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In a breakthrough that will give the British people one more chance to weigh in on the tortured question of Brexit, the UK Parliament – after a series of baroque machinations – agreed late yesterday to hold a general election on December 12.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pushed for this vote (four times now!) because he's gambling that his Conservative Party can win the majority he needs to push through his Brexit deal before the newly-extended deadline to leave the EU hits on January 31. Although his party leads in the polls (some even show the Conservatives up by double digits), there is no shortage of risks for him—the polls could just be wrong (as they were when his predecessor Theresa May tried to cushion her own parliamentary majority by calling a snap election in 2017, only to actually lose seats), or voters could hold Johnson, and his entire Conservative party by extension, responsible for the endless anguish of Brexit. Some Britons will even treat this as a de facto second Brexit referendum instead of a national election since there are no guarantees they will have another chance to make their voices heard.
That's exactly what certain parties are counting on. The Liberal Democrats, for their part, will campaign for votes among those who favor remaining in the EU, as will the Scottish National Party, while the upstart far-right Brexit Party will try to poach Brexit supporters who think Johnson hasn't been hardline enough.
One of the big questions is how the opposition Labour Party will fare. Labour, which held out until the last moment on supporting a fresh election, is badly divided over whether to leave the EU or not. They will campaign on renegotiating the Brexit agreement and then putting their new deal to a vote to the British people. Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is a better campaigner than he is an opposition leader, but asking Brexit-fatigued folks to extend the political chaos so Labour can have a turn negotiating with Brussels is a tough message to win an election on.
What's certain is that this will be the most bitter and tumultuous British election campaign in recent memory. What is not as certain is whether it will in fact yield a clear majority for any of these parties. If not, the hell of Brexit will roll right through snowball season…
Syria is quickly turning into US President Donald Trump's most significant foreign policy blunder to date. It's looking like it might be for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, too.
On Monday, the Trump administration announced a fresh wave of sanctions on Turkey, in a bid to get Erdogan to halt his invasion of Kurdish-controlled territory in Syria. Yes, you may recall, that's the same invasion that the US green-lit last week by withdrawing American troops from the area.
The Kurds, meanwhile, have struck up an alliance of necessity with Russian-backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Russian forces are moving in, and many ISIS prisoners that were being guarded by the Kurds have reportedly escaped.
There are, of course, reasonable arguments for extricating American troops from Middle East conflicts, but the way this went down has been pretty close to a disaster. So can Trump fix it? And if not, will he pay a price?
Sanctions aren't likely to do much good. Sanctions are an unreliable tool in the best of times. But Erdogan is particularly unlikely to back down on this. Crushing Kurdish militants is a core national security interest that enjoys broad support among the Turkish population. Erdogan may even be strengthened at home if he can spin his Syrian invasion, and the resulting sanctions, as an act of sovereign defiance against a fickle and unfriendly US. Even if Turkey did withdraw, it's hard to see the Kurds (or their new Russian pals) going back to the way things were.
Will Trump pay a domestic price? He may have thought pulling a few dozen US troops out of a foreign war zone would be an easy win with voters. Trump has taken seemingly bigger geopolitical gambles with North Korea and Iran in a bid to rewrite the world's nuclear future—and is used to having time to course correct as necessary. But Syria is a quagmire, full of adversaries willing to pounce on any US misstep. Now the mess has escalated quickly, playing on an endless loop on cable television. If this turns into a foreign policy own-goal that reinvigorates ISIS, American voters could punish him at the polls next November.
Trump wasn't the only one who miscalculated. Erdogan knew Trump was liable to change his mind under mounting political pressure back in the US. The Turkish leader tried to tie his hands by launching the strike quickly, but Trump changed his mind anyway; now Turkey will catch US blame for whatever happens with ISIS as well as being squeezed by US sanctions. Factor in that the Kurds now have powerful allies in Russia who are much more committed to the outcome in Syria than the US ever was, and Erdogan may well be looking at a protracted fight that's going to cost Turkish lives and liras. Erdogan got what he wanted out of Trump, but he may well rue the day he did.
The speeches may be boring, but the annual UN General Assembly (UNGA) allows world leaders the chance, if they want it, to meet one-on-one to talk about sensitive topics. Crossing paths in UN corridors allows for freer conversation than formal bilateral summits with all their protocols and political pitfalls.
Unfortunately, as the 74th installment of the UNGA gets under way, we have to note three potential encounters that aren't happening this week, and one meeting that probably shouldn't. Read the full list here.
1. Iran's President Hassan Rouhani and his US counterpart Donald Trump. This was always a long shot, but it become a stratospheric reach after Iran evidently blew up Saudi Arabia's main oil facilities last week. Trump, who had talked up the potential for a chat multiple times, quickly changed his tune. That's too bad, because regional tensions, and the threat of a US-Iran war, won't cool themselves.
2. South Korea and Japan. These two East Asian powers are locked in a growing trade spat rooted in unresolved grievances about Japanese actions during World War II. And yet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Moon Jae-in are not, in fact, expected to meet this week. These are two of the world's largest economies, and they're now locked in a fight with losers on both sides.
3. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and India's Narendra Modi. After Modi abruptly stripped Kashmir of the autonomy it has enjoyed for 70 years just last month, Khan compared him to Hitler. It's never encouraging when these two nuclear-armed neighbors talk at, rather than with, one another.
The meeting that is happening but maybe shouldn't: Trump will meet with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he has allegedly (and perhaps impeachably) pressured to probe the Ukrainian business dealings of the son of US presidential hopeful Joe Biden.
When Donald Trump first started talking about buying Greenland last week, we figured it was a weird story with less legs than a Harp seal.
Signal readers, we were wrong. President Trump was so serious about purchasing the autonomous Danish territory that this week he abruptly cancelled a trip to Denmark after the country's prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, labelled the idea "absurd."
So is the idea of buying Greenland really absurd? Well, yes, in the sense that in today's world countries generally don't operate like real estate developers, buying and selling each other's territory. And even if Denmark wanted to sell Greenland, which it rules only nominally, it's not clear it actually could do so without Greenland's approval.
But wanting to buy Greenland isn't absurd at all. The Truman administration even looked into it in the 1940s, when it was seen as an Arctic chess piece in the Cold War. The US has had an airbase there since World War Two.
Today, the reasons are different, and they have a lot to do with one thing: climate change. There are huge reserves of gas, metals, oil, and rare earth elements underneath all that Arctic ice, to which Greenland lays some claim. As global warming thaws Greenland's glaciers faster and faster, those resources will become more accessible. At the same time, less polar ice means lucrative new Arctic shipping lanes are opening up – China and Russia are already angling to dominate those passages.
And that's another reason the US might be interested in Greenland: China, Washington's "strategic competitor," is already there. In recent years, Beijing has been cutting big checks to the island, including buying a significant stake in a big rare earths mining project and offering to build new airports.
A few hundred million dollars of foreign investment makes a huge impact on an economy as small and underdeveloped as Greenland's. The US has leaned on Denmark to undermine China's investment drive, but Washington has no comparable effort to win hearts and minds there.
So there are plenty of good reasons to want more influence in Greenland. But by assuming that the island was for sale when no one ever said it was, and then antagonizing his Danish counterpart for rebuffing him, Trump took a sensible idea – closer ties with a strategically and economically important island – and turned it into a counterproductive diplomatic circus that may in fact undermine Washington's ability to get what it wants.
European Parliament elections in May didn't go well for Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras as his radical-turned-mushy-left Syriza party was drubbed by the resurgent center-right New Democracy (ND) party by 9.3 points. The scale of the loss prompted Tsipras to call national elections early to staunch the political bleeding.
It didn't work. His party lost to ND and its US-educated, pro-market leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis this weekend by more than 8 percentage points; that's a large enough margin for New Democracy to secure a return to political power, as well as a comfortable majority in Greece's parliament.
Greece's New Prime Minister Is 'Cautiously Optimistic' 10 Years After the Debt Crisis
Some key points for consideration beyond the headlines you'll be reading this week:
This next one will be the most stable Greek government we'll see for a while. For years, one of the defining features of the Greek electoral system was the 50-seat bonus the first-place party received in Greece's 300-member parliament for, well, coming in first. The idea was that the bonus would help provide a political cushion for the governing party and the political space it needs to move its agenda forward.
But in 2016, Syriza abolished the 50-seat bonus, arguing that it's undemocratic (which has a certain logic to it). Changes to Greece's election laws must be grandfathered in though, so this round of elections kept the 50-bonus-seat system in place, and the next one will do away with it.
As it is, Greek governments have struggled to stay in power, particularly given the politically ugly choices they've had to make (this was the fifth snap election since 2012), and given the depth of Greece's crisis, plenty more tough decisions will be needed in the coming years. Structurally speaking, this new Mitsotakis-led government is looking like the last with any kind of political crutch to stand on.
The return of political protests? When Greece first started implementing austerity measures demanded by its international creditors (primarily the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission, aka "the Troika"), it was beset by large-scale protests that caused millions in property damage in downtown Athens on a semi-regular basis. Those protests largely died down once Tsipras took office—his critics accused him of having been the driving force behind those original protests, while his supporters argued that the protests died down because the Greek people recognized they finally had a prime minister in Tsipras that was willing to fight for them.
It could also be that the Greek people just got protest-fatigue. Regardless, the return of New Democracy—one of the two establishment parties that first drove Greece into its current mess—has the potential to touch off the kind of political violence the country hasn't seen since Syriza took power in 2015.
The comeback kids. But if there's a bigger lesson for the world to take away from Greek elections this Sunday, it's this: even populist movements run out of steam. Syriza was one of the very first populist governments to come to power, though its electoral victory was mostly written off as a product of Greece's unusually dire circumstances rather than as part of a larger anti-Establishment movement rippling around the world.
Whatever the reason, Syriza was unable to deliver on its lofty promises of rolling back austerity measures and bending Brussels to its will. It's not enough to make promises; you also have to deliver.
And four years later, the Greek people decided to bring back the party in office before Syriza stormed to power (albeit one that's under new leadership).
It's a reminder that populism, like politics generally, is cyclical.
UPDATE: This text has been updated to reflect Mitsotakis' victory in the election.
7: US negotiators sat down with the Taliban for a 7th round of peace talks over the weekend, amid ongoing violence in the country. Two US special forces soldiers were killed in a firefight with Taliban fighters last week.
121: It's been 121 months since the US emerged from the steep recession that followed the financial crisis in June 2009. That's the longest economic expansion in US history.
31: Japan resumed commercial whaling on Monday, ending a 31-year hiatus. The move follows Japan's withdrawal from the International Whaling Commission, a global conservation organization that passed a moratorium on whale hunting in the 1980s. Japan insists it can whale in an environmentally responsible way, but the move has sparked criticism from activists.
72: Just 72 percent of people in North America (and 73 percent of Northern Europeans) think vaccines are safe. Contrast that with the 95 percent of South Asians and the 92 percent of East Africans who agree with that statement. Overall, 79 percent of the world believes vaccines are safe to administer. #FirstWorldProblems40,000: The US beer industry has lost some 40,000 jobs since 2016, according to an industry study. The main driver seems to be the Trump administration's aluminum tariffs, which have raised the price of beer cans, cutting into companies' profits.
525: Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz lost his job in a no-confidence vote on Monday after just 525 days, the shortest tenure of any Austrian Chancellor in modern history. (German speakers may now gleefully note that "kurz" means "short"). But after his party did well in the EU parliament elections, he'll likely return to power after a fresh ballot this fall. #DerKommBackKid
65: Traces of antibiotic drugs were discovered in 65% of rivers surveyed across 72 countries, in a recent study. That's a big problem: when antibiotics pollute waterways, bacteria that is harmful to humans has a better chance of encountering them and developing resistance. The UN says that as many as 10 million people globally could be killed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria by 2050.
5.7: Chinese tourism to the US dropped 5.7% in 2018 from the year prior, marking the first time that figure has declined year-on-year since 2003. That's real money lost—in 2017 Chinese tourists spent $18.8 billion dollars while visiting the US. No word yet on any possible government bailouts for the US tourism industry, though.Over the past eight years, crisis-wracked Greece has received around $360 billion from other European countries and the IMF in a bid to stave off economic collapse. In exchange, the country promised to drastically cut spending, in particular by slashing pensions and public-sector salaries.
Well, as of yesterday, Greece has received its final loan payment from its European creditors, meaning that its nearly decade-long “bailout” is complete. But there are a number of reasons why Greeks aren’t smashing plates just yet—after all, the economy is still 25 percent smaller than when the crisis began, and household incomes have plummeted by more than 30 percent during that time.
Here to explain a few more key caveats is fellow Signalista Leon Levy, just back from a visit to his Balkan motherland:
First, Greece’s gargantuan debts haven’t disappeared. In fact, this year Greece’s debt burden will top out at nearly 190 percent of GDP. The hope, among optimists, is that this will fall to 150 percent of GDP by 2023. Overall, Greece will be saddled with the bailout debts until well beyond the middle of this century.
Second, although growth is expected to hit 2 percent this year, the governing Syriza party has done little to inspire investor confidence beyond the bare minimum required by the bailouts. In fact, the government, still fearful of a bank run by disillusioned Greeks, continues to restrict ATM withdrawals for its own citizens. It’s hard to muster foreign confidence in an economy under conditions like these.
Lastly, as Greece looks to move ahead, it faces a critical challenge: over the last ten years, more than half a million Greeks, among them many of the country’s best-educated people, have fled in search of better opportunities abroad. Given the precarious situation at home, most of them are unlikely to return. That means fewer innovative businesses that can help repair Greece’s economy, a smaller tax take for the Greek state, and a longer-run demographic crunch in which there are too many elderly Greeks and not enough young workers to fund the pension system.
So yes, Greece successfully exiting the bailout phase of its economic recovery is better than the alternative—Greece going back hat-in-hand to request another financial lifeline—but it’s more a stepping stone than a milestone. Greece’s odyssey from financial wreckage to return is far from over.