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And the (geopolitical) Oscar goes to …
It's the 95th Academy Awards on Sunday, and we all know that the Oscars often get political. You can expect speeches to reference Russia's war in Ukraine and, of course, US culture-war issues like identity politics. But in this era of political hyper-polarization in America and beyond, we’ve got our own awards to give out.
Here are our picks for a few of the best performances of the past 12 months.
Best Documentary Feature: "The Little Short," by El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, based on his get-rich-quick bestseller "Bukele's Guide to Wealth and Fame in Crypto Markets."
Best Cameo/Actress in a Limited TV Miniseries:Liz Truss as British PM.
Lifetime Achievement: Former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for "My Trip to Taipei," a tour de force in DNGAF about the geopolitical consequences of my actions.
Best Costume Design: US Rep. (and alleged serial liar) George Santos (R-NY) as a drag queen in Brazil.
Best Editing: Xi Jinping for ending zero-COVID in China — and all references to it too.
Best Special Effects: The US/Russia/pro-Ukrainian group/we'll-never-know-who for the Nord Stream pipeline explosion.
Best Sound Editing in Parliament/Exit From the Party: Former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern.
Best Screenplay/Cinematography: C-SPAN for "The House Speaker Fight," an unexpectedly riveting story of failed votes, failed fistfights, and failed leadership in the US Congress.
Best Remake: Jair Bolsonaro, director of the 8 de Janeiro reboot of January 6.
Best Picture: "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Balloon," a Kubrick-esque Cold War 2.0 satire featuring Joe Biden, Xi Jinping, and a floating weapon of mass puns.
US President Joe Biden, Mexican President AMLO and Canadian PM Justin Trudeau arrive for a joint news conference at the conclusion of the North American Leaders' Summit in Mexico City.
What We’re Watching: Three Amigos huddle, Peruvian violence, East Asia travel curbs
Three Amigos talk and ... that's all, folks
Well, some progress is better than none at all — at least among “friends.” At their “Three Amigos” summit on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, and Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador — known as AMLO — announced a slew of agreements on things like moving some US production of semiconductors to Mexico, cutting methane emissions to fight climate change, and installing EV charging stations on shared borders. But they failed to make significant headway on the thorniest issues: the record numbers of asylum seekers entering the US from Mexico; Mexican-made fentanyl causing a public health catastrophe for los gringos; and USMCA-related trade disputes such as Mexico's energy reforms or Canadian grumbling at the Biden administration's EV subsidies. Indeed, perhaps the best thing to come out of the summit is that Biden and AMLO — who had tense exchange on Day 1 — showed that despite their lack of personal chemistry, maybe they can be compadres after all.
A deadly day in Peru
Peruvian authorities announced a three-day curfew in the southern region of Puno after at least 18 people were killed Monday in clashes between protesters and police. It was the deadliest day since the country descended into chaos after the ouster of former President Pedro Castillo in early December. The mostly rural supporters of Castillo, a leftist newcomer to politics who faced multiple impeachment attempts during his 17 months in office, have been blocking roads across the country and calling for him to be immediately released and reinstated. Crucially, they have still not accepted the pledge by acting president Dina Boluarte, Castillo’s former VP, to bring forward the scheduled 2026 general elections to April of next year. Meanwhile, a confidence vote to approve Boluarte’s new cabinet easily passed on Tuesday night (the alternative would have caused a cabinet reshuffle and even more chaos). Authorities have also blocked Evo Morales – Bolivia’s former leftist president and a Castillo ally who was himself ousted amid mass protests in 2019 – from entering Peru to cheer on the protesters. What's more, Peru's chief prosecutor is opening an investigation against Boluarte and members of her cabinet on charges of “genocide, qualified homicide and serious injuries.”
East Asian COVID visa beef
China is lashing out at COVID travel restrictions after reopening to the world. On Tuesday, Beijing responded to the latest curbs by Japan and South Korea by canceling short-term visas for their citizens. Tokyo and Seoul are ostensibly worried about new COVID variants being spread by arrivals from China, where Xi Jinping has relaxed his zero-COVID policy with the same lack of transparency that allowed COVID to spread beyond China’s borders in the first place in early 2020. For its part, Beijing resents being singled out by its neighbors while many other countries are welcoming Chinese tourists. In the near term, the impact of the visa tit-for-tat will be limited because few people are now traveling between China and the two countries. But if the restrictions stay in place for weeks or months, it might delay a much-anticipated revival of business activity in East Asia.
A member of the Federal Police looks on as supporters of Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro arrive on a bus after their camp was dismantled in Brasilia.
Are the men in uniform hurting Brazil's democracy?
Hardcore supporters of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro ransacked Brazil's democratic institutions à la Jan. 6 on Sunday, and there’s strong anecdotal evidence that some members of the security forces didn’t do much to stop them.
It was, at a minimum, a dereliction of duty. Or perhaps it reflected their thinly veiled sympathy for what the protesters were trying to do: overturn the result of the 2022 election to reinstate Bolsonaro.
Local media spotted civilian cops and members of the military police in Brasília chatting with protesters and even escorting them as they stormed parliament, the presidential palace, and the Supreme Court. Ibaneis Rocha, the pro-Bolsonaro governor of the federal district, was suspended for 90 days for failing to prevent the attacks carried out by Bolsonaristas who reportedly arrived in Brasília days before in 100 buses that went unnoticed by the friendly men in uniform. And guess who decided to skip town and is apparently hiding in Florida? Anderson Torres, the capital’s now-fired security chief and Bolsonaro’s former justice minister.
In the end, no security personnel defied the federal order to retake the buildings. Still, the dramatic events have shone a spotlight on Brazil’s capital and on the close ties between the country’s security apparatus and Bolsonaro.
It’s unclear how widespread the phenomenon is. Brazil’s military and police don’t do surveys on the politics of its rank and file. But again, anecdotally, it’s an open secret that most of them are fans of the former president, an ex-army captain himself.
On the one hand, the military is traditionally conservative and thus ideologically aligned with a right-winger like Bolsonaro. On the other, its members have a strong incentive to respect hierarchy and to defend law and order. In that sense, they are not an immediate threat to democracy, says Chris Garman, managing director for the Americas at Eurasia Group.
Brazil's security apparatus, he explains, has strong survival instincts — in part due to lessons learned coming out of military rule in 1985. Very few of its members openly expressed any willingness to support Bolsonaro's efforts to overturn the election result or to defy orders by their commanders despite rumblings of a coup.
Yet, that's not the only risk — especially under the newly minted left-wing presidency of Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva.
"It's more of a gray zone," Garman says. Bolsonarista cops and soldiers might be less aggressive in clamping down on protests that might turn violent, as they've done with thousands of pro-Bolsonaro crowds that have been stirring up trouble across the country since their idol lost re-election to Lula two months ago.
The slow-burn threat is that the crackdown against the rioters and their backers deepens their mistrust of the government and disenchantment with the political class.
A big chunk of Bolsonaro's base — including many members of Brazil’s security apparatus — "came out of this election feeling that [it] was stolen in the loose sense of the word, not the narrow sense of the word from fraud," Garman says. "They view that establishment was out to undermine Bolsonaro and elect Lula" by stacking the odds against the former.
So what, if anything, can Lula do to prevent another 8 de Janeiro? With an Erdogan-style purge of the military and police out of the question, it all comes down to how the prosecution is handled.
For Garman, Lula will have to strike a tough balance between taking effective action against the perpetrators and making sure his measures don't smack of overreach that pushes Bolsonaristas so far into their corner that next time, the security men might be even less inclined to do their job.