afghan government. They are demanding negotiations with the American military, with the objective of the negotiations to be the full withdrawal of the "occupying forces" -- the US and Nato forces.
On Saturday, just hours before Ghani announced the supposed ceasefire with the Taliban, Taliban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada issued a statement repeating all their demands:
"Afghan Mujahid Nation! This year's [Eid holiday] approaches us as our Jihadi struggle against the American occupation is on the threshold of victory due to the help of Allah Almighty. The infidel invading forces have lost all will of combat, their strategy has failed, advanced technology and military equipment rendered useless, sedition and corruption-sowing group defeated and the arrogant American generals have been compelled to bow to the Jihadic greatness of the Afghan nation...Bringing peace and security is from among the highest priorities of the Islamic Emirate, but peace will remain elusive during an occupation and neither is salvation possible without the establishment of an Islamic authority....
This war that is has been called the longest, costliest and most futile war in American history, plunged the entire region and the world including Afghanistan into insecurity and chaos.
A war that has cost Americans loss of security, prestige and mental wellbeing globally and even inside America itself...
But the Islamic Emirate continues to call America towards understanding and sound logic instead of force and points them towards options that can guarantee the secession and end of this long war, and that lone option is to end the occupation of Afghanistan and nothing more....
The regime based in Kabul and forced upon the Afghan people at the expense of huge American military, financial and human loss has disappointed American officials and they have lost all trust in the regime due to corruption, incompetency, impotence and failure.
The leadership of this corrupt regime has been given to a figure who has spent all his time in power squabbling with officials of his government, battling his chief executive, battling his deputies, battling his cabinet and even battling his governors....
Even now if they show readiness for direct dialogue with the Islamic Emirate by accepting the ground realities of Afghanistan, we will view it as a sound step by America.
Sincere, transparent and result-oriented negotiations are an important part of our policy, But negotiations must be sincere and productive free from any fraud and deception and must revolve around the core issue and not be used for propaganda or misleading the common thinking."
The statement goes on to give additional demands for negotiations with the Americans, and for American withdrawal.
Each time I write an article about the Afghan war, it seems more and more like a Gothic fantasy. Ghani's statement and Akhundzada's are so completely out of touch with one another, that it seems clear that they can only be play-acting. Pompeo's statement that "It's time for peace" seems even more surreal. And the statement from Pakistan's foreign office seems to be mocking and making fun of all of them. Ghani and Pompeo are not stupid men, so there's no chance that they believe anything they're saying.
And we haven't even mentioned ISIS-K, the Afghanistan branch of ISIS, which is not included in the supposed ceasefire.
As I've said, the only thing that makes sense is the larger strategy for the region. If America withdraws, it would destabilize the region, and would be a political disaster for the American administration. The larger picture is that Donald Trump and the military understand that this war cannot be won, but they also understand that war with China and Pakistan is approaching. As war with China and Pakistan approaches, president Trump wants to keep American troops active in Afghanistan, and to continue to maintain several American military bases in Afghanistan, including two air bases in Bagram and Kandahar International Airport. These bases will be valuable in any future war with China. Under these circumstances, having troops in Afghanistan is what matters, whether the Taliban are defeated or not. Tolo News (Afghanistan) and Long War Journal and Long War Journal
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 20-Aug-18 World View -- Afghanistan's president Ghani announces ceasefire with Taliban thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(20-Aug-2018)
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Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says that capitalism has not always existed
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Venezuela's Socialist president Nicolás Maduro announced a bizarre set of new economic regulations to try to reverse the economic destruction he's inflicted for years. In his Friday night speech he said:
"I want the country to recover and I have the formula. Trust me."
The first part of his "trust me" formula was to devalue the bolivar currency by 96%, and then introduce a new currency, the Bolivar Soberano ("sovereign bolivar") which is pegged to a pseudo-bitcoin-like crypto-currency called the "petro," which is pegged to the price of oil, where oil is produced by Venezuela's collapsing oil industry.
The second part of the formula is that the minimum wage will be increased by 3000%. This means that many business owners will have to lay off employees, substantially increasing unemployment in the country.
The third part of the formula is to increase the corporate tax rate. Businesses that survive the minimum wage increase many not survive higher taxes.
The fourth part of the formula is to remove the subsidy on gasoline. Businesses that depend on transportation costs to receive or deliver goods will be hit hard. Millions of workers who have been buying gasoline at subsidized rates will be hit hard as well. But this is necessary, says Maduro, to prevent fuel smuggling. There will also be new taxes on luxury goods.
Socialist Venezuela's inflation rate is above 40,000%, and the IMF predicts that it will reach one million percent this near. The only way to stop inflation is to produce more goods. If the people need two million loaves of bread to avoid starvation, and if the country's bakeries only produce one million loaves, then one million people will go without bread, irrespective of what currency is being used. Furthermore the price of bread will soar, irrespective of what currency is being used. That's not rocket science. That Economics 1.01. The fact that Maduro and other Socialist politicians in other countries are unable to grasp that simple fact shows how incredibly stupid they are. And the results speak for themselves.
Venezuela's Socialist economy is destroying not only Venezuela, but the entire region, as more than a million migrants have fled starvation and violence in Venezuela and crossed the border into Colombia.
From there, many have continued on, planning to live in Ecuador or Peru. But Ecuador, which has been receiving 4,000 new migrants every day, crossing the border from Colombia, has closed the border, and says that no more Venezuelans will be admitted unless they have a passport. Peru has announced a similar measure to take effect next week.
Socialist Venezuela is becoming one of the top three economic hyperinflation disasters of the last century, along with Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe, and 1920s Germany under the Weimar Republic. CNBC and Independent (London) and Reuters
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Wonder girl Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the new face of the left, apparently thinks that capitalism has just been invented. Here's what she said in an interview:
"Capitalism has not always existed in the world and will not always exist in the world."
So let's be clear. Tens of thousands of years ago, when the first cavemen formed a community and started bartering with each other for products and services -- "You make me a wheel, and I'll kill a deer in exchange" -- that was a free capitalist market. So Ocasio-Cortez is an idiot.
There's also a lot of nonsense these days about Sweden and Norway being Socialist countries. No they aren't. They're capitalist countries. Maybe the government pays for some services, like doctors and education, but that's also partially true in the United States, with Medicaid and school scholarships.
Let's review. As I've written many times in the past, Socialism is mathematically impossible as population grows. Socialism may work OK when you have a feudal society of a few hundred people, but the number of regulators grows exponentially faster than the population grows, so by the time you get to, say, a million people, everyone would have to be a regulator. So the Socialist system collapses.
Furthermore, Socialism is much worse than Nazism. Nazism killed tens of millions of people in the last century, but Socialism killed hundreds of millions. There is literally nothing worse than Socialism.
Somebody should tell Ocasio-Cortez that it's Socialism that hasn't been around forever. It was invented in 1848 by Karl Marx, and it's been a disastrous failure every time it's been tried, for the reasons I just gave. Whether Ocasio-Cortez likes it or not (and I'm sure she doesn't), it's mathematically provable that Socialism will always fail.
That's why countries like Cuba, Russia, China, East Germany, Norway, Sweden and others that have tried Socialism have been forced to end it and return to free markets, and a great deal of capitalism.
The only two mostly Socialist countries that I'm aware of in the world today are Venezuela and North Korea. All others are mostly capitalistic. I keep wondering how stupid you have to be to support Socialism, which has a 100% failure record, but we only have to look at Socialist politicians like Kim Jong-un, Nicolás Maduro, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, and Jeremy Corbyn for the answers. Daily Caller
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 19-Aug-18 World View -- Socialist Venezuela introduces new fantasy currency and new Socialist changes thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(19-Aug-2018)
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The growing military threat from China
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The new edition of the Pentagon's annual report on China documents major advances in a number of areas where China's military is aggressively preparing for war against the United States and its allies.
As we've been reporting for years, China has been developing numerous intercontinental ballistic missile systems that have no military purpose other than to target American cities, American bases, and American aircraft carriers.
According to the new report, these capabilities are now being extended to bombers:
"The PLA (China's "People's Liberation Army") has long been developing air strike capabilities to engage targets as far away from China as possible. Over the last three years, the PLA has rapidly expanded its overwater bomber operating areas, gaining experience in critical maritime regions and likely training for strikes against U.S. and allied targets. The PLA may continue to extend its operations beyond the first island chain, demonstrating the capability to strike U.S. and allied forces and military bases in the western Pacific Ocean, including Guam. Such flights could potentially be used as a strategic signal to regional states, although the PLA has thus far has not been clear what messages such flights communicate beyond a demonstration of improved capabilities."
Whereas a fleet of bombers is of great concern to Americans, China's neighbors are probably more concerned about China's activities in the South China Sea. The report says that China has largely completed its operation to create artificial islands, but continues to build infrastructure on the islands it's created, in order to support possible military operations in the future.
According to the report, China plans "floating nuclear power stations":
"China’s plans to power these islands may add a nuclear element to the territorial dispute. In 2017, China indicated development plans may be underway to power islands and reefs in the typhoon-prone South China Sea with floating nuclear power stations; development reportedly is to begin prior to 2020."
It's well-known that China's activities in the South China Sea were declared illegal in 2016 by the United Nations Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, which ruled that all of China's activities in the South China Sea are illegal and in violation of international law. China claims it has the right to violate international law any time, although it laughably invokes international law when it's on their side. AFP and Dept. of Defense (PDF)
The report documents the means by which China uses military threats to enforce its claims to the South China Sea, referring to the techniques as "low-intensity coercion." According to the report:
"China continues to exercise low-intensity coercion to advance its claims in the East and South China Seas. During periods of tension, official statements and state media seek to portray China as reactive. China uses an opportunistically timed progression of incremental but intensifying steps to attempt to increase effective control over disputed areas and avoid escalation to military conflict. China also uses economic incentives and punitive trade policies to deter opposition to China’s actions in the region. In 2017, China extended economic cooperation to the Philippines in exchange for taking steps to shelve territorial and maritime disputes. Conversely, a Chinese survey ship lingered around Benham Rise in the spring after the Philippines refused several requests from China to survey the area. Later in the spring, CCG boats reportedly fired warning shots over Philippine fishing boats near Union Bank. In August 2017, China used PLAN, CCG, and PAFMM ships to patrol around Thitu Island and planted a flag on Sandy Cay, a sandbar within 12 nm of Subi Reef and Thitu Island, possibly in response to Manila’s reported plans to upgrade its runway on Thitu Island. China probably used coercion to pressure Vietnam to suspend joint Vietnam-Spain drilling operations in a disputed oil block in the South China Sea over the summer of 2017."
The South China Sea is international waters according to international law. When American Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOs) are performed by American warships passing through the SCS, they're invariably met with harsh threats and demands to leave.
Ever since Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2006, he's sided with China in the South China Sea, saying essentially that he has no choice since China could crush the Philippines militarily. However, this position has always been contentious domestically. When Duterte first announced this position, I pointed out at the time that polls showed that polls showed an approval rating around 90% for Americans, but only around 50% for Chinese.
Duterte's policy is wearing thin. In the last week, there was an incident where a Philippines plane was flying in the South China Sea, and received a radio warning from the Chinese:
"Philippine military aircraft, I’m warning you again. Leave immediately or you will bear responsibility for all the consequences!"
This implied threat of an attack by China's military is an example of "low-intensity coercion." In response, Duterte on Friday criticized China for using "nasty words" to its pilots:
"You know very well that we will not attack.... We’re not prepared to go to war with you so why do you have to say those nasty words?"
I think it's safe to say that this whiny pleading by Duterte will not have any effect on the Chinese. ABS-CBN (Philippines)
An important part of China's coercion technique is the use of the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM).
The PAFMM is the only government-sanctioned maritime militia in the world. In the past, the vessels in the PAFMM were from companies or ordinary fishermen. What's changed now, according to the report, is that China is building a large state-owned fishing fleet. These are like vigilante boats that harass and block fishing boats from other nations, and perform other functions in conjunction with the PLA. According to the report:
"In the South China Sea, the PAFMM plays a major role in coercive activities to achieve China’s political goals without fighting, part of broader PRC military doctrine stating confrontational operations short of war can be an effective means of accomplishing political objectives. The militia has played significant roles in a number of military campaigns and coercive incidents over the years, including the 2009 harassment of the USNS IMPECCABLE conducting normal operations, the 2012 Scarborough Reef standoff, the 2014 Haiyang Shiyou-981 oil rig standoff, and a large surge of ships in waters near the Senkakus in 2016."
The PAFMM unit operating in the South China Sea is paid salaries independent of any clear commercial fishing responsibilities, and recruited from recently separated veterans.
This appears to be similar to China's practice of establishing large communities of Chinese students or workers in other countries, keeping them under the control of Beijing's international coercive propaganda agency, the "United Front Work Department" (UFWD). As I've described in the past, there is almost a form of mind control involved in these communities, which the Chinese describe as "Magic Weapons." On command from the UFWD, these students and workers demonstrate, complain or riot to implement Chinese policy. China Defense Blog (30-Jun-2016)
The report says that "One of the overarching goals of the structural reforms now reshaping the PLA is to construct a military capable of conducting complex joint operations, including those that would be involved in a Taiwan contingency."
The report lists several "courses of action" that China's military could take to invade Taiwan:
If the United States should intervene in the takeover of Taiwan, China would try to delay effective intervention and seek victory in a high-intensity, limited war of short duration.
In a sense there's nothing particularly new in this report, since it's just the next annual iteration of China's preparations for a pre-emptive attack on the United States at a place and time of its choosing, which I've been writing about for well over a decade.
As I've mentioned before, people my age have never understood how it was possible for Adolf Hitler to so thoroughly fooled the British government in 1938. The Nazis were spending enormous amounts of money building an army, navy and air force whose only real purpose was to attack the British Isles, but it was completely ignored by the British public except, famously, for Sir Winston Churchill, who warned of the approaching attack, but was scorned and ridiculed for doing so.
Today, few people want to contemplate the possibility of a pre-emptive attack by China, even though it's just as certain as the Nazi attacks that started World War II. But there are differences today. The Pentagon has been aware for years of the military buildup by the Chinese, and has been producing the annual reports for years as well.
China's activities in the South China Sea have repeated Nazi activities by annexing regions belonging to other nations. These activities have been so blatant and obvious that anyone with even the slightest knowledge of what's going on in the world is aware of it.
But even before the South China Sea became an issue, Taiwan was an issue. China has been preparing for a full-scale invasion of Taiwan at least since the 1990s, and the US has been preparing to defend Taiwan militarily for at least as long.
So the Pentagon and the United States military have been preparing militarily for war with China at least since the 1990s.
The presidency of Donald Trump has brought a new urgency to the danger from China.
As I've written many times, everything that the Trump administration has done in foreign policy since Donald Trump took office makes complete sense to me, because everything he does is consistent with the Generational Dynamics analyses that I've been posting for years. Trump understands these analyses because he was educated by his former principal advisor Steve Bannon, whom I've worked with for years, and who is an expert on both military history and Generational Dynamics. The mainstream press and mainstream analysts are always completely and totally baffled by the administration's foreign policy, which is one of the reasons that few analysts and journalists have any idea of the danger from China.
As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other. The Trump administration is generally aware of all this, even if the mainstream media are not.
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 18-Aug-18 World View -- New Pentagon military assessment details China's preparations for war thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(18-Aug-2018)
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Profound connection between the sanctions on Turkey and North Korea
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
As the weeks and months go by with no progress on North Korean denuclearization, harsh sanctions imposed by the United Nations and the United States continue to be imposed on North Korea. These sanctions were imposed months and years ago, and remain in effect because of North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. However, these sanctions have been weakened in the last couple of months because China, Russia and other countries have clandestine ways to conduct trade with North Korea in violation of the sanctions.
The US on Thursday announced new sanctions targeting shipping and trading firms based in China, Russia and Singapore. These firms have been active in violating the sanctions. According to the announcement issued by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC):
"OFAC designated China-based Dalian Sun Moon Star International Logistics Trading Co., Ltd. and its Singapore-based affiliate, SINSMS Pte. Ltd. These companies worked together to facilitate illicit shipments to North Korea using falsified shipping documents, including exports of alcohol, tobacco, and cigarette-related products. The illicit cigarette trade in North Korea reportedly has netted over $1 billion per year for the regime. SINSMS Pte. Ltd. is responsible for exports to North Korea and general trading of items from China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Cambodia. Employees at SINSMS Pte. Ltd. also provided information on how to evade shipping restrictions by sending cargo SINSMS Pte. Ltd. to Nampo, North Korea, via Dalian, China.OFAC also designated Russia-based Profinet Pte Ltd. (Profinet) and its Director General, Russian national Vasili Aleksandrovich Kolchanov. Profinet is a Russian port service agency that provides loading, bunkering, supplying, and departure arrangements for vessels calling at the Russian ports of Nakhodka, Vostochny, Vladivostok, and Slavyanka. Profinet has provided port services on at least six separate occasions to DPRK-flagged vessels, including the sanctioned vessels CHON MYONG 1 and RYE SONG GANG 1, which have carried thousands of metric tons of refined oil products. Profinet continued to offer its bunkering services to DPRK-flagged vessels even after its employees knew of oil-related sanctions on North Korea. Kolchanov was personally involved in North Korea-related deals and interacted directly with North Korean representatives in Russia."
Russia's foreign ministry said that fresh sanctions could undermine the peace process in North Korea. The ministry also said that Washington "is not aware" of how the "utmost pressure" on North Korea is "fraught with danger," without specifying what danger they had in mind. According to the statement:
"The destructive U.S. tactics, pursued beyond the framework of the U.N. Security Council and its 1718 Sanctions Committee (related to North Korea), is only able to undermine the progress, which has been made recently toward the settlement."
Nobody seriously believes that North Korea has discontinued development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, short of testing them. And indeed, why should they stop development?
As we recently reported, a United Nations report says that during the last six months, not only has North Korea not stopped development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles but, even worse, North Korea is stepping up plans to sell weapons to other countries, including to the Houthis in Yemen.
As I've been writing for many months, based on Generational Dynamics analyses, is that there is no chance whatsoever that North Korea will give up its nuclear development program now or in the future, after having tortured, starved and brutalized their own population for three decades, under the promise that one day North Korea would be a nuclear power on a peer with the United States.
North Korea has one and only one objective in the charm offensive since the beginning of the year and in Kim's summit meetings with Trump and South Korean leaders: To get the US-led sanctions lifted without having to give up its development of nuclear missiles targeting the United States.
Statements from the North Koreans have expressed increasing hostility toward the United States for not agreeing to lift the sanctions. Last week, North Korea's foreign ministry issued a statement saying that the North has worked to improve relations between the two countries and "make active contributions to peace, security, and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula and over the world." The statement added:
"[U.S. officials] are making baseless allegations against us and making desperate attempts at intensifying the international sanctions....As long as the U.S. denies even the basic decorum for its dialogue partner and clings to the outdated acting script which the previous administrations have all tried and failed, one cannot expect any progress in the implementation of the DPRK-U.S. joint statement including the denuclearization."
The North Koreans have used the phrase "step by step" to describe how they would like the process to go, meaning that they take some step, and then the US takes some step -- removing some of the sanctions.
The North Koreans have demolished two test sites, but it's widely believed that they were no longer needed anyway. Nonetheless, the North Koreans have expressed anger that these meaningless steps were not reciprocated by reducing sanctions.
What the US negotiators have requested from North Korea is a complete list of all their nuclear and missile development and test sites, and to permit the process of United Nations inspections of all these facilities. The North Koreans have flatly refused.
So really nothing has changed since the beginning of the year except that the North Koreans have advanced the nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development by another eight months.
The Kim Jong-un administration has said in the past that nothing will stop them from developing an arsenal of nuclear missiles aimed at the United States. The Trump administration has said repeatedly that would not be allowed. This is similar to the ancient theological puzzle of what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. At some point there will be an explosion. AP and US Treasury and Reuters
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On Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin doubled down on sanctions against Turkish officials for their refusal to free Christian pastor Andrew Brunson, who was arrested in 2016 on what the US claims are trumped up charges.
"We put sanctions on several of the Cabinet members. We have more that we’re planning to do if they don’t release him quickly."
It's been somewhat startling to see the harsh reaction by the Trump administration over this one particular issue -- the release of pastor Brunson -- when there are so many other disagreements, including other Americans being held hostage, that are not causing a similar reaction.
The reason, as we explained last week, is that in the particular case of Brunson, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan had a friendly meeting with Donald Trump early in June, and after Trump left that meeting believing that they had made a deal: Trump would convince Israel to release a Turkish citizen, and in return Turkey would release Brunson. The Turkish citizen, Ebru Ozkan, was in fact released, but Brunson was not.
So from the point of view of the Trump administration, this is not an ordinary disagreement. They had a deal, Trump kept his part, Erdogan reneged.
At its core, this is similar to the situation with North Korea. Trump met with North Korea's child dictator Kim Jong-un in Singapore, and they had a written agreement for North Korea to denuclearize on a step-by-step basis. Trump did in fact take an important step on the US side by canceling military drills with the South Koreans. So from Trump's point of view, he is performing his part of the deal, and Kim is reneging.
This is a serious matter because these two situations are in lockstep. If Erdogan can renege on a promise, then Kim can do the same, and vice-versa. From Trump's point of view, this is certainly an important factor in the Art of the Deal.
Turkey is in the middle of a currency crisis that began long before the Brunson issue was raised and the sanctions were imposed. Erdogan says that interest rates are evil, and insists on personal control of Turkey's central bank. The result is double-digit inflation, and that the value of the lira has been crashing against the dollar and other currencies, and this has had a knock-on effect on other developing country currencies, as investors rush to the safety of US Treasuries.
Last year, Turkey rushed to support Qatar when it was blockaded by Saudi Arabia, and now Qatar is returning the favor by pledging $15 billion dollars. The lira rallied briefly on the announcement, then began to fall again. Qatar's money will help Turkey buy time, but the core problems with the central bank will have to be fixed quickly. Bloomberg
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 17-Aug-18 World View -- US imposes new North Korea sanctions on Chinese and Russian shipping companies thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(17-Aug-2018)
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China's military aid and infrastructure investments bring debt trap to Cambodia
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Nobody is surprised that the Cambodia People's Party (CPP), led by Cambodia's dictator Hun Sen, won the recent national parliamentary election. Still, it's breathtaking that the National Election Committee (NEC) announced on Wednesday that the CPP had a clean sweep, and had won all 125 parliamentary seats up for election.
65 year old Hun Sen came to power in 1985, in the midst of an invasion by Communist Vietnam (1979-89), which followed the "Killing Fields" civil war, where Communist leader Pol Pot led the Khmer Rouge to kill some two million civilians.
Cambodia used to have reasonably fair elections. It was an ally of the United States, the European Union and the West in general, helping it on the road to a democracy with fair and free elections. Everything was swell, as long as Hun Sen was the overwhelming victor in elections.
All that changed with 2013 election, when the opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue party (CNRP) came close to winning, with 44% of the vote compared to 48% for the CPP. Rather than risk losing an election, Hun Sen became increasingly authoritarian. Political opponents were jailed or assassinated, and Hun Sen took control of all the media, making the once independent newspapers nothing more than government CPP party organs, and closing all radio stations critical of the government, including Voice of America.
The coup de grâce came last year when the leader of the CNRP, Kem Sokha, was jailed on trumped-up charges of "treason." Then the court, under Hun Sen's control, ordered the complete dissolution of the CNRP, the only viable opposition party. So that explains how Hun Sen's party was able to win all 125 parliamentary seats.
These actions by Hun Sen in the last few years have come under increasing international criticism by human rights organizations, and by pressure from the West, including the United States, Australia and the European Union. The United States has already sanctioned the commander of Hun Sen’s bodyguard unit, for carrying out “serious acts of human rights abuse against the people of Cambodia.”
The European Union is threatening to go farther, by threatening trade sanctions against Cambodia, particularly by withdrawing the "Everything But Arms" (EBA) trade preferences that Cambodia enjoys with the EU. The EBA grants developing countries such as Cambodia quota free and duty free access to the EU market. In 2017, Cambodia had $6.2 billion in revenue from exports to the EU, and avoided paying $676 million in duties because of the EBA.
That money would have to be paid if the EBA were withdrawn, resulting in high unemployment among Cambodia's 700,000 garment workers, many of whom are heavily indebted. Because withdrawing the EBA would hurt the Cambodian people, rather than Hun Sen and the Cambodian leaders, there is a big reluctance to do it. Reuters and The Conversation and VOA and Al-Jazeera
As the West has been increasingly critical of human rights abuses in Cambodia, Cambodia has gotten closer and closer to China, where human rights abuses, including torture, rape, jailings and assassinations are perfectly OK.
In March of this year, hundreds of Cambodian and Chinese soldiers held "Golden Dragon," a 15-day joint military exercise in central Cambodia, involving live-fire rocket launches from helicopters, mock tank battles, and anti-terrorism and emergency relief training.
Last year, Cambodia suspended a planned joint military exercise with the U.S. Army, called Angkor Sentinel, that was to have been held for the eighth year straight. Also canceled was a long-running U.S. Navy program that provided humanitarian assistance in the country. Cambodia said its forces were too busy to join the annual exercise.
Then in June, China pledged $100 million in military grants for training and equipment for the Cambodian military. These grants are, of course, made with no concern for human rights, as would be the case with Western grants.
China is also providing funding for major infrastructure projects, including dams along the Mekong River and hydroelectric plants. In June 2018, a leaked environmental impact assessment report on the proposed Sambor Hydropower Dam project in Cambodia revealed that constructing a dam at the proposed site could "literally kill the [Mekong] River."
Developing hydropower dams is the Cambodian government’s highest energy priority. Currently, the government is aggressively pursuing this goal with the help of Chinese companies, for which a series of dam projects have been granted approvals.
So far, all of Cambodia’s hydropower plants have been developed under 50-year build–operate–transfer contracts. Under these contracts, all revenue accrued will flow to the Chinese companies operating the dams. Only at the conclusion of the contracts will each plant’s ownership and revenue be transferred to the Cambodian government. Before this time, the current hydropower plants are creating very little income for Cambodia.
In fact, this is turning into yet one more example of a China "debt trap" situation, in many ways similar to the situation in Pakistan that I described yesterday, and in other countries as well. China has made huge infrastructure developments in the capital city Phnom Penh, and more so in the Sihanoukville seaport. One resident is quoted as saying:
"Everything has changed in Sihanoukville in just two years. Before it was really quiet here, but not any more with all the Chinese construction. I am worried that it’s very destructive to the environment, all this building.... And what will happen when all the construction is finished and thousands more people come? There will be no Cambodia left in Sihanoukville."
Sihanoukville has given itself over entirely to Chinese investment, with a $1.1 billion investment from China in just the past year. Chinese casino owners have also taken advantage of the nonexistent gambling regulation and lax money-laundering laws to set up an empire that is accessible only to foreigners – because gambling is still illegal for Cambodian locals.
The key complaint for many in Sihanoukville is that even though Chinese investment brings wealth, it is mainly kept within their own community. Chinese residents and visitors buy from Chinese businesses and visit Chinese restaurants and hotels, ensuring the trickle-down effect is minimal.
However, Cambodia has the fastest growing debt in all of Southeast Asia. The debt trap will occur when Cambodia is unable to make the payments on its debt. At that point, China will do as it's done before: Take control of the infrastructure assets it funded, and leave the country with a large enclave of Chinese workers and their families, and enclave that will be there forever. VOA and The Diplomat and East Asia Forum and Asia Nikkei and Reuters
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 16-Aug-18 World View -- China-Cambodia grow closer militarily, as Hun Sen steals parliamentary election thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(16-Aug-2018)
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War of words grows over IMF funding for Pakistan's debt
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) has claimed credit for a suicide bombing attack that injured three Chinese workers in Pakistan's Balochistan province, as they were working on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). It appears that the Chinese workers were specifically targeted. The suicide attack targeted a bus transporting Chinese workers from their work place in the mines to the city of Quetta.
The Chinese workers were working on the Saindak Copper-Gold project in a mountainous area near the border with Iran. This is a joint venture between Pakistan and China to extract gold, copper and silver from the area. The project is managed by a Chinese firm, the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC).
Since the 1990s, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) has been waging an armed struggle against the government of Pakistan for equal rights and self-determination for the people of the Baloch ethnic group in Pakistan. It has conducted dozens of terror attacks against government installations, security personnel, military targets, and Pakistani laborers. In May 2017 it began attacking CPEC and Chinese targets, particularly the port at Gwadar. The BLA opposes CPEC, saying that it exploits Balochistan resources that they believe belong to the Baloch people.
Although the exact contractual agreement between Pakistan and China is a secret, it's believed that profits are distributed according to ownership. MCC owns 50% of the mine, Balochistan province owns 35%, and Pakistan's government owns 15%. The BLA claim that CPEC is allowing China and Pakistan to exploit resources that should belong to the Baloch people.
CPEC is a $55-60 billion 20-year project that will supposedly build a network of roads, railways and energy pipelines aiming to connect western Chinese cities, starting from China's easternmost city Kashgar in Xinjiang province, to the sea port in Gwadar on the Indian Ocean in Balochistan province in southern Pakistan. It will have both economic and military components. Power generation, transport, commerce, R&D and the defense of Pakistan all will be increasingly tied to Chinese investment, supplies and interests.
The security of Chinese workers in Pakistan is a big issue. China and Pakistan signed the CPEC agreement in March of last year, making CPEC a target of terror groups including BLA.
Chinese officials say that a major benefit of CPEC to Pakistan is that it employs about 2,000 local Balochistan workers. But Pakistan's ambassador to China Masood Khalid has estimated that there are some 30,000 Chinese working on Pakistan development projects, including CPEC, and that Pakistan's army has deployed 15,000 soldiers to provide security for the Chinese workers.
So China has loaned Pakistan tens of billions of dollars for CPEC, and the salaries of 30,000 Chinese workers and 15,000 soldiers are paid out of that money. But only 2,000 local workers receive any of that money. The BLA objects to these kinds of terms.
Despite all that money being paid for Pakistani army soldiers, the bus carrying Chinese workers was still attacked by a suicide bomber on Saturday.
This has alarmed Chinese officials. A Chinese police delegation arrived in Pakistan's capital city Islamabad on Monday to discuss the matter. Pakistan's interior minister said that Pakistan had left no stone unturned in providing fool proof security to Chinese citizens in Pakistan. “We are committed to fight against terrorism in all of its manifestations." There has not yet been any announcement of what additional steps will be taken to protect Chinese citizens working in Pakistan.
Li Wei, a Chinese counter-intelligence expert, said:
"The province of Balochistan is a region in Pakistan where terrorist activities are relatively intense. Separatist forces there believe that any development activity in their 'territories' violates their interests, and that is the reason why they launch terror attacks."
The solution is to hire more security personnel. One Chinese company has six security personnel escorting a single Chinese employee to ensure his daily safety. The Nation (Pakistan) and Express Tribune (Pakistan) and Global Times (Beijing) and The Nation (24-Aug-2017) and Dawn (Pakistan, 27-Oct-2017)
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As we reported last week, Pakistan is deeply in debt, and has only enough foreign reserves to cover payments for imports until the end of August. Much of Pakistan's financial problems are caused by a Chinese "debt trap," where Pakistan does not have the foreign reserves to make payments on the money that China has loaned to Pakistan for CPEC. ( "7-Aug-18 World View -- Pakistan faces imminent financial crisis threatening China's CPEC")
On Monday, it emerged that China has agreed to guarantee Pakistan's financial backing. This means that China will loan Pakistan additional billions of dollars, making Pakistan even more deeply indebted to China.
The only other possible source of money for Pakistan to stave off financial disaster is a new loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), although Pakistan has not fully repaid its last loan, made in 2013.
Imran Khan, Pakistan's incoming anti-American prime minister, used to criticize Pakistan's government for borrowing from the Washington-based IMF, but now that he's in the government with a pending financial crisis, he's suggested that his attitude may have changed.
However, attitudes in Washington have also changed. It's becoming apparent that China is setting debt traps in one nation after another as it loans tens of billions of dollars to each nation for infrastructure projects in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It's now being recognized that many of these countries are going to come to the IMF for loans when they're unable to pay their debts to China, which means that money from the IMF, which is largely funded by American taxpayers, would be paid to China in the case of each country.
Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of US senators expressed concern over potential bailout requests to the IMF by countries who have accepted "predatory Chinese infrastructure financing."
This has angered the Chinese, who of course would like to have the IMF bail out their debt trap countries, so that in effect the IMF would be funding China's BRI projects in all the countries.
According to a lengthy analysis in the South China Morning Post:
"Unexpectedly, just five days after Pakistan’s elections, [US Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo opposed an IMF bailout package to Pakistan. He argued that American taxpayer dollars are part of IMF funding and therefore the US government would not allow a bailout package for Pakistan that could be used to repay Chinese creditors or the government of China. This is the first time the US government has openly made a move that is tantamount to attacking Pakistan-China economic cooperation. ...Against this backdrop, Pompeo’s recent statement is a major blow to US-Pakistan relations. This does not bode well for peace and stability in Afghanistan because now Pakistan will not be motivated to cooperate with the US government anymore on the Afghan front.
Given that the US is a major power broker in the IMF, its opposition will effectively thwart a bailout package for Pakistan. The country will have to explore other options to secure the funds needed to stimulate its economy. Unfortunately, there are not many countries or funding organisations that can offer Pakistan a generous financial bailout. Thus, Pakistan would be left with no choice but to ask for help from its all-weather friend – China. ...
After the probable refusal of IMF bailout package, Pakistan will be seeking additional loans of US$12 billion from China. ...
Hence, Pakistan will further be pushed towards economic dependence on China. If it is unable to repay Chinese loans, it could end up leasing its assets, such as Gwadar Port, to China. This model has already worked with Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port.
The US decision to block the IMF bailout has effectively put Pakistan on the path to becoming a Chinese economic colony. This will certainly not help the US in increasing its influence in South Asia and Indochina, but will rather immensely increase the influence of China in South Asia."
The analysis refers to the Sri Lanka example, where Sri Lanka was unable to make payments on money loaned by China for the Hambantota Seaport. As a result, Sri Lanka was forced to give control of Hambantota to China for 99 years. In addition, there is now a large Chinese enclave surrounding the seaport of thousands of Chinese workers and families that will be there forever.
So the above analysis worries that all of Pakistan is on the path to becoming a "Chinese economic colony." The implied solution is that the US and the IMF should rush to Pakistan's rescue and give them the money to repay their all-weather friend China.
It's actually still possible that the IMF will lend Pakistan the money. Theoretically, the IMF is an indpendent organization, located in Washington, but not controlled in any way by Washington political policy. Theoretically, the IMF should not be swayed in its decision by the way the money will be used -- to repay China.
As I've been writing for the last ten years, Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other.
Whether the IMF lends money to Pakistan or not, it is not possible for the US and Pakistan to become "friends" in anything like the sense that China and Pakistan are "all-weather friends." Express Tribune (Pakistan) and Xinhua and South China Morning Post
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 15-Aug-18 World View -- Chinese workers in Pakistan injured in terrorist bombing thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(15-Aug-2018)
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Afghan army, backed by US, struggles to regain Ghazni after four days
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Afghan army forces have still not fully regained control of Ghazni Proving, four days after they were surprised by an unexpected attack by Taliban militants on Friday. The sophistication and force of this attack has once again brought into question the Nato and American strategy in Afghanistan.
On Friday, Taliban militants conducted a multipronged attack on Ghazni, a city of 270,000 people, and a trading and transit hub strategically located along a major highway in eastern Afghanistan. Afghan government officials say that Taliban militants were hiding in mosques and homes in Ghazni, and were using residents as human shields. They would slip out at night and attack Afghan forces.
As is often the case in Afghanistan, there are suspicions that the Taliban militants had support and help from sympathetic civilian residents of the city. Some Afghans said the assault was not a surprise, and followed months of build-up by militants near checkpoints around the city.
It would not be surprising if a substantial number of civilians supported the Taliban. Many in the civilian population are ethnic Pashtuns, and the Taliban itself consists of radicalized Pashtuns.
The US military was actively involved in supporting the Afghan army. US warplanes delivered two dozen airstrikes, killing more than 140 Taliban fighters, according to the military. U.S. military spokesman Lt. COL Martin O'Donnell downplayed the significance of the situation and summarized it on Monday:
"Ghazni City remains under Afghan government control, and the isolated and disparate Taliban forces remaining in the city do not pose a threat to its collapse as some have claimed. That said, the Taliban's attempts to hide themselves amongst the Afghan populace does pose a threat to the civilian population, who were terrorized and harassed by this ineffective attack and the subsequent execution of innocents, destruction of homes and burning of a market."
However, video released by local TV broadcaster Tolo News showed black smoke rising in the air as buildings burn and Taliban fighters roam freely around the city. As of Tuesday morning, the situation in Ghazni is not yet clear. Military Times and ABC News and AP and Tolo News (Afghanistan)
The assault on Ghazni City comes after another assault on Farah City in the western part of the country in May. ( "16-May-18 World View -- Taliban launches major military operation in Farah province in Afghanistan")
Taliban activists and the American military have dueling narratives about how to interpret these repeated attacks by Taliban militants.
Over the past months, the Taliban have seized several districts across Afghanistan, staging near-daily attacks on afghan security forces. This proves, according to the Taliban, that they can attack and take control of districts at any time of their choosing.
However, Afghan officials are claiming that this proves that the Taliban are being defeated because, even though they can attack at will, they are unable to hold group the way they used to as recently as 2016.
U.S. military spokesman Lt. COL Martin O'Donnell said:
"Tactically, operationally and strategically, the Taliban achieved nothing with this failed attack except another eye-catching, but inconsequential headline. The fact remains that the Taliban are unable to seize terrain and unable to match the Afghan security forces or our enablement, retreating once directly and decisively engaged."
Arguably, both sides make good points: The Taliban can attack as often as they want, but they can't hold against the Afghan forces.
The problem is that the second part of that statement is true only if the Afghan forces are backed by Nato military logistics and airpower. The brutal attack on Ghazni suggests that without the Nato military, the Afghan forces apparently cannot defeat the Taliban.
The Nato and Afghan government strategy is to use military force to compel the Taliban to negotiate a peace. As I've described in detail many times in the past, a Generational Dynamics analysis proves that's wrong. The Taliban are ethnic Pashtuns that have been radicalized, and they include new generations of young Pashtuns that have come of age since the bloody Afghan civil war in the early 1990s. These young people are seeking revenge against their former enemies in the Northern Alliance, and even if the Taliban leadership tries to negotiate peace, the younger Pashtuns would not be interested.
That's a summary of the analysis that I've been posting for years, but in the last year the situation has become even worse. As ISIS militants in Syria have lost their caliphate in Raqqa and have continued to lose ground, many ISIS militants have been returning to their home countries, whether in Europe, in Russia or in Afghanistan. They're forming a new terrorist network, ISIS-K, or "ISIS Khorasan" ("Wilayah Khorasan") or ISKP, the South Asian branch of ISIS.
ISIS-K has been conducting its own terror attacks in Afghanistan, sometimes cooperating with the Taliban, and at other times fighting against the Taliban. The Taliban, especially the younger generation militants, have no desire for a negotiated peace with the government, but even if they did, the militants in ISIS-K would not. So the Nato plan for Afghanistan has no chance of succeeding.
As I've written in the past, there seems to be another strategy for the American military in Afghanistan. Donald Trump and the military understand that this war cannot be won, but they also understand that war with China and Pakistan is approaching. As war with China and Pakistan approaches, president Trump wants to keep American troops active in Afghanistan, and to continue to maintain several American military bases in Afghanistan, including two air bases in Bagram and Kandahar International Airport. These bases will be valuable in any future war with China. Under these circumstances, having troops in Afghanistan is what matters, whether the Taliban are defeated or not. Asia Times and Long War Journal and Guardian (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 14-Aug-18 World View -- Taliban attack on Ghazni brings America's Afghanistan strategy into question thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(14-Aug-2018)
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Major issues about commercial exploitation remain unresolved
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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The presidents of five major countries -- the countries bordering the Caspian Sea -- all arrived in the Kazakhstan port city of Aktau on Sunday for a summit meeting to sign what is being called a "historic" agreement on settling the status of the Caspian Sea. The five countries are Russia, Iran, and three former Soviet states, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.
The five leaders signed agreements on trade and economic cooperation, cooperation in the transport sector. The leaders also agreed that the surface of the Caspian Sea would be freely available to everyone for activities like travel and fishing.
According to Russia's president Vladimir Putin, the agreement "creates conditions for bringing cooperation between the countries to a qualitatively new level of partnership, for the development of close cooperation on different trajectories." Whatever that means. BBC and Tass (Moscow) and Press TV (Tehran) and Al Jazeera and Deutsche Welle
There are some 50 billion barrels of oil and nearly 9 trillion cubic meters of gas in proven or probable reserves in the Caspian seabed. At today's prices, that's worth several trillion dollars. The problem is how to divide those reserves, and Sunday's "historic" agreement leaves those issues unsettled.
Prior to 1991, there were only two littoral states bordering the Caspian Sea -- the Soviet Union and Iran. When the Soviet Union split up, suddenly there were five littoral states. Starting in 1996, these five countries attempted to reach agreement on how to split up the seabed among themselves. However, they were never able to reach agreement, and apparently that's still true despite Sunday's "historic" agreement.
The problem is that the Caspian Sea is a unique body of water in the world, and so there are no examples to provide guidance. The Caspian Sea in Central Asia is the largest inland body of water in the world. From the point of view of international law, it's neither a sea nor a lake. It can't be a lake because it's too large, and it can't be a sea because it's not connected to any of the world's oceans.
International law provides formulas for dividing up the seabeds of lakes and seas. If the Caspian Sea is a sea, then the size of the region that each country gets depends on the length of the coastline bordering the sea. Under this formula, Azerbaijan, Russia and Kazakhstan would get the largest shares of the seabed, and so these countries favor it.
But if the Caspian Sea is a lake, then there are five littoral states, and so the seabed would be split up equally among them, giving them each 20% of the seabed. Iran and Turkmenistan favor this formula, because they have the shortest shorelines.
According to news reports, the agreement avoids calling either a sea or a lake, but gives it a special legal status, with an agreement in principle to a special formula for dividing up the seabed among the five countries. However, the formula is apparently close to the "sea" formula. In their closing statements, the leaders of Iran and Turkmenistan said that these issues remained unsettled, and that another summit meeting would be required within a few months.
The agreement apparently permits something that Russia had been opposing -- allowing Turkmenistan to build a "Trans-Caspian Pipeline" (TCP) to permit delivery of its gas to Azerbaijan, where it would be pumped into pipelines leading west to Turkey and Europe. For 20 years, Russia has opposed the TCP, claiming that it poses a potential environmental hazard to the Caspian's unique biosphere. However, this objection is laughable, since Russia's Gazprom has laid several pipelines in the Black Sea, which also has a "unique biosphere." It's believed that Russia simply wants to block competition.
However, Russia and Iran did get their way in one more area. The agreement specifically forbids any but the five Caspian countries from deploying military forces on the Caspian Sea.
Recall that in April I wrote "28-Apr-18 World View -- Kazakhstan to permit America to use Caspian ports to supply military in Afghanistan." Russia and Iran objected to this, claiming that the Nato would use the transit of supplies to Afghanistan as an excuse to deploy American forces in the ports in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and that the ports might turn into American military bases.
However, Kazakhstan committed that only nonmilitary supplies will be permitted to pass through the ports, and Sunday's agreement seals that commitment. According to Kazakhstan's foreign minister:
"Some representatives of Russian media and expert communities do not have a firm grasp of facts on the real situation regarding the transit of US non-military cargo via Kazakhstan.... It is about commercial railway transportation of non-lethal cargo via Kazakhstan to continue the operations to support the Afghan government, which is necessary for the whole international community.... Naturally, any military bases on the Caspian Sea are out of question."
He added that this is not a change to any existing agreements. RFE/RL and Reuters and Bloomberg and SBS (Australia) and Sputnik (Moscow)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 13-Aug-18 World View -- A 'historic' Caspian Sea agreement leaves major issues unresolved thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(13-Aug-2018)
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Brief generational history of Colombia
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A new president took office in Colombia on Tuesday of last week. Right-wing Ivan Duque took office, replacing left-wing Juan Manuel Santos. The inauguration occurred in the midst of a major diplomatic clash between Colombia and Venezuela.
Last weekend on Saturday evening, a live drama unfolded on nationwide TV in Venezuela. Socialist President Nicolás Maduro, was giving a televised speech when suddenly he stopped speaking and looked up at the sky. Two drones armed with explosives detonated near Maduro, who, however, was not hurt. Three hours later, he was on nationwide tv again, saying:
"I am fine, I am alive, and after this attack I'm more determined than ever to follow the path of the revolution. ... I have no doubt that the name Juan Manuel Santos is behind this attack."
According to Maduro, Santos acted in coordination with the former president of the Venezuelan Parliament, Julio Borges, who had been in the political opposition to Maduro.
Last year, the Socialist Maduro dissolved the democratically elected parliament and replaced with a "Constituent Assembly" consisting of Maduro's political cronies. Last week, the Constituent Assembly revoked the immunity that Borges had as an opposition lawmaker, and the Supreme Court called for his arrest. However, Borges has apparently fled Venezuela. According to Maduro, Borges had fled to Colombia.
Now Maduro is demanding that Colombia and the United States extradite Borges and other opposition lawmakers that have fled to those countries. These extradition requests have been refused.
On Thursday, the European Union in Brussels issued a statement on the drone attack:
"The latest events have further inflated the tensions in Venezuela. The European Union rejects any form of violence and expects that a comprehensive and transparent investigation of Saturday´s drone attack is conducted to establish the facts, in full respect for the rule of law and for human rights.In this regard, the EU expects the recognition of the National Assembly's constitutional powers, including the full respect of its prerogatives concerning the parliamentary immunity of its members, in line with established constitutional rights, legislation and procedures.
The EU reiterates its support for a negotiated, democratic and peaceful solution for the multiple crises affecting the country as the only way forward. This needs to encompass a return to constitutional normality restoring democratic process and the rule of law, respect for fundamental rights and freedoms, release of all political prisoners, and addressing the pressing humanitarian needs of the population."
This statement infuriated Maduro. According to Maduro , Santos acted in coordination with Borges, "who receives the order, the resources, the logistics, the support and the plan [and] is the one who takes responsibility for the history of assassinating the president."
Maduro condemned the statement by the EU:
"It is truly deplorable the communique of the European Union, they go out to protect the terrorists, in their communiqué they protect the terrorists, in their communique they are not capable of condemning the attack that had as objective to assassinate the president of this country."
Thanks to Socialist policies, Venezuela is suffering the worst economic depression ever recorded in Latin America. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates gross domestic product (GDP) contracted by 16.5 percent in 2016 and 12 percent in 2017, and forecasts a 15 percent contraction for 2018. Inflation reached more than 2,600 percent in 2017, the highest in the world by a wide margin, and the IMF forecasts 13,000 percent for 2018.
Thanks to the Socialist policies, Venezuelans are starving, and are unable to feed their kids or obtain medicines to care for them when they're sick. The Socialist government of Venezuela has created a massive refugee problem that's destabilizing the entire region. By some estimates, 35,000 Venezuelan refugees flee across the border into Colombia every day, although many return after acquiring basic items, like food. Some one million are staying in Colombia. About 4,000 migrants enter Ecuador every day, fleeing violence in Venezuela. Brazil has taken in over 41,000 Venezuelans.
Every Socialist government in history has failed, either peacefully or disastrously. Even Cuba has given up Socialism. The only two Socialist governments left are Venezuela and North Korea. However, Venezuela destabilizing the entire region, and with Maduro making threatening accusations like the one last week, it's possible that Venezuela's Socialist government will end with war. AFP and Europa (EU) and Diario Las Americas (Trans) and Al Jazeera
The Trump administration has high hopes for Ivan Duque, because Duque has promised to tackle the drug problem. Last year, president Trump suggested stopping aid to countries that are "pouring" drugs into the US. In Colombia, some 209,000 hectares (516,500 acres) of land are used to grow coca, the principal ingredient used to manufacture cocaine. Colombia is the largest cocaine producer in the world.
Colombia's last generational crisis war was shared with Venezuela. It was called "La Violencia," or the Colombian Revolt, 1948-1959. More than 200,000 persons lost their lives and more than a billion dollars of property damage was done.
As we've written many times in the past, when a generational crisis war is an ethnic or tribal civil war, it really never ends. One side may force the other into submission, but the people on both sides are traumatized by the murders, mutilations, rapes, and torturing that they performed on people who lived in the same cities and even on the same streets, where the mothers exchanged recipes and the children played together. All the survivors continue to feel the lingering horror of the atrocities that were committed on both sides. After the war ends, there is continuing sporadic violence as we've described in many countries, including Syria, Cambodia, Cameroon, Burundi, Congo, and others.
In post-war Colombia, the government confiscated small farms in order to create large farms, but in doing so left large pools of unemployed people.
By the mid-1960s. two Marxist-Leninist guerrilla terrorist groups had formed: the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC) and the National Liberation Army (Ejército de Liberación Nacional – ELN). Both groups have massive criminal histories, using drug trafficking, violence, bombings, murders, kidnappings for ransom, and extortion as sources of leverage and income. Billions of dollars of income have been derived from the sale of narcotics each year. In the last 50 years, as many as 220,000 people are dead, 25,000 are disappeared, and 5.7 million are displaced.
In December 2016, the government signed a peace agreement with the FARC. The agreement ended much of the violence, but it was highly controversial because it specified that all FARC members would walk free with no punishment for the 50 years of horrific crimes, which infuriated the relatives of the violence by the FARC. Duque made a campaign promise to revise and renegotiate the peacekeeping deal to provide for the relatives of the victims.
Duque has also promised to fix the drug problem:
"We will be effective in the eradication and substitution of illegal crops, accompanied by productive opportunities [for farmers]."
That remains to be seen. Other attempts to reduce coca production have failed. Coca production surged to historically high levels in 2017, and among the reasons is a crop-substitution program tied to Colombia’s peace deal that offered incentives to coca farmers to switch to legal crops. Those incentives were so lucrative that some rural dwellers planted more coca to earn more cash. In addition, Colombia in 2015 banned aerial spraying of coca crops after a determination that the herbicide being used could cause cancer in humans. Duque is committed to be much more aggressive, including a return to using the banned herbicide. Stanford Univ and Insight Crime and Council on Foreign Relations (11-Jan-2017) and Washington Post
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 12-Aug-18 World View -- Colombia's president Ivan Duque takes office amidst accusations from Venezuela thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
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(12-Aug-2018)
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How Erdogan apparently double-crossed Trump
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Turkey's lira currency has been falling steadily for the last year because of a clearly stated view by Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan that interest rates are "evil," and because he has been controlling Turkey's central bank consistent with that belief.
The lira has already lost 40% of its value in the past month. On Friday, the currency fell another 20%, before settling at being down 14% from Thursday's level.
The result is that any imported item now cost two or three times as many liras as they did a few months ago. The inflation rate is above 15%.
Many economists had been predicting for months that Erdogan's actions would lead to a currency crisis, which is what's happening now. There are concerns that unless Erdogan adopts sensible policies, the result will be a full-scale national economic crisis.
During the campaign for the June 24 elections, Erdogan said the following:
"If my people say continue on this path in the elections, I say I will emerge with victory in the fight against this curse of interest rates. Because my belief is: interest rates are the mother and father of all evil."
In July he appointed his son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, to run the central bank, and said, "We will see inflation and interest rates decline in the coming period."
These statements caused concern among investors for two reasons. First, an interest rate decline will cause higher inflation, not lower inflation, and combined with his statement that interest rates are "the mother and father of all evil," it's reasonable to conclude that Erdogan does not have the vaguest clue how economics works.
We've seen this kind of thing in other countries. In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro followed and are following policies which have meant economic destruction for their country. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe's policy of throwing white farmers off farms and giving the farms to political cronies who know nothing about farms ended up destroying Zimbabwe's economy, and it's unclear whether this policy is still continuing. I've written about many other examples where a clueless idiot leader politician destroys a country's economy and the country itself.
That hasn't happened to Turkey yet, but Erdogan has become so fanatical that it will if he continues the path he's on.
The second reason that investors are concerned is that Erdogan seems determined to control the central bank even though it should be an independent institution, like America's Federal Reserve. So now you have delusional politician, Erdogan, who says that "interest rates are the mother and father of all evil," and is also running the central bank. What could go wrong?
So that's why the lira currency has been falling steadily for a year, and then started falling even more rapidly after the June 24 election, when he was reelected president, along with a constitutional change that gave him almost dictatorial powers. Hurriyet (Ankara) and Business Insider and Deutsche Welle
So there have been an interesting series of statements from both Erdogan and US president Donald Trump in the last couple of days.
On Thursday evening, Erdogan that there was nothing to fear if the lira was falling against the US dollar:
"If they have their dollars, we have our people and God."
However, on Friday morning, Trump tweeted the following:
"I have just authorized a doubling of Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum with respect to Turkey as their currency, the Turkish Lira, slides rapidly downward against our very strong Dollar! Aluminum will now be 20% and Steel 50%. Our relations with Turkey are not good at this time!"
This caused the lira to start plummeting, ending up the day having lost 14% of its value.
Erdogan apparently went into a panic, because he gave one of his televised national rants where he screams every sentence furiously at the top of his lungs. He said the following:
"If there is anyone who has dollars or gold under their pillows, they should go exchange it for liras at our banks. This is a national, domestic battle.Some countries have engaged in behavior that protects coup plotters and knows no laws or justice. Relations with countries who behave like this have reached a point beyond salvaging."
Erdogan also warned of “economic war.”
However, there is a greater concern that the falling lira will lead to contagion. A number of banks, especially in Spain and Italy, are holding Turkish government bonds, and they are going down in value with the lira. A bigger concern is that many companies in Turkey have borrowed money in international markets, and the debts are denominated in dollars. A typical company's income would be in lira, while debt payments must be made in dollars. A weakening lira means that companies may default on their loans. CNBC and Hurriyet News (Ankara) and Bloomberg
A lot of people were shocked on Friday morning at the harshness of Trump's tweet when he said that he was doubling Turkey's tariffs on steel and aluminum, and at the same time he apparently mocked Turkey's falling lira currency.
It appears that this highly confrontational statement was retaliation for what Trump saw as a double-cross by Erdogan.
Trump met Erdogan at a Nato meeting early in June. Their discussions were very friendly, and after they ended, Trump thought they had made a deal: Trump would ask Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to release a Turkish citizen, Ebru Ozkan, arrested because of alleged terrorist links to Hamas, and then Turkey would release pastor Andrew Brunson, who was arrested in Turkey on October 2016 on charges of espionage, which the US considers are bogus charges.
So on July 14, Trump called Netanyahu and requested that Ozkan be released, and she was released the next day. But Brunson was not released, and Turkish officials said that no such deal had ever been made. Instead, they began piling more demands that would have to be met in exchange for the release of Brunson, including the extradition of Fethullah Gülen, whom Erdogan blames for the attempted coup in Turkey in 2016, but without any evidence.
Needless to say, Trump was infuriated, and this led to a first round of sanctions in July, and then Friday's announcement of more sanctions. The Trump administration is now saying that Brunson must be released, to resolve this situation. Furthermore, reports indicate that because Trump believes he was double-crossed, the administration is also requiring that all further conditions and demands from Turkey be put into writing, to avoid future misunderstandings.
Trump is now involved in highly contentious sanctions disputes with Turkey, Russia, Iran and China. Any one of these situations could spiral into something much larger, including an actual war. Also, since the global financial system is currently one huge Ponzi scheme, one of these situations could also trigger a chain reaction leading to a global financial crisis. Washington Post and Hurriyet News (Ankara) and Ynet News (Israel) and Middle East eye
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 11-Aug-18 World View -- Turkey's lira currency crumbles as Trump turns the screws after Erdogan double-cross thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(11-Aug-2018)
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China uses increasing violence to suppress criticism
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Although Xi Jinping's power and credibility as president of China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does not seem to be threatened, there are signs of growing discontent, especially under pressure from the trade war initiated by the Trump administration.
Since coming to power in 2013, Xi Jinping has claimed to be champion of the fight against corruption in the CCP. In line with that fight, Xi has purged many government officials whom he accused of corruption, but it always turned out that the purged officials were not his strongest supporters, and the people who replaced them were all indebted to Xi in some way. Thus the first against corruption for the last five years has appeared more and more to be a purge of Xi's political enemies -- which would itself be the ultimate form of corruption.
Public or online criticism of Xi is de facto a crime in China. A few months ago I told the story of how I repeatedly challenged a Chinese troll to make even the tiniest criticism of Xi, or even to reference an article in Chinese media that has any criticism of Xi. He kept changing the subject, and finally I pointed out that if he did criticize Xi, then he would be thrown into a pit, hung by his thumbs, and have his tongue removed with a pair of pliers. Well, I was being overly dramatic, but he would certainly have risked going to jail.
So it certainly was remarkable in February of this year when a leading commentator and a prominent businessman openly criticized Xi for his plan to amend the constitution so that he could run independent. Li Datong, a former editor for the state-run China Youth Daily, wrote: "If there are no term limits on a country's highest leader, then we are returning to an imperial regime. My generation has lived through Mao. That era is over. How can we possibly go back to it?"
Indeed, I've written about country after country to describe what happens when a leader refuses to relinquish power. We've seen this in Cambodia, Syria, Iran, Cameroon, Congo, and Burundi, among others. In each case, the leader becomes increasing authoritarian and oppressive, ordering peaceful opposition protesters to be slaughtered, tortured, raped or jailed, and shutting down media outlets including newspapers and the internet.
Xi's claim to be the hero in fighting corruption has been badly tarnished by various scandals. The piece of bad news this summer was the discovery that a pharmaceutical company with deep connections to Xi has been responsible for producing substandard vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough, and had faked data for its rabies vaccine. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese children nationwide have been given the faulty vaccines. Many in China are blaming Xi for this. Japan Times and CBS News and South China Morning Post (6-Mar)
The greatest damage to Xi's reputation is the "trade war" initiated by the Trump administration. The US announced tariffs on Chinese products, and China retaliated with tariffs on American products. The tit for tat war has shocked many Chinese, and has triggered a major debate in China over Xi's foreign and domestic policy leadership.
Many in China are questioning Xi's absolute refusal to negotiate with the Americans to get the trade dispute resolved. Many fear that China will indeed be much worse off from a full-blown trade war. There's a deeper criticism that Xi is violating the advice of 1980s leader Deng Xiaoping: "Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership." Since taking power, instead of taking this advice, Xi has been increasingly arrogant foreign policy, and his policies are seen as costly, ambitious, risky and confrontational.
Many Chinese also fear that China has become too dependent on stealing American intellectual property, and can't develop it on their own.
Xi has reacted by ordering an extensive campaign to "enhance patriotism" among intellectuals. A key aspect is to strengthen the “political guidance” of intellectuals and bring their “ideological and political identification” in line with goals set out by the party and the nation.
There are even demands that CCP members get back to basics and study Karl Marx's 1848 Communist Manifesto, the tract that predicted the triumph of Socialism. Socialism has a 100% failure rate, and China abandoned any pretense of following the dictates of Communist Manifesto decades ago. Even Cuba in the last few years has almost completely abandoned the Marx's tenets, since it was becoming clear that Socialism was destroying Cuba, as it has destroyed every other place it's been tried. Most CCP members, it turns out, have never read the Communist Manifesto, so ordering them to read it now appears to be a true move of desperation. South China Morning Post and Inside Story (Australia) and Radio Free Asia and South China Morning Post
As in the other countries I've listed, Cambodia, Syria, Cameroon, and so forth, the CCP in China is using violence increasingly to control groups that don't adhere closely to the party line. Whether it's violent reprisals in Tibet, or violent education camps in Xinjiang, or the threat of a massive military invasion of Taiwan, the CCP have shown themselves increasingly willing to use jailings, torture, rape and murder to force the public into the CCP line.
Two major events occurred about 25 years ago that are the driving forces in CCP policy today. One was the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989, where Chinese security thugs killed thousands of peacefully demonstrating college students. The other event was the collapse, in 1991, of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party. These events put the members of the Chinese Communist Party into a high state of anxiety, from which they've never come down. They use massive violence by police thugs to suppress any protests before they can get out of hand and threaten the existence of the CCP. Self-preservation of the CCP is more important the China itself.
China's government used to report the number of "mass incidents that occurred each year. These are incidents where dozens of Chinese citizens protest or get into fistfights with one another. There were hundreds of these protests each year in the 1990s. The number of mass incidents kept growing exponentially, reaching 100,000 in the year 2008. If even one of these "mass incidents" occurred in the United States, it would be international news, but China has hundreds of them every day.
After 2008, China stopped reporting them. However, there was one activist named Lu Yuyu who compiled the data himself from news reports, and published it online. He was arrested and is currently serving time in jail.
China's CCP is frightened of social instability that could lead to a revolution that would threaten the CCP. China's history is filled with huge, massive internal rebellions (civil wars), the most recent of which were the White Lotus Rebellion (1796-1805), the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64) and Mao's Communist Revolution (1934-49). China is now overdue for a new massive civil war, and CCP officials fear that any small anti-government protest could spiral into a new rebellion and revolution. Guardian (London) and China Change (6-Jul-2016) and Foreign Affairs (3-Oct-2016) and Hong Kong Free Press
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 10-Aug-18 World View -- Discontent with China's president Xi Jinping continues during 'trade war' thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(10-Aug-2018)
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Spain becomes the major destination for migrants from Africa
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Readers may recall that when Italy held nationwide elections in March, the elections failed to produce a majority party. Two particularly bitter rivals were the left-wing Five Star Movement (M5S) that got 32% of the vote, and the right-wing La Lega (The League) that got 17% of the vote.
Incredibly, these two parties got together and formed a governing coalition. They're far apart on many issues, but they do share similar attitudes on three issues: a nationalistic anti-euro attitude, a xenophobic anti-immigrant attitude, and a complete lack of fiscal discipline. Much to everyone's surprise, they formed a governing coalition based on these three principles.
This new governing coalition announced a list of policy proposals, including a completely delusional list of economic proposals.
Italian debt stands at around €2.3 trillion ($2.7 trillion), or 133% of gross domestic product (GDP), the worst in Europe. The new government does have a way of reducing the debt: spend a lot more money, and drastically reduce taxes. (As I wrote at the time, I wish I could tell you that this is a joke, but it isn't.)
Specifically, the government would like to do the following right away:
As wonderful as these proposals are, they have a serious problem: Implementing them would violate EU rules by pushing Italy's annual deficit above 3% of GDP.
Italy's deputy prime minister and M5S leader Luigi Di Maio has a solution: The EU should change the rules, so that Italy can spend as much as it wants on these social problems. According to Di Maio:
"It is possible to introduce both this measure and a flat tax and to respect European Union deficit limits, because this is a structural reform for Italy. The European Union must listen to us in this phase when we want to protect citizens facing a social emergency."
He added that his request to change the EU deficit limit rules comes with a threat:
"We want to discuss these reforms with the European Union to obtain the margin for maneuver that will allow us to implement those measures. That means doing the same as we did on immigration. There shouldn’t be a clash with the EU, but a frank discussion."
In the case of immigration, the "frank discussion" was accompanied by an order closing all Italian ports to immigrant rescue ships. This forced the EU government in Brussels to adopt new rules for immigrants, giving Italy at least a portion of what it was demanding. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of La Lega, claimed that his government had gotten 70% of what it wanted from the EU.
So Di Maio is demanding that the EU change its deficit rules, or Italy will "do the same as we did on immigration." What that means remains to be seen.
It should be noted that Di Maio's delusional plans and demands are not being met with unanimous agreement even within Italy's government. Prime minister Giuseppe Conte is insisting on a "realistic" budget, and that the new measures will be introduced gradually. Bloomberg and Reuters and Bloomberg and Guardian (London)
At first, the major route for migrants into Europe was through Turkey into Greece. When the EU closed the so-called "Balkan route" for migrants, and then signed the EU-Turkey migrant deal in 2016, the number of migrants reaching Greece fell sharply.
Then the major route moved westward, with migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Libya to Africa. However, in 2017 Italy paid money to Libyan warlords and the Libyan government to prevent migrants from crossing.
So the preferred route to Europe has moved westward again. The number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe has fallen drastically from previous years, but now the major route is to cross the strait between Morocco and Spain.
So far in 2018, 27,614 migrants arrived in Spain, 18,475 arrived in Italy, and 16,142 arrived in Greece. Der Spiegel and El País and Euro News and Guardian (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 9-Aug-18 World View -- Italy threatens EU with immigration fight to get budget concessions thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(9-Aug-2018)
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The international demand for regime change in Iran
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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President Donald Trump on Tuesday issued an executive order reimposing economic sanctions that had been eased by the 2015 nuclear deal. The sanctions target Iran's automotive industry, the purchase of commercial aircraft and metals including gold, and the selling of Persian carpets.
Trump tweeted:
"Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States. I am asking for WORLD PEACE, nothing less!"
The action appears to have thrown the European Union into a new level of chaos.
The sanctions bar any company which does business in Iran from doing business in the US - under far reaching secondary sanctions - and they also forbid any company that does business in the US from doing business with any company that does any business with Iran. This means, for example, that under certain circumstances a bank may have to deny a company doing business with Iran access to its own dollar-based bank accounts. But in that case, the bank could be sued by its own customers.
Trying to cope, the EU has passed so-called "blocking laws" that would make it illegal for banks to withdraw services to companies doing business with Iran or even with other companies that do business with Iran. The laws are designed to limit the potential damage to European companies conducting legitimate business with Iran directly or indirectly.
However, these laws have not been particularly effective. Germany's carmaker Daimler immediately announced a halt to its business activities in Iran. France's oil and gas giant Total has already indicated it intends to shelve a multi-billion dollar investment in Iran. France's automaker Renault, which had an 8% share of Iran's automotive market, announced last week it would comply with the sanctions. Peugeot withdrew in June. More than 100 international companies have also said they would comply.
However, China's auto companies are rushing to fill the gap left by departing European companies. Chinese cars already have a nearly 10% share of Iran's auto market, and a 50% share of auto parts imported into Iran. Iran Khodro, Iran's largest car manufacturer and assembler of foreign cars, recently told its salesmen to promote to customers China’s H30 Cross, made by Dongfeng Fengshen, as a replacement for Renault’s Tondar 90.
Other Chinese car manufacturers present in Iran include Chery and Brilliance, whose H330, assembled in Iran by Saipa, is among the top 10 best-selling cars in the country. China has also lifted monthly oil imports from Iran by 26%. China is the world’s top crude oil buyer and Iran’s biggest customer. RFE/RL and BBC and VOA and Deutsche Welle
Iran's economy is in serious trouble. The rial currency has been plummeting against the dollar since May, when the US announced that sanctions would be imposed on August 7.
Since that time there have been growing street protests in cities across the country. However, they're not anti-American protests, which is something we as Americans have come to expect for decades. Instead, the protests are blaming their own government.
Here's a list of street protesters chants collected by RFE/RL in the last few days:
“Death to high prices and inflation.”
“We don’t want incompetent officials.”
“Not to Gaza, not to Lebanon. May my life be sacrificed for Iran.”
“Death to the dictator.”
“Our enemy is right here. They lie when they say it’s America.”
"Reza Shah, bless your soul.”
“Iranians, shout out your demands.”
"Police forces, support [us], support [us].”
“Death to Hizballah.”
“Iranians die, [but] they don’t accept abjection.”
“Death to Khamenei.”
“Mullahs must get lost.”
“Don’t be scared, we’re all together.”
If you want to understand what's going on, the easiest model to keep in mind is the street protests in America in the 1960s and 1970s. Although the several things were protested, they were mainly anti-war protests against the war in Vietnam.
Logic might indicate that since the North Vietnamese in Hanoi were the enemy, Americans should be on the side of the Americans, not the North Vietnamese. It's true that few Americans were openly on the side of the North Vietnamese (Jane Fonda and John Kerry come to mind), but few Americans were on the side of America either.
It made no difference what the Nixon administration did. The young protesters were opposed to everything. And it made no difference what Hanoi did either. There was nothing that Hanoi could have done to make the young protesters say, "Gee, maybe Nixon is right. I'm going to support him now." Violent street protests in Los Angeles and Detroit, and the 1968 riot at the Democratic convention in Chicago, and the shootings of students at Kent State College in 1970 were blamed on Johnson and Nixon. (Paragraph corrected, 10-Aug)
This is what always happens in a generational Awakening, starting around 20 years after the end of a generational crisis war, in this case World War II. The survivors of the war traumatized by its horrors, and vow to keep it from happening again. The generation that grows up after the war have no personal memory of it, and they turn against the generations of survivors in what's called a "generation gap"
Exactly the same thing is happening in Iran today. The first major anti-government protest began in 1999, about 20 years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Some 10,000 students rioted in Tehran University, chanting anti-government slogans. The police reacted violently, leaving at least 20 people hospitalized and 125 students jailed.
There were sporadic protests every few months after that. The next round of major protests, large enouch to threaten the government occurred after the 2009 presidential election. The violence that followed was bloody and massive. Largely peaceful street protests by hundreds of thousands of mostly young people occurred in Iran’s main cities and provincial capitals, including Tehran, Tabriz, Isfahan and Shiraz. They were met with unrestrained violence by the police and security forces. Dozens were killed, and 4,000 people were jailed. The police particularly targeted journalists and other government critics with widespread torture, beatings, and threats against family members.
A new round of protests began in December 2017, and they've been continuing intermittently since then.
Just as there's almost nothing that Hanoi could have done in 1960s America to cause young people to support Richard Nixon, there is nothing that the US can do today that would cause Iran's young people to support the Supreme Leader Seyed Ali Khamenei. Every problem will be interpreted through the filter of opposing the current government.
And there are plenty of things to protest against, as you can see from the anti-government chants listed above.
There's a big antiwar factor. Young people want Iran out of Syria. Young people want Iran out of Gaza. Young people want Iran to stop funding Hezbollah. Young people want Israel to be left alone. Young people blame the poor economy on massive military spending abroad. In fact, Iran received tens of billions of dollars when sanctions were lifted in 2015, but ordinary people saw little of it. It mostly benefitted government cronies, and the rest was spent on foreign wars.
That leads to the second major factor: Corruption. According to Transparency International, Iran's government is among the most corrupt in the world. According to its transparency index, Iran has an extremely low score of 30 out of 100. By comparison, the worst performing region in the world is sub-Saharan Africa, with a score of 32, which is a better score than Iran's.
Corruption has become so endemic and so bad in Iran's government that even government officials have been expressing alarm. The reason that Iran is so steeped in corruption can be found in its constitution, which was written by Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 revolution. Khomeini wrote the constitution to give himself and any future Supreme Leader with almost unlimited powers.
Khomeini's constitution is almost completely lacking in the kinds of checks and balances that the US Constitution is full of -- three branches of government, with each branch given specific powers that can be curtailed by other branches of government. Iran has an Assembly of Experts that is supposed to provide oversight to the Supreme Leader, but it never has seriously performed that function. The way the constitution is set up, with no real checks and balances, the only way to succeed in government is to be more corrupt than anyone else. Radio Farda (24-Feb) and Bloomberg and Fox News
There is a great desire in the West for something called "regime change" in Iran, although it's rarely specified what that means.
Regime change did occur in America in 1974, with the forced resignation of Richard Nixon. The current Supreme Leader is Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei, 79 years old, born 1939. Many people are hoping that he'll be replaced soon, although he might live for another 10-15 years. But would that qualify as "regime change"?
Corruption is thoroughly embedded in Iran because corruption is almost demanded by the constitution for survival in government. Real regime change would require a new constitution. Perhaps the Assembly of Experts might form a "Constitutional Convention," like the one in America in 1787, and lock the participants in a room and not let them up until they come up with a new constitution for Iran, filled with checks and balances. However, there's little hope for that. In fact, any real regime change may not come for many years.
For almost 15 years, I've been saying, based on a Generational Dynamics analysis, that that Iran will be America's ally in the coming Clash of Civilizations world war.
This can be seen by connecting the dots. China is very closely allied with Pakistan, which is very closely allied with the Sunni states, including Saudi Arabia. China and India are bitter enemies, as are Pakistan and India. Russia and India are very closely allied, and India is very closely allied with Iran, as Hindus have been allied with Shia Muslims going back to the Battle of Karbala in 680. So the US is going to be allied with India, Russia and Iran, versus China, Pakistan, and the Sunni Muslim states. Just remember that Russia was our bitter enemy before WW II, was our ally during WW II, and was our bitter enemy after WW II. You can't make judgments from today's fatuous political alignments to how nations will act when they're forced to make hard choices in the context of a generational crisis war. These major decisions are made by the populations, large generations of people, not by a few politicians when a nation and its way of life are threatened.
So that's a brief summary of the geopolitical linkages. But there's another way we know that Iran will be an American ally. Iran's college students have been holding pro-American and pro-Western protests for almost 20 years, starting with the first major protest in 1999. The Iranian regime brutally and violently ended those protests, but they didn't change minds. Today, those college students are 30-40 years old, moving into positions of power. When the time comes and Iranians are forced to choose, they'll decide that they'll have no choice but to side with America and the West. CNBC and Fox News and Slate
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 8-Aug-18 World View -- Iran's protesters blame bad economy on Supreme Leader, not on US sanctions thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(8-Aug-2018)
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Pakistan elects anti-American far right religious Imran Khan
to be prime minister
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Imran Khan, who will be taking the oath of office as prime minister of Pakistan in a few days, as his political party, Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) (Movement for Justice), seems poised to form a governing coalition, following the July 25 national elections.
Khan, a Pashtun born in 1952, is extremely popular and charismatic. He was one of Pakistan's greatest cricket players of all time. In the 1990s, he was voted as the "Sexiest Man of The Year" by the Australia Magazine Oz.
Khan's views are strongly Islamist, closely associated with Pakistan's religious far right, even to the point of supporting Pakistan's draconian blasphemy law which allows any Pakistani citizen to kill another person with impunity, provided that he first accuses the person he's going to kill of blasphemy. He's anti-American, has promised to distance Pakistan from the United States, has condemned NATO airstrikes on terrorists in Pakistan, and has promised to resolve the Kashmir issue with India in Pakistan's favor. This could be important when the army and intelligence services ask for a favor in return for helping to get him elected. The News (Pakistan) and Washington Post
Like all politicians, Khan made plenty of campaign promises that he won't be able to fulfill. He promised to create an "Islamic welfare state," with big public spending on health and education. In fact, his campaign speeches were totally delusional.
Imran Khan will not have much time to celebrate his victory, as Pakistan is so short of foreign reserves that it could be forced into bankruptcy within a month, and his "Islamic welfare state" is just a distant dream.
Pakistan and China like to say that they're "all-weather friends," but the reason for Pakistan's enormous mountain of debt is the $52 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), part of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which China has been using to force a number of countries into a debt trap.
The goal of the CPEC is to connect China's western Xinjiang province to the Gwadar port in southern Pakistan by means of a collection of highways and railways. The project is to be completed by 2030.
We've described a number of these projects in the past, and they have common elements. China lends tens of billions of dollars to a country to build an infrastructure project. China supplies thousands of workers and their families to do the building. Chinese companies are used to provide equipment and supplies. The country must pay for all these Chinese workers and equipment with money from the loan, which means that most of the money gets sent back to China. The country must still repay the loan, which means that it's paying China twice for the same loan. And the country is left for decades with a large Chinese community of workers and families controlled by Beijing's international coercive propaganda agency, the "United Front Work Department" (UFWD).
Pakistan has been borrowing money "like crazy" for the last five years. Imports for energy, machinery, transport equipment and metals have skyrocketed because of CPEC and because of rising oil prices. Meanwhile exports, mainly textiles, have increased only slightly. As a result, the country's foreign currency reserves have declined to about $10.3 billion, enough to cover less than two months of imports. If Pakistan cannot pay for imports, then the entire CPEC project would be in danger.
In June, China granted an emergency loan to Pakistan for $1 billion to cover payments for imports till the end of August.
According to one analyst, Pakistan was unable to turn to Saudi Arabia for a loan because Pakistan had refused in 2016 to join the Saudi-led coalition waging a war in Yemen.
So Pakistan has been forced to turn to its all-weather friend China for one loan after another. This has alarmed even some Pakistani officials, because the country has become so dependent on China.
In the past, Pakistan has borrowed from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for emergency funds, and wants to do so again. But there are several issues:
As a private citizen, Imran Khan has criticized the IMF in the past, and has criticized Pakistan's government for borrowing from the IMF. Now that he's going to be prime minister, he may have to change his tune. Dawn (Pakistan) and AFP and Dawn and South China Morning Post and Al Jazeera
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 7-Aug-18 World View -- Pakistan faces imminent financial crisis threatening China's CPEC thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(7-Aug-2018)
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UN report: North Korea nuclear and missile development continues
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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A confidential report to the United Nations Security Council says that during the last six months, not only has North Korea not stopped development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles but, even worse, North Korea is stepping up plans to sell weapons to other countries, including to the Houthis in Yemen. Now when we talk about the war in Yemen, instead of the "Iran-backed Houthis," we can refer to the "Iran-backed and North Korea backed Houthis."
According to the report:
"[North Korea] has not stopped its nuclear and missile programs and continued to defy Security Council resolutions through a massive increase in illicit ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products, as well as through transfers of coal at sea during 2018."
North Korea also violated a textile ban by exporting more than $100 million in goods to China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey and Uruguay within the same time period.
North Korea has also offered "a range of conventional arms, and in some cases ballistic missiles to armed groups in Yemen and Libya," and particularly to the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen. There is no report on whether the sales were actually made.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking at the ASEAN conference, said in response to the reports:
"If these reports prove accurate, and we have every reason to believe that they are, that would be in violation. I want to remind every nation that has supported these resolutions that this is a serious issue and something we will discuss with Moscow.[The US expects] all countries to abide to the UN Security Council resolutions and enforce sanctions on North Korea. Any violation that detracts from the world's goal of finally, fully denuclearizing North Korea would be something that America would take very seriously."
Pompeo did not specify what action or retaliation the US would take against every country violating the sanctions, but there have been widespread reports of violations by several countries, and no action has been taken. In particular, Russia has been accused of bringing in thousands of North Korean "guest workers," who act as virtual slaves, and whose salaries are sent back to the North Korean regime.
However, Pompeo's remarks were met with sharp rebukes by the representative of North Korea, Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, who said that Washington was "raising its voice louder" in anger, despite goodwill measures by North Korea.
North Korea's foreign minister Ri Yong Ho slammed the United States for insisting on sanctions, and prioritizing them higher than "confidence-building," which apparently refers to removing sanctions:
"Confidence is not a sentiment to be cultivated overnight. In order to build full confidence between the DPRK [North Korea] and the US, it is essential for both sides to take simultaneous actions and phased steps to do what is possible one after another."
He said that North Korea had done its part with goodwill measures such as the moratorium on nuclear testing and the dismantling of a nuclear site. But instead of reciprocating these goodwill measures, he accused the US of "raising its voice louder" for maintaining sanctions against North Korea, and was "showing the attitude to retreat even from declaring the end of war, a very basic and primary step for providing peace on the Korean peninsula." Declaring an end to the Korean War, which is still theoretically in progress, though under a ceasefire, would require removing American troops from South Korea, a key objective of North Korea. It would also require removing the THAAD missile defense system, a key objective of China. Reuters and Deutsche Welle and Straits Times
As I've written many times, everything that the Trump administration has done in foreign policy since Donald Trump took office makes complete sense to me, which is in contrast to Obama's foreign policy, which never made sense. The reason that Trump's foreign policy makes sense is because everything he does is consistent with the Generational Dynamics analyses that I've been posting for years. Trump understands these analyses because he was educated by his former principal advisor Steve Bannon, whom I've worked with for years, and who is an expert on both military history and Generational Dynamics. It's worth mentioning this because the mainstream press and mainstream analysts are always completely and totally baffled by the administration's foreign policy, even though it is consistent and makes complete sense, provided you focus on actions, not PR tweets.
On Sunday, responding to questions about the UN report, national security adviser John Bolton and Senator Marco Rubio described the administration strategy toward North Korea at the present time.
As I've been writing for many months, based on Generational Dynamics analyses, is that there is no chance whatsoever that North Korea will give up its nuclear development program now or in the future, after having tortured, starved and brutalized their own population for three decades, under the promise that one day North Korea would be a nuclear power on a peer with the United States.
North Korea has one and only one objective in the charm offensive since the beginning of the year and in Kim's summit meetings with Trump and South Korean leaders: To get the US-led sanctions lifted without having to give up its development of nuclear missiles targeting the United States.
Saturday's statements by North Korea's foreign minister harshly criticizing the US for not reciprocating North Korea's "goodwill measures" and instead demanding that sanctions be continued is in line with this objective.
During John Bolton's interview on Sunday, he said the following:
"As I've said to you and others before, there's nobody in his administration starry eyed about the prospects of North Korea actually denuclearizing.But I think what's going on now is that the president is giving Kim Jong-un on a master class on how to hold a door open for somebody. And if the North Koreans can't figure out how to walk through it, even the president's fiercest critics will not be able to say it's because he didn't open it wide enough.
We are going to have to see a performance from the North Koreans. There's no question about it."
This is a very interesting statement, and reflects a strategy that I haven't heard previously from the administration. As I've suggested in the past, North Korea will continue nuclear missile development no matter what the Trump administration does, and since it doesn't make any different what action is taken, the administration should choose actions that when the inevitable nuclear confrontation happens, the North Koreans and the Chinese will be blamed for it, not the United States. This is crucial from the point of view of historians ten or twenty years from now, looking back and saying that it was North Korea, not the United States, that was to blame for what happened. Bolton's remarks on Trump giving "a master class on how to hold a door open for somebody" are exactly in line with that objective.
Senator Marco Rubio, who is on the Senate and Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees, was also interviewed on Fox News, and gave additional strategic information:
"Well, I'm about to tell you I hope I'm wrong about, but I do not believe that he is ever going to give up his nuclear arsenal. What I do believe he will do is a series of unilateral concessions that do not undermine his capabilities in the long term. For example, I think he's more than willing to tear apart facilities that are no longer necessary for old missiles because he's got newer ones that work better. I believe he has undisclosed sites that he thinks he can shield from the world. I believe that he believes that even if he gets rid of some of the new enrichment capabilities, he already has existing weapons and existing enriched capabilities that he can hide from the from the world.And every single time that he does one of these productions he is engendering goodwill internationally, which is ultimately his goal, to undermine international support for sanctions by arguing, "Look at all these things I'm doing, the Americans are not reciprocating," and undermining sanctions at the U.N. and internationally. That's his goal in my opinion."
The interviewer Chris Wallace said: "Isn't Kim succeeding in lowering the temperature, breaking apart the alliance of sanctions, and isn't president Trump being played?"
Rubio responded, "I don't know if the president is being played. I think he's hoping for the best but prepared for the worst. The sanctions remained in place. We haven't changed a single sanction on North Korea."
Once again, this makes complete sense because it's consistent with the Generational Dynamics analyses that I've been posting for months. As I've said in the past, Trump can't prevent a world war, but I'm not going to criticize Trump for taking steps to try to prevent a world war, even if doing so is impossible.
One more related subject that the mainstream media is completely baffled about is the issue of Russia. I must hear reporters ask the same question a dozen times a day: Why is Trump so "nice" to Vladimir Putin and Russia, when he's not so "nice" to China and in fact is conducting a trade war?
Once again, this makes perfect sense, as I've been describing for years. Russia will be our ally in the coming world war, just as the Soviet Union was our ally in World War II, even though it was a bitter enemy before and after World War II. Generational Dynamics predicts that this bit of history will repeat itself, so of course it makes sense for Trump to be "nice" to Russia. This will be of help later.
As for the trade war against China, this is a dangerous game. An American oil embargo against Japan in 1941 led to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor several months later, and this trade war might trigger a similar response from China today. In a sense it doesn't make any difference, since China has been arming itself militarily to pre-emptively attack the United States at a time of its choosing, so the trade war might force China to move up the attack to a time when it will not be as well prepared. However, there's no question that this is a dangerous move.
As regular readers know, Generational Dynamics predicts that there is an approaching Clash of Civilizations world war, pitting the "axis" of China, Pakistan and the Sunni Muslim countries against the "allies," the US, India, Russia and Iran. Part of it will be a major new war between Jews and Arabs, re-fighting the bloody the war of 1948-49 that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. The war between Jews and Arabs will be part of a major regional war, pitting Sunnis versus Shias, Jews versus Arabs, and various ethnic groups against each other. Fox News
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 6-Aug-18 World View -- John Bolton and Marco Rubio describe North Korea strategy, as sanctions are violated thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(6-Aug-2018)
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Concerns grow over China's debt strategy for Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Neither China nor the United States is a member of the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN), but both had representatives present, and their competing strategies were the main subjects of discussion. ASEAN has ten members: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
For lexicographers and cartographers, the main news is that Western nations, including Australia and the US, have given a new name to their strategies, referring to the "Indo-Pacific strategy" instead of the old name, "Asia-Pacific strategy."
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had earlier discussed a plan to invest $113 million in technology, energy and infrastructure in the Indo-Pacific region. On Saturday he added:
"As part of our commitment to advancing regional security in the Indo-Pacific, the United States is excited to announce nearly $300 million in new funding to reinforce security cooperation throughout the entire region."
The reason for the change in terminology is to emphasize that the Pacific Ocean and the India Ocean form a combined strategic region. However, the terminology change is annoying to the Chinese, who prefer the China-centric name "Asia-Pacific," while the name "Indo-Pacific" gives more emphasis to China's historic enemy, India.
Chinese media were bitterly scathing in their response to Pompeo's announcements:
"What is the Indo-Pacific strategy? Many complain about its vagueness. Its most innovative part may be the name itself. Washington probably hopes the rest of the world would stop asking questions, tacitly understand Washington's intentions and firmly gather around the US after a few exchanges of glances and together begin to counter China's rising influence....ASEAN members are not sure what the US Indo-Pacific strategy entails. The US announced only an investment of $113 million, which also includes India. The amount seems only sufficient to build an overpass perhaps in the center of Mumbai. Washington is using a strategic gimmick. It is insincere about pushing forward economic prosperity of Indo-Pacific region....
As a concept, Indo-Pacific strategy generated some media and psychological impact. But this is perhaps the only points it can score. If the US wants more, this strategy will be the abyss that consumes much US resources and its output can hardly match its input.
What's more important, this is not the era where geopolitics rules all. The US has treated China's Belt and Road initiative, which focuses on mutually beneficial cooperation, as strategic expansion, and is trying to prohibit Asia from marching forward through connectivity. Washington's move is against historic tide. Even if it plans to invest 100 times its current amount, the investment will be devoured by the historic trend."
The commentary mentions China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), where China has committed $900 billion (with a "b") to Asian countries, in contrast to America's "paltry" commitment of $133 million (with an "m"). Reuters and Global Times (Beijing) and Asia Times and ASEAN
Many ASEAN countries were disappointed at the lack of specifics in Pompeo's promise that "The United States will continue to create the conditions for mutual prosperity in a free and open Indo-Pacific."
However, many of these countries are quite concerned about the numerous problems associated with BRI, including corruption scandals and concerns about opaque financing, delays and mounting debt problems linked to the loans Beijing has provided to its partner countries.
In the past couple of years, we've seen how these projects work, in countries like Sri Lanka, Kenya, Djibouti, Malaysia and Pakistan:
Malaysia has suspended a $14 billion rail line because of graft and corruption. Pakistan cancelled a $14 billion dam project last year because of excessive debts. Kenya accused China of "neo-colonialism, racism and blatant discrimination." Other countries are extremely anxious about Chinese investments.
The US offer of $113 million plus $300 million is paltry compared to China's offer, but the US offer is aid, not a loan, and it's the local workers who will build the infrastructure project.
That's why, when announcing these aid packages, Pompeo emphasized "partnership, not domination" in Asia, and promised to "create the conditions for mutual prosperity in a free and open Indo-Pacific." Nikkei and Malay Mail and Washington Examiner
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 5-Aug-18 World View -- China mocks America's 'Indo-Pacific' strategy at ASEAN meeting thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(5-Aug-2018)
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Zimbabwe's post-election violence raises concerns about economy
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
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Early Friday morning the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) declared incumbent Emmerson Mnangagwa the winner of Sunday's presidential election with 50.8% of the vote -- just enough to avoid a run-off against Chamisa, who received 44.3% of the vote.
Chamisa declared the result fraudulent, and urged his supporters to hold peaceful protests, avoiding violence. However, a Chamisa press conference was broken up by government riot police. On Wednesday, the army opened live fire on protesters in the capital city Harare, killing six people.
Whether or not the election was fraudulent, these and other acts of post-election violence by government security and military forces against protesters are raising concerns in the international community that Zimbabwe is not a stable country, and that therefore commercial investments in Zimbabwe are too risky.
Mnangagwa repeatedly made it clear during the campaign that he wanted the election to be fair and free of controversy, specifically so that international investors would help boost Zimbabwe's collapsing economy.
Zimbabwe's disastrous economy is blamed on tribal and racial violence by Mnangagwa's predecessor Robert Mugabe. Mugabe's Shona tribe conducted genocide against the hated Ndebele tribe, killing tens of thousands, and marginalizing them ever since. Then he conducted racial warfare starting in 2000 by confiscating hundreds of farms owned by white farmers, and turning them over to his Shona cronies who didn't know how to run a farm. A lot of the racist confiscation was performed through "land invasions," where a group of Shona tribesmen would invade a white-owned farm, throw the white farmers off the farm, and confiscate it through force.
The result was an economic disaster that changed Zimbabwe from the breadbasket of southern Africa into a basket case. The currency collapsed with an inflation rate over 231 million percent, as people were forced into starvation. Mugabe continued his "indigenization" program by confiscating commercial businesses and turning them over to Shona cronies who didn't know how to run businesses.
During this year's election campaign, Mnangagwa actually acknowledged Mugabe's disastrous policies by attempting to woo white farmers with promises to return some of their land.
Mnangagwa conceded that much of the land stolen from white farmers had been given to powerful politicians, soldiers or tribal leaders who knew little or nothing about farming:
"I know of some chiefs who have moved from one farm to another. Then they run it down. Then he leaves that farm and he is issued another one. He runs it down. That time is gone."
However, that speech was given by a politician to wealthy Zimbabweans during election campaign. Why would anyone believe anything that a politician says during an election campaign? At his core, Mnangagwa is a Shona tribesman still at war with Ndebele tribesmen and whites.
Now that Mnangagwa has been declared winner of the presidential election, he has to find a way to get international investors to invest in Zimbabwe. And this will have to be done with actions, not promises. Whether he can do that remains to be seen. Zimbabwe Mail and Deutsche Welle (7-Jul)
South Africa's president Cyril Ramaphosa, leader of the governing African National Congress (ANC) political party, made a surprise announcement on Tuesday that the ANC would go ahead with aggressive plans to confiscate white-owned farms without compensation:
"The ANC reaffirms its position that the Constitution is a mandate for radical transformation both of society and the economy.A proper reading of the Constitution on the property clause enables the state to effect expropriation of land with just and equitable compensation and also expropriation without compensation in the public interest.
It has become patently clear that our people want the Constitution to be more explicit about expropriation of land without compensation, as demonstrated in the public hearings. ...
Accordingly, the ANC will, through the parliamentary process, finalize a proposed amendment to the Constitution that outlines more clearly the conditions under which expropriation of land without compensation can be effected.
The intention of this proposed amendment is to promote redress, advance economic development, increase agricultural production and food security."
Blacks claim that farmland was owned by whites during the apartheid era, but since South Africa achieved independence in 1994, blacks own very little farmland, while whites own massively more. In 1994, the ANC promised to expropriate 30% of the white-owned farms "with just and equitable compensation," as provided for in the constitution, and redistribute that land to black farmers.
However, 25 years later, the government has acquired only 7.9% of the white-owned farms, and even those have mostly not been redistributed to blacks. Therefore, there have increasingly belligerent demands within the ANC to take action to confiscate white-owned farms. Furthermore, rather than have the ANC provide "just and equitable compensations," the new constitutional amendment will permit confiscation with no compensation whatsoever.
This is exactly the policy that Zimbabwe followed, and in fact confiscation with no compensation opens the way to the same kinds of "land invasions," where blacks invade a white-owned farm and throw the white farmer out. The result that the value of the South African rand currency has been falling sharply since Ramaphosa's announcement.
Ramaphosa, of course, is just another ordinary politician making a campaign promise in advance of next year's election. Ramaphosa made the completely empty promise to "advance economic development, increase agricultural production and food security," even though he has absolutely no clue how to do that and, in fact, the Zimbabwe experiences indicates that the outcome will be disastrous.
The ANC have been forming committees and holding meetings for over a year on the question of land confiscation without compensation, but they still haven't even come up with a description of how the land confiscation would work. Questions that they've been unable or unwilling to answer include the following:
Even under the most benign circumstances, why would a black farmer with no experience as a farmer do anywhere near as well as a white farmer who has been farming for decades? He won't.
Zimbabwe used to produce enough food to feed itself, and export the rest. After Robert Mugabe's farm confiscation program, Zimbabwe was forced to import food, and Zimbabwe was saved by food from South African farms. After South Africa's farm confiscation program is put into effect, who's going to save South Africa? News24 (South Africa) and CNBC and News24 and Eyewitness News (South Africa) and The South African and News24
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 4-Aug-18 World View -- South Africa announces plans for unpaid confiscation of white-owned farms thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(4-Aug-2018)
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Reasons for quick containment of last Ebola outbreak
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
As we reported in May, there was a potentially explosive outbreak of Ebola in the city of Mbandaka, a large heavily populated urban city of about 1.2 million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where an outbreak could spread rapidly. Furthermore, Mbandaka is a port city on the Congo River, creating the potential of transmission along the Congo River to other cities and other countries.
On July 24, the World Health Organization (WHO) was proud to announce that the outbreak had officially ended. The doctors who had been sent to the region had been extremely vigilant, and had been aggressively using "contact tracing" to prevent the virus from spreading. When an Ebola patient is identified, then all that person's contacts and contacts of contacts are tracked down, and are warned to remain indoors for an incubation period of 21 days.
A vaccine had been developed, and suspected victims were treated with the vaccine, to prevent development of the full virus. Teams went to remote villages to vaccinate some 3300 people likely to have been exposed to Ebola. However, it's still not known whether the vaccine actually protected against infection, although it clearly boosted morale.
On July 24, all known contacts had completed their 21 day isolation period, and there were no new cases. There had been 53 cases of Ebola, and 29 deaths.
This was a striking contrast to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa from 2014 to 2016, sickening over 28,000 and killing over 11,310. Guardian (24-Jul) and Science Magazine (18-Jul) and World Health Organization (24-Jul)
The last outbreak of Ebola occurred in the far western region of Equateur province which is in in far western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Now the World Health Organization (WHO) is declaring a new outbreak. This one is in North Kivu province, in far eastern DRC, 2,500 km (1,500 miles) from the previous outbreak.
The new outbreak has been spreading rapidly. Already, 20 people have been killed, including four health workers, and four other people have tested positive for the virus.
There are three known strains of the Ebola virus -- the Zaire strain, the Sudan strain, and the Bundibugyo strain. The last outbreak was the Zaire strain, and the vaccine that had been developed was specific to that strain. Which of the three strains is in the new outbreak has not been identified, but the vaccine can be used only with the Zaire strain.
A more dangerous problem, beyond the possible unavailability of a vaccine, is that that that North Kivu province is a war zone for a tribal civil war. Armed groups backed by government forces have been burning down and pillaging villages, torching houses, shutting down schools, hospitals and churches, forcefully recruiting young men, abducting and kidnapping innocent citizens, raping women and girls. This has already driven hundreds of thousands of refugees from North Kivu province of DRC into refugee camps in Uganda. ( "13-Feb-18 World View -- Thousands of DR Congo refugees pour into Uganda to escape tribal violence")
The WHO has been rapidly transferring its people and assets from Equateur province, the site of the previous Ebola outbreak, to the site of current outbreak in North Kivu province. However, it remains to be seen how effective they'll be in this midst of an extremely violent tribal war situation. Guardian (London) and Reuters and World Health Organization
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The Ebola outbreak that began in May and ended on July 24 was defeated by the WHO extremely quickly, much more quickly than in the past. There are several reasons for this:
The new outbreak, which takes place in the midst of a tribal civil war, may not be as easy to contain. And if it is, then the next big disease outbreak may be from an unknown pathogen that can't be contained with existing strategies. Vox
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 3-Aug-18 World View -- DR Congo has new outbreak of Ebola just as the previous outbreak ends thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(3-Aug-2018)
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Opposition grows to the 'fudge' proposal
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Brexit has been a pending disaster ever since the referendum passed on June 23, 2016, and many people in the UK and EU continue to look for ways to make the disaster as small as possible. So now the news is full of talk of a "fudge."
As I explained a few weeks ago, "fudge" is being increasingly used as a stylish, fashionable word for what used to be called "kicking the can down the road."
So in the last couple of days, there are reports that the EU negotiators are ready to agree to a "fudge" based on the so-called "Chequers plan" proposal by UK prime minister Theresa May a month ago.
May was able to twist a lot of arms to get the plan approved by her Tory cabinet at a meeting at Chequers, the prime minister's country residence. But the euphoria didn't last long, as two of her ministers resigned four days later, David Davis, the Brexit secretary, and Boris Johnson, the foreign minister.
The endless chaos in the UK government caught the attention of the EU negotiators, as officials in both governments increasingly realize the following:
It's become increasingly clear among EU officials in Brussels that May will be unable to navigate an agreement between the "Remainers" and the "Brexiteers," and there is no majority in Commons for any proposal. This would mean that the likelihood of a hard "no deal" Brexit is increasing by the day.
For that reason, EU officials are increasingly willing to "fudge" the negotiations. The plan for future EU-UK ties will not be a formal agreement, but will be an aspirational statement to say as little as possible, to get past the March 29 deadline.
The main condition would be a watertight backstop arrangement to avoid a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. The backstop would require setting up a customs border in the Irish Sea, which separates the Irish Isles from the British Isles. Such measures would in practice keep much of Northern Ireland’s economy under EU legal control, something that Theresa May has said is intolerable.
One senior EU official said:
"The political declaration cannot violate our principles. But with the rest, whatever helps pass a withdrawal bill is fine. You can talk about many things because the backstop is the insurance if all these nice perspectives don't work out."
Besides the backstop, the UK will have to pay the "divorce bill," estimated to be around 39 billion pounds ($50 billion).
Other things, like the complex trading rules, the "common EU-UK rulebook," and court jurisdiction would be left as vague as possible, to be negotiated in the transition period following formal Brexit.
And that's what we used to call "kicking the can down the road." Evening Standard (UK) and Politics (UK) and FT and UK Government Brexit White Paper (PDF, 13-July)
Almost as soon as the report emerged that EU officials might accept a "fudge" of Theresa May's Chequers proposal, opposition grew in both the UK and the EU.
Foreign minister Boris Johnson, a strong Brexiteer, considered the Chequers proposal to be the worst of all worlds. In his resignation letter to Theresa May last month, Johnson wrote the following:
"The British government has spent decades arguing against this or that EU directive, on the grounds that it was too burdensome or ill-thought out. We are now in the ludicrous position of asserting that we must accept huge amounts of precisely such EU law, without changing an iota, because it is essential for our economic health - and when we no longer have any ability to influence these laws as they are made."
Although Johnson is a strong member of the Brexit Leave camp, people in the Remain camp, who never wanted Brexit in the first place, agree with Johnson's opinion of the Chequers proposals.
The Remain camp is now calling it the "blind Brexit." According to Chris Leslie, an MP in the Remain camp:
"A blind Brexit would take the UK to the same place as a no-deal Brexit, but without the clarity. The idea that the fundamental contradictions of the government’s Brexit policy can be more easily resolved after the UK has left the EU is simply ludicrous.A blind Brexit is being talked about because some see it as a short-term face-saving deal for both the British government and the European Union, both of which are now terrified that concluding with a failure to agree a deal will result in a humiliating no-deal Brexit.
With the EU27 governments and the EU commission wanting to spare Theresa May’s blushes, there is a risk we end up with a fake deal to save face."
Leslie's statement is that it's ludicrous to think that issues that can't be resolved before Brexit, will be more easily resolved after Brexit is true, but he misses the point. The whole point of a "fudge" is to "kick the can down the road," and if that can keep happening over and over, then the issues will never be resolved, and will never have to be resolved.
Readers may recall what happened with Greece's financial crisis. The EU and Greece would have a major crisis meeting every few months, usually running all night, and they would announce a "fudge," a way to postpone the crisis till the next meeting. The problems with Greece's unsustainable debt were never resolved -- it's still unsustainable. But they've found a way to kick the can down the road indefinitely.
So that's the idea behind the Brexit fudge. Leslie is right that there will be no agreement during the transition period, but if the politicians are clever enough, no agreement will every have to be reached, and every problem will be postponed. As the Peanuts character Charlie Brown used to say, no problem is so big that it can't be run away from.
The Remain camp is now calling itself "The People's Vote" because it's focused on a second Brexit referendum on leaving the EU. People in the Leave camp would never agree to that, but as I understand it, even if everyone did agree, a referendum takes a long time to set up, and so it's impossible before the March 29 Brexit deadline.
For that reason, the Remain camp is seeking out its own fudge. They're trying to convince EU leaders, especially from Germany and France, to agree to a postponement of the March 29 day to give enough time for a second referendum. Guardian (London) and Daily Mail (London)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 2-Aug-18 World View -- Report: EU and UK ready to accept 'fudge' to get through Brexit thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(2-Aug-2018)
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The Grand Bazaar and the prospects for regime change
by
John J. Xenakis
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
 |
Massive demonstrations that began in December 2017 have been continuing intermittently in cities across Iran since then. On Tuesday, the protests spread to the history central city of Isfahan.
The protests a month ago were triggered by the collapse in the value of Iran's currency, the rial. At the end of 2017, the exchange rate was 42,000 rials to the US dollar. A month ago, the exchange rate had fallen to 90,000 rials to the dollars. One of the chants that protesters used in last months demonstrations was "We don't want the dollar at 100,000 rials!"
Well, on July 29 the exchange rate crossed the 100,000 milestone, and by Monday, the exchange rate was 110,000 rials to the dollar. The rate has been falling since May, when the Trump administration withdrew from the nuclear deal, and announced that US sanctions would be imposed on August 7.
The plunge in the value of the rial means that goods imported into Iran from other countries now cost two times or even three times as much as they used to.
As Americans, we're so used to being blamed for everything in the world, it's startling that the protesters are not blaming America for this increase in prices. Instead, they're blaming their own government.
Protesters blame the government for wasting the tens of billions of dollars that Iran received when sanctions were lifted after the nuclear deal was signed in 2015. From the point of view of protesters, that money simply vanished into thin air, and they blame that on the Iranian government, not the Americans. The protesters blame Iran's massive corruption, especially among the clergy, and the money that's being spent on foreign wars in Syria and Lebanon.
Marchers on Tuesday were seen in video clips chanting "Leave Syria and think about us," and "No to Gaza, No to Lebanon — I give my life to Iran." The latter refers to billions of dollars being given to Hezbollah in Lebanon, and to Hamas in Gaza.
Other slogans were much more personal: "Death to the dictator," referring to the Supreme Leader Seyed Ali Khamenei. VOA and AP and Arab News
The frequency of protests in Iran since the beginning of the year has raised hopes in the West that regime change was close at hand.
Earlier this month, there were protests for a very different reason -- water shortages and pollution, and lack of water management. A vast agricultural area in Khuzestan province in southwestern Iran lacks irrigation water. This is a region that was devastated by the Iran/Iraq war in the 1980s, and has a largely Arab population, which suffers official discrimination, as opposed to the majority Persian population. About 40% of Iran has been suffering from a serious drought since last year.
There is a great desire in the West for something called "regime change" in Iran, although it's rarely specified what that means. It could mean that Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, gets replaced, but his replacement may be worse. In terms of violent repression, Khamenei actually isn't very different from the Shah of Iran (Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi) who was deposed by the 1979 revolution.
As we described last month in "Brief generational history of Iran's protests," Tehran's Grand Bazaar has played a pivotal role in protests and regime changes in the past.
Tehran's Grand Bazaar is one of the oldest shopping malls in the world, with origins that go back as far as 1660 BC. It occupies over 8 square miles, and has hundreds of shops. So when there's a widespread protest and strike supported by the shop owners, and suddenly all the shops are closed, it is a significant event.
The Tobacco Revolt of 1890-92 was led by tobacco merchants in the Grand Bazaar, but quickly spread to other merchants. The revolt fizzled because of violence from the Shah. But in 1905, there were new protests, led this time by the sugar merchants in the Grand Bazaar. These protests led to a generational crisis civil war, the Constitutional Revolution, which was a major "regime change" for Iran in that the Shah was then bound by laws defined in the new constitution.
The White Revolution protests in 1962 were begun by a different set of élites -- the clergy, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. This was too soon after the Constitutional Revolution to spread widely, and it fizzled quickly.
However, it led to the Great Islamic Revolution in 1979. Once again, the merchants in the Grand Bazaar were among the leaders that brought about a major regime change -- overthrowing the Shah and replacing him with Khomeini.
So now there are new protests by the merchants in the Grand Bazaar, thanks to the plunge in the value of the rial, something that affects them directly. Does that mean that regime change is at hand?
No, it doesn't. If there's some kind of widespread revolt, it will almost certainly fizzle, like the Tobacco Revolt and the White Revolution protests.
From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, there is a different kind of change at hand, an Awakening era climax similar to the one that forced president Richard Nixon to step down in America in 1974. This will be the climax of the political confrontation between the generations of old geezer survivors of the revolution and the people in the younger generations growing up after the revolution -- the same young people who have been protesting in cities across Iran.
Depending on who is in charge after this change, it's possible that Iran will once again be the ally of the United States, just as it was prior to 1979. Reuters and Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya and OrigIran and The Conversation (3-Jul)
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(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the 1-Aug-18 World View -- Iran's anti-government protests expand as rial currency plummets thread of the Generational Dynamics forum. Comments may be
posted anonymously.)
(1-Aug-2018)
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