Diplomacy & Crisis News

Parliaments have a critical role in translating the new sustainable development agenda – which world leaders will adopt later this month at the United Nations – into real improvements for the lives of the world’s people, says the head of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU).

The United Nations General Assembly today approved a resolution sending the draft ‘2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ to Member States for adoption later this month, bringing the international community “to the cusp of decisions that can help realize the… dream of a world of peace and dignity for all,” according to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The United Nations refugee agency announced today that it managed to deliver humanitarian aid to non-Government-controlled areas in eastern Ukriane for the first time in several weeks, including to Horvlika and other nearby areas north of Donetsk, which experienced heavy fighting in August.

The number of “exhausted and desperate” women and children making their way from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq through the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia seeking refuge in Europe has tripled in the past three months, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said today.

The detection of a new case of Ebola in Sierra Leone over the weekend after the West African country had marked almost three weeks of zero cases has prompted the use of an experimental vaccine to fight the disease, according to the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO).

A ground-breaking air quality measuring device expected to cost up to 100 times less than existing solutions has the potential to “revolutionize” air quality measurement in developing countries and help prevent deaths from air pollution that claim 7 million lives each year, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Dominique David, rédacteur en chef de Politique étrangère, présente le numéro d’automne, consacré à l’Algérie : « L’Algérie, nouvelle puissance régionale ? »

Edito Politique étrangère : « L’Algérie… par Ifri-podcast

The UN human rights office said today it is alarmed by the steep increase in the number of civilian casualties in Yemen’s Taiz governorate in recent weeks, as well as by the “untenable” humanitarian situation which is being made worse by the blockage of supply routes into Taiz city by local “popular committees” affiliated with the Houthis.

Le numéro d’automne de Politique étrangère (3-2015), consacré à l’Algérie, vient de paraître !

Dans un environnement en feu, l’Algérie semble étrangement calme, mais les orages s’approchent : chute du prix des hydrocarbures dans une économie très dépendante, baisse d’une rente qui assure la paix sociale, blocage du système politique, déstabilisations du Maghreb (Tunisie, Libye…) et du Sahel (Mali…). Alger se retrouve face à des choix difficiles. Comment régler la succession du président Bouteflika, avec une société de plus en plus dépolitisée mais qui conteste l’opacité du régime ? Est-il possible de diversifier enfin une économie toujours structurée par la rente ? Comment se garder des désordres extérieurs ? Principale puissance militaire de la région, l’Algérie a choisi depuis des décennies le non-engagement extérieur, une option qui n’est plus viable. Au plan interne et au plan externe, le régime va devoir démontrer une souplesse qui lui permette de gérer des situations nouvelles et potentiellement très dangereuses.

Cette livraison de Politique étrangère s’attache également à deux thèmes majeurs de l’actualité de 2015 : le centenaire du génocide arménien, occasion de rapprochement entre Ankara et Erevan gaspillée, mais révélatrice, entre autres, des contradictions turques ; et la mutation des migrations internationales, en particulier celles qui concernent l’Europe et l’espace méditerranéen.

La négociation d’un éventuel TTIP, la vision chinoise des « nouvelles Routes de la soie », l’état de la Somalie, la piraterie dans le golfe de Guinée, les rapports entre les États musulmans et l’islam de France : autant d’autres sujets de réflexion développés dans ce numéro, au cœur des débats internationaux les plus présents.

Découvrez le sommaire ici.

Téléchargez le dossier de presse ici.

Achetez le numéro 3-2015 de Politique étrangère ici.

Abonnez-vous à Politique étrangère ici.

Political crises and violent protests rocked a number of countries in August, including Guatemala, Nepal, Lebanon and Iraq, where popular unrest threatens to topple the government and overturn the post-2003 political order. Deadly conflict worsened in Yemen, Afghanistan and Kashmir, while violence increased in Burundi following President Nkurunziza’s successful run for a third term, and instability remained the norm in the Central African Republic where UN peacekeeping efforts faced a series of setbacks. A border crisis also prompted a dangerous spike in tensions between Colombia and Venezuela. On a positive note, August saw a peace agreement in South Sudan, strengthened prospects for political and constitutional reform in Sri Lanka, and an important political agreement ahead of October elections in Guinea.

Chômage, pauvreté, laïcité « en danger » : à chaque difficulté, les dirigeants politiques se tournent volontiers vers l'école, dont ils affectent de croire qu'elle détient toutes les solutions. Mais peut-on sauver le monde depuis la salle de classe ? / France, Éducation, État, Idéologie, Inégalités, (...) / France, Éducation, État, Idéologie, Inégalités, Jeunes, Médias, Pauvreté, Politique, Service public, Société, Travail, Chômage - 2015/06

(Own report) - The German government is firmly committed to promoting the German arms industry. According to a "strategy paper" recently adopted by the cabinet, the government is planning to "increase investments" in the development of "defense-related technologies." It also wants to step up "political support" for German arms companies' business activities, which - if necessary - could be extended to "third countries" non-members of the EU or NATO, and could explicitly include the export of combat hardware. Bilateral agreements should also be concluded with "partner countries" to enhance the "opportunities for German companies" in "large-scale foreign [arms] procurement projects," according to the paper. These measures comply with the demands of German arms manufacturers, who, for quite some time, have been in "dialogue" with government representatives. One of the results of the "dialogue," announced by Vice-Chancellor and Minister for the Economy Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) is the government's support of defense contractors "to obtain access to the evolving markets of civilian security technologies" as well as, in their "cooperation efforts with developing and threshold countries."

Dans un article ainsi intitulé (Foreign Affairs,Juin 2015), Charles King (Georgetown, University) alerte ses lecteurs sur la fin possible de ce qui a contribué largement à la supériorité stratégique américaine : l’entretien d’une connaissance fine des autres régions du monde, permettant aux décideurs de « voir le monde tel que les autres le voient » (J. William Fullbright).
Plaidoyer à la fois réaliste en ce qu’il résonne en termes de rapports de force, et anti-réaliste en ce qu’il insiste sur le fait que la puissance est le fruit de bien plus qu’une seule force économique et militaire, l’article loue l’apport d’une communauté de « minutemen of the mind » : universitaires, étudiants, intellectuels curieux… Il rappelle d’autres vérités encore : la connaissance ne s’épanouit que dans un environnement qui lui est propice ; la mobilité des savants est un atout ; beaucoup de pays sont capables d’envoyer des missiles, peu ont réussi à construire l’équivalent de la Brookings ou de la Chatham House ; enfin et surtout, il doit être demandé aux chercheurs de contraindre les décideurs, en leur montrant que les réalités sont toujours plus complexes qu’ils ne le pensent, et non de conforter leur pouvoir et leurs perceptions. Pour ce faire, les universitaires doivent commencer par travailler sur des situations réelles, qui interviennent dans des lieux réels.
Ces avertissements valent-ils pour la France ? A plusieurs égards, oui, et d’ailleurs pour bien d’autres pays aussi. Croit-on suffisamment, aujourd’hui, en la compréhension fine et contre-intuitive des phénomènes internationaux, ou ne cherche-t-on qu’à conforter des « standard operating procedures », comme on dit dans l’analyse décisionnelle ? Les analyses exprimées par les universitaires sont-elles suffisamment écoutées par les décideurs ? A qui, à quoi doivent-elles d’ailleurs servir, pour reprendre une question déjà posée dans un article publié (F. Charillon, « Les relations internationales, science royale ? », in Th. Balzacq, F. Ramel, Traité de relations internationales, Sciences Po, 2014). « A personne sinon au bien commun de la connaissance et à sa communauté épistémique, car la science (même sociale), pour être pure, doit être libre des contraintes de pouvoir ? Aux autorités publiques qui financent les recherches, car le payeur est le commandeur,  et l’aide à la recherche participe d’une politique publique contribuant à la performance, au développement et à la protection d’une société ? ». Nos relations internationales, à l’université, traitent-elles suffisamment de « situations réelles dans des lieux réels » ? Chercher à découpler, ici, l’intérêt de l’approche intellectuelle de l’intérêt stratégique d’un pays dans son ensemble, est dangereux, sauf à estimer qu’une grande démocratie doit absolument se caractériser par une analyse internationale déconnectée de toute utilisation concrète possible…
En la matière, la France, comme d’autres, a connu des hauts et des bas. Des avancées ont eu lieu, elles ont été remises en cause, et ce cycle continuera. Une réflexion « œcuménique » sur ce point, mêlant acteurs et décideurs, demeure urgente.

Plus d'un siècle s'est écoulé depuis la publication de l'essai classique de Robert Michels, « Les Partis politiques ». Mais la question qu'il soulevait conserve son actualité : nos sociétés démocratiques seraient-elles condamnées à la domination des élus sur les électeurs ? / Allemagne, Italie, (...) / Allemagne, Italie, Démocratie, État, Histoire, Idées, Idéologie, Inégalités, Intellectuels, Parti politique, Politique, Syndicalisme - 2015/01

Guatemala is confronting a fast-moving crisis of political legitimacy, as prosecutors reveal new evidence that appears to implicate President Otto Pérez Molina and his former vice president in an allegedly massive tax fraud scheme. Powerful business and civil society organisations are calling for the president´s resignation. Almost twenty years after the end of a bloody civil war, Guatemala has an opportunity to overcome a legacy of impunity, weak institutions and crippled political parties. At the same time, there is a danger that hope could turn into frustration and even violence if political actors fail to respect constitutional rules, and those chosen in the 6 September elections for president and Congress ignore popular demands for justice and transparency.

Am 20. August 2015 legte Burundis Präsident Pierre Nkurunziza schnell und leise zum dritten Mal den Amtseid ab. Die Vereidigung war erst am selben Morgen angekündigt worden, und die in der Hauptstadt akkreditierten Botschafter aus Europa und den USA blieben ebenso demonstrativ fern wie die Vertreter der Afrikanischen Union. Mit Blick auf die Sicherheitslage und die hohe Zahl politischer Morde im August hatte man sich entschlossen, die Vereidigung rasch und ohne großes Aufheben durchzuziehen.

Qui achète qui ? La question n'épuise assurément pas la subtilité des organisations humaines. Mais y répondre offre un robuste aperçu de leur hiérarchie. Début août, une dépêche de l'agence Bloomberg annonçait : « Le groupe Goldman Sachs a embauché M. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, ancien premier ministre du (...) / Banque, Finance, Libéralisme, Personnalités, Politique - 2015/09

Flickr via donkeyhotey

Last Thursday, Greece was momentarily shaken out of its crisis funk when Alexis Tsipras announced that he was resigning from the post of Prime Minister and calling for new elections to be held on September 20th. Tsipras had only been in office since January, but he declared that his mandate had “exhausted its limits”. Having lost a third of his party’s support, the now ex-Prime Minister prefers to wager on the chance that a favorable majority will form by September rather than risk struggling with negotiating coalitions for the rest of his term.

Tsipras splintered Syriza, a radical left party, when he agreed to the bailout terms presented by the troika—the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund—just weeks after 61.3 percent of Greeks had voted against them on July 5th. Despite his drastic U-turn, polls still indicate that Greeks favor Alexis Tsipras as a leader over most other candidates. This popularity, however, is not very useful to a Prime Minister who faces a hostile parliament. Observers say that Tsipras had no choice but to agree to the creditors’ terms for another bailout. But for some, agreeing to the memorandum after holding a national referendum was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The party fractured itself between pro- and anti-memorandum partisans; the latter working hard to form stronger coalitions in order to oppose creditor conditions and leave the Eurozone to return to the Greek drachma.

On Friday, the former Energy Minister under Tsipras, Panagiotis Lafazanis, became the head of Popular Unity, a new left-wing party looking to bring together Syriza’s disenfranchised electorate and politicians. If the 25 Syriza MPs that defected to Popular Unity were not enough to cause a tight race, pressure is also mounting on the right. While radical socialists hurry to organize on time for elections and a caretaker government takes Syriza’s place, far-right party Golden Dawn is addressing the overlooked immigration crisis that Greece faces in the Aegean sea, at the expense of Tsipras’ and Syriza’s MPs.

Despite such active opposition, it  seems unlikely that parties, especially newly-formed ones, will have time to campaign and win over many new supporters. Tsipras’ idea that next month’s elections will allow for a more cohesive government to form is not senseless. The former Prime Minister has gained right-wing voters at the expense of left-wing voters. Even if this was unintentional, the shift from  radical ideologist to being perceived as a social democrat might work in his favor.

It is difficult to predict whether Tsipras is simply breeding more uncertainty for Greece’s future or if his resignation is a ploy meant to ensure stronger bargaining power on the national stage. Many say that Greece should be actively implementing reforms to meet the expectations of creditors, rather than putting Greeks through a new round of political brinkmanship. On the one hand, it may seem like Tsipras is stalling the implementation of strict austerity measures, but, on the other hand, he also appears to be heading in a direction that favors dialogue with the troika.

Tsipras’s new style of politics, which cost him a third of his party, is one driven by survival instinct.  Steering away from the idealistic (and reactionary) goals first set by Syriza, a Greek utopia that wanted to avoid austerity while maintaining the Euro, Tsipras is now appealing to wider political base.

A 2013 Pew Research Center poll indicated that a majority of EU citizens considered Greeks to be the least hardworking country in Europe. This kind of stereotype demonstrates the finger-pointing tendency that the Jacques Delors Institute warned against: “It is of crucial importance that backward looking criticism will be replaced by forward looking constructive dialogue on how to strengthen the euro”. According to the Institute, that aims to advise European Union leaders, the EU needs to customize its approach to countries’ economies in the future and invest in Greek industries in a way that will trigger growth. Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s President, who knows a thing or two about sovereign debt, told Euronews in June, “All those measures are not meant to overcome the crisis, they are just to liquidate the debt”.

However, irrespective of the outcome of the vote, I would venture a guess that Tsipras, both lacks the political will and the common sense to see through the reforms demanded by the creditors. The Greek default, often compared with Latvia’s, Iceland’s, Ireland’s or Argentina’s, is nevertheless unique. Athens not only lacks a strong export sector or any significant comparative advantage over other EU members (the much-touted olive oil and cheese industry only account for $790 million worth of exports), but the shabby state of the Greek institutional framework and inefficient court system render the austerity-driven bailout vacuous.

Increasing the country’s competitiveness through austerity measures without bolstering its manufacturing sector, imposing tax hikes without strengthening its tax collection capacities, selling off state assets without stamping out corruption, and holding elections on the fickle platform “paying lip service to the creditors while bemoaning the European diktat” are the wrong ways to put Greece back on track. As much as some pundits have tried to spin the Greek crisis into a case of victim blaming whereby evil European creditors snuffed democracy in the name of finance and at the expense of the Greeks themselves, without deep, comprehensive structural reforms Athens will be dead in the water.

Almazbek Atambayev will be traveling to Beijing and Tehran, but dropped the New York leg of his September travel plans

 

China watchers around the world are alarmed at the significant fall in Chinese stock markets and many are warning that the recent crash has alarming prospects for the underlying Chinese economy. Their worries reached new heights following the 8.5% drop in the Shanghai Composite Index on Monday – the biggest fall in eight years. Many attempts were made to stem the decline in the stock markets, including the banning of short-selling and new listings, the threat to arrest short sellers, the freezing of close to half the companies traded, and massive influx of state capital to buy shares. Perhaps in an attempt to prop up the financial position of its exporters, a supposed one-time yuan devaluation of 1.9% was announced last Tuesday by the People’s Bank of China. Since then, the yuan (or renminbi) has had its value cut an additional two consecutive days.

Some prominent China watchers are calling into question the Communist Party’s ability to control not only its stock markets, but also other policy-making areas. Paul Krugman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008 and professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, calls the Chinese leadership “naked emperors” and says “they have no clue what they’re doing.” Despite Krugman’s admonition, the Party may have a few tricks up its sleeve.

Beijing has been expanding its reach in other markets, such as Africa, where ten out of the top twenty fastest-growing economies between 2013 and 2017 are located according to the International Monetary Fund. Indeed, it has done so for some time now, with China’s trade with Africa reaching an estimated $200 billion in 2012. Chinese companies are also winning massive infrastructure contracts to build railways, airports, highways and ports, typically supported by large, state-owned financial institutions such as the Export-Import Bank of China. Most of the financing of these large projects is tied to procurement of Chinese equipment, machinery and materials—a boost to its exporters. And many Chinese have flocked to Africa to set up small retail stores and sell cheap Chinese-made household items.

Yet, while providing new markets for Chinese state-owned enterprises and traders may help improve China’s gross domestic product (GDP), this strategy is not without risk. As Howard French, author of China’s Second Continent relates, it is “outcomes that count.” Chinese citizens and companies have been welcomed by many African leaders who believe they can quickly build much-needed infrastructure. And in many countries they have done just that. However, French reports in his many travels throughout Africa, that some of the Chinese-built infrastructure is substandard, with airports subject to flooding or newly-built highways crumbling. In another example, French points to the “outraged Ghanaians who seem to have awoken one recent day to the discovery that thousands of Chinese newcomers were scrambling illegally to take control of their country’s lucrative gold mining sector, digging up the countryside, despoiling the land, and bribing local chiefs and police officials in the process.”

If Chinese policy-makers want to sustain their stated GDP growth near 6-7 percent for the near future, increasing the number of countries their exporters have access to would certainly help. With Chinese-led initiatives such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the BRICS New Development Bank, and the Silk Road Fund, their exporters and state-owned enterprises could well gain access to new markets. But given the backlash many Chinese companies are now facing in Africa, new efforts will need to be undertaken to improve their behavior—lest better-governed countries turn to their competitors.