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Haitian president's killing reflects unprecedented rise in violence
Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on global politics this week:
What do we know about the assassination of Haiti's president?
Well, we know it's not making an awful lot of news the assassination of the leader of a country, because Haiti's a tiny economy. It's incredibly poor, it's been devastated by natural disasters and also by general lawlessness in the country. And over the last month, gang violence has become historically unprecedented. The police have been unable to maintain law and order in the streets, in most of the cities or sort of, major towns in Haiti. You've had thousands of Haitians displaced. You've had dozens of civilians killed and then overnight a gang entered the personal residence of the president. Again, police and presidential guard unable to stop them and he's dead. And his wife, the First Lady is in the hospital. It's a pretty staggering situation and obviously, some international support, some peacekeepers could be useful on the ground. Aid by itself is not going to do it right now.
What's the deal with US troops leaving Bagram airbase in the middle of the night?
This is the most important military airfield in Afghanistan. The US has been using it for staging operations over the last 20 years. The US as you know is pulling out of Afghanistan. Trump tried to get it done, didn't quite finish the job. Biden now saying that he will by 9/11. There's only about a thousand US troops left in Afghanistan with the civilian airport and guarding the US embassy. The Taliban is increasingly taking over all the territory. Afghan troops are fleeing. About a thousand deserted for Tajikistan in the past couple of weeks because they know the country is about to fall to the Taliban. And as the United States left Bagram in the middle of the evening, they apparently shut off the electricity. Apparently didn't tell the Afghan national commander that they were leaving. There was no handover. And so as a consequence, the place got thoroughly looted that night. That is an apocryphal story for what is about to come to the entire country as the Americans leave. Whether or not that means the US leaving now is the right thing is a very different story. I generally am sympathetic to getting the Americans out after 20 years, but we're clearly not handling this the way we should be either with our allies or with the Afghans.
Is this latest COVID 19 vaccine corruption scandal going to be the one that sinks Brazil's Bolsonaro?
Not in the near-term in the sense that in order for impeachment to actually succeed in Brazil you'd really need to see approval ratings down in the low teens consistently. That's not the case in Brazil. Bolsonaro is still in the thirties. You just don't have the support to get it done. But he would get crushed in presidential elections if they happened right now against Lula from the PT, the Workers' Party, who will be opposing him. Elections are next year. Increasingly, it is an uphill struggle for Bolsonaro. Interesting that the Brazilian president saying that these may be fake elections. He won't recognize the outcome of a stolen election. Sounds a lot like somebody we know here in the United States from just last year. And Brazil is indeed setting itself up for a very similar type of contested outcome from what we had in the United States.
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What We're Watching: Myanmar protests test the generals, Haiti's political chaos, Netanyahu in the dock
Myanmar protests test junta's patience: It didn't take long for the Myanmar military junta to get an earful from the streets. Since staging a coup last week, in which they detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, they have been met with a growing protest movement in the capital, Naypyidaw, and other cities across the country. Flying the flag of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party and carrying images of Lord Buddha, the protesters say they are demanding an end to "dictatorship." The generals, for their part, have so far showed restraint, deploying water cannons against the protesters this time, rather than shooting them dead, as they ended up doing in 1988 and again in 2007. But the military has warned ominously that it won't tolerate actions that undermine "state stability, public safety, and the rule of law." With the world watching, will the generals change tack and crush the protests after all — in the end, who's to stop them?
Haiti's term limit turmoil: Haiti's embattled President Jovenel Moïse said Sunday that his government had arrested more than 20 people whom he accused of plotting to overthrow his government. For months, Haiti has been wracked by deepening political turmoil and violence over what should be a simple question: when does the president's term end? Moïse's opponents say that his five-year term was due to expire on Sunday, and they've called for a two-year transition government. But the president argues that because an interim government ran the country during the first year of his term, he actually has until February 2022 to lead. Top justices in Haiti as well as human rights advocates have sided with the opposition, but the Biden administration, as well as the Organization for American States and the United Nations, are all in Moïse's corner, for now. With no obvious way out of the deadlock at the moment, Haiti — the Western Hemisphere's poorest country — is on the brink of a potentially disastrous explosion of political violence.
Israel's Netanyahu in the dock: Just six weeks out from Israel's fourth general elections in the past two years, Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is back in court facing a host of corruption charges. Bibi, Israel's longest serving PM, has pleaded not-guilty to charges that he directed favorable government policy towards prominent media and business figures in exchange for gifts and positive media coverage. Bibi says the whole thing is a political "witch hunt," but if convicted, the forever-leader could face several years behind bars. A verdict is not expected to be handed down for months — or even years (Netanyahu's camp has already called for further delays to the proceedings until after the March 23 election) -- but the political impact of the case so close to the polls is worth watching. The March vote will largely be a referendum on Bibi, but will negative fallout from the trial really hurt him? Or is it the case that, as some observers say, most Israelis decided long ago whether they are "for or against Bibi"?