Suchergebnisse

Background The Greek economy went through a steep recession for ten years in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. What started as a unique episode of a sovereign debt crisis in a monetary union, triggered a banking sector crisis and a sequence of adjustment programmes aiming at macroeconomic stabilization and economic recovery. … Continued

Prospects for democratic gains in West Africa have taken two major hits so far in 2024. First, on January 28, the military-ruled Sahelian countries Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger announced their withdrawal from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional economic and diplomatic bloc. Second, on February 3, Senegal's term-limited President Macky Sall unilaterally postponed the country's presidential elections, scheduled for February 25; a pliant legislature voted two days later to place the new election date on December 15.The U.S., which has looked to ECOWAS as the key front-line diplomatic actor in responding to West Africa's crises, has cause for concern as well as reasons for reflection — especially about how its aversion to seriously criticizing civilian incumbents has helped lead to this juncture.The crises in Senegal and within ECOWAS are interrelated in several ways. ECOWAS has been vocal but severely inconsistent in attempting to uphold democratic norms in the region. ECOWAS intervened militarily to oust longtime Gambian President Yahaya Jammeh after he conceded his country's 2016 elections but then tried to reverse that decision; the intervention represented the high-water mark of ECOWAS's enforcement power in recent years. Before and after, however, ECOWAS reacted tepidly to relatively blatant power grabs and executive overreach by West African leaders, setting the stage for coups and other forms of upheaval.Civilian presidents' overreach included several instances in which legal systems targeted prominent opposition figures at moments that were highly politically convenient for incumbents; for example, in Niger under President Mahamadou Issoufou and in Senegal under Sall. ECOWAS had little criticism to make of those maneuvers, or of dubious third term bids by leaders in Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire, or of a deeply flawed legislative election in Mali, all of which took place in 2020.Post-election discontent contributed directly to coups in Mali (2020) and Guinea (2021), suggesting that ECOWAS's (and Western powers') reluctance to criticize civilian incumbents can actually feed, rather than tamp down, political instability. ECOWAS's tolerance of civilian overreach also weakened its credibility when negotiating with coup-makers in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Niger, and that same tolerance has also likely been one factor emboldening Sall in his recent decision to postpone Senegal's elections. ECOWAS has also lost face through its unsuccessful sanctions regime against Mali in 2022, which failed to bring that country's junta to heel, and through some members' threats to invade Niger after the 2023 coup (and subsequent and ongoing detention of president Mohamed Bazoum and his family) there. Those threats were both reckless to make and embarrassing to abandon.The Sahelian juntas' decision to leave ECOWAS has raised numerous questions about the bloc's future, as well as the future of other West African regional organizations, such as the West African Monetary Union (a group of Francophone countries with a common currency); so far, Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso have not left the latter organization. Nonetheless, the three Sahelian states' departures takes a substantial swath of territory out of ECOWAS's zone, although the economic impact could be felt more in the Sahel than in the rest of West Africa, given that the former relies upon the latter (for ports and migrant workers' remittances, among other things) more than West Africa relies upon the Sahel. Pulling out of ECOWAS also lets the juntas delay transitions to civilian rule even longer, and saps ECOWAS's influence over its remaining member states.The disruptions to Senegal's electoral calendar, meanwhile, threaten to set that country back significantly. Senegal's democracy has been imperfect, to say the least: the country experienced de facto (and, for a time, de jure) single-party rule for its first 40 years, and, following the unprecedented opposition victory by Abdoulaye Wade in 2000, it took a massive popular mobilization to ensure that Wade ultimately conceded the 2012 election when his own time was up.Sall's tenure has been marked, as noted above, by a series of aggressive court cases against whoever the president's key rival happened to be at a given moment, with three prominent figures at various times banned from contesting elections. Nevertheless, Senegal's democracy is no sham, and the country enjoys several rare distinctions in the region, notably the lack of a successful military coup — and until 2024, no presidential election had been postponed there.Sall had already, with apparent reluctance, pledged not to seek a third term, and the 2024 election was expected to be (and perhaps still will be) a coronation of his hand-picked successor, Prime Minister Amadou Ba. Yet the postponement raises fears that Sall may have other maneuvers planned. It also establishes the precedent of putting the president above institutional rules.The United States government issued a fairly firm statement raising concerns about the postponement, the security forces' harsh treatment of opposition politicians, and the government's clampdown on internet access. The statement could have gone further by naming Sall, rather than referring amorphously to "the Government of Senegal." Presumably American officials are also working behind the scenes to pressure Sall to hold the election and not let the date slip any further than December 15. And hopefully officials are threatening actual consequences if that doesn't happen.This moment should also invite reflection, however, on how events reached this point. The full diplomatic record is not available to the public, of course, but if American officials did not earlier make pointed criticisms regarding the legal system's treatment of Sall's opponents, then they missed a key opportunity to prevent the scenario that is unfolding now. From what this outside observer can tell, American officials have typically contented themselves with a superficial stability in various West African countries, and have elevated some countries (Senegal and Niger, in recent years, and even more recently, Cote d'Ivoire) to "darling" status — with a correspondingly gentle approach to leaders there.As the Sahel dives into an even darker political period, with juntas arresting dissidents and independent voices right and left, and as Senegal teeters, American officials should be even quicker to offer constructive criticism to their remaining friends in the region — lest things deteriorate further.

The shock election of a self-proclaimed "libertarian liberal," the chainsaw-wielding eccentric Javier Milei as Argentina's president has attracted a flurry of attention globally. Most of it was focused on the radicalism of Milei's economic proposals to cure Argentina's chronic ills — chief among them an annual inflation at the rate of 143% and the poverty that has engulfed over 40% of Argentines, and all that with an outstanding debt of $43 billion owed to the International Monetary Fund. Milei's remedies include liquidating Argentina's central bank, dropping the national currency — the peso — in favor of the U.S. dollar, privatizing state assets and slashing public expenditures, including subsidies for the most vulnerable individuals and communities. The chainsaw that he adopted as his icon during the election campaign symbolized his intention to demolish the state, which, according to Milei, is at the root of Argentina's relative decline in the 20th and 21st centuries.While some libertarians, notably in the U.S., welcomed his election as the latest and best chance to advance their long-cherished beliefs and a future inspiration for the U.S., their enthusiasm may be misplaced. Milei's main focus may be on the economy, but, as president, he'll also have to steer Argentina's foreign policy. This is not an area in which he has displayed much interest or knowledge to date, but someone like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a standard bearer of libertarianism in the U.S., would hardly recognize himself in the positions embraced by Milei. In fact, Milei's foreign policy views, to the extent they exist, are far closer to neoconservative than libertarian. His views would easily find home in hawkish Washington D.C. think tanks and parts of the mainstream of both the Republican and Democratic parties. This is not to be underestimated, as Argentina is a member of the G-20, the third largest economy in Latin America, and has recently been invited to join BRICS, a grouping that comprises China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa.Milei's foreign policy views, as expressed repeatedly during the election campaign, are starkly Manichean — they divide the world into democracies and "communist autocracies." Counter-intuitively for a self-proclaimed champion of free trade, he promised to sever ties with two of Argentina's main trade partners — China and Brazil (combined, both account for around 25% of the total of Argentinian exports) — on the grounds that both are ruled by "communists." China was an object of particular scorn, with Milei dubbing the country at one point "an assassin."Milei is a staunch supporter of Ukraine, in contrast to a more moderate position espoused by the outgoing center-left Peronist administration which, while condemning Russia's aggression of Ukraine, was also reluctant to sever ties with Moscow, which grew closer during the pandemic when Argentina acquired Russian vaccines, with results generally deemed acceptable.Perhaps on no issue Milei's neoconservative credentials are more on display than in his fervid embrace of Israel. While Argentina, under different governments, has generally enjoyed good relations with Israel, those were traditionally balanced by Buenos Aires' engagement with Arab countries and, at times, even Iran. That balancing act did not prevent Argentina from declaring Hezbollah a terrorist organization for its alleged role in the notorious 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Milei's defeated opponent, Sergio Massa, promised to similarly add Palestinian Hamas to Argentina's terrorist list if he had been elected. Milei, however, wants to go much further. He declared that his first international trips as president-elect will be to Israel and the U.S. He also promised to move Argentina's embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Such a one-sided reorientation would represent a major break in Argentina's traditional foreign policy consensus.Milei is also opposed, on ideological grounds, to Argentina joining the BRICS, despite the invitation issued by the existing members, reportedly the result of heavy lobbying by Brazil on Buenos Aires' behalf. While the prospect of joining the group that represents more than 40% of the world's population and 31% of global GDP (and also a destiny of some 30% of total Argentine exports) is seen as an opportunity by many Argentine businesspeople and politicians, for Milei BRICS represents little more than a dictators' club.The president-elect is also remarkably skeptical about Mercosur, a South American trade bloc which includes, besides Argentina, also Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay. Milei dismissed it as merely a "low-quality customs union that distorts commerce." Such a position raises fresh questions about the prospects for a long-delayed trade deal between Mercosur and the European Union.There is always a chance that the realities of governing (among them, the fact that his party holds relatively few seats in the National Congress) would temper some of the most radical ideas Milei spouted during an election campaign. After all, the former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, with whom Milei professes a mutual admiration also started as a fierce critic of China, only to significantly soften his position while in office. But during the presidential debate, Milei displayed a worrying ignorance of how international relations work. While no longer calling for a complete severance of ties with China and Brazil, he insisted that any such interaction should be left entirely to the private sector, apparently oblivious to the fact that it is governments that negotiate international trade frameworks and agreements, including tariffs, phyto-sanitary rules, and other measures.That is especially true in the case of China, where the weight of the public sector in the country's external economic activity is preponderant. Currently, alongside many smaller projects, China is involved in building two hydroelectric dams in Argentina which, when completed, would cover the daily electricity consumption of 1.5 million Argentine households, cut oil and gas import expenses, and even allow to export electricity to the neighboring countries. Milei's simplistic vision of economic relations as mere exchanges between private actors sows doubts about the future of these projects. Worse, their cancellation would risk seriously undermining Argentina's credibility with international partners, even from ideologically more "compatible" countries.The likely appointment of Diana Mondino, an economist, as the future minister of foreign affairs, has so far failed to assuage concerns about Milei's policies. As evidenced in a pre-election debate organized by the Argentine Council on Foreign Relations, Mondino, who has spent her entire professional life in private sector, seems to share her future boss' ideological view of international relations, as well as a penchant for hyperbole. A few days before the elections, she likened Milei's possible victory to the fall of the Berlin Wall 34 years ago, as if the modern-day Argentina were in any way comparable to Soviet-backed communist dictatorships.It is obviously too early to tell how the Milei presidency will unfold, but based on his rhetoric it may be a bumpy road ahead for foreign policy in Argentina.

As world leaders gather in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, there is a palpable sense that the global balance of power is shifting. Three decades after the end of the Cold War, the unipolar moment appears to have given way to a far more complex system of geopolitics.BRICS — a non-Western geopolitical grouping led by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — doubled its size a few weeks ago when it invited six states from the Global South to join its ranks. And well over a year into the war in Ukraine, most countries have chosen not to join the West in its sanctions regime against Russia despite intense diplomatic pressure. "As the unipolar era that followed the end of the Cold War recedes, the global South is coming alive once again," wrote Sarang Shidore in a recent essay for Foreign Affairs. "But its guiding principle this time is not idealism but realism, with an unhesitating embrace of national interests and increased recourse to power politics."To better understand these trends, RS sat down with Shidore, who recently took over the new Global South Program at the Quincy Institute. Shidore brings an unconventional yet realist perspective on the end of the unipolar moment and the rise of a new world order. His message is clear: The U.S. can't stop the rise of a new order, but it can help shape certain trends in its favor if policymakers can accept that unipolarity is, in fact, dead. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.RS: Why do you find the category of the "Global South" useful? Why is it analytically valuable?Shidore: The key is to understand that the world is not equitable when it comes to power — not just wealth, not just income, but power. Power is a squishy quality, but it is, at the end of the day, what makes things happen.When you look at the power map of the world, you see some clear winners and some others who are not quite in the room. The winners are the United States and its core allies in Europe, probably Japan, probably Korea to a large degree. You have the other great powers, Russia and China, who by virtue of being great powers can exercise influence and resist various pressures.What's left is a huge number of states. Now, not all of them are poor. The majority of them are quite poor, but there are some middle-income countries or even some countries that have become wealthy. Nevertheless, they are not in the inner rooms of decision making in the world order. They feel they cannot shape the world order in any substantial way. They're deeply dissatisfied in terms of their status and their influence.As with all labels, there is ambiguity. It's not a precise formula that you can punch in and get a precise answer. The point is that any definition like the "Global South" or the "West", if it's useful to describe an important dynamic in the world order, then it is of value.Of course economics is going to come into it. Of course the colonial past is a part of it. It's a tapestry. But nevertheless, it's a geopolitical fact. Broadly speaking, I would center it on geopolitics and power.RS: It's the geopolitical haves and the have-nots.Shidore: That's right. RS: So we've got this group of countries that's dissatisfied, that doesn't want to play great power politics, that wants to be involved in the system. Is that just a desire, and or is there an actual momentum towards change?Shidore: This is a debate. I think most people would agree that we are less unipolar than we were in the 1990s. Most people have accepted that something was lost in the war on terror, that America lost significant amounts of credibility and even took an economic hit and [suffered] a strategic setback. Then, of course, you had the financial crisis. With the financial crisis and then the Covid shock, you create a lot of damaging impact in the Global South. But nevertheless, after these three crises have happened, when we look at the world you still see that today, there are middle powers with significantly more influence than they had in 1992. There's easily nine or 10 of those. Not only do they have more economic power, but they also have more political savviness and ability to play the game of international politics, get their preferences noticed and acted upon, and sometimes really chart their own futures in their regions and beyond.Turkey is an example of that. It plays its game quite cleverly. Of course, it overshoots and has suffered economic shocks recently, and so forth. But the bottom line is, it's no longer the country it was in the 1990s, [when it was] economically much weaker, knocking on the door and patiently trying to get into the European Union saying, "We are Europeans. Please accept us as Europeans." They're now saying, "We don't care if you admit us or not. We are striking out on our own." One can agree or disagree with specific policies, but as an actor, Turkey is asserting itself. It's a variable thing. If you take military power, there's no doubt that the United States dominates the world, and no middle power can come close. If you take financial power, the U.S. again dominates the world. If you take economic power in a broad sense of the term, there things have really changed. Now you have China, of course, the big other in the room, by some measure bigger than the United States. In material terms, China is actually a bigger economy than the U.S. But all these other middle powers have actually achieved a relative economic level of consumption, travel, connectivity through technology. What they had in the 1990s was much less than what they have now. They're able to muscle their way into the debate, at least in some form. But there's still a long way to go for genuine change in institutions.This contestation is happening as we speak. It's going to play out over one, two, maybe three decades, and this is when we are going to have winners and losers on all sides. Ultimately, I'm most interested in what we do in the United States about it. Are you going to be in denial until it's too late? Or are you going to understand what's happening in the world and craft a strategy that benefits the American people and allows the U.S. to navigate the shoals of what is a more complicated and, in some ways, more treacherous world?RS: You're getting at something there about the difficulty of having an American state coming out of the unipolar moment and being in this position where it seems like this trend is a threat to American power. A lot of people will say China is the big problem, but it seems like you're laying out a much larger, broader threat to American power and its ability to enforce its will. Do you see it in those zero sum terms?Shidore: I think people are seeing it in zero sum terms. That's the problem. First of all, I think it's futile. If there was a button we could push and return to 1992, would many people press it? I think a lot of people would say, "Let's go back and give ourselves a second chance." Maybe a world in which America in 1992 had taken its victory humbly and said unipolarity is something we're going to sustain through an enlightened understanding of interests, maybe that would have been a wonderful thing. But that's not what happened. Now, it's too late to put the genie back into the bottle. We are inevitably heading in a certain direction, we cannot have the debates on whether we're gonna return to unipolarity, or whether that would have been a better world. What we have now is the reality of today's world and the world of the future.There are dangers in all orders. There is no perfect global order where all the bases are covered, everybody's safe, rich, and happy, and the environment is perfect. As it is there are threats. Climate change is a major threat. If we start adding threats and inflating threats, then we will have one of two reactions. One is that we will take measures that are far in excess of the real threat. And we have done that before, in the war of terror. We could have another version of it. The other end of the spectrum is we lose hope and confidence, and that's not a good thing either. So let's understand the reality of the world and understand that a lot of what are now called threats are either relatively minor, or they're actually opportunities. There are opportunities here to increase influence in the Global South. Just because country X has invited China to build a port doesn't mean China's going to have a base there. If you push it to choose, then maybe that will happen.There's an anxiety at work here. Behind the facade of confidence is the deep anxiety of losing America's mojo. I don't think America's mojo is lost. This is a huge country with a diverse set of people, and people still want to come and live here. It's got enormous resources. It's secure. There's no reason to lose confidence and get so stricken with anxiety.RS: We've got the General Assembly coming up this week in the UN. Something that Biden and the whole administration have planted a flag on is this idea of Security Council reform. BRICS, too, recently endorsed as a bloc the idea of Security Council reform. Is that one of the key things to move forward into an equitable system for some of these middle powers that really want a higher level of influence?Shidore: There's no doubt that that's a gold standard. The UN is the only really global body. We don't have anything comparable. But everything that I know about it tells me it's hard to change because the bar for reform is very high.I'm more looking at the other major global institutions, the Bretton Woods institutions: the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. There are possibilities there. But because that isn't moving either, alternative institutions are cropping up, whether it's the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, whether it's the New Development, whether it's bilateral projects like China's Belt and Road Initiative, they're stepping in and doing things on the ground. The World Bank System still remains among the biggest. It sets a lot of norms and standards. People look to the World Bank for a lot of things. But if it doesn't reform, there's gonna come a day when it just becomes one of many. That's not beneficial to the U.S. The impatience for change is growing. As we know well, the current design of the order is a 1945 design. We are practically 20 years away from 2045. So how are you going to reach 2045 and after 100 years there's been no significant change to the world order's design? I think that's just not a sustainable proposition.