Quantcast
Channel: Conn Hallinan – The Epoch Times
Viewing all 20 articles
Browse latest View live

Continental Drift: Europe’s Breakaways

0
0
Catalan activists march for an independent Catalonia. Throughout Europe, historical grievances, uneven development, and ethnic tensions have been exacerbated by a long-running economic crisis, giving new life to old independence movements. (Joan Campderrós-i-Canas/Flickr)

Happy families are all alike: every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

The opening to Tolstoy’s great novel of love and tragedy could be a metaphor for Europe today, where “unhappy families” of Catalans, Scots, Belgians, Ukrainians, and Italians contemplate divorcing the countries they are currently a part of. And in a case where reality mirrors fiction, they are each unhappy in their own way.

While the United States and its allies may rail against the recent referendum in Crimea that broke the peninsula free of Ukraine, Scots will consider a very similar one on September 18, and Catalans would very much like to do the same. So would residents of South Tyrol, and Flemish speakers in northern Belgium.

On the surface, many of these secession movements look like rich regions trying to free themselves from poor ones, but while there is some truth in that, it is overly simplistic. Wealthier Flemish speakers in northern Belgium would indeed like to separate from the distressed, French-speaking south, just as Tyroleans would like to free themselves of poverty-racked southern Italy. But in Scotland much of the fight is over preserving the social contract that conservative Labour and right-wing Tory governments have systematically dismantled. As for Catalonia—well, it’s complicated.

Borders in Europe may appear immutable, but of course they are not. Sometimes they are changed by war, economic necessity, or because the powerful draw capricious lines that ignore history and ethnicity. Crimea, conquered by Catherine the Great in 1783, was arbitrarily given to the Ukraine in 1954. Belgium was the outcome of a congress of European powers in 1830. Impoverished Scotland tied itself to wealthy England in 1707. Catalonia fell to Spanish and French armies in 1714. And South Tyrol was a spoil of World War I.

In all of them, historical grievance, uneven development, and ethnic tensions have been exacerbated by a long-running economic crisis. There is nothing like unemployment and austerity to fuel the fires of secession.

The two most pressing secessionist movements—and the ones most likely to have a profound impact on the rest of Europe—are in Scotland and Catalonia.

Both are unhappy in different ways.

Scotland

Scotland always had a vocal, albeit marginal, nationalist party, but was traditionally dominated by the British Labour Party. The Conservatives hardly exist north of the Tweed. But Tony Blair’s “New Labour” Party’s record of spending cuts and privatization alienated many Scots, who spend more on their education and health services than the rest of Britain. University tuition, for instance, is still free in Scotland, as are prescription drugs and home healthcare.

When Conservatives won the British election in 2010, their austerity budget savaged education, healthcare, housing subsidies, and transportation. Scots, angered at the cuts, voted for the Scottish National Party (SNP) in the 2011 elections for the Scottish parliament. The SNP immediately proposed a referendum that will ask Scots if they want to dissolve the 1707 Act of Union and once again become be an independent country. If passed, the Scottish government proposes re-nationalizing the postal service and throwing nuclear-armed Trident submarines out of Scotland.

If one takes into account its North Sea oil resources, there is little doubt that an independent Scotland would be viable. Scotland has a larger GDP per capita than France and, in addition to oil, exports manufactured goods and whiskey. Scotland would become one of the world’s top 35 exporting countries.

The Conservative government says that if the Scots vote for independence, they will have to give up the pound as a currency. The Scots respond that if the British follow through on their currency threat, Scotland will wash its hands of its portion of the British national debt. At this point, there is a standoff.

According to the British—and some leading officials in the European Union (EU)—an independent Scotland will lose its EU membership, but that may be bluster. For one, it would violate past practice. When East and West Germany were united in 1990, some 20 million residents of the former German Democratic Republic were automatically given EU citizenship. If 5.3 million Scots are excluded, it will be the result of pique, not policy. In any case, with the Conservatives planning a referendum in 2017 that might pull Britain out of the EU, London is not exactly holding the high ground on this issue.

If the vote were taken today, the Scots would probably vote to remain in Britain, but sentiment is shifting. The most recent poll indicates that 40 percent will vote for independence, a 3-percent increase from the previous poll. The “no” votes have declined by 2 percent to 45 percent, with 15 percent undecided. All Scottish residents over the age of 16 can vote. Given the formidable campaigning skills of Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister and leader of the SNP, those are chilling odds for the London government.

Catalonia

Catalonia, wedged up against France in Spain’s northeast, has long been a powerful engine for the Spanish economy, and a region steeped in historical grievance. Conquered by the combined armies of France and the Spain in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), it was also on the losing side of the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War. In 1940, triumphant fascists suppressed the Catalan language and culture and executed Catalonia’s president, Lluis Companys—an act no Madrid government has ever made amends for.

Following Franco’s death in 1975, Spain began its transformation to democracy, a road constructed by burying the deep animosities engendered by the Civil War. But the dead stay buried only so long, and a movement for Catalan independence began to grow.

In 2006 Catalonia won considerable autonomy, which was then overturned by the Supreme Tribunal in 2010 at the behest of the current ruling conservative People’s Party (PP). That 2010 decision fueled the growth of the Catalan independence movement, and in 2012 separatist parties in the province were swept into power.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s PP is pretty much an afterthought in Catalonia, where several independence parties dominate the Catalan legislature. The largest of these is Province President Artur Mas’ Convergencia i Unio (CiU), but the Esquerra Republicana de Cataluyna (ERC) recently doubled its representation in the legislature.

That doesn’t mean they agree with one another. Mas’ party tends to be centrist to conservative, while the ERC is leftist and opposed to the austerity program of the PP, some of which Mas has gone along with. The CiU’s centrism is one of the reasons that Mas’ party went from 62 seats to 50 in the 2012 election, while the ERC jumped from 10 to 21.

Unemployment is officially at 25 percent—but far higher among youth and in Spain’s southern provinces—and the left has thrown down the gauntlet. Over 100,000 people marched on Madrid last month demanding an end to austerity.

Rajoy—citing the 1976 constitution—refuses to allow an independence referendum, a stubbornness that has only fueled separatist strength. This past January the Catalan parliament voted 87 to 43 to hold a referendum, and polls show a majority in the province will support it. Six months ago, a million and a half Catalans marched in Barcelona for independence.

The PP has been altogether ham-fisted about Catalonia and seems to delight in finding things to provoke Catalans: Catalonia bans bull fighting, so Madrid passes a law making it a national cultural heritage. The Basques get to collect their own taxes, Catalans cannot.

How would the EU react to an independent Catalan? And would the central government in Madrid do anything about it? It is hard to imagine the Spanish army getting involved, although a former minister in the Franco government started Rajoy’s party, and the dislike between Madrid and Barcelona is palpable.

Other Fault Lines

There are other fault lines on the continent.

Will Belgium split up? The fissure between the Flemish-speaking north and the French-speaking south is so deep it took 18 months to form a government after the last election. And if Belgium shatters, does it become two countries or get swallowed by France and the Netherlands?

In Italy, the South Tyrol Freedom Party (STFP) is gearing up for an independence referendum and pressing for a merger with Austria, although the tiny province—called Alto Adige in Italy—has little to complain about. It keeps 90 percent of its taxes, and its economy has dodged the worst of the 2008 meltdown. But some of its German-Austrian residents are resentful of any money going to Rome, and there is a deep prejudice against Italians—who make up 25 percent of South Tyrol—particularly among those in the south. In this way the STFP is not very different from the racist, elitist Northern League centered in Italy’s Po Valley.

It is instructive to watch the YouYube video on how borders in Europe have changed from 1519 to 2006, a period of less than 500 years. What we think of as eternal is ephemeral. The European continent is once again adrift, pulling apart along fault lines both ancient and modern. How nations like Spain and Britain, and organizations like the EU, react to this process will determine if it will be civilized or painful. But trying to stop it will most certainly cause pain.

Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus. Originally published in Foreign Policy in Focus under a Creative Commons License 3.0.


Will Sanctions Sideline the US Dollar?

0
0
An Afghan moneychanger counts U.S. dollar notes on a street in Kabul on Oct. 1, 2011. (Adek Berry/AFP/GettyImages)

The use of sanctions as an international cudgel has long been complicated by some nasty unintended consequences.

For the United States and the world economy, one consequence could be particularly significant: The recent round of sanctions aimed at Moscow over the crisis in Ukraine could backfire on Washington by accelerating a move away from the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

While in the short run American actions against Russia’s oil and gas industry will inflict economic pain on Moscow, in the long run the U.S. government may lose some of its control over international finance.

A World Beyond the IMF

Proposals to move away from using the dollar as the international currency reserve are by no means new. Back in 2009, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) proposed doing exactly that. SCO members include Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan, Iran, India, Pakistan, and Mongolia have SCO observer status, and the organization has close ties with Turkey and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Ever since the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, the world’s finances have been dominated by the U.S. dollar, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. But according to economist Jeffrey Sachs, that world is vanishing. The dollar cannot continue to hold the high ground, Sachs said, because “the role of the United States in the global economy is diminishing.”

While it may be diminishing, the United States and its European allies still control the levers of international finance. For example, the U.S. slice of the global GDP is 19.2 percent, and its share of IMF voting rights is 16.8 percent. In contrast, China, with 16.1 percent of the global GDP, has only 3.8 percent voting rights in the IMF. The presidency of the organization is reserved for a European.

In 2010, the World Bank “reformed” its voting rights to increase low- and middle-income countries from 34.67 percent to 38.38 percent, although even this modest adjustment has been sidelined because the U.S. Senate refuses to accept it. The wealthier countries still control more than 60 percent of the vote. The presidency of the bank normally goes to an American.

In early August of this year, the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—launched a series of initiatives aimed at altering the current structure of international finance. Besides pushing to dethrone the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, the organization created a development bank and a Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA). The former would allow countries to bypass the IMF and the World Bank, with their tightfisted austerity fixation, and the latter would give countries emergency access to foreign currency.

The development bank will start off with $50 billion in the kitty, but that will soon double. The BRICS will also be able to draw on $100 billion from the CRA. While by international standards those are modest sums—the IMF has close to $800 billion in its coffers—the BRICS bank and CRA has just five members, while the IMF serves hundreds of countries. Eventually the BRICS observer members may be able to tap into those funds.

Sanctions and Blowback

Last month’s sanctions went straight for Russia’s jugular vein: the development of its massive oil and gas reserves and Moscow’s construction of the South Stream pipeline. When completed, South Stream will supply Europe with 15 percent of its natural gas and generate over $20 billion in annual profits. Indeed, there is suspicion among some Europeans that the real goal of the sanctions is to derail South Stream and replace it with U.S. shale-based American oil and gas.

Sanctions can do enormous damage.

The United Nations estimates that the sanctions against Iraq were responsible for the deaths of some 500,000 Iraqi children from 1991 to 1998.

The sanctions aimed at Iran’s oil and gas industry have cut deeply into government revenues—80 percent of the country’s foreign reserves are generated by hydrocarbons—resulting in widespread inflation, unemployment, and a serious national health crisis. While humanitarian goods are not embargoed, their cost has put medical care beyond the reach of many Iranians.

Associated Press reporter Nasser Karimi wrote last year that some medicine and medical equipment costs have risen 200 percent: “radiology film up 240 percent; helium for MRIs up 667 percent; filters for kidney dialysis up 325 percent.” The cost of chemotherapy has almost tripled.

Iran’s exclusion from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) makes it impossible to transfer funds electronically. That, in turn, makes buying the raw materials to manufacture generic medicines expensive and difficult.

The recent crash of an Iranian passenger plane that killed 39 people was, in part, the result of sanctions. Because Iran cannot purchase spare parts for its Boeing and Airbus planes, it is forced to use alternatives, like the trouble-prone Ukrainian-made A-140 aircraft that went down on Aug. 10. Another A-140 crashed in 2002, killing 46 passengers.

In short, opposing the United States and its allies can be dangerous to one’s health.

There is growing opposition to the widespread use of sanctions, as well as to the ability to isolate countries from international finance by excluding them from things like SWIFT. Coupled with this is a suspicion that the United States uses its currency to support its own economy at the expense of others.

After the 2007–2008 economic meltdown, for example, the U.S. central bank lowered its interest rates and increased its money supply, thus making U.S. exports cheaper and other countries’ imports more expensive. Developing countries have blamed these policies for artificially driving up the value of their currencies and thus damaging their export-driven economies. Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega calls it waging “currency war.”

With the United States now pushing higher interest rates and throttling back on buying foreign bonds, many developing countries fear that international capital will flow back to the United States, leaving countries like Brazil high and dry.

Sidelining Washington

As long as the world’s reserve currency is in dollars, the United States will be able to manipulate global finance and block countries like Iran from any transactions using dollars. But that may be coming to an end. With China set to replace the United States as the world’s largest economy, it is only a matter of time before the renminbi—or some agreed upon international method of exchange—replaces the dollar.

China is already moving toward bypassing New York as the world’s financial center, instead routing its finances through Hong Kong and London. “There can be little doubt from these actions that China is preparing for the demise of the dollar, at least as the world’s reserve currency,” said Alasdair Macleod of GoldMoney, a leading dealer in precious metals.

A number of countries are already dealing in other currencies. Australian mining companies, for example, have recently shifted to using China’s renminbi.

How dumping the dollar will affect the United States is not clear, and predictions of the impact range from minor to catastrophic. What will almost certainly happen is that the United States will lose some of its clout in international finance, making it easier for developing countries to move away from the American economic model of wide-open markets, fiscal austerity, and hostility to any government role in the economy.

Diminishing the role of the dollar may make it harder to apply sanctions as well, particularly in those areas where Washington’s policies are increasingly alienated from much of the world, as in Iran, Cuba, and Russia. The European Union (EU) has sanctioned Russia over Ukraine, but not to the extent that the United States has. The EU’s trade with Russia is a major part of the Europe’s economy, while Russian trade with the United States is minor. And the BRICS—who represent almost a quarter of the world’s GDP and 40 percent of its population—did not join those sanctions.

Addressing the BRICS delegates in Fortaleza, Brazil, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “Together we should think about a system of measures that would help prevent the harassment of countries that do not agree with some foreign policy decision made the by the U.S. and their allies.”

In the long run, the EU may come to regret that it went along with Washington. German industry has taken a big hit—trade with Russia fell 20 percent from January through May—and Russia’s ban on EU agricultural products has badly hurt Poland, Lithuania, Germany, Denmark, Latvia, Finland, and the Netherlands. Indeed, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi warned that the current EU recovery is extremely fragile and that sanctions could push it back into recession.

The Germans are especially worried that Russia will turn to Asia, permanently cutting Berlin out of Moscow’s economic sphere.

Trouble Ahead

There are enormous changes ahead as a result of climate change and population growth. While there has been a reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty—that is, making less than $1.25 a day—a great deal of that reduction has occurred in China. Things have actually gotten worse in parts of Asia and Africa.

By 2050 the world’s population will grow to 9 billion, and 85 percent of that growth will be in developing nations, the very countries that most need help to confront the consequences of that future.

Unless the institutions of international finance are wrested from the control of a few wealthy nations, and unless there are checks on the ability of the United States and its allies to devastate a country’s economy over a disagreement on foreign policy, those figures bode for some serious trouble ahead.

FPIF columnist Conn Hallinan can be read at www.dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and www.middleempireseries.wordpress.com. This article previously published at FPIF.org.

The Big Chill: Tensions in the Arctic

0
0
The Los Angeles-class submarine USS Annapolis rests on the Arctic Ocean after breaking through three feet of ice during Ice Exercise (ICEX) 2009 on March 21, 2009. The U.S. Navy teamed with the University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory to train in the arctic environment. (Tiffini M. Jones/U.S. Navy via Getty Images)

One hundred and sixty-eight years ago this past July, two British warships—HMS Erebus and HMS Terror—sailed north into Baffin Bay, bound on a mission to navigate the fabled Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. It would be the last that the 19th-century world would see of Sir John Franklin and his 128 crew members.

But the Arctic that swallowed the 1845 Franklin expedition is disappearing, its vast ice sheets thinning, its frozen straits thawing. And once again, ships are headed north, not on voyages of discovery—the northern passages across Canada and Russia are well known today—but to stake a claim in the globe’s last great race for resources and trade routes.

How that contest plays out has much to do with the flawed legacies of World War II, which may go a long way toward determining whether the Arctic will become a theater of cooperation or—in the words of former NATO commander and U.S. Adm. James G. Stavridis—an “icy slope toward a zone of competition, or worse, a zone of conflict.”

Opening the Northern Passage

There is a great deal at stake.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic holds 13 percent of the world’s oil reserves and 30 percent of its natural gas. There are also significant coal and iron ore deposits. As the ice retreats, new fishing zones are opening up, and—most importantly—so are shipping routes that trim thousands of miles off voyages, saving enormous amounts of time and money. Expanding trade will stimulate shipbuilding, the opening of new ports, and economic growth, especially in East Asia.

Traffic in the Northern Sea Route across Russia—formerly known as the Northeast Passage—is still modest but on the uptick. The easiest of the northern routes to traverse, the passage has seen an increase in shipping, from 4 vessels in 2010 to 71 in 2013. And for the first time in history, a liquid natural gas tanker—the Ob River—made the trip in 2012. On a run from Hammerfest, Norway to Tobata, Japan, the ship took only nine days to traverse the passage, cutting almost half the distance off the normal route through the Suez Canal.

Which is not to say that the Northern Sea Passage is a stroll in the garden. The Arctic may be retreating, but it is still a dangerous and stormy place, not far removed from the conditions that killed Franklin and his men. A lack of detailed maps is an ongoing problem, and most ships require the help of expensive icebreakers. But for the first time, specially reinforced tankers are making the run on their own.

Tensions at the Top

Tensions in the region arise from two sources: squabbles among the border states (Norway, Russia, Canada, the United States, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden) over who owns what, and efforts by nonpolar countries (China, India, the European Union, and Japan) that want access. The conflicts range from serious to somewhat silly. In the latter category was the 2007 planting of a small Russian flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole by private explorer Artur Chilingarov, a stunt that even the Moscow government dismissed as theatrics.

But the Russians do lay claim to a vast section of the North Pole based on their interpretation of the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea, which allows countries to claim ownership if an area is part of a country’s continental shelf. Moscow argues that the huge Lomonosov Ridge, which divides the Arctic Ocean into two basins and runs under the Pole, originates in Russia. Canada and Denmark also claim the ridge as well.

Canada organized an expedition this past summer to find out what really happened to Franklin and his two ships. The search was a success—one of the ships was found in Victoria Straits—but the goal was political, not archaeological: Ottawa is using the find to lay claim to the Northwest Passage.

Copenhagen and Ottawa are meanwhile at loggerheads over Hans Island, located between Ellesmere Island and Danish-controlled Greenland. The occupation of the tiny rock by the Canadian military has generated a Free Hans Island campaign in Denmark.

The U.S. government has been trying to stake out terrain as well, though it’s constrained by the fact that Washington has not signed the Law of the Seas Convention. The United States has locked horns with Canada over the Beaufort Sea, and the Pentagon released its first “Arctic Strategy” study last year. The United States maintains 27,000 military personnel in the region, not including regular patrols by nuclear submarines.

The Russians and Canadians have ramped up their military presence in the region as well, and Norway has carried out yearly military exercises—Arctic Cold Response—involving up to 16,000 troops, many of them NATO units.

Outside Looking In

But you don’t have to be next to the ice to want to be a player. China may be a thousand miles from the nearest ice floe, but as the second largest economy in the world, it has no intention of being left out in the cold. This past summer the Chinese icebreaker Snow Dragon made the Northern Sea Passage run, and Beijing has elbowed its way into being a Permanent Observer on the Arctic Council. Formed in 1996, the council consists of the border states, plus the indigenous people that populate the vast frozen area. Japan and South Korea are also observers.

And herein lies the problem.

Tensions are currently high in East and South Asia because of issues deliberately left unresolved by the 1952 Treaty of San Francisco that ended World War II. As Canadian researcher Kimie Hara recently discovered, the United States designed the treaty to have a certain amount of “manageable instability” built into it by leaving certain territorial issues unresolved. The tensions that those issues generate make it easier for the United States to maintain a robust military presence in the region. Thus, China and Japan are involved in a dangerous dispute over the uninhabited islands in the East China Sea—called the Diaoyus by China and the Senkakus by Japan—because the 1952 treaty did not designate which country had sovereignty. If it comes to a military confrontation, the United States is bound by treaty to support Japan.

Similar tensions exist between South Korea and Japan over the Dokdo/Takeshima islands, between Japan and Russia over the Northern Territories/Southern Kuril Islands, and between China, Vietnam, and Taiwan over the Spratly and Paracel islands. Brunei and Malaysa also have claims that overlap with China’s. Any ships traversing the East and South China seas on the way north will find themselves in the middle of several nasty territorial disputes.

In theory, the economic potential of the Arctic routes should pressure the various parties to reach an amicable resolution of their differences, but things are complicated these days.

Russia has indicated it would like to resolve the Northern Territories/Kuril issue, and initial talks appeared to be making progress. But then in July, Tokyo joined Western sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea, and negotiations have gone into the freezer.

Moscow just signed off on a $400 billion oil and gas deal with Beijing and is looking to increase trade with China as a way to ease the impact of Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. At least for the present, China and Russia are allies and trade partners, and both would like to see a diminished role for the United States in Asia. That wish, of course, runs counter to Washington’s growing military footprint in the region—the so-called Asia pivot.

The tensions have even generated some good old-fashioned paranoia. When a Chinese tycoon tried to buy land in northern Norway, one local newspaper claimed it was a plot, calling the entrepreneur “a straw man for the Chinese Communist Party.”

Breaking the Ice

The Arctic may be cold, but the politics surrounding it are pretty hot.

At the same time, the international tools to resolve such disputes currently exist. The first step is a commitment to put international law—such as the Law of the Seas Convention—over national interests.

The Chinese have a good case for sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyus, and Japan has solid grounds for reclaiming most of the Southern Kuril Islands. Korea would likely prevail in the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute, and China would have to back off some of its extravagant claims in the South China Sea.

For all the potential for conflict, there is a solid basis for cooperation in the Arctic. Russia and Norway have divided up the Barents Sea, and Russia, Norway, the United States, and the United Kingdom are cooperating on nuclear waste problems in the Kola Peninsula and Arkhangelsk. There are common environmental issues. The Arctic is a delicate place, easy to damage, slow to heal.

As Aqqaluk Lynge, chair of the indigenous Inuit Circumpolar Council said, “We do not want a return to the Cold War.”

Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Conn Hallinan can be read at www.dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and www.middleempireseries.wordpress.com. This article previously published at fpif.org.

The Greek Earthquake

0
0
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (L) holds a meeting with European Parliament President Martin Schulz at his office in central Athens on Jan. 29, 2015. (Milos Bicanski/Getty Images)

Almost before the votes were counted in the recent Greek elections, battle lines were being drawn all over Europe.

While Alexis Tsipras, the newly elected prime minister from Greece’s victorious Syriza party, was telling voters that “Greece is leaving behind catastrophic austerity, fear, and autocratic government,” Jens Weidmann, president of the German Bundesbank, was warning the new government not to “make promises it cannot keep and the country cannot afford.”

On Feb. 12, those two points of view will collide when European Union (EU) heads of state gather in Brussels. Whether the storm blowing out of Southern Europe proves an irresistible force or the European Council an immovable object, the continent is not likely to be the same after that meeting.

The Jan. 25 victory of Greece’s left-wing Syriza party was, on one hand, a beacon for indebted countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Ireland.

On the other, it’s a gauntlet for Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, and the “troika”—the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund—that designed and enforced the austerity policies that have inflicted a catastrophic economic and social crisis on tens of millions of Europeans.

The troika’s policies were billed as “bailouts” for countries mired in debt—often as a result of the 2008 financial speculation bubble, over which the indebted countries had little control—and as a way to restart economic growth. In return for the loans, the EU and the troika demanded massive cutbacks in social services, huge layoffs, privatization of public resources, and higher taxes.

However, the “bailouts” didn’t go toward stimulating economies, but rather toward repaying creditors—mostly large European banks. Out of the $266 billion loaned to Greece, 89 percent went to investors. After a full five years under the troika formula, Greece was the most indebted country in Europe. Gross national product dropped 26 percent, unemployment topped 27 percent (and over 50 percent for young people), and one-third of the population lost their health care coverage.

Given a chance to finally vote on the austerity strategy, Greeks overwhelmingly rejected the parties that went along with the troika and elected Syriza.

A Coalition of the Unconventional

Now it gets tricky, starting with the internal situation within Greece.

Because Syriza fell two seats short of controlling the Greek Parliament, it has gone into coalition with the small, right-wing Independent Greeks party. While initially that seems an odd choice—the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and the Greek Communist Party also have deputies, and Syriza only needed two more seats—Greek politics are, if nothing else, complex.

The Independent Greeks—that split off from the conservative New Democracy Party that ruled Greece prior to the last election—is an odd duck by any measure. It has e a strong racist and xenophobic streak, and its leader, Panos Kammenos, believes that jet contrails are chemicals used to control people’s minds. But the party is staunchly anti-austerity and will not likely waver in the face of the troika or German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

What would seem like a more compatible alliance with PASOK, however, is precluded by that fact that the center-left Socialists supported the austerity package. There’s a new centrist party, To Potami, but it has yet to publish its program, and it’s unclear exactly what it stands for. As for the communists, the party’s leadership said they have no intention of working with the “false hope” of Syriza.

Continental Rumblings

As convoluted as Greek politics are, the main obstacle for Syriza will come from other EU members and the troika.

Finnish Prime Minister Alex Stubb made it clear “that we would say a resounding ‘No’ to forgive loans.” Merkel’s chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, said, “We have pursued a policy which works in many European countries, and we will stick to in the future.” IMF head Christine Lagarde chimed in, “There are rules that must be met in the eurozone,” and that “We cannot make special exceptions for specific countries.”

But Tsipras will, to paraphrase the poet Swinburne, not go entirely naked into Brussels, but “trailing clouds of glory.” Besides the solid support in Greece, a number of other countries and movements will be in the Belgian capital as well.

Syriza is closely aligned with Podemos, the new anti-austerity party that’s now polling ahead of the conservative ruling People’s Party in Spain. “2015 will be the year of change in Spain and Europe,” tweeted Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias in the aftermath of the election. “Let’s go Alexis, let’s go!” Unemployment in Spain is 24 percent, and over 50 percent for young people.

Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein—now the third largest party in the Irish Republic—hailed the vote as opening “up the real prospect of democratic change, not just for the people of Greece, but for citizens right across the EU.” Unemployment in Ireland is 10.7 percent, and tens of thousands of jobless young people have been forced to emigrate.

Germany’s center-left Social Democrats are generally supportive of the troika. But the Green Party hailed the Syriza victory, and Der Linke Party members marched with signs reading, “We start with Greece. We change Europe.”

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi—who has his own issues with the EU’s rigid approach to debt—also hailed the Greek elections, and top aide Sandro Gozi said that Rome was ready to work with Syriza. The jobless rate in Italy is 13.4 percent, but 40 percent among youth.

The French Communist Party hailed the Greek elections as “Good news for the French people,” and Jean-Luc Melenchon of the Left Party called for a left-wing alliance similar to Syriza. French President François Hollande made a careful statement about “growth and stability,” but the Socialist leader is trying to quell a revolt by the left flank of his own party over austerity, and Paris is closer to Rome than it is to Berlin on the debt issue.

While the conservative government of Portugal was largely silent, Marisa Matias—who represents the Left Bloc in Portugal’s delegation to the European Parliament—told a rally, “A victory for Syriza is a victory for all of Europe.”

Time to Deliver

In short, there are a number of currents in the EU. And there’s a growing recognition even among supporters of the troika that the prevailing approach to debt is not sustainable.

One should have no illusions that Syriza will easily sweep the policies of austerity aside, but there is a palpable feeling on the continent that a tide is turning.

It didn’t start with the Greek elections, but with last May’s European Parliament elections, where anti-austerity parties made solid gains. While some right-wing parties that opportunistically donned a populist mantle also increased their vote, voters tended to go left when given a viable choice. For instance, the right did well in Denmark, France, and Britain, but largely because there were no anti-austerity voices on the left in those races. Elsewhere, despite the headlines of the time, the left generally defeated its rightist opponents.

If Syriza is to survive, however, it must deliver. And that will be a tall order given the power of its opponents.

At home, the party will have to take on Greece’s wealthy tax-dodging oligarchs if it hopes to extend democracy and start refilling the coffers drained by the troika’s policies. It will also need to get a short-term cash infusion to meet its immediate obligations, but without giving in to yet more austerity demands by the troika.

For all the talk about Syriza being “extreme”—its name is a Greek acronym for “Coalition of the Radical Left”—its program, as Greek journalist Kia Mistilis points, is “classic ’70s social democracy.” It calls for an enhanced safety net, a debt moratorium, a minimum wage increase, and economic stimulus.

Syriza is pushing for a European conference modeled on the 1953 London Debt Agreement that pulled Germany out of debt after World War II and launched the Wirtschaftswunder—the economic miracle that created modern Germany. The agreement waived more than 50 percent of Germany’s debt, stretched out payments for the remainder over 50 years, and made repayment of loans dependent on the country running a trade surplus.

The centerpiece of Syriza’s Thessaloniki program is its “four pillars of national reconstruction,” which include “confronting the humanitarian crisis,” “restarting the economy and promoting tax justice,” “regaining employment,” and “transforming the political system to deepen democracy.”

Each of the “pillars” is spelled out in detail, including costs, income, and savings. While it’s certainly a major break with the EU’s current model, it’s hardly the October Revolution.

The Specter Haunting Europe

The troika’s austerity model has been quite efficient at smashing trade unions, selling off public resources at fire sale prices, lowering wages, and starving social services. As a statement by the International Union of Food Workers argues, “Austerity is not the product of a deficient grasp of macroeconomics or a failure of ‘social dialogue,’ it is a conscious blueprint for expanding corporate power.”

Under an austerity regime, the elites do quite well, and they are not likely to yield without a fight.

But Syriza is poised to give them one, and “the little party that could” is hardly alone. Important elections are looming in Estonia, Finland, and Spain that will give anti-austerity forces more opportunities to challenge the policies of Merkel and the troika.

The specter haunting Europe may not be the one that Karl Marx envisioned. But it’s putting a scare into the halls of the rich and powerful all the same.

Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Conn Hallinan can be read at www.dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and www.middleempireseries.wordpress.com. This article previously published on FPIF.org.

Turning the European Debt Myth Upside-Down

0
0
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis (R) shakes hands with International Monetary Fund (IMF) Director Christine Lagarde during an emergency Eurogroup finance ministers meeting at the European Council in Brussels on Feb. 11, 2015. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images)

Myths are dangerous because they rely more on cultural memory and prejudice than facts.

And behind the current crisis between Greece and the European Union (EU) lies a fable that bears little relationship to why Athens and a number of other countries in the 28-member organization find themselves in deep distress.

The tale is a variation of Aesop’s allegory of the industrious ant and the lazy, fun-loving grasshopper. The “northern countries”—especially Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, and Finland—play the role of the ant, and Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland the part of the grasshopper.

The ants are sober and virtuous, while the grasshoppers are spendthrift, corrupt lay-abouts who have spent themselves into trouble and now must pay the piper.

The problem is that this myth bears almost no relationship to the actual roots of the crisis or what the solutions might be. And it perpetuates a fable that the debt is the fault of individual countries rather than a serious crisis at the very heart of the EU.

Whose Debt?

First, a little myth busting.

The European debt crisis goes back to the end of the roaring ’90s, when the banks were flush with money and looking for ways to raise their bottom lines. One major strategy was to pour money into REAL ESTATE, which had the effect of creating bubbles, particularly in Spain and Ireland.

From 1999 to 2007, bank loans for Irish REAL ESTATE jumped 1,730 percent, from 5 million euros to 96.2 million ($5.59 million to $107.52 million) —more than half the country’s GDP. Housing prices increased 500 percent. “It was not the public sector but the private sector that went haywire in Ireland,” concludes Financial Times analyst Martin Wolf.

Spain, which had a budget surplus and a low debt ratio, went through much the same process, and saw an identical jump in housing prices: 500 percent.

In both countries there was corruption, but it wasn’t the penny ante variety of tax evasion or profit skimming. Instead, politicians—eager for a piece of the action and generous “donations”—waved zoning rules, sidestepped environmental regulations, and cut sweetheart tax deals. Hundreds of thousands of housing projects went up, many of them never to be occupied.

Then the American banking crisis hit in 2008, and the bottom fell out. Suddenly, the ants were in trouble.

But not really, because the ants have a trick: they gamble and the grasshoppers pay. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz points out, Europe (like the United States) moved its gambling debts “from the private sector to the public sector—a well-established pattern over the past half-century.”

Fintan O’Toole, author of “Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger,” estimates that to save the Anglo Irish Bank, Irish taxpayers shelled out $30 billion euros, a sum that was the equivalent of the island’s entire tax revenues for 2009. To raise the money, the European Central Bank—which, along with the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission, makes up the “Troika”—strong-armed Ireland into adopting austerity measures that tanked the country’s economy, doubled the unemployment rate, increased consumer taxes, and forced many of the country’s young people to emigrate. Almost half of Ireland’s income tax now goes just to service the interest on its debts.

And poor Portugal. It had a solid economy and a low debt ratio, but currency speculators drove up interest rates on borrowing beyond what the government could afford, and the European Central Bank refused to intervene. The result was that Lisbon was forced to swallow a “bailout” laden with austerity measures that in turn torpedoed its economy.

In Greece’s case, too, while the country has no shortage of wealthy tax evaders, the myth of profligacy falls flat. Germany, Sweden, and many other European countries spend more of their GDP on services than does Athens. Greece spends 44.6 percent of its GDP on its citizens, which comes in just below Germany’s 46 percent and well beneath Sweden’s 55 percent.

And as for lazy: Greeks work 600 hours more a year than Germans.

According to economist Mark Blyth, author of “Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea,” Greek public spending throughout the 2000s was “really on track and quite average in comparison to everyone else’s.” Its so-called flood of public sector jobs consisted of 14,000 over two years. All the talk of the profligate Greek government is “a lot of nonsense” and just “political cover for the fact that what we’ve done is bail out some of the richest people in European society and put the cost on some of the poorest.”

There was a “score” in Greece. However, it had nothing to do with free spending. Rather, it was a scheme dreamed up by Greek politicians, bankers, and the American FINANCE corporation Goldman Sachs.

Greece’s application for EU membership in 1999 was rejected because its budget deficit in relation to its GDP was over 3 percent, the cutoff line for joining. That’s where Goldman Sachs came in. For a fee rumored to be $200 million (some say three times that), the multinational giant essentially cooked the books to make Greece look like it cleared the bar. Then Greece’s political and economic establishment hid the scheme until the 2008 crash shattered the illusion.

The Grasshoppers Strike Back

The Troika puts the blame for the debt crisis on the spendthrift ways of Greece, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal, but it was the CASINO mentality of private investors—backed by the banks—that brought on the current catastrophe.

In short, it was the busy little ants, not the fiddling grasshoppers that brought down the “distressed four.”

American, German, French, and Dutch banks had to know that they were creating an unstable REAL ESTATE bubble—a 500 percent jump in housing prices is the very definition of the beast—but kept right on lending because they were making out like bandits.

When the bubble popped and Europe went into recession, Greece was forced to apply for a bailout from the Troika. In exchange for 172 billion euros, the Greek government instituted an austerity program that saw economic activity decline 25 percent and unemployment rise to 27 percent—and to over 50 percent for young Greeks. The cutbacks slashed pensions, wages, and social services, and drove 44 percent of the population into poverty.

Virtually all of the bailout funds—89 percent—went to the banks that gambled in the 1999 to 2007 REAL ESTATE casino. What the Greeks—as well as the Spaniards, Portuguese, and Irish—got was misery.

There are other EU countries, meanwhile—including Italy and France—that aren’t quite in the same boat as the “distressed four,” but are nonetheless under pressure to bring down their debt ratios.

But what are those debts?

This past summer, the Committee for a Citizen’s Audit on the Public Debt issued a report on France, a country that is currently instituting austerity measures to bring its debt in line with the magic “3-percent” ratio. The Committee—which refers to itself as a “collective”—was launched in January 2012 following a French petition drive that gathered almost 60,000 signatures. Associated with the Party of the European Left, it’s a polyglot organization with an international focus. “Collectives” are busy all over the world lobbying for debt audits.

What the committee concluded was that 60 percent of the French public debt was “illegitimate.”

More than 18 other countries, including Brazil, Portugal, Ecuador, Greece, and Spain, have done the same “audit.” And in each case, they found that increased public spending was not the cause of deficits. From 1978 to 2012, French public spending actually declined by 2 GDP points.

The main culprit in the debt crisis was a fall in revenues resulting from massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. According to Razmig Keucheyan, sociologist and author of “The Left Hemisphere,” this “neoliberal mantra” that was supposed to increase investment and employment did the opposite.

The second major reason, according to the debt audit study, was the increase in interest rates that benefit creditors and speculators. Had interests rates remained stable during the 1990s, debt would be significantly lower.

Keucheyan argues that tax reductions and interest rates are “political decisions,” and that “public deficits do not grow naturally out of the normal course of social life. They are deliberately inflicted on society by the dominant classes to legitimize austerity policies that will allow the transfer of value from the working classes to the wealthy ones.”

The International Labor Organization recently found that wages have, indeed, stalled or declined throughout the EU over the past decade.

The audit movement calls for repudiating debt that results from “the service of private interests” as opposed to the “wellbeing of the people.” In 2008, Ecuador canceled 70 percent of its debt as “illegitimate.”

How this plays out in the current Greek–EU crisis is not clear. The Syriza government is not asking to cancel the debt—though it would certainly like a write-down—but only that it be given time to let the economy grow. The recent four-month deal may give Athens some breathing room, but the ants are still demanding austerity, and tensions are high.

What seems clear is that Germany and its allies are trying to force Syriza into accepting conditions that will undermine its support in Greece and demoralize anti-austerity movements in other countries.

Exploding the Myth

The United States can play a role in this—President Barack Obama has already called for easing the austerity policies—through its domination of the IMF.

By itself, Washington can outvote Germany, the Netherlands, and Finland combined, and could exert pressure on the two other Troika members to compromise. Will it? Hard to say, but the Americans are certainly a lot more nervous about Greece exiting the eurozone than Germany is.

The key to a solution is exploding the myth.

That has already begun. Over the past few weeks, demonstrators in Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Great Britain, Belgium, and Austria have poured into the streets to support Syriza’s stand against the Troika. “The left has to work together having as its common goal the elimination of predatory capitalism,” said Maite Mola, vice president of the European Left organization and member of the European Parliament. “And the solution should be European.”

In the end, the grasshoppers might just turn Aesop’s fable upside down.

Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Conn Hallinan can be read at www.dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and www.middleempireseries.wordpress.com. This article was previously published on FPIF.org.

Yemen’s War Is Redrawing the Middle East’s Fault Lines

0
0
Smoke billows following an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition on May 11, in the capital Sanaa. the Saudi war in Yemen stands little chance of success without significant ground forces. (Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images)

Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world, bereft of resources, fractured by tribal divisions and religious sectarianism, and plagued by civil war.

And yet this small country tucked into the bottom of the Arabian Peninsula is shattering old alliances and spurring new and surprising ones. As Saudi Arabia continues its air assault on Yemen’s Houthi insurgents, supporters, and opponents of the Riyadh monarchy are reconfiguring the political landscape in a way that’s unlikely to vanish once the fighting is over.

The Saudi version of the war is that Shiite Iran is trying to take over Sunni Yemen using proxies—the Houthis—to threaten the kingdom’s southern border and assert control over the strategic Bab-el-Mandeb Strait into the Red Sea.

The Iranians claim they have no control over the Houthis and no designs on the strait. They maintain that the war is an internal matter for the Yeminis to resolve.

The Saudis have constructed what at first glance seems a formidable coalition consisting of the Arab League, the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Turkey, and the United States. Except that the “coalition” isn’t as solid as it looks—in fact, it’s more interesting for whom it doesn’t include than whom it does.

Friends Like These

Egypt and Turkey are the powerhouses in the alliance, but there’s more sound and fury than substance in their support.

Initially, Egypt made noises about sending ground troops—the Saudi army can’t handle the Houthis and their allies—but pressed by Al-Monitor, Cairo’s ambassador to Yemen, Youssef el-Sharkawy, turned opaque: “I am not the one who will decide about a ground intervention in Yemen. This goes back to the estimate of the supreme authority in the country and Egyptian national security.”

Since Saudi Arabia supported the Egyptian military’s coup against the Muslim Brotherhood government and is propping up the regime with torrents of cash, Riyadh may eventually squeeze Cairo to put troops into the Yemen war.

While Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also pledged Ankara’s support for “Saudi Arabia’s intervention” and demanded that “Iran and the terrorist groups” withdraw, Erdogan was careful to say that he “may consider” offering “logistical support based on the evolution of the situation.”

Erdogan wants to punish Iran for its support of the Assad regime in Syria and its military presence in Iraq, where Tehran is aiding the Baghdad government against the ISIS. He is also looking to tap into Saudi money. The Turkish economy is in trouble—its public debt is the highest it’s been in a decade, and borrowing costs are rising worldwide. With an important election coming in June, Erdogan is hoping the Saudis will step in to help out.

Yemen is a dreadfully difficult place to win a war.

But actually getting involved is another matter. The Turks think the Saudis are in a pickle—Yemen is a dreadfully difficult place to win a war, and an air assault without ground troops has zero chance of success.

When the Iranians reacted sharply to Erdogan’s comments, the president backpedalled. Iran is a major trading partner for the Turks, and, with the possibility that international sanctions against Tehran will soon end, Turkey wants in on the gold rush that is certain to follow. During Erdogan’s recent trip to Tehran, the Turkish president and Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif issued a joint statement calling for an end to the war in Yemen, and a “political solution.” It was a far cry from Erdogan’s initial belligerence.

The Arab League supports the war, but only to varying degrees. Iraq opposes the Saudi attacks, and Algeria is keeping its distance by calling for an end to “all foreign intervention.”

Even the normally compliant GCC, representing the oil monarchs of the Gulf, has a defector. Oman abuts Yemen, and its ruler, Sultan Qaboos, is worried the chaos will spread across his borders. And while the United Arab Emirates has flown missions over Yemen, the UAE is also preparing to cash in if sanctions are removed from Tehran. “Iran is on our doorstep, we have to be there,” Marwan Shehadeh, a developer in Dubai told the Financial Times. “It could be a great game changer.”

Pakistan Drifts Away

The most conspicuous absence in the Saudi coalition, however, is Pakistan—a country that’s received billions in aid from Saudi Arabia and whose current prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was sheltered by Riyadh from the wrath of Pakistan’s military in 1999.

When the Saudis initially announced their intention to attack Yemen, they included Pakistan in the reported coalition, an act of hubris that backfired badly. Pakistan’s Parliament demanded a debate on the issue and then voted unanimously to remain neutral. While Islamabad declared its intention to “defend Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty,” no one thinks the Houthis are about to march on Jeddah.

The Yemen war is deeply unpopular in Pakistan, and the Parliament’s actions were widely supported, with one editorial writer calling for rejecting “GCC diktat.” Only the terrorist Lashkar-e-Taiba organization, which planned the 2008 Mumbai massacre in India, supported the Saudis.

Pakistan has indeed relied on Saudi largesse and, in turn, provided security for Riyadh. But the relationship is wearing thin.

First, there’s widespread outrage in Pakistan over Saudi Arabia’s support of extremist Islamist groups, some of which are at war with Pakistan’s government. Last year, the terrorist organization—the Tehrik-i-Taliban—massacred 145 people, including 132 students, in Peshawar. Fighting these groups in North Waziristan has taxed the Pakistani army, which must also pay attention to its southern neighbor, India.

The Saudis, with their support for the rigid Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, are also blamed for growing Sunni–Shiite tensions in Pakistan.

Second, Islamabad is deepening its relationship with China. In mid-April, Chinese President Xi Jinping promised to invest $46 billion to finance Beijing’s new “Silk Road” from western China to the Persian Gulf. Part of this will include a huge expansion of the port at Gwadar in Pakistan’s restive Baluchistan Province, a port that Bruce Riedel said will “rival Dubai or Doha as a regional economic hub.”

Riedel is a South Asia security expert, a senior fellow at the centrist Brookings Institution, and a professor at Johns Hopkins. Dubai is in the United Arab Emirates and Doha in Qatar. Both are members of the GCC.

China is concerned about security in Baluchistan, with its long-running insurgency against Pakistan’s central government, as well as the ongoing resistance by the Turkic-speaking, largely Muslim Uyghur people in western China’s Xinjiang Province.

Uyghurs, who number a little over 10 million, are being marginalized by an influx of Han Chinese, China’s dominant ethnic group.

Wealthy Saudis have helped finance some of these groups, and neither Beijing nor Islamabad is happy about it. Pakistan has pledged to create a 10,000-man “Special Security Division” to protect China’s investments. According to Riedel, the Chinese told the Pakistanis that Beijing would “stand by Pakistan if its ties with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates unravel.”

The US and Israel

The United States has played an important, if somewhat uncomfortable, role in the Yemen War.

It’s feeding Saudi Arabia intelligence and targeting information and refueling Saudi warplanes in midair. It also intercepted an Iranian flotilla headed for Yemen that Washington claimed was carrying arms for the Houthis. Iran denies it, and there’s little hard evidence that Tehran is providing arms to the insurgents.

But while Washington supports the Saudis, it has also urged Riyadh to dial back the air attacks and look for a political solution. The United States is worried that the war-induced anarchy is allowing al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to flourish. The embattled Houthis were the terrorist group’s principal opponents.

The humanitarian crisis in Yemen is growing critical. More than 1,000 people, many of them civilians, have been killed, and the bombing and fighting has generated 300,000 refugees. The Saudi–U.S. naval blockade—and the recent destruction of Yemen’s international airport—has shut down the delivery of food, water, and medical supplies in a country that is largely dependent on imported food.

However, the Obama administration is unlikely to alienate the Saudis, who are already angry with Washington for negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran. Besides aiding the Saudi attacks, the United States has opened the arms spigot to Riyadh.

Meanwhile, the Iran nuclear agreement has led to what has to be one of the oddest alliances in the region: Israel and Saudi Arabia. Riyadh is on the same wavelength as the Netanyahu government when it comes to Iran, and the two are cooperating in trying to torpedo the agreement.

According to investigative journalist Robert Parry, the alliance between Tel Aviv and Riyadh was sealed by a secret $16 billion gift from Riyadh to an Israeli “development” account in Europe, some of which has been used to build illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories.

The Saudis and the Israelis are on the same side in the Syrian civil war as well. And for all Riyadh’s talk about supporting the Palestinians, the only members of the GCC that have given money to help rebuild Gaza after last summer’s Israeli attack are Qatar and Kuwait.

Kingdom of Fear

How this all falls out in the end is hard to predict, except that it is clear that, for all their financial firepower, the Saudis can’t get the major regional players—Israel excepted—on board. And an alliance with Israel—a country that’s more isolated today because of its occupation policies than at any other time in its history—is not likely to be very stable.

Longtime Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk said the Saudis live in “fear” of the Iranians, the Shiite, ISIS, al-Qaeda, U.S. betrayal, Israeli plots, even “themselves, for where else will the revolution start in Sunni Muslim Saudi [Arabia] but among its own royal family?”

That “fear” is driving the war in Yemen. It argues for why the United States should stop feeding the flames and instead join with the European Union and demand an immediate ceasefire, humanitarian aid, and a political solution among the Yemenis themselves.

Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus (fpif.org), where this article was previously published.

Judgment Day for Austerity in Irish Election

0
0
Part of the Fine Gael-Labour coalition’s problem is that it claimed it had no choice but to enforce the savage austerity regime of the European Central Bank, but is trying to take credit for recent improvement in the economy. (AnCatDubh/Wikimedia, CC SA 3.0)

What looked like a smooth path to electoral victory for the Irish government has suddenly turned rocky, and the Fine Gael-Labour coalition is scrambling to keep its majority in the 166-seat Dáil. A series of missteps by Fine Gael’s Taoiseach [prime minister] Enda Kenney, and a sharply critical report of the 2008 Irish “bailout,” has introduced an element of volatility into the Feb. 26 vote that may end in a victory by an interesting, if fragile, coalition of leftists and independents.

The center-right Fine Gael and center-left Labour Party currently hold 99 seats, but few observers see them maintaining their majority. Fine Gael has dropped from 30 percent several months ago to 26 percent today, and Labour is only polling at 9 percent. That will not translate into enough seats to control the Dáil, and putting together a ruling coalition will be tricky, particularly when polls indicate that the independent bloc that has picked up 3 percent and is now the number one vote getter. In general, the independents are left or left-leaning.

Ireland is in the middle of an economic ‘boom,’ but that is a relative term.

The country is in the middle of an economic “boom,” but that is a relative term. Ireland is still reeling from years of European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed austerity that doubled the rate of childhood poverty and saddled working people with onerous taxes, painful rate hikes, and high unemployment. Wages have fallen 15 percent. Since 2008, almost 500,000 Irish—the majority of them young and educated—have emigrated from the country in search of jobs.

The government’s trouble began in December, when torrential rains swamped parts of the country and Kenny’s slow response to the disaster angered rural voters. Flood victims blamed the government for failing to invest in flood control, an infrastructure improvement that fell victim to the austerity regime.

Ireland's Taoiseach Enda Kenny talks to the press outside No. 10 Downing Street in London, England, on Nov. 9, 2015, after meeting British Prime Minister David Cameron. (Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images)

Ireland’s Taoiseach Enda Kenny talks to the press outside No. 10 Downing Street in London, England, on Nov. 9, 2015, after meeting British Prime Minister David Cameron. (Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images)

Then the Fine Gael-Labour coalition was hit with a double whammy: a report by in-house auditors for the European Union and an Irish parliamentary study of the collapse of Irish banks from 2008 to 2010. The EU study found that the ECB had pressured the Irish government not to impose losses on “senior bondholders” and, instead, put the burden on taxpayers. According to the parliamentary study, the ECB threatened to withdraw emergency support for Irish banks—thus crashing the economy—if wealthy bondholders were forced to take losses. All of this came as news to most of the Irish.

The center-right Fianna Fail Party was in power when the great crash came in 2008, a crash that had nothing to do with government spending or debt, but was instead, the result of real estate speculation by banks and financial institutions. Irish land values jumped 800 percent, which should have warned the banks that a bubble was inflating. But the bondholders, speculators, and banks did nothing because they were making enormous amounts of money. When the bubble popped, Irish taxpayers were forced to pick up the $67 billion tab.

Fianna Fail was crushed in the 2011 election, losing two-thirds of their deputies,  and Fine Gael-Labour took over.

Part of the government’s problem is that for the past five years it has been saying that it had no choice but to enforce the savage austerity regime of the ECB, but it is now trying to take credit for the recent improvement of the economy.

The coalition’s mantra has been “stay the course,” good times are ahead. The term the government is using is “fiscal space,” or the estimated amount of money that will be available for investment if Ireland continued its economic recovery. According to Fine Gael that figure would be $12 billion between 2017 and 2021.

First, no one understood “fiscal space,” a term used by the IMF. Even Deputy Prime Minister Joan Burton, a Labour Party leader, called it “a new kind of ‘F’ word” and said voters hadn’t a clue what it meant. Asked to define it, Kenny said the Irish voters wouldn’t understand it, a statement that managed to insult everyone. The government subsequently knocked the figure down to $10 billion, and the opposition said it was more like $8 billion.

And while Fine Gael is taking credit for the economy, critics are pointing out that it wasn’t austerity, but a fall in world oil prices and a decline in the value of the euro that favors Ireland’s export industry, that got the economy going.

Finally Kenny muffed a question about whether Fine Gael might consider a coalition with Fianna Fail because the Labour Party was dropping in the polls and might not hold its 33 seats. This enraged Labour, and Kenny had to mend fences and pledge that Fine Gael would never go into a government with Fianna Fail.

If you had no power, you can claim no credit; if you did have power, you have to account for how unjustly you used it.
— Fintan O'Toole, Irish writer and political commentator

In short, the government is looking inept, and it is taking fire for its shift from “we had no choice in applying the austerity” to “we take all the credit for the current situation.” Fintan O’Toole, the sharp-tongued columnist for the Irish Times and author of “Ship of Fools,” chronicling the financial greed that led to the 2008 meltdown, wrote of the government, “If you had no power, you can claim no credit; if you did have power, you have to account for how unjustly you used it.”

Behind the cover of “It’s not our fault,” the government cut funds for caregivers, threw people off of National Health, cut support for the disabled, support for education, and did nothing about rising homelessness. As O’Toole points out, the improvements in the economy were because of oil prices, low interest rates, and the falling euro, all “entirely outside the control of the Irish government.”

In any case, the country is still deeply in debt and, while the jobless rate is no longer 15 percent, it is still just below 10 percent.

The Dáil is a motley affair, with a host of small parties and a bloc of independents. Currently Fine Gael has 66 seats and Labour 33. The center-right Fianna Fail (that inched up slightly in recent polls) has 21, and the leftist Sinn Fein has 14. The latter dropped three points in the poll from 20 percent to 17 percent. Other left parties include the Social Democrats, the Anti-Austerity Party, and there is a mix of mainly leftists in the independent bloc. The centrist Greens are showing some growth, as is the small rightist Renva Party.

Right now various stripes of the left hold 41 seats, a figure that is likely to go up in the coming elections. To control the Dáil requires 80 seats, but if the independents do well, Sinn Fein holds its own, and Labour jumps ship, an anti-austerity coalition is possible.

In the end it may be a hung parliament, with no bloc of parties able to cobble together an effective government. Kenny may double cross Labour and join with Fianna Fail. But whoever takes over, the policies of austerity have been deeply discredited during this election and anyone who tries to “stay the course” is in for stormy weather.

Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), where this article was originally published.

Irish Shillelagh Austerity

0
0
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams speaks to the media as he arrives at the Lotuh Count in Dundalk, Ireland, on Feb. 27, 2016, the day after the vote took place in a general election in Ireland. Voters punished Ireland's coalition government and boosted smaller parties in the first election since emerging from a bailout program, raising the prospect of weeks of uncertainty in the eurozone country. Sinn Fein were set to increase their seats to become the third largest group in parliament, continuing an upward trend in support for the party led by Gerry Adams. (Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)

Note: A shillelagh is a blackthorn walking stick that the Irish use for whacking things they don’t like.

If there is one thing clear after Ireland’s recent election, it is that people no longer buy the myth that austerity is the path to economic salvation. It is the same message that Greeks, Portuguese, and Spaniards delivered to their elites over the past year: the prophets of tough love, regressive taxes, and massive social services cutbacks should update their resumes and consider a different profession than politics.

Ireland is a small country but the Feb. 26 election drove a big spike into the policies of the “troika”—the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund—that have blitzed economies across the continent and made chronic unemployment and growing economic inequality a continuing source of malaise.

The governing center-right Fine Gael lost 16 seats, and its partner, the center-left Labour Party, was virtually wiped out, dropping from 37 seats it controlled after the 2011 election only to six. The two parties had overseen an economic program that almost doubled child poverty rates, drove some 500,000 young people to emigrate, reduced wages by 15 percent, and sharply raised the jobless rate.

Ireland’s economic difficulties had nothing to do with public spending, but were the fallout from private speculators and banks caught in the great 2008 financial meltdown. Rather than making the speculators pay, the then government of Fianna Fail shifted the bank debts to taxpayers. The troika agreed to a $67 billion bailout of the banks, but only if major bondholders were exempted and the government would institute a draconian austerity program. Most Irish voters were unaware of this “trade off” until just before the election.

The Fine Gael-Labour government has long claimed that it had no choice but to apply the austerity formulas and that, in any case, the policies worked, because the economy was recovering. Voters didn’t buy it. The “recovery” has largely been restricted to Dublin—where homelessness in January reached a record high—and the growth was largely a product of falling oil prices and a decline in the value of the euro, rather than the result of austerity.

As Fintan O’Toole of the Irish Times put it, “What voters said on Friday is in some ways highly complex, but in relation to the dominant narrative that austerity is the path to recovery, the Irish said, ‘We don’t believe you.'” The Fine Gael-Labour campaign slogans of “stability” and “all is well” fell flat. The government, O’Toole said, “imagined that it would ride back to power on a feel-good factor, as if people who had been repeatedly beaten should feel good that the beating has stopped.”

At first glance, the Irish election looked like a shootout between the two center-right parties—Fine Gael and Fianna Fail—that have taken turns governing Ireland for more than eight decades. But this time around Fianna Fail ran from the left—mild left, as it were—promising greater fairness and more public services. Fianna Fail, which was crushed in the 2011 election, bounced back from 21 seats to 44 and is now the second largest party in the Dáil after Fine Gael.

The Dáil has 158 seats.

Another winner was the unabashedly leftist Sinn Fein Party, which picked up nine seats for a total of 23 and is now the third largest force in the Dáil. The People Before Profits/Anti-Austerity Party gained two seats, and the independent bloc picked up a seat. In contrast, the right-wing Renua Party lost its three seats.

Irish elections are complex affairs, employing a proportional representation system that provides a path for small parties to gain a foothold in the Dáil, but makes campaigning complicated.  

What emerged from the Feb. 26 vote was a hung parliament: Fine Gael/Labour did not win enough seats for a majority, but neither did anyone else. There is talk of a “grand coalition” between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, but both parties would have to renege on pre-election promises that they wouldn’t consider such a move, and it would automatically make Sinn Fein the leader of the opposition. The latter possibility scares both center-right parties.

Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, and Labour refuse to consider a coalition with Sinn Fein because of the Party’s links to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and violence. It is an odd rationale, considering that all three parties have roots in the sometimes quite violent struggle for Irish independence and the bloody 1922–1923 civil war over the Anglo-Irish Treaty that freed the Republic from Great Britain.

In any case, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams made it clear that his party has no interest in being a minority member of any combination that Fine Gael or Fianna Fail put together. And there is no way that Sinn Fein can construct a majority coalition. At most, the left and center-left parties could muster 60 votes, and that would include the Labour Party, a dubious possibility. Indeed, one Labour Party leader, Alan Kelly, has already called for a Fine Gael-Fianna Fail unity government.

It is possible that Fine Gael will try to rule as a minority government, but that would require Fianna Fail to abstain when it comes time to elect a Prime Minister, or Taoiseach. And it would also mean that Fianna Fail might have to choose between swallowing some of Fine Gael’s austerity policies that it ran against in the election, or bringing down the government. Since any minority government will be extremely fragile, another round of elections is a real possibility. During the campaign, Fianna Fail leader Michael Martin said he would not go into a coalition with Fine Gael, and Irish voters in a rematch might punish any party that broke its promises.

Irish voters essentially gave two messages in the last election, one directed at Europe and the other at its own political structure.

About Europe, the voters firmly rejected the increasingly discredited policies of the troika, joining Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese voters in saying “enough.” Austerity as a cure for economic crisis, as O’Toole points out, “was not just an Irish story—it was a European narrative.” That narrative is under siege.

About Ireland, voters turned their own political structure upside down. The two parties that have dominated Ireland since the end of the 1922–1923 civil war can now claim the allegiance of slightly less than 50 percent of the electorate. This election, as Sinn Fein’s Adams argues, represents “a fundamental realignment of Irish politics.”

For more of Conn Hallinan’s essays visit Dispatches From the Edge. Meanwhile, his novels about the ancient Romans can be found at The Middle Empire Series. This article was originally published on Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF).


Socialists Rain on Spain

0
0
A man waves a Republican flag as people gather in the main square of Madrid during a Podemos (We Can) party march in Madrid, Spain, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2015. Tens of thousands of people  possibly more are marching through Madrid’s streets in a powerful show of strength by Spain’s fledgling radical leftist party Podemos (We Can) which hopes to emulate the electoral success of Greece’s Syriza party in elections later this year. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

The effort by Pedro Sanchez, leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, to form a government on March 2 brings to mind the story of the hunter who goes into the forest with one bullet in his rifle. Seeing a deer on his right and a boar on his left, he shoots in the middle.

Sanchez’s search for a viable coalition partner began when the ruling right-wing Popular Party (PP) took a pounding in Spain’s Dec. 20 election, dropping 63 seats and losing its majority. Voters, angered by years of savage austerity that drove poverty and unemployment rates to among the highest in Europe, voted PP Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy out and anti-austerity parties in, although leaving the PP as the largest single party in the parliament.

The only real winner in election was the left-wing Podemos Party, which took 20.6 percent of the vote. The Socialist Party actually lost 20 seats, its worst showing ever, and at 22 percent, barely edged out Podemos. And if the Spanish political system were not rigged to give rural voters more power than urban ones, Podemos would have done much better. The Socialists and the PP are particularly strong in rural areas, while Podemos is strong in the cities.

While a candidate in Madrid needs 128,000 votes to be elected, in rural areas as few as 38,000 votes will get you into the parliament. Podemos and the Socialists both won over five million votes, with the difference only 341,000. But the Socialists took 89 seats to Podemos’s 65.

Spaniards voted for change, but the Socialists, who ran an anti-austerity campaign, chose to form an alliance with the conservative Ciudadanos or Citizens Party, which refuses to have anything to do with Podemos—and the feeling is mutual. Ciudadanos also underperformed at the polls. Ciudadanos was predicted to get as much as 25 percent of the vote and surpass Podemos, but instead came in under 14 percent with only 40 seats.

On the surface the only thing the Socialists and Ciudadanos have in common is their adamant opposition to Catalonia’s push for a referendum on independence. Podemos is also opposed to a Catalan breakaway, but supports the right of the region to vote on the matter.

Catalonia’s drive for independence is certainly controversial and would have a major impact on Spain’s economy, but exactly how the Spanish government thinks it can block a referendum is not clear. And if Catalans did vote for independence, how would Madrid stop it? One doubts that the government would send in the army or that such an intervention would be successful.

Indeed, the fierceness with which the PP, Socialist Party and Ciudadanos oppose the right of Catalans to vote is more likely to drive the province toward independence, rather than discourage it. At this point Catalonia’s voters are split slightly in favor of remaining in Spain, although young voters favor independence, a demographic factor that will loom larger in the future. In provincial elections last September, candidates who supported independence took 47.7 percent of the vote.

The Socialists had a path to form a government, but one that would have required the party to modify its position on a Catalan referendum. If it had done so, it could have formed a government using Podemos, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), the Basque Nationalist Party (EJA-PNV), Canary Islanders, and a mix of independents. Had the Socialists compromised on Catalonia, they might even have picked up the votes from the center-right Democracy and Freedom Party (DIL).

Left parties in the Parliament can put together 162 votes on their own, which is short of the 176 needed to form a government. But it would not have been impossible to pick up 13 more votes from the mix of 14 independents and eight seats controlled by the Catalan DIL.

Choosing Ciudadanos as a partner makes little sense. Podemos immediately dropped cooperation talks with the Socialists and sharply criticized Sanchez for not building a genuine left government. Ciudadanos’ economic policies are not much different than the PP’s, plus it opposes abortion, and is hawkish on immigration. In any case the party did poorly in the national elections. The merger “prevents the possibility of forming a pluralistic government of change,” according to the parliamentary deputy and Podemos spokesperson, Inigo Errejon.

“Negotiate with us,” Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias told Sanchez, “stop obeying the oligarchs.” The Socialist Party leader pleaded with Podemos to vote for him so that the Socialist-Ciudadanos alliance could pass “progressive” legislation like raising the minimum wage and addressing the gender wage gap. The Socialists also presented a plan to tax the wealthy, improve health care, and try to stop the growth of “temporary” worker contracts that have reduced benefits and job security.

But those issues do not really address the underlying humanitarian crisis most Spaniards are experiencing, like poverty and growing homelessness, and the damage austerity has inflicted on education and social services. And Ciudadanos’ views on abortion, immigration, and privatizing public services are repugnant to Podemos.

Spain’s unemployment rate is still over 20 percent—far more among the youth in the country’s south—and many of the jobless will soon run out of government aid. While the economy grew 3.1 percent in 2015 and is projected to grow 2.7 percent in 2016, it is not nearly where it was before the great 2008 financial crisis and the implosion of Spain’s enormous real estate bubble.  On top of which, that growth rate had nothing to do with the austerity policies, but instead was the result declining value of the euro, low interest rates, and cheap oil.

If the Socialists have no success in forming a government, there will be new elections, probably in late June. Polls show the outcome of such a vote would be similar to the last election, but Spanish polls are notoriously inaccurate. In the last election they predicted Ciudadanos would eclipse Podemos. The opposite was the case.

The right-wing Popular Party is likely to do worse, because it is mired in a series of corruption scandals over bid-rigging and illegal commissions. In Valencia, nine out of the 10 PP councilors are considered formal suspects in the case. Indeed, the Party’s reputation for corruption makes it difficult for any other grouping in the parliament to make common cause with it. And even if Ciudadanos dumped its anti-corruption plank and broke its promise never to cooperate with the PP, such a government would still fall short of the 176 votes needed. The PP controls 119 seats.

In part, the Socialists are frightened by the growth of Podemos and the fact that it might replace them as the number two party in the parliament. In part, the Socialists also tend to run from the left and govern from the center, even the center-right. That is a formula that will simply not work anymore in Spain. The domination of the Spanish government by the two major parties since 1977 is a thing of the past, having been replaced by regional and anti-austerity parties like Podemos.

Before the recent election, the two major parties controlled between 75 percent and 85 percent of the voters. In the December election, they fell to just over 50 percent.

A more successful model is being built next door in Portugal, where the Socialists united with two left-wing parties to form a government. All the parties involved had to compromise to make it work, and the alliance might come apart in the long run. But for now it is working, and the government is dismantling the more egregious austerity measures and has put a halt to the privatization of public services like transportation.

Spain’s Socialist Party is riven with factions, some more conservative than others. Sanchez—whose nickname is ” El Guapo” (handsome)—has so far out-maneuvered his party opponents, but this latest debacle will do him little good. He did receive support from the party’s rank and file for the Ciudadanos move, but that led nowhere in the end. Sanchez got 130 votes in the first round and only picked up one more vote in the second round.

Another election will probably not produce a sea change in terms of party support, but voters may punish the Socialists for their unwillingness to compromise. Those votes are unlikely to go to Ciudadanos, and the PP is so mired in corruption that it will struggle to keep its current status as the largest party in the parliament. A recent poll taken after Prime Minster Rajoy passed on trying to form a government found that 71 percent of the voters felt that the PP did not have the best interests of Spain in mind. That refusal may come to haunt the PP in June.

Podemos will undoubtedly pick up some Socialist Party voters, but probably not enough to form a government. That will only happen if Socialists put aside their stubborn opposition to a Catalan referendum and help build what Podemos calls a “genuine” leftist government.

Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), where this article was originally published.

A Terrible Beauty: Remembering Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rebellion

0
0
99th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, April 2015. (Irish Defense Forces/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Standing on the front steps of Dublin’s general post office a century ago, the poet Padraig Pearse announced the Poblacht na hEireann—the “Irish republic.”

He was reading from a proclamation, the ink barely dry, of a provisional Irish government declaring its independence from British rule. It was just after noon on March 24, 1916, the opening scene in a drama that would mix tragedy and triumph, the twin heralds of Irish history.

It’s a hundred years since some 750 men and women threw up barricades and seized key locations in downtown Dublin. They would be joined by maybe 1,000 more. In six days it would be over, the post office in flames, the streets blackened by shell fire, and the rebellion’s leaders on their way to face firing squads against the walls of Kilmainham Jail.

And yet the failure of the Easter Rebellion would eventually become one of the most important events in Irish history—a “failure” that would reverberate worldwide and be mirrored by colonial uprisings almost half a century later.

Colonial Parallels

Anniversaries—particularly centennials—are equal parts myth and memory, and drawing lessons from them is always a tricky business. Yet while 1916 is not 2016, there are parallels, pieces of the story that overlap and dovetail in the Europe of then with the Europe of today.

Europe in 1916 was a world at war. The lamps, as the expression goes, had gone out in August 1914, and the continent was wrapped in barbed wire and steeped in almost inconceivable death and destruction. Shortly after the last Irish rebel was shot, the British launched the battle of the Somme. More than 20,000 would die in the first hour of that battle. By the end, there would be more than a million casualties on both sides.

Europe is still at war, in some ways retracing the footsteps of a colonial world supposedly long gone. Britain is fighting its fourth war in Afghanistan. Italian special forces are stalking Islamists in their former colony Libya. French warplanes are bombing their old stomping grounds in Syria and chasing down Tuaregs in Mali.

And Europe is also at war with itself. Barbed wire is once again being unrolled, not to make killing zones out of the no man’s land between trenches, but to block the floods of refugees generated by European—and American—armies and proxies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria.

In many ways, the colonial chickens are coming home to roost.

The British and French between them secretly sliced up the Middle East in 1916, using religion and ethnicity to divide and conquer the region. Instability was built in.

Indeed, that was the whole idea: There would never be enough Frenchmen or Englishmen to rule the Levant, but with Shiites, Sunnis, and Christians busily trying to tear out one another’s throats, they wouldn’t notice the well dressed bankers on the sidelines—”tut tutting” the lack of civilized behavior and counting their money.

The Irish of 1916 understood that gambit—after all, they were its first victims.

Ireland was a colony long before the great powers divided up the rest of the world in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the strategies that kept the island poor, backward, and profitable were transplanted elsewhere. Religious divisions kept India largely docile. Tribal and religious divisions made it possible to rule Nigeria. Ethnic conflict short-circuited resistance in Kenya and South Africa. Division by sect worked well in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.

Ireland was the great laboratory of colonialism where the English experimented with ways to keep a grip over the population. Culture, religion, language, and kinship were all grist for the mill. And when all else failed, Ireland was a short sail across the Irish Sea: Kill all the lab rats and start anew.

Discovering Nationalism

The fact that the English had been in Ireland for 747 years by 1916 was relevant.

The Irish call the occupation “the long sorrow,” and it had made them a bit bonkers. Picking a fight in the middle of a war with one of the most powerful empires in human history doesn’t seem like a terribly rational thing to do—and in truth, there were many Irish who agreed it was a doomed endeavor.

The European left denounced the Easter rising, mostly because they couldn’t make much sense of it. What was a disciplined Marxist intellectual and trade union leader like James Connolly doing taking up arms with mystic nationalists like Padraig Pearse and Joseph Mary Plunkett? One of the few radicals to get it was V.I. Lenin, who called criticism of the rebellion “monstrously pedantic.”

What both Connolly and Lenin understood was that the uprising reflected a society profoundly distorted by colonialism. Unlike many other parts of Europe, in Ireland different classes and viewpoints could find common ground precisely because they had one similar experience: No matter what their education, no matter what their resources, in the end they were Irish, and treated in every way as inferior by their overlords.

Most of the European left was suspicious of nationalism in general because it blurred the lines between oppressed and oppressors and undermined their analysis that class was the great fault line. But as the world would discover half a century later, nationalism could also be an ideology that united the many against the few.

In the end, it would create its own problems and raise up its own monsters. But for the vast majority of the colonial world, nationalism was an essential ingredient of national liberation.

The Free Civilizations

The Easter rebellion wasn’t the first anti-colonial uprising. The American threw off the English in 1783; the Greeks drove out the Turks in 1832. India’s great Sepoy rebellion almost succeeded in driving the British out of the sub-continent in 1857. There were others as well.

But there was a special drama to the idea of a revolution in the heart of an empire, and it was that drama more than the act itself that drew the world’s attention. The Times of London blamed the Easter rising for the 1919 unrest in India, where the British army massacred 380 Sikh civilians at Amritsar. How the Irish were responsible for this, the Times never bothered to explain.

But the Irish saw the connection, if somewhat differently. Roger Casement, a leader of the 1916 rebellion who was executed for treason in August of that year, said that the cause of Ireland was also the cause of India, because the Easter rebels were fighting “to join again the free civilizations of the earth.”

As a rising it was a failure, in part because the entire affair was carried out in secret. Probably no more than a dozen or so people knew that it was going to happen. When the Irish Volunteer Force and the Irish Citizens Army marched up to the post office, most of the passersby—including the English ones—thought it was just the “boys” out having a little fun by provoking the authorities again.

But secrets don’t make for successful revolutions. The plotters imagined that their example would fire the whole of Ireland, but by the time most of the Irish had found out about it, it was over.

Compared to other uprisings, it wasn’t even an overly bloody affair. There were about 3,000 casualties and 485 deaths, many of them civilians. Of the combatants, the British lost 151 and the rebels 83—including the 16 executed in the coming weeks. It devastated a square mile of downtown Dublin, and when British troops marched the rebels through the streets after their surrender, crowds spit on the rebels.

But as the firing squads did their work day after day, the sentiment began to shift.

Connolly was so badly wounded he could not stand, so they tied him to a chair and shot him. The authorities also refused to release the executed leaders to their families, burying them in quicklime instead. Some 3,439 men and 79 women were arrested and imprisoned. Almost 2,000 were sent to internment camps, and 98 were given death sentences. Another 100 received long prison sentences.

None of this went done well with the public, and the authorities were forced to call off more executions. Plus, the idea of an “Irish republic” wasn’t going to go away, no matter how many people were shot, hanged or imprisoned.

A Blood Sacrifice

The Easter rising was certainly an awkward affair. Pearse called it a “blood sacrifice,” which sounded uncomfortably close to the Catholic proverb that “The blood of the martyrs is the seat of the church.”

And yet, that is the nature of things like the Easter rising. The year 1916 churned up all of the ideologies, divisions, and prejudices that colonialism had crafted over hundreds of years, making for some very odd bedfellows. Those who dreamed of re-constituting the ancient kingdom of Meath manned barricades with students of Karl Marx. Illiterate tenant farmers took up arms with Countess Markievicz, who counseled women to “leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver.”

Many of those divisions remain.

There will be at least two celebrations of the Easter rising. The establishment parties—Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, and the Labor Party—have organized events leading up to the main commemoration March 27. Sinn Fein, representing the bulk of the Irish left, will have its own celebration. Several small splinter groups will present their own particular story of the Easter rising.

And if you want to be part of it, you can go on the Internet and buy a “genuine” Easter Rebellion T-shirt from “Eire Apparent.” Everything is for sale, even revolution.

In some ways, 1916 was about Ireland and its long, strange history. But 1916 is also about the willingness of human beings to resist, sometimes against almost hopeless odds. There is nothing special or uniquely Irish about that.

In the short run, the Easter rebellion led to the executions of people who might have prevented the 1922–1923 civil war between republicans and nationalists that followed the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1921. The Free State was independent and self-governing, but still part of the empire, while the British had lopped off Northern Ireland to keep as their own. Ireland didn’t become truly independent until 1937.

In the long run, however, the Easter rising made continued British rule in Ireland impossible. In that sense, Pearse was right: The blood sacrifice had worked.

The New Colonialism

Does the centennial mean anything for today’s Europe? It may.

Like the Europe of 1916, the Europe of 2016 is dominated by a few at the expense of the many. The colonialism of empires has been replaced by the colonialism of banks and finance.

The British occupation impoverished the Irish, but they weren’t so very different from today’s Greeks, Spanish, and Portuguese—and yes, Irish—who’ve seen their living standards degraded and their young exported, all to “repay” banks from which they never borrowed anything. Do most Europeans really control their lives today any more than the Irish did in 1916?

How different is today’s “troika”—the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund—from Whitehall in 1916? The latter came uninvited into Ireland; the former dominates the economic and political life of the European Union.

In his poem, “Easter Week 1916,” the poet William Butler Yeats called the rising the birth of “a terrible beauty.” And so it was.

But Pearse’s oration at the graveside of the old Fenian warrior Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa may be more relevant: “I say to the masters of my people, beware. Beware of the thing that is coming. Beware of the risen people who shall take what yea would not give.”

Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), where this article was originally published. This commentary is a joint publication of FPIF and TheNation.com.

Continental Drift: Europe’s Breakaways

0
0
Catalan activists march for an independent Catalonia. Throughout Europe, historical grievances, uneven development, and ethnic tensions have been exacerbated by a long-running economic crisis, giving new life to old independence movements. (Joan Campderrós-i-Canas/Flickr)

Happy families are all alike: every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

The opening to Tolstoy’s great novel of love and tragedy could be a metaphor for Europe today, where “unhappy families” of Catalans, Scots, Belgians, Ukrainians, and Italians contemplate divorcing the countries they are currently a part of. And in a case where reality mirrors fiction, they are each unhappy in their own way.

While the United States and its allies may rail against the recent referendum in Crimea that broke the peninsula free of Ukraine, Scots will consider a very similar one on September 18, and Catalans would very much like to do the same. So would residents of South Tyrol, and Flemish speakers in northern Belgium.

On the surface, many of these secession movements look like rich regions trying to free themselves from poor ones, but while there is some truth in that, it is overly simplistic. Wealthier Flemish speakers in northern Belgium would indeed like to separate from the distressed, French-speaking south, just as Tyroleans would like to free themselves of poverty-racked southern Italy. But in Scotland much of the fight is over preserving the social contract that conservative Labour and right-wing Tory governments have systematically dismantled. As for Catalonia—well, it’s complicated.

Borders in Europe may appear immutable, but of course they are not. Sometimes they are changed by war, economic necessity, or because the powerful draw capricious lines that ignore history and ethnicity. Crimea, conquered by Catherine the Great in 1783, was arbitrarily given to the Ukraine in 1954. Belgium was the outcome of a congress of European powers in 1830. Impoverished Scotland tied itself to wealthy England in 1707. Catalonia fell to Spanish and French armies in 1714. And South Tyrol was a spoil of World War I.

In all of them, historical grievance, uneven development, and ethnic tensions have been exacerbated by a long-running economic crisis. There is nothing like unemployment and austerity to fuel the fires of secession.

The two most pressing secessionist movements—and the ones most likely to have a profound impact on the rest of Europe—are in Scotland and Catalonia.

Both are unhappy in different ways.

Scotland

Scotland always had a vocal, albeit marginal, nationalist party, but was traditionally dominated by the British Labour Party. The Conservatives hardly exist north of the Tweed. But Tony Blair’s “New Labour” Party’s record of spending cuts and privatization alienated many Scots, who spend more on their education and health services than the rest of Britain. University tuition, for instance, is still free in Scotland, as are prescription drugs and home healthcare.

When Conservatives won the British election in 2010, their austerity budget savaged education, healthcare, housing subsidies, and transportation. Scots, angered at the cuts, voted for the Scottish National Party (SNP) in the 2011 elections for the Scottish parliament. The SNP immediately proposed a referendum that will ask Scots if they want to dissolve the 1707 Act of Union and once again become be an independent country. If passed, the Scottish government proposes re-nationalizing the postal service and throwing nuclear-armed Trident submarines out of Scotland.

If one takes into account its North Sea oil resources, there is little doubt that an independent Scotland would be viable. Scotland has a larger GDP per capita than France and, in addition to oil, exports manufactured goods and whiskey. Scotland would become one of the world’s top 35 exporting countries.

The Conservative government says that if the Scots vote for independence, they will have to give up the pound as a currency. The Scots respond that if the British follow through on their currency threat, Scotland will wash its hands of its portion of the British national debt. At this point, there is a standoff.

According to the British—and some leading officials in the European Union (EU)—an independent Scotland will lose its EU membership, but that may be bluster. For one, it would violate past practice. When East and West Germany were united in 1990, some 20 million residents of the former German Democratic Republic were automatically given EU citizenship. If 5.3 million Scots are excluded, it will be the result of pique, not policy. In any case, with the Conservatives planning a referendum in 2017 that might pull Britain out of the EU, London is not exactly holding the high ground on this issue.

If the vote were taken today, the Scots would probably vote to remain in Britain, but sentiment is shifting. The most recent poll indicates that 40 percent will vote for independence, a 3-percent increase from the previous poll. The “no” votes have declined by 2 percent to 45 percent, with 15 percent undecided. All Scottish residents over the age of 16 can vote. Given the formidable campaigning skills of Alex Salmond, Scotland’s first minister and leader of the SNP, those are chilling odds for the London government.

Catalonia

Catalonia, wedged up against France in Spain’s northeast, has long been a powerful engine for the Spanish economy, and a region steeped in historical grievance. Conquered by the combined armies of France and the Spain in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), it was also on the losing side of the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War. In 1940, triumphant fascists suppressed the Catalan language and culture and executed Catalonia’s president, Lluis Companys—an act no Madrid government has ever made amends for.

Following Franco’s death in 1975, Spain began its transformation to democracy, a road constructed by burying the deep animosities engendered by the Civil War. But the dead stay buried only so long, and a movement for Catalan independence began to grow.

In 2006 Catalonia won considerable autonomy, which was then overturned by the Supreme Tribunal in 2010 at the behest of the current ruling conservative People’s Party (PP). That 2010 decision fueled the growth of the Catalan independence movement, and in 2012 separatist parties in the province were swept into power.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s PP is pretty much an afterthought in Catalonia, where several independence parties dominate the Catalan legislature. The largest of these is Province President Artur Mas’ Convergencia i Unio (CiU), but the Esquerra Republicana de Cataluyna (ERC) recently doubled its representation in the legislature.

That doesn’t mean they agree with one another. Mas’ party tends to be centrist to conservative, while the ERC is leftist and opposed to the austerity program of the PP, some of which Mas has gone along with. The CiU’s centrism is one of the reasons that Mas’ party went from 62 seats to 50 in the 2012 election, while the ERC jumped from 10 to 21.

Unemployment is officially at 25 percent—but far higher among youth and in Spain’s southern provinces—and the left has thrown down the gauntlet. Over 100,000 people marched on Madrid last month demanding an end to austerity.

Rajoy—citing the 1976 constitution—refuses to allow an independence referendum, a stubbornness that has only fueled separatist strength. This past January the Catalan parliament voted 87 to 43 to hold a referendum, and polls show a majority in the province will support it. Six months ago, a million and a half Catalans marched in Barcelona for independence.

The PP has been altogether ham-fisted about Catalonia and seems to delight in finding things to provoke Catalans: Catalonia bans bull fighting, so Madrid passes a law making it a national cultural heritage. The Basques get to collect their own taxes, Catalans cannot.

How would the EU react to an independent Catalan? And would the central government in Madrid do anything about it? It is hard to imagine the Spanish army getting involved, although a former minister in the Franco government started Rajoy’s party, and the dislike between Madrid and Barcelona is palpable.

Other Fault Lines

There are other fault lines on the continent.

Will Belgium split up? The fissure between the Flemish-speaking north and the French-speaking south is so deep it took 18 months to form a government after the last election. And if Belgium shatters, does it become two countries or get swallowed by France and the Netherlands?

In Italy, the South Tyrol Freedom Party (STFP) is gearing up for an independence referendum and pressing for a merger with Austria, although the tiny province—called Alto Adige in Italy—has little to complain about. It keeps 90 percent of its taxes, and its economy has dodged the worst of the 2008 meltdown. But some of its German-Austrian residents are resentful of any money going to Rome, and there is a deep prejudice against Italians—who make up 25 percent of South Tyrol—particularly among those in the south. In this way the STFP is not very different from the racist, elitist Northern League centered in Italy’s Po Valley.

It is instructive to watch the YouYube video on how borders in Europe have changed from 1519 to 2006, a period of less than 500 years. What we think of as eternal is ephemeral. The European continent is once again adrift, pulling apart along fault lines both ancient and modern. How nations like Spain and Britain, and organizations like the EU, react to this process will determine if it will be civilized or painful. But trying to stop it will most certainly cause pain.

Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus. Originally published in Foreign Policy in Focus under a Creative Commons License 3.0.

Will Sanctions Sideline the US Dollar?

0
0
An Afghan moneychanger counts U.S. dollar notes on a street in Kabul on Oct. 1, 2011. (Adek Berry/AFP/GettyImages)

The use of sanctions as an international cudgel has long been complicated by some nasty unintended consequences.

For the United States and the world economy, one consequence could be particularly significant: The recent round of sanctions aimed at Moscow over the crisis in Ukraine could backfire on Washington by accelerating a move away from the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

While in the short run American actions against Russia’s oil and gas industry will inflict economic pain on Moscow, in the long run the U.S. government may lose some of its control over international finance.

A World Beyond the IMF

Proposals to move away from using the dollar as the international currency reserve are by no means new. Back in 2009, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) proposed doing exactly that. SCO members include Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan, Iran, India, Pakistan, and Mongolia have SCO observer status, and the organization has close ties with Turkey and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Ever since the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, the world’s finances have been dominated by the U.S. dollar, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. But according to economist Jeffrey Sachs, that world is vanishing. The dollar cannot continue to hold the high ground, Sachs said, because “the role of the United States in the global economy is diminishing.”

While it may be diminishing, the United States and its European allies still control the levers of international finance. For example, the U.S. slice of the global GDP is 19.2 percent, and its share of IMF voting rights is 16.8 percent. In contrast, China, with 16.1 percent of the global GDP, has only 3.8 percent voting rights in the IMF. The presidency of the organization is reserved for a European.

In 2010, the World Bank “reformed” its voting rights to increase low- and middle-income countries from 34.67 percent to 38.38 percent, although even this modest adjustment has been sidelined because the U.S. Senate refuses to accept it. The wealthier countries still control more than 60 percent of the vote. The presidency of the bank normally goes to an American.

In early August of this year, the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—launched a series of initiatives aimed at altering the current structure of international finance. Besides pushing to dethrone the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, the organization created a development bank and a Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA). The former would allow countries to bypass the IMF and the World Bank, with their tightfisted austerity fixation, and the latter would give countries emergency access to foreign currency.

The development bank will start off with $50 billion in the kitty, but that will soon double. The BRICS will also be able to draw on $100 billion from the CRA. While by international standards those are modest sums—the IMF has close to $800 billion in its coffers—the BRICS bank and CRA has just five members, while the IMF serves hundreds of countries. Eventually the BRICS observer members may be able to tap into those funds.

Sanctions and Blowback

Last month’s sanctions went straight for Russia’s jugular vein: the development of its massive oil and gas reserves and Moscow’s construction of the South Stream pipeline. When completed, South Stream will supply Europe with 15 percent of its natural gas and generate over $20 billion in annual profits. Indeed, there is suspicion among some Europeans that the real goal of the sanctions is to derail South Stream and replace it with U.S. shale-based American oil and gas.

Sanctions can do enormous damage.

The United Nations estimates that the sanctions against Iraq were responsible for the deaths of some 500,000 Iraqi children from 1991 to 1998.

The sanctions aimed at Iran’s oil and gas industry have cut deeply into government revenues—80 percent of the country’s foreign reserves are generated by hydrocarbons—resulting in widespread inflation, unemployment, and a serious national health crisis. While humanitarian goods are not embargoed, their cost has put medical care beyond the reach of many Iranians.

Associated Press reporter Nasser Karimi wrote last year that some medicine and medical equipment costs have risen 200 percent: “radiology film up 240 percent; helium for MRIs up 667 percent; filters for kidney dialysis up 325 percent.” The cost of chemotherapy has almost tripled.

Iran’s exclusion from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) makes it impossible to transfer funds electronically. That, in turn, makes buying the raw materials to manufacture generic medicines expensive and difficult.

The recent crash of an Iranian passenger plane that killed 39 people was, in part, the result of sanctions. Because Iran cannot purchase spare parts for its Boeing and Airbus planes, it is forced to use alternatives, like the trouble-prone Ukrainian-made A-140 aircraft that went down on Aug. 10. Another A-140 crashed in 2002, killing 46 passengers.

In short, opposing the United States and its allies can be dangerous to one’s health.

There is growing opposition to the widespread use of sanctions, as well as to the ability to isolate countries from international finance by excluding them from things like SWIFT. Coupled with this is a suspicion that the United States uses its currency to support its own economy at the expense of others.

After the 2007–2008 economic meltdown, for example, the U.S. central bank lowered its interest rates and increased its money supply, thus making U.S. exports cheaper and other countries’ imports more expensive. Developing countries have blamed these policies for artificially driving up the value of their currencies and thus damaging their export-driven economies. Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega calls it waging “currency war.”

With the United States now pushing higher interest rates and throttling back on buying foreign bonds, many developing countries fear that international capital will flow back to the United States, leaving countries like Brazil high and dry.

Sidelining Washington

As long as the world’s reserve currency is in dollars, the United States will be able to manipulate global finance and block countries like Iran from any transactions using dollars. But that may be coming to an end. With China set to replace the United States as the world’s largest economy, it is only a matter of time before the renminbi—or some agreed upon international method of exchange—replaces the dollar.

China is already moving toward bypassing New York as the world’s financial center, instead routing its finances through Hong Kong and London. “There can be little doubt from these actions that China is preparing for the demise of the dollar, at least as the world’s reserve currency,” said Alasdair Macleod of GoldMoney, a leading dealer in precious metals.

A number of countries are already dealing in other currencies. Australian mining companies, for example, have recently shifted to using China’s renminbi.

How dumping the dollar will affect the United States is not clear, and predictions of the impact range from minor to catastrophic. What will almost certainly happen is that the United States will lose some of its clout in international finance, making it easier for developing countries to move away from the American economic model of wide-open markets, fiscal austerity, and hostility to any government role in the economy.

Diminishing the role of the dollar may make it harder to apply sanctions as well, particularly in those areas where Washington’s policies are increasingly alienated from much of the world, as in Iran, Cuba, and Russia. The European Union (EU) has sanctioned Russia over Ukraine, but not to the extent that the United States has. The EU’s trade with Russia is a major part of the Europe’s economy, while Russian trade with the United States is minor. And the BRICS—who represent almost a quarter of the world’s GDP and 40 percent of its population—did not join those sanctions.

Addressing the BRICS delegates in Fortaleza, Brazil, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “Together we should think about a system of measures that would help prevent the harassment of countries that do not agree with some foreign policy decision made the by the U.S. and their allies.”

In the long run, the EU may come to regret that it went along with Washington. German industry has taken a big hit—trade with Russia fell 20 percent from January through May—and Russia’s ban on EU agricultural products has badly hurt Poland, Lithuania, Germany, Denmark, Latvia, Finland, and the Netherlands. Indeed, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi warned that the current EU recovery is extremely fragile and that sanctions could push it back into recession.

The Germans are especially worried that Russia will turn to Asia, permanently cutting Berlin out of Moscow’s economic sphere.

Trouble Ahead

There are enormous changes ahead as a result of climate change and population growth. While there has been a reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty—that is, making less than $1.25 a day—a great deal of that reduction has occurred in China. Things have actually gotten worse in parts of Asia and Africa.

By 2050 the world’s population will grow to 9 billion, and 85 percent of that growth will be in developing nations, the very countries that most need help to confront the consequences of that future.

Unless the institutions of international finance are wrested from the control of a few wealthy nations, and unless there are checks on the ability of the United States and its allies to devastate a country’s economy over a disagreement on foreign policy, those figures bode for some serious trouble ahead.

FPIF columnist Conn Hallinan can be read at www.dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and www.middleempireseries.wordpress.com. This article previously published at FPIF.org.

The Big Chill: Tensions in the Arctic

0
0
The Los Angeles-class submarine USS Annapolis rests on the Arctic Ocean after breaking through three feet of ice during Ice Exercise (ICEX) 2009 on March 21, 2009. The U.S. Navy teamed with the University of Washington Applied Physics Laboratory to train in the arctic environment. (Tiffini M. Jones/U.S. Navy via Getty Images)

One hundred and sixty-eight years ago this past July, two British warships—HMS Erebus and HMS Terror—sailed north into Baffin Bay, bound on a mission to navigate the fabled Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. It would be the last that the 19th-century world would see of Sir John Franklin and his 128 crew members.

But the Arctic that swallowed the 1845 Franklin expedition is disappearing, its vast ice sheets thinning, its frozen straits thawing. And once again, ships are headed north, not on voyages of discovery—the northern passages across Canada and Russia are well known today—but to stake a claim in the globe’s last great race for resources and trade routes.

How that contest plays out has much to do with the flawed legacies of World War II, which may go a long way toward determining whether the Arctic will become a theater of cooperation or—in the words of former NATO commander and U.S. Adm. James G. Stavridis—an “icy slope toward a zone of competition, or worse, a zone of conflict.”

Opening the Northern Passage

There is a great deal at stake.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic holds 13 percent of the world’s oil reserves and 30 percent of its natural gas. There are also significant coal and iron ore deposits. As the ice retreats, new fishing zones are opening up, and—most importantly—so are shipping routes that trim thousands of miles off voyages, saving enormous amounts of time and money. Expanding trade will stimulate shipbuilding, the opening of new ports, and economic growth, especially in East Asia.

Traffic in the Northern Sea Route across Russia—formerly known as the Northeast Passage—is still modest but on the uptick. The easiest of the northern routes to traverse, the passage has seen an increase in shipping, from 4 vessels in 2010 to 71 in 2013. And for the first time in history, a liquid natural gas tanker—the Ob River—made the trip in 2012. On a run from Hammerfest, Norway to Tobata, Japan, the ship took only nine days to traverse the passage, cutting almost half the distance off the normal route through the Suez Canal.

Which is not to say that the Northern Sea Passage is a stroll in the garden. The Arctic may be retreating, but it is still a dangerous and stormy place, not far removed from the conditions that killed Franklin and his men. A lack of detailed maps is an ongoing problem, and most ships require the help of expensive icebreakers. But for the first time, specially reinforced tankers are making the run on their own.

Tensions at the Top

Tensions in the region arise from two sources: squabbles among the border states (Norway, Russia, Canada, the United States, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Sweden) over who owns what, and efforts by nonpolar countries (China, India, the European Union, and Japan) that want access. The conflicts range from serious to somewhat silly. In the latter category was the 2007 planting of a small Russian flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole by private explorer Artur Chilingarov, a stunt that even the Moscow government dismissed as theatrics.

But the Russians do lay claim to a vast section of the North Pole based on their interpretation of the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea, which allows countries to claim ownership if an area is part of a country’s continental shelf. Moscow argues that the huge Lomonosov Ridge, which divides the Arctic Ocean into two basins and runs under the Pole, originates in Russia. Canada and Denmark also claim the ridge as well.

Canada organized an expedition this past summer to find out what really happened to Franklin and his two ships. The search was a success—one of the ships was found in Victoria Straits—but the goal was political, not archaeological: Ottawa is using the find to lay claim to the Northwest Passage.

Copenhagen and Ottawa are meanwhile at loggerheads over Hans Island, located between Ellesmere Island and Danish-controlled Greenland. The occupation of the tiny rock by the Canadian military has generated a Free Hans Island campaign in Denmark.

The U.S. government has been trying to stake out terrain as well, though it’s constrained by the fact that Washington has not signed the Law of the Seas Convention. The United States has locked horns with Canada over the Beaufort Sea, and the Pentagon released its first “Arctic Strategy” study last year. The United States maintains 27,000 military personnel in the region, not including regular patrols by nuclear submarines.

The Russians and Canadians have ramped up their military presence in the region as well, and Norway has carried out yearly military exercises—Arctic Cold Response—involving up to 16,000 troops, many of them NATO units.

Outside Looking In

But you don’t have to be next to the ice to want to be a player. China may be a thousand miles from the nearest ice floe, but as the second largest economy in the world, it has no intention of being left out in the cold. This past summer the Chinese icebreaker Snow Dragon made the Northern Sea Passage run, and Beijing has elbowed its way into being a Permanent Observer on the Arctic Council. Formed in 1996, the council consists of the border states, plus the indigenous people that populate the vast frozen area. Japan and South Korea are also observers.

And herein lies the problem.

Tensions are currently high in East and South Asia because of issues deliberately left unresolved by the 1952 Treaty of San Francisco that ended World War II. As Canadian researcher Kimie Hara recently discovered, the United States designed the treaty to have a certain amount of “manageable instability” built into it by leaving certain territorial issues unresolved. The tensions that those issues generate make it easier for the United States to maintain a robust military presence in the region. Thus, China and Japan are involved in a dangerous dispute over the uninhabited islands in the East China Sea—called the Diaoyus by China and the Senkakus by Japan—because the 1952 treaty did not designate which country had sovereignty. If it comes to a military confrontation, the United States is bound by treaty to support Japan.

Similar tensions exist between South Korea and Japan over the Dokdo/Takeshima islands, between Japan and Russia over the Northern Territories/Southern Kuril Islands, and between China, Vietnam, and Taiwan over the Spratly and Paracel islands. Brunei and Malaysa also have claims that overlap with China’s. Any ships traversing the East and South China seas on the way north will find themselves in the middle of several nasty territorial disputes.

In theory, the economic potential of the Arctic routes should pressure the various parties to reach an amicable resolution of their differences, but things are complicated these days.

Russia has indicated it would like to resolve the Northern Territories/Kuril issue, and initial talks appeared to be making progress. But then in July, Tokyo joined Western sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea, and negotiations have gone into the freezer.

Moscow just signed off on a $400 billion oil and gas deal with Beijing and is looking to increase trade with China as a way to ease the impact of Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. At least for the present, China and Russia are allies and trade partners, and both would like to see a diminished role for the United States in Asia. That wish, of course, runs counter to Washington’s growing military footprint in the region—the so-called Asia pivot.

The tensions have even generated some good old-fashioned paranoia. When a Chinese tycoon tried to buy land in northern Norway, one local newspaper claimed it was a plot, calling the entrepreneur “a straw man for the Chinese Communist Party.”

Breaking the Ice

The Arctic may be cold, but the politics surrounding it are pretty hot.

At the same time, the international tools to resolve such disputes currently exist. The first step is a commitment to put international law—such as the Law of the Seas Convention—over national interests.

The Chinese have a good case for sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyus, and Japan has solid grounds for reclaiming most of the Southern Kuril Islands. Korea would likely prevail in the Dokdo/Takeshima dispute, and China would have to back off some of its extravagant claims in the South China Sea.

For all the potential for conflict, there is a solid basis for cooperation in the Arctic. Russia and Norway have divided up the Barents Sea, and Russia, Norway, the United States, and the United Kingdom are cooperating on nuclear waste problems in the Kola Peninsula and Arkhangelsk. There are common environmental issues. The Arctic is a delicate place, easy to damage, slow to heal.

As Aqqaluk Lynge, chair of the indigenous Inuit Circumpolar Council said, “We do not want a return to the Cold War.”

Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Conn Hallinan can be read at www.dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and www.middleempireseries.wordpress.com. This article previously published at fpif.org.

The Greek Earthquake

0
0
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras (L) holds a meeting with European Parliament President Martin Schulz at his office in central Athens on Jan. 29, 2015. (Milos Bicanski/Getty Images)

Almost before the votes were counted in the recent Greek elections, battle lines were being drawn all over Europe.

While Alexis Tsipras, the newly elected prime minister from Greece’s victorious Syriza party, was telling voters that “Greece is leaving behind catastrophic austerity, fear, and autocratic government,” Jens Weidmann, president of the German Bundesbank, was warning the new government not to “make promises it cannot keep and the country cannot afford.”

On Feb. 12, those two points of view will collide when European Union (EU) heads of state gather in Brussels. Whether the storm blowing out of Southern Europe proves an irresistible force or the European Council an immovable object, the continent is not likely to be the same after that meeting.

The Jan. 25 victory of Greece’s left-wing Syriza party was, on one hand, a beacon for indebted countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Ireland.

On the other, it’s a gauntlet for Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, and the “troika”—the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund—that designed and enforced the austerity policies that have inflicted a catastrophic economic and social crisis on tens of millions of Europeans.

The troika’s policies were billed as “bailouts” for countries mired in debt—often as a result of the 2008 financial speculation bubble, over which the indebted countries had little control—and as a way to restart economic growth. In return for the loans, the EU and the troika demanded massive cutbacks in social services, huge layoffs, privatization of public resources, and higher taxes.

However, the “bailouts” didn’t go toward stimulating economies, but rather toward repaying creditors—mostly large European banks. Out of the $266 billion loaned to Greece, 89 percent went to investors. After a full five years under the troika formula, Greece was the most indebted country in Europe. Gross national product dropped 26 percent, unemployment topped 27 percent (and over 50 percent for young people), and one-third of the population lost their health care coverage.

Given a chance to finally vote on the austerity strategy, Greeks overwhelmingly rejected the parties that went along with the troika and elected Syriza.

A Coalition of the Unconventional

Now it gets tricky, starting with the internal situation within Greece.

Because Syriza fell two seats short of controlling the Greek Parliament, it has gone into coalition with the small, right-wing Independent Greeks party. While initially that seems an odd choice—the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) and the Greek Communist Party also have deputies, and Syriza only needed two more seats—Greek politics are, if nothing else, complex.

The Independent Greeks—that split off from the conservative New Democracy Party that ruled Greece prior to the last election—is an odd duck by any measure. It has e a strong racist and xenophobic streak, and its leader, Panos Kammenos, believes that jet contrails are chemicals used to control people’s minds. But the party is staunchly anti-austerity and will not likely waver in the face of the troika or German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

What would seem like a more compatible alliance with PASOK, however, is precluded by that fact that the center-left Socialists supported the austerity package. There’s a new centrist party, To Potami, but it has yet to publish its program, and it’s unclear exactly what it stands for. As for the communists, the party’s leadership said they have no intention of working with the “false hope” of Syriza.

Continental Rumblings

As convoluted as Greek politics are, the main obstacle for Syriza will come from other EU members and the troika.

Finnish Prime Minister Alex Stubb made it clear “that we would say a resounding ‘No’ to forgive loans.” Merkel’s chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, said, “We have pursued a policy which works in many European countries, and we will stick to in the future.” IMF head Christine Lagarde chimed in, “There are rules that must be met in the eurozone,” and that “We cannot make special exceptions for specific countries.”

But Tsipras will, to paraphrase the poet Swinburne, not go entirely naked into Brussels, but “trailing clouds of glory.” Besides the solid support in Greece, a number of other countries and movements will be in the Belgian capital as well.

Syriza is closely aligned with Podemos, the new anti-austerity party that’s now polling ahead of the conservative ruling People’s Party in Spain. “2015 will be the year of change in Spain and Europe,” tweeted Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias in the aftermath of the election. “Let’s go Alexis, let’s go!” Unemployment in Spain is 24 percent, and over 50 percent for young people.

Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein—now the third largest party in the Irish Republic—hailed the vote as opening “up the real prospect of democratic change, not just for the people of Greece, but for citizens right across the EU.” Unemployment in Ireland is 10.7 percent, and tens of thousands of jobless young people have been forced to emigrate.

Germany’s center-left Social Democrats are generally supportive of the troika. But the Green Party hailed the Syriza victory, and Der Linke Party members marched with signs reading, “We start with Greece. We change Europe.”

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi—who has his own issues with the EU’s rigid approach to debt—also hailed the Greek elections, and top aide Sandro Gozi said that Rome was ready to work with Syriza. The jobless rate in Italy is 13.4 percent, but 40 percent among youth.

The French Communist Party hailed the Greek elections as “Good news for the French people,” and Jean-Luc Melenchon of the Left Party called for a left-wing alliance similar to Syriza. French President François Hollande made a careful statement about “growth and stability,” but the Socialist leader is trying to quell a revolt by the left flank of his own party over austerity, and Paris is closer to Rome than it is to Berlin on the debt issue.

While the conservative government of Portugal was largely silent, Marisa Matias—who represents the Left Bloc in Portugal’s delegation to the European Parliament—told a rally, “A victory for Syriza is a victory for all of Europe.”

Time to Deliver

In short, there are a number of currents in the EU. And there’s a growing recognition even among supporters of the troika that the prevailing approach to debt is not sustainable.

One should have no illusions that Syriza will easily sweep the policies of austerity aside, but there is a palpable feeling on the continent that a tide is turning.

It didn’t start with the Greek elections, but with last May’s European Parliament elections, where anti-austerity parties made solid gains. While some right-wing parties that opportunistically donned a populist mantle also increased their vote, voters tended to go left when given a viable choice. For instance, the right did well in Denmark, France, and Britain, but largely because there were no anti-austerity voices on the left in those races. Elsewhere, despite the headlines of the time, the left generally defeated its rightist opponents.

If Syriza is to survive, however, it must deliver. And that will be a tall order given the power of its opponents.

At home, the party will have to take on Greece’s wealthy tax-dodging oligarchs if it hopes to extend democracy and start refilling the coffers drained by the troika’s policies. It will also need to get a short-term cash infusion to meet its immediate obligations, but without giving in to yet more austerity demands by the troika.

For all the talk about Syriza being “extreme”—its name is a Greek acronym for “Coalition of the Radical Left”—its program, as Greek journalist Kia Mistilis points, is “classic ’70s social democracy.” It calls for an enhanced safety net, a debt moratorium, a minimum wage increase, and economic stimulus.

Syriza is pushing for a European conference modeled on the 1953 London Debt Agreement that pulled Germany out of debt after World War II and launched the Wirtschaftswunder—the economic miracle that created modern Germany. The agreement waived more than 50 percent of Germany’s debt, stretched out payments for the remainder over 50 years, and made repayment of loans dependent on the country running a trade surplus.

The centerpiece of Syriza’s Thessaloniki program is its “four pillars of national reconstruction,” which include “confronting the humanitarian crisis,” “restarting the economy and promoting tax justice,” “regaining employment,” and “transforming the political system to deepen democracy.”

Each of the “pillars” is spelled out in detail, including costs, income, and savings. While it’s certainly a major break with the EU’s current model, it’s hardly the October Revolution.

The Specter Haunting Europe

The troika’s austerity model has been quite efficient at smashing trade unions, selling off public resources at fire sale prices, lowering wages, and starving social services. As a statement by the International Union of Food Workers argues, “Austerity is not the product of a deficient grasp of macroeconomics or a failure of ‘social dialogue,’ it is a conscious blueprint for expanding corporate power.”

Under an austerity regime, the elites do quite well, and they are not likely to yield without a fight.

But Syriza is poised to give them one, and “the little party that could” is hardly alone. Important elections are looming in Estonia, Finland, and Spain that will give anti-austerity forces more opportunities to challenge the policies of Merkel and the troika.

The specter haunting Europe may not be the one that Karl Marx envisioned. But it’s putting a scare into the halls of the rich and powerful all the same.

Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Conn Hallinan can be read at www.dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and www.middleempireseries.wordpress.com. This article previously published on FPIF.org.

Turning the European Debt Myth Upside-Down

0
0
Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis (R) shakes hands with International Monetary Fund (IMF) Director Christine Lagarde during an emergency Eurogroup finance ministers meeting at the European Council in Brussels on Feb. 11, 2015. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images)

Myths are dangerous because they rely more on cultural memory and prejudice than facts.

And behind the current crisis between Greece and the European Union (EU) lies a fable that bears little relationship to why Athens and a number of other countries in the 28-member organization find themselves in deep distress.

The tale is a variation of Aesop’s allegory of the industrious ant and the lazy, fun-loving grasshopper. The “northern countries”—especially Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, and Finland—play the role of the ant, and Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland the part of the grasshopper.

The ants are sober and virtuous, while the grasshoppers are spendthrift, corrupt lay-abouts who have spent themselves into trouble and now must pay the piper.

The problem is that this myth bears almost no relationship to the actual roots of the crisis or what the solutions might be. And it perpetuates a fable that the debt is the fault of individual countries rather than a serious crisis at the very heart of the EU.

Whose Debt?

First, a little myth busting.

The European debt crisis goes back to the end of the roaring ’90s, when the banks were flush with money and looking for ways to raise their bottom lines. One major strategy was to pour money into REAL ESTATE, which had the effect of creating bubbles, particularly in Spain and Ireland.

From 1999 to 2007, bank loans for Irish REAL ESTATE jumped 1,730 percent, from 5 million euros to 96.2 million ($5.59 million to $107.52 million) —more than half the country’s GDP. Housing prices increased 500 percent. “It was not the public sector but the private sector that went haywire in Ireland,” concludes Financial Times analyst Martin Wolf.

Spain, which had a budget surplus and a low debt ratio, went through much the same process, and saw an identical jump in housing prices: 500 percent.

In both countries there was corruption, but it wasn’t the penny ante variety of tax evasion or profit skimming. Instead, politicians—eager for a piece of the action and generous “donations”—waved zoning rules, sidestepped environmental regulations, and cut sweetheart tax deals. Hundreds of thousands of housing projects went up, many of them never to be occupied.

Then the American banking crisis hit in 2008, and the bottom fell out. Suddenly, the ants were in trouble.

But not really, because the ants have a trick: they gamble and the grasshoppers pay. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz points out, Europe (like the United States) moved its gambling debts “from the private sector to the public sector—a well-established pattern over the past half-century.”

Fintan O’Toole, author of “Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger,” estimates that to save the Anglo Irish Bank, Irish taxpayers shelled out $30 billion euros, a sum that was the equivalent of the island’s entire tax revenues for 2009. To raise the money, the European Central Bank—which, along with the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission, makes up the “Troika”—strong-armed Ireland into adopting austerity measures that tanked the country’s economy, doubled the unemployment rate, increased consumer taxes, and forced many of the country’s young people to emigrate. Almost half of Ireland’s income tax now goes just to service the interest on its debts.

And poor Portugal. It had a solid economy and a low debt ratio, but currency speculators drove up interest rates on borrowing beyond what the government could afford, and the European Central Bank refused to intervene. The result was that Lisbon was forced to swallow a “bailout” laden with austerity measures that in turn torpedoed its economy.

In Greece’s case, too, while the country has no shortage of wealthy tax evaders, the myth of profligacy falls flat. Germany, Sweden, and many other European countries spend more of their GDP on services than does Athens. Greece spends 44.6 percent of its GDP on its citizens, which comes in just below Germany’s 46 percent and well beneath Sweden’s 55 percent.

And as for lazy: Greeks work 600 hours more a year than Germans.

According to economist Mark Blyth, author of “Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea,” Greek public spending throughout the 2000s was “really on track and quite average in comparison to everyone else’s.” Its so-called flood of public sector jobs consisted of 14,000 over two years. All the talk of the profligate Greek government is “a lot of nonsense” and just “political cover for the fact that what we’ve done is bail out some of the richest people in European society and put the cost on some of the poorest.”

There was a “score” in Greece. However, it had nothing to do with free spending. Rather, it was a scheme dreamed up by Greek politicians, bankers, and the American FINANCE corporation Goldman Sachs.

Greece’s application for EU membership in 1999 was rejected because its budget deficit in relation to its GDP was over 3 percent, the cutoff line for joining. That’s where Goldman Sachs came in. For a fee rumored to be $200 million (some say three times that), the multinational giant essentially cooked the books to make Greece look like it cleared the bar. Then Greece’s political and economic establishment hid the scheme until the 2008 crash shattered the illusion.

The Grasshoppers Strike Back

The Troika puts the blame for the debt crisis on the spendthrift ways of Greece, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal, but it was the CASINO mentality of private investors—backed by the banks—that brought on the current catastrophe.

In short, it was the busy little ants, not the fiddling grasshoppers that brought down the “distressed four.”

American, German, French, and Dutch banks had to know that they were creating an unstable REAL ESTATE bubble—a 500 percent jump in housing prices is the very definition of the beast—but kept right on lending because they were making out like bandits.

When the bubble popped and Europe went into recession, Greece was forced to apply for a bailout from the Troika. In exchange for 172 billion euros, the Greek government instituted an austerity program that saw economic activity decline 25 percent and unemployment rise to 27 percent—and to over 50 percent for young Greeks. The cutbacks slashed pensions, wages, and social services, and drove 44 percent of the population into poverty.

Virtually all of the bailout funds—89 percent—went to the banks that gambled in the 1999 to 2007 REAL ESTATE casino. What the Greeks—as well as the Spaniards, Portuguese, and Irish—got was misery.

There are other EU countries, meanwhile—including Italy and France—that aren’t quite in the same boat as the “distressed four,” but are nonetheless under pressure to bring down their debt ratios.

But what are those debts?

This past summer, the Committee for a Citizen’s Audit on the Public Debt issued a report on France, a country that is currently instituting austerity measures to bring its debt in line with the magic “3-percent” ratio. The Committee—which refers to itself as a “collective”—was launched in January 2012 following a French petition drive that gathered almost 60,000 signatures. Associated with the Party of the European Left, it’s a polyglot organization with an international focus. “Collectives” are busy all over the world lobbying for debt audits.

What the committee concluded was that 60 percent of the French public debt was “illegitimate.”

More than 18 other countries, including Brazil, Portugal, Ecuador, Greece, and Spain, have done the same “audit.” And in each case, they found that increased public spending was not the cause of deficits. From 1978 to 2012, French public spending actually declined by 2 GDP points.

The main culprit in the debt crisis was a fall in revenues resulting from massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. According to Razmig Keucheyan, sociologist and author of “The Left Hemisphere,” this “neoliberal mantra” that was supposed to increase investment and employment did the opposite.

The second major reason, according to the debt audit study, was the increase in interest rates that benefit creditors and speculators. Had interests rates remained stable during the 1990s, debt would be significantly lower.

Keucheyan argues that tax reductions and interest rates are “political decisions,” and that “public deficits do not grow naturally out of the normal course of social life. They are deliberately inflicted on society by the dominant classes to legitimize austerity policies that will allow the transfer of value from the working classes to the wealthy ones.”

The International Labor Organization recently found that wages have, indeed, stalled or declined throughout the EU over the past decade.

The audit movement calls for repudiating debt that results from “the service of private interests” as opposed to the “wellbeing of the people.” In 2008, Ecuador canceled 70 percent of its debt as “illegitimate.”

How this plays out in the current Greek–EU crisis is not clear. The Syriza government is not asking to cancel the debt—though it would certainly like a write-down—but only that it be given time to let the economy grow. The recent four-month deal may give Athens some breathing room, but the ants are still demanding austerity, and tensions are high.

What seems clear is that Germany and its allies are trying to force Syriza into accepting conditions that will undermine its support in Greece and demoralize anti-austerity movements in other countries.

Exploding the Myth

The United States can play a role in this—President Barack Obama has already called for easing the austerity policies—through its domination of the IMF.

By itself, Washington can outvote Germany, the Netherlands, and Finland combined, and could exert pressure on the two other Troika members to compromise. Will it? Hard to say, but the Americans are certainly a lot more nervous about Greece exiting the eurozone than Germany is.

The key to a solution is exploding the myth.

That has already begun. Over the past few weeks, demonstrators in Greece, Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Great Britain, Belgium, and Austria have poured into the streets to support Syriza’s stand against the Troika. “The left has to work together having as its common goal the elimination of predatory capitalism,” said Maite Mola, vice president of the European Left organization and member of the European Parliament. “And the solution should be European.”

In the end, the grasshoppers might just turn Aesop’s fable upside down.

Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Conn Hallinan can be read at www.dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com and www.middleempireseries.wordpress.com. This article was previously published on FPIF.org.


Yemen’s War Is Redrawing the Middle East’s Fault Lines

0
0
Smoke billows following an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition on May 11, in the capital Sanaa. the Saudi war in Yemen stands little chance of success without significant ground forces. (Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images)

Yemen is the poorest country in the Arab world, bereft of resources, fractured by tribal divisions and religious sectarianism, and plagued by civil war.

And yet this small country tucked into the bottom of the Arabian Peninsula is shattering old alliances and spurring new and surprising ones. As Saudi Arabia continues its air assault on Yemen’s Houthi insurgents, supporters, and opponents of the Riyadh monarchy are reconfiguring the political landscape in a way that’s unlikely to vanish once the fighting is over.

The Saudi version of the war is that Shiite Iran is trying to take over Sunni Yemen using proxies—the Houthis—to threaten the kingdom’s southern border and assert control over the strategic Bab-el-Mandeb Strait into the Red Sea.

The Iranians claim they have no control over the Houthis and no designs on the strait. They maintain that the war is an internal matter for the Yeminis to resolve.

The Saudis have constructed what at first glance seems a formidable coalition consisting of the Arab League, the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Turkey, and the United States. Except that the “coalition” isn’t as solid as it looks—in fact, it’s more interesting for whom it doesn’t include than whom it does.

Friends Like These

Egypt and Turkey are the powerhouses in the alliance, but there’s more sound and fury than substance in their support.

Initially, Egypt made noises about sending ground troops—the Saudi army can’t handle the Houthis and their allies—but pressed by Al-Monitor, Cairo’s ambassador to Yemen, Youssef el-Sharkawy, turned opaque: “I am not the one who will decide about a ground intervention in Yemen. This goes back to the estimate of the supreme authority in the country and Egyptian national security.”

Since Saudi Arabia supported the Egyptian military’s coup against the Muslim Brotherhood government and is propping up the regime with torrents of cash, Riyadh may eventually squeeze Cairo to put troops into the Yemen war.

While Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also pledged Ankara’s support for “Saudi Arabia’s intervention” and demanded that “Iran and the terrorist groups” withdraw, Erdogan was careful to say that he “may consider” offering “logistical support based on the evolution of the situation.”

Erdogan wants to punish Iran for its support of the Assad regime in Syria and its military presence in Iraq, where Tehran is aiding the Baghdad government against the ISIS. He is also looking to tap into Saudi money. The Turkish economy is in trouble—its public debt is the highest it’s been in a decade, and borrowing costs are rising worldwide. With an important election coming in June, Erdogan is hoping the Saudis will step in to help out.

Yemen is a dreadfully difficult place to win a war.

But actually getting involved is another matter. The Turks think the Saudis are in a pickle—Yemen is a dreadfully difficult place to win a war, and an air assault without ground troops has zero chance of success.

When the Iranians reacted sharply to Erdogan’s comments, the president backpedalled. Iran is a major trading partner for the Turks, and, with the possibility that international sanctions against Tehran will soon end, Turkey wants in on the gold rush that is certain to follow. During Erdogan’s recent trip to Tehran, the Turkish president and Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif issued a joint statement calling for an end to the war in Yemen, and a “political solution.” It was a far cry from Erdogan’s initial belligerence.

The Arab League supports the war, but only to varying degrees. Iraq opposes the Saudi attacks, and Algeria is keeping its distance by calling for an end to “all foreign intervention.”

Even the normally compliant GCC, representing the oil monarchs of the Gulf, has a defector. Oman abuts Yemen, and its ruler, Sultan Qaboos, is worried the chaos will spread across his borders. And while the United Arab Emirates has flown missions over Yemen, the UAE is also preparing to cash in if sanctions are removed from Tehran. “Iran is on our doorstep, we have to be there,” Marwan Shehadeh, a developer in Dubai told the Financial Times. “It could be a great game changer.”

Pakistan Drifts Away

The most conspicuous absence in the Saudi coalition, however, is Pakistan—a country that’s received billions in aid from Saudi Arabia and whose current prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was sheltered by Riyadh from the wrath of Pakistan’s military in 1999.

When the Saudis initially announced their intention to attack Yemen, they included Pakistan in the reported coalition, an act of hubris that backfired badly. Pakistan’s Parliament demanded a debate on the issue and then voted unanimously to remain neutral. While Islamabad declared its intention to “defend Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty,” no one thinks the Houthis are about to march on Jeddah.

The Yemen war is deeply unpopular in Pakistan, and the Parliament’s actions were widely supported, with one editorial writer calling for rejecting “GCC diktat.” Only the terrorist Lashkar-e-Taiba organization, which planned the 2008 Mumbai massacre in India, supported the Saudis.

Pakistan has indeed relied on Saudi largesse and, in turn, provided security for Riyadh. But the relationship is wearing thin.

First, there’s widespread outrage in Pakistan over Saudi Arabia’s support of extremist Islamist groups, some of which are at war with Pakistan’s government. Last year, the terrorist organization—the Tehrik-i-Taliban—massacred 145 people, including 132 students, in Peshawar. Fighting these groups in North Waziristan has taxed the Pakistani army, which must also pay attention to its southern neighbor, India.

The Saudis, with their support for the rigid Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, are also blamed for growing Sunni–Shiite tensions in Pakistan.

Second, Islamabad is deepening its relationship with China. In mid-April, Chinese President Xi Jinping promised to invest $46 billion to finance Beijing’s new “Silk Road” from western China to the Persian Gulf. Part of this will include a huge expansion of the port at Gwadar in Pakistan’s restive Baluchistan Province, a port that Bruce Riedel said will “rival Dubai or Doha as a regional economic hub.”

Riedel is a South Asia security expert, a senior fellow at the centrist Brookings Institution, and a professor at Johns Hopkins. Dubai is in the United Arab Emirates and Doha in Qatar. Both are members of the GCC.

China is concerned about security in Baluchistan, with its long-running insurgency against Pakistan’s central government, as well as the ongoing resistance by the Turkic-speaking, largely Muslim Uyghur people in western China’s Xinjiang Province.

Uyghurs, who number a little over 10 million, are being marginalized by an influx of Han Chinese, China’s dominant ethnic group.

Wealthy Saudis have helped finance some of these groups, and neither Beijing nor Islamabad is happy about it. Pakistan has pledged to create a 10,000-man “Special Security Division” to protect China’s investments. According to Riedel, the Chinese told the Pakistanis that Beijing would “stand by Pakistan if its ties with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates unravel.”

The US and Israel

The United States has played an important, if somewhat uncomfortable, role in the Yemen War.

It’s feeding Saudi Arabia intelligence and targeting information and refueling Saudi warplanes in midair. It also intercepted an Iranian flotilla headed for Yemen that Washington claimed was carrying arms for the Houthis. Iran denies it, and there’s little hard evidence that Tehran is providing arms to the insurgents.

But while Washington supports the Saudis, it has also urged Riyadh to dial back the air attacks and look for a political solution. The United States is worried that the war-induced anarchy is allowing al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to flourish. The embattled Houthis were the terrorist group’s principal opponents.

The humanitarian crisis in Yemen is growing critical. More than 1,000 people, many of them civilians, have been killed, and the bombing and fighting has generated 300,000 refugees. The Saudi–U.S. naval blockade—and the recent destruction of Yemen’s international airport—has shut down the delivery of food, water, and medical supplies in a country that is largely dependent on imported food.

However, the Obama administration is unlikely to alienate the Saudis, who are already angry with Washington for negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran. Besides aiding the Saudi attacks, the United States has opened the arms spigot to Riyadh.

Meanwhile, the Iran nuclear agreement has led to what has to be one of the oddest alliances in the region: Israel and Saudi Arabia. Riyadh is on the same wavelength as the Netanyahu government when it comes to Iran, and the two are cooperating in trying to torpedo the agreement.

According to investigative journalist Robert Parry, the alliance between Tel Aviv and Riyadh was sealed by a secret $16 billion gift from Riyadh to an Israeli “development” account in Europe, some of which has been used to build illegal settlements in the Occupied Territories.

The Saudis and the Israelis are on the same side in the Syrian civil war as well. And for all Riyadh’s talk about supporting the Palestinians, the only members of the GCC that have given money to help rebuild Gaza after last summer’s Israeli attack are Qatar and Kuwait.

Kingdom of Fear

How this all falls out in the end is hard to predict, except that it is clear that, for all their financial firepower, the Saudis can’t get the major regional players—Israel excepted—on board. And an alliance with Israel—a country that’s more isolated today because of its occupation policies than at any other time in its history—is not likely to be very stable.

Longtime Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk said the Saudis live in “fear” of the Iranians, the Shiite, ISIS, al-Qaeda, U.S. betrayal, Israeli plots, even “themselves, for where else will the revolution start in Sunni Muslim Saudi [Arabia] but among its own royal family?”

That “fear” is driving the war in Yemen. It argues for why the United States should stop feeding the flames and instead join with the European Union and demand an immediate ceasefire, humanitarian aid, and a political solution among the Yemenis themselves.

Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus (fpif.org), where this article was previously published.

Judgment Day for Austerity in Irish Election

0
0
Part of the Fine Gael-Labour coalition’s problem is that it claimed it had no choice but to enforce the savage austerity regime of the European Central Bank, but is trying to take credit for recent improvement in the economy. (AnCatDubh/Wikimedia, CC SA 3.0)

What looked like a smooth path to electoral victory for the Irish government has suddenly turned rocky, and the Fine Gael-Labour coalition is scrambling to keep its majority in the 166-seat Dáil. A series of missteps by Fine Gael’s Taoiseach [prime minister] Enda Kenney, and a sharply critical report of the 2008 Irish “bailout,” has introduced an element of volatility into the Feb. 26 vote that may end in a victory by an interesting, if fragile, coalition of leftists and independents.

The center-right Fine Gael and center-left Labour Party currently hold 99 seats, but few observers see them maintaining their majority. Fine Gael has dropped from 30 percent several months ago to 26 percent today, and Labour is only polling at 9 percent. That will not translate into enough seats to control the Dáil, and putting together a ruling coalition will be tricky, particularly when polls indicate that the independent bloc that has picked up 3 percent and is now the number one vote getter. In general, the independents are left or left-leaning.

Ireland is in the middle of an economic ‘boom,’ but that is a relative term.

The country is in the middle of an economic “boom,” but that is a relative term. Ireland is still reeling from years of European Central Bank (ECB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed austerity that doubled the rate of childhood poverty and saddled working people with onerous taxes, painful rate hikes, and high unemployment. Wages have fallen 15 percent. Since 2008, almost 500,000 Irish—the majority of them young and educated—have emigrated from the country in search of jobs.

The government’s trouble began in December, when torrential rains swamped parts of the country and Kenny’s slow response to the disaster angered rural voters. Flood victims blamed the government for failing to invest in flood control, an infrastructure improvement that fell victim to the austerity regime.

Ireland's Taoiseach Enda Kenny talks to the press outside No. 10 Downing Street in London, England, on Nov. 9, 2015, after meeting British Prime Minister David Cameron. (Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images)

Ireland’s Taoiseach Enda Kenny talks to the press outside No. 10 Downing Street in London, England, on Nov. 9, 2015, after meeting British Prime Minister David Cameron. (Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images)

Then the Fine Gael-Labour coalition was hit with a double whammy: a report by in-house auditors for the European Union and an Irish parliamentary study of the collapse of Irish banks from 2008 to 2010. The EU study found that the ECB had pressured the Irish government not to impose losses on “senior bondholders” and, instead, put the burden on taxpayers. According to the parliamentary study, the ECB threatened to withdraw emergency support for Irish banks—thus crashing the economy—if wealthy bondholders were forced to take losses. All of this came as news to most of the Irish.

The center-right Fianna Fail Party was in power when the great crash came in 2008, a crash that had nothing to do with government spending or debt, but was instead, the result of real estate speculation by banks and financial institutions. Irish land values jumped 800 percent, which should have warned the banks that a bubble was inflating. But the bondholders, speculators, and banks did nothing because they were making enormous amounts of money. When the bubble popped, Irish taxpayers were forced to pick up the $67 billion tab.

Fianna Fail was crushed in the 2011 election, losing two-thirds of their deputies,  and Fine Gael-Labour took over.

Part of the government’s problem is that for the past five years it has been saying that it had no choice but to enforce the savage austerity regime of the ECB, but it is now trying to take credit for the recent improvement of the economy.

The coalition’s mantra has been “stay the course,” good times are ahead. The term the government is using is “fiscal space,” or the estimated amount of money that will be available for investment if Ireland continued its economic recovery. According to Fine Gael that figure would be $12 billion between 2017 and 2021.

First, no one understood “fiscal space,” a term used by the IMF. Even Deputy Prime Minister Joan Burton, a Labour Party leader, called it “a new kind of ‘F’ word” and said voters hadn’t a clue what it meant. Asked to define it, Kenny said the Irish voters wouldn’t understand it, a statement that managed to insult everyone. The government subsequently knocked the figure down to $10 billion, and the opposition said it was more like $8 billion.

And while Fine Gael is taking credit for the economy, critics are pointing out that it wasn’t austerity, but a fall in world oil prices and a decline in the value of the euro that favors Ireland’s export industry, that got the economy going.

Finally Kenny muffed a question about whether Fine Gael might consider a coalition with Fianna Fail because the Labour Party was dropping in the polls and might not hold its 33 seats. This enraged Labour, and Kenny had to mend fences and pledge that Fine Gael would never go into a government with Fianna Fail.

If you had no power, you can claim no credit; if you did have power, you have to account for how unjustly you used it.
— Fintan O'Toole, Irish writer and political commentator

In short, the government is looking inept, and it is taking fire for its shift from “we had no choice in applying the austerity” to “we take all the credit for the current situation.” Fintan O’Toole, the sharp-tongued columnist for the Irish Times and author of “Ship of Fools,” chronicling the financial greed that led to the 2008 meltdown, wrote of the government, “If you had no power, you can claim no credit; if you did have power, you have to account for how unjustly you used it.”

Behind the cover of “It’s not our fault,” the government cut funds for caregivers, threw people off of National Health, cut support for the disabled, support for education, and did nothing about rising homelessness. As O’Toole points out, the improvements in the economy were because of oil prices, low interest rates, and the falling euro, all “entirely outside the control of the Irish government.”

In any case, the country is still deeply in debt and, while the jobless rate is no longer 15 percent, it is still just below 10 percent.

The Dáil is a motley affair, with a host of small parties and a bloc of independents. Currently Fine Gael has 66 seats and Labour 33. The center-right Fianna Fail (that inched up slightly in recent polls) has 21, and the leftist Sinn Fein has 14. The latter dropped three points in the poll from 20 percent to 17 percent. Other left parties include the Social Democrats, the Anti-Austerity Party, and there is a mix of mainly leftists in the independent bloc. The centrist Greens are showing some growth, as is the small rightist Renva Party.

Right now various stripes of the left hold 41 seats, a figure that is likely to go up in the coming elections. To control the Dáil requires 80 seats, but if the independents do well, Sinn Fein holds its own, and Labour jumps ship, an anti-austerity coalition is possible.

In the end it may be a hung parliament, with no bloc of parties able to cobble together an effective government. Kenny may double cross Labour and join with Fianna Fail. But whoever takes over, the policies of austerity have been deeply discredited during this election and anyone who tries to “stay the course” is in for stormy weather.

Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), where this article was originally published.

Irish Shillelagh Austerity

0
0
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams speaks to the media as he arrives at the Lotuh Count in Dundalk, Ireland, on Feb. 27, 2016, the day after the vote took place in a general election in Ireland. Voters punished Ireland's coalition government and boosted smaller parties in the first election since emerging from a bailout program, raising the prospect of weeks of uncertainty in the eurozone country. Sinn Fein were set to increase their seats to become the third largest group in parliament, continuing an upward trend in support for the party led by Gerry Adams. (Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)

Note: A shillelagh is a blackthorn walking stick that the Irish use for whacking things they don’t like.

If there is one thing clear after Ireland’s recent election, it is that people no longer buy the myth that austerity is the path to economic salvation. It is the same message that Greeks, Portuguese, and Spaniards delivered to their elites over the past year: the prophets of tough love, regressive taxes, and massive social services cutbacks should update their resumes and consider a different profession than politics.

Ireland is a small country but the Feb. 26 election drove a big spike into the policies of the “troika”—the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund—that have blitzed economies across the continent and made chronic unemployment and growing economic inequality a continuing source of malaise.

The governing center-right Fine Gael lost 16 seats, and its partner, the center-left Labour Party, was virtually wiped out, dropping from 37 seats it controlled after the 2011 election only to six. The two parties had overseen an economic program that almost doubled child poverty rates, drove some 500,000 young people to emigrate, reduced wages by 15 percent, and sharply raised the jobless rate.

Ireland’s economic difficulties had nothing to do with public spending, but were the fallout from private speculators and banks caught in the great 2008 financial meltdown. Rather than making the speculators pay, the then government of Fianna Fail shifted the bank debts to taxpayers. The troika agreed to a $67 billion bailout of the banks, but only if major bondholders were exempted and the government would institute a draconian austerity program. Most Irish voters were unaware of this “trade off” until just before the election.

The Fine Gael-Labour government has long claimed that it had no choice but to apply the austerity formulas and that, in any case, the policies worked, because the economy was recovering. Voters didn’t buy it. The “recovery” has largely been restricted to Dublin—where homelessness in January reached a record high—and the growth was largely a product of falling oil prices and a decline in the value of the euro, rather than the result of austerity.

As Fintan O’Toole of the Irish Times put it, “What voters said on Friday is in some ways highly complex, but in relation to the dominant narrative that austerity is the path to recovery, the Irish said, ‘We don’t believe you.'” The Fine Gael-Labour campaign slogans of “stability” and “all is well” fell flat. The government, O’Toole said, “imagined that it would ride back to power on a feel-good factor, as if people who had been repeatedly beaten should feel good that the beating has stopped.”

At first glance, the Irish election looked like a shootout between the two center-right parties—Fine Gael and Fianna Fail—that have taken turns governing Ireland for more than eight decades. But this time around Fianna Fail ran from the left—mild left, as it were—promising greater fairness and more public services. Fianna Fail, which was crushed in the 2011 election, bounced back from 21 seats to 44 and is now the second largest party in the Dáil after Fine Gael.

The Dáil has 158 seats.

Another winner was the unabashedly leftist Sinn Fein Party, which picked up nine seats for a total of 23 and is now the third largest force in the Dáil. The People Before Profits/Anti-Austerity Party gained two seats, and the independent bloc picked up a seat. In contrast, the right-wing Renua Party lost its three seats.

Irish elections are complex affairs, employing a proportional representation system that provides a path for small parties to gain a foothold in the Dáil, but makes campaigning complicated.  

What emerged from the Feb. 26 vote was a hung parliament: Fine Gael/Labour did not win enough seats for a majority, but neither did anyone else. There is talk of a “grand coalition” between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail, but both parties would have to renege on pre-election promises that they wouldn’t consider such a move, and it would automatically make Sinn Fein the leader of the opposition. The latter possibility scares both center-right parties.

Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, and Labour refuse to consider a coalition with Sinn Fein because of the Party’s links to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and violence. It is an odd rationale, considering that all three parties have roots in the sometimes quite violent struggle for Irish independence and the bloody 1922–1923 civil war over the Anglo-Irish Treaty that freed the Republic from Great Britain.

In any case, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams made it clear that his party has no interest in being a minority member of any combination that Fine Gael or Fianna Fail put together. And there is no way that Sinn Fein can construct a majority coalition. At most, the left and center-left parties could muster 60 votes, and that would include the Labour Party, a dubious possibility. Indeed, one Labour Party leader, Alan Kelly, has already called for a Fine Gael-Fianna Fail unity government.

It is possible that Fine Gael will try to rule as a minority government, but that would require Fianna Fail to abstain when it comes time to elect a Prime Minister, or Taoiseach. And it would also mean that Fianna Fail might have to choose between swallowing some of Fine Gael’s austerity policies that it ran against in the election, or bringing down the government. Since any minority government will be extremely fragile, another round of elections is a real possibility. During the campaign, Fianna Fail leader Michael Martin said he would not go into a coalition with Fine Gael, and Irish voters in a rematch might punish any party that broke its promises.

Irish voters essentially gave two messages in the last election, one directed at Europe and the other at its own political structure.

About Europe, the voters firmly rejected the increasingly discredited policies of the troika, joining Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese voters in saying “enough.” Austerity as a cure for economic crisis, as O’Toole points out, “was not just an Irish story—it was a European narrative.” That narrative is under siege.

About Ireland, voters turned their own political structure upside down. The two parties that have dominated Ireland since the end of the 1922–1923 civil war can now claim the allegiance of slightly less than 50 percent of the electorate. This election, as Sinn Fein’s Adams argues, represents “a fundamental realignment of Irish politics.”

For more of Conn Hallinan’s essays visit Dispatches From the Edge. Meanwhile, his novels about the ancient Romans can be found at The Middle Empire Series. This article was originally published on Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF).

Socialists Rain on Spain

0
0
A man waves a Republican flag as people gather in the main square of Madrid during a Podemos (We Can) party march in Madrid, Spain, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2015. Tens of thousands of people  possibly more are marching through Madrid’s streets in a powerful show of strength by Spain’s fledgling radical leftist party Podemos (We Can) which hopes to emulate the electoral success of Greece’s Syriza party in elections later this year. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

The effort by Pedro Sanchez, leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, to form a government on March 2 brings to mind the story of the hunter who goes into the forest with one bullet in his rifle. Seeing a deer on his right and a boar on his left, he shoots in the middle.

Sanchez’s search for a viable coalition partner began when the ruling right-wing Popular Party (PP) took a pounding in Spain’s Dec. 20 election, dropping 63 seats and losing its majority. Voters, angered by years of savage austerity that drove poverty and unemployment rates to among the highest in Europe, voted PP Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy out and anti-austerity parties in, although leaving the PP as the largest single party in the parliament.

The only real winner in election was the left-wing Podemos Party, which took 20.6 percent of the vote. The Socialist Party actually lost 20 seats, its worst showing ever, and at 22 percent, barely edged out Podemos. And if the Spanish political system were not rigged to give rural voters more power than urban ones, Podemos would have done much better. The Socialists and the PP are particularly strong in rural areas, while Podemos is strong in the cities.

While a candidate in Madrid needs 128,000 votes to be elected, in rural areas as few as 38,000 votes will get you into the parliament. Podemos and the Socialists both won over five million votes, with the difference only 341,000. But the Socialists took 89 seats to Podemos’s 65.

Spaniards voted for change, but the Socialists, who ran an anti-austerity campaign, chose to form an alliance with the conservative Ciudadanos or Citizens Party, which refuses to have anything to do with Podemos—and the feeling is mutual. Ciudadanos also underperformed at the polls. Ciudadanos was predicted to get as much as 25 percent of the vote and surpass Podemos, but instead came in under 14 percent with only 40 seats.

On the surface the only thing the Socialists and Ciudadanos have in common is their adamant opposition to Catalonia’s push for a referendum on independence. Podemos is also opposed to a Catalan breakaway, but supports the right of the region to vote on the matter.

Catalonia’s drive for independence is certainly controversial and would have a major impact on Spain’s economy, but exactly how the Spanish government thinks it can block a referendum is not clear. And if Catalans did vote for independence, how would Madrid stop it? One doubts that the government would send in the army or that such an intervention would be successful.

Indeed, the fierceness with which the PP, Socialist Party and Ciudadanos oppose the right of Catalans to vote is more likely to drive the province toward independence, rather than discourage it. At this point Catalonia’s voters are split slightly in favor of remaining in Spain, although young voters favor independence, a demographic factor that will loom larger in the future. In provincial elections last September, candidates who supported independence took 47.7 percent of the vote.

The Socialists had a path to form a government, but one that would have required the party to modify its position on a Catalan referendum. If it had done so, it could have formed a government using Podemos, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), the Basque Nationalist Party (EJA-PNV), Canary Islanders, and a mix of independents. Had the Socialists compromised on Catalonia, they might even have picked up the votes from the center-right Democracy and Freedom Party (DIL).

Left parties in the Parliament can put together 162 votes on their own, which is short of the 176 needed to form a government. But it would not have been impossible to pick up 13 more votes from the mix of 14 independents and eight seats controlled by the Catalan DIL.

Choosing Ciudadanos as a partner makes little sense. Podemos immediately dropped cooperation talks with the Socialists and sharply criticized Sanchez for not building a genuine left government. Ciudadanos’ economic policies are not much different than the PP’s, plus it opposes abortion, and is hawkish on immigration. In any case the party did poorly in the national elections. The merger “prevents the possibility of forming a pluralistic government of change,” according to the parliamentary deputy and Podemos spokesperson, Inigo Errejon.

“Negotiate with us,” Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias told Sanchez, “stop obeying the oligarchs.” The Socialist Party leader pleaded with Podemos to vote for him so that the Socialist-Ciudadanos alliance could pass “progressive” legislation like raising the minimum wage and addressing the gender wage gap. The Socialists also presented a plan to tax the wealthy, improve health care, and try to stop the growth of “temporary” worker contracts that have reduced benefits and job security.

But those issues do not really address the underlying humanitarian crisis most Spaniards are experiencing, like poverty and growing homelessness, and the damage austerity has inflicted on education and social services. And Ciudadanos’ views on abortion, immigration, and privatizing public services are repugnant to Podemos.

Spain’s unemployment rate is still over 20 percent—far more among the youth in the country’s south—and many of the jobless will soon run out of government aid. While the economy grew 3.1 percent in 2015 and is projected to grow 2.7 percent in 2016, it is not nearly where it was before the great 2008 financial crisis and the implosion of Spain’s enormous real estate bubble.  On top of which, that growth rate had nothing to do with the austerity policies, but instead was the result declining value of the euro, low interest rates, and cheap oil.

If the Socialists have no success in forming a government, there will be new elections, probably in late June. Polls show the outcome of such a vote would be similar to the last election, but Spanish polls are notoriously inaccurate. In the last election they predicted Ciudadanos would eclipse Podemos. The opposite was the case.

The right-wing Popular Party is likely to do worse, because it is mired in a series of corruption scandals over bid-rigging and illegal commissions. In Valencia, nine out of the 10 PP councilors are considered formal suspects in the case. Indeed, the Party’s reputation for corruption makes it difficult for any other grouping in the parliament to make common cause with it. And even if Ciudadanos dumped its anti-corruption plank and broke its promise never to cooperate with the PP, such a government would still fall short of the 176 votes needed. The PP controls 119 seats.

In part, the Socialists are frightened by the growth of Podemos and the fact that it might replace them as the number two party in the parliament. In part, the Socialists also tend to run from the left and govern from the center, even the center-right. That is a formula that will simply not work anymore in Spain. The domination of the Spanish government by the two major parties since 1977 is a thing of the past, having been replaced by regional and anti-austerity parties like Podemos.

Before the recent election, the two major parties controlled between 75 percent and 85 percent of the voters. In the December election, they fell to just over 50 percent.

A more successful model is being built next door in Portugal, where the Socialists united with two left-wing parties to form a government. All the parties involved had to compromise to make it work, and the alliance might come apart in the long run. But for now it is working, and the government is dismantling the more egregious austerity measures and has put a halt to the privatization of public services like transportation.

Spain’s Socialist Party is riven with factions, some more conservative than others. Sanchez—whose nickname is ” El Guapo” (handsome)—has so far out-maneuvered his party opponents, but this latest debacle will do him little good. He did receive support from the party’s rank and file for the Ciudadanos move, but that led nowhere in the end. Sanchez got 130 votes in the first round and only picked up one more vote in the second round.

Another election will probably not produce a sea change in terms of party support, but voters may punish the Socialists for their unwillingness to compromise. Those votes are unlikely to go to Ciudadanos, and the PP is so mired in corruption that it will struggle to keep its current status as the largest party in the parliament. A recent poll taken after Prime Minster Rajoy passed on trying to form a government found that 71 percent of the voters felt that the PP did not have the best interests of Spain in mind. That refusal may come to haunt the PP in June.

Podemos will undoubtedly pick up some Socialist Party voters, but probably not enough to form a government. That will only happen if Socialists put aside their stubborn opposition to a Catalan referendum and help build what Podemos calls a “genuine” leftist government.

Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), where this article was originally published.

A Terrible Beauty: Remembering Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rebellion

0
0
99th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, April 2015. (Irish Defense Forces/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Standing on the front steps of Dublin’s general post office a century ago, the poet Padraig Pearse announced the Poblacht na hEireann—the “Irish republic.”

He was reading from a proclamation, the ink barely dry, of a provisional Irish government declaring its independence from British rule. It was just after noon on March 24, 1916, the opening scene in a drama that would mix tragedy and triumph, the twin heralds of Irish history.

It’s a hundred years since some 750 men and women threw up barricades and seized key locations in downtown Dublin. They would be joined by maybe 1,000 more. In six days it would be over, the post office in flames, the streets blackened by shell fire, and the rebellion’s leaders on their way to face firing squads against the walls of Kilmainham Jail.

And yet the failure of the Easter Rebellion would eventually become one of the most important events in Irish history—a “failure” that would reverberate worldwide and be mirrored by colonial uprisings almost half a century later.

Colonial Parallels

Anniversaries—particularly centennials—are equal parts myth and memory, and drawing lessons from them is always a tricky business. Yet while 1916 is not 2016, there are parallels, pieces of the story that overlap and dovetail in the Europe of then with the Europe of today.

Europe in 1916 was a world at war. The lamps, as the expression goes, had gone out in August 1914, and the continent was wrapped in barbed wire and steeped in almost inconceivable death and destruction. Shortly after the last Irish rebel was shot, the British launched the battle of the Somme. More than 20,000 would die in the first hour of that battle. By the end, there would be more than a million casualties on both sides.

Europe is still at war, in some ways retracing the footsteps of a colonial world supposedly long gone. Britain is fighting its fourth war in Afghanistan. Italian special forces are stalking Islamists in their former colony Libya. French warplanes are bombing their old stomping grounds in Syria and chasing down Tuaregs in Mali.

And Europe is also at war with itself. Barbed wire is once again being unrolled, not to make killing zones out of the no man’s land between trenches, but to block the floods of refugees generated by European—and American—armies and proxies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, and Syria.

In many ways, the colonial chickens are coming home to roost.

The British and French between them secretly sliced up the Middle East in 1916, using religion and ethnicity to divide and conquer the region. Instability was built in.

Indeed, that was the whole idea: There would never be enough Frenchmen or Englishmen to rule the Levant, but with Shiites, Sunnis, and Christians busily trying to tear out one another’s throats, they wouldn’t notice the well dressed bankers on the sidelines—”tut tutting” the lack of civilized behavior and counting their money.

The Irish of 1916 understood that gambit—after all, they were its first victims.

Ireland was a colony long before the great powers divided up the rest of the world in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the strategies that kept the island poor, backward, and profitable were transplanted elsewhere. Religious divisions kept India largely docile. Tribal and religious divisions made it possible to rule Nigeria. Ethnic conflict short-circuited resistance in Kenya and South Africa. Division by sect worked well in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.

Ireland was the great laboratory of colonialism where the English experimented with ways to keep a grip over the population. Culture, religion, language, and kinship were all grist for the mill. And when all else failed, Ireland was a short sail across the Irish Sea: Kill all the lab rats and start anew.

Discovering Nationalism

The fact that the English had been in Ireland for 747 years by 1916 was relevant.

The Irish call the occupation “the long sorrow,” and it had made them a bit bonkers. Picking a fight in the middle of a war with one of the most powerful empires in human history doesn’t seem like a terribly rational thing to do—and in truth, there were many Irish who agreed it was a doomed endeavor.

The European left denounced the Easter rising, mostly because they couldn’t make much sense of it. What was a disciplined Marxist intellectual and trade union leader like James Connolly doing taking up arms with mystic nationalists like Padraig Pearse and Joseph Mary Plunkett? One of the few radicals to get it was V.I. Lenin, who called criticism of the rebellion “monstrously pedantic.”

What both Connolly and Lenin understood was that the uprising reflected a society profoundly distorted by colonialism. Unlike many other parts of Europe, in Ireland different classes and viewpoints could find common ground precisely because they had one similar experience: No matter what their education, no matter what their resources, in the end they were Irish, and treated in every way as inferior by their overlords.

Most of the European left was suspicious of nationalism in general because it blurred the lines between oppressed and oppressors and undermined their analysis that class was the great fault line. But as the world would discover half a century later, nationalism could also be an ideology that united the many against the few.

In the end, it would create its own problems and raise up its own monsters. But for the vast majority of the colonial world, nationalism was an essential ingredient of national liberation.

The Free Civilizations

The Easter rebellion wasn’t the first anti-colonial uprising. The American threw off the English in 1783; the Greeks drove out the Turks in 1832. India’s great Sepoy rebellion almost succeeded in driving the British out of the sub-continent in 1857. There were others as well.

But there was a special drama to the idea of a revolution in the heart of an empire, and it was that drama more than the act itself that drew the world’s attention. The Times of London blamed the Easter rising for the 1919 unrest in India, where the British army massacred 380 Sikh civilians at Amritsar. How the Irish were responsible for this, the Times never bothered to explain.

But the Irish saw the connection, if somewhat differently. Roger Casement, a leader of the 1916 rebellion who was executed for treason in August of that year, said that the cause of Ireland was also the cause of India, because the Easter rebels were fighting “to join again the free civilizations of the earth.”

As a rising it was a failure, in part because the entire affair was carried out in secret. Probably no more than a dozen or so people knew that it was going to happen. When the Irish Volunteer Force and the Irish Citizens Army marched up to the post office, most of the passersby—including the English ones—thought it was just the “boys” out having a little fun by provoking the authorities again.

But secrets don’t make for successful revolutions. The plotters imagined that their example would fire the whole of Ireland, but by the time most of the Irish had found out about it, it was over.

Compared to other uprisings, it wasn’t even an overly bloody affair. There were about 3,000 casualties and 485 deaths, many of them civilians. Of the combatants, the British lost 151 and the rebels 83—including the 16 executed in the coming weeks. It devastated a square mile of downtown Dublin, and when British troops marched the rebels through the streets after their surrender, crowds spit on the rebels.

But as the firing squads did their work day after day, the sentiment began to shift.

Connolly was so badly wounded he could not stand, so they tied him to a chair and shot him. The authorities also refused to release the executed leaders to their families, burying them in quicklime instead. Some 3,439 men and 79 women were arrested and imprisoned. Almost 2,000 were sent to internment camps, and 98 were given death sentences. Another 100 received long prison sentences.

None of this went done well with the public, and the authorities were forced to call off more executions. Plus, the idea of an “Irish republic” wasn’t going to go away, no matter how many people were shot, hanged or imprisoned.

A Blood Sacrifice

The Easter rising was certainly an awkward affair. Pearse called it a “blood sacrifice,” which sounded uncomfortably close to the Catholic proverb that “The blood of the martyrs is the seat of the church.”

And yet, that is the nature of things like the Easter rising. The year 1916 churned up all of the ideologies, divisions, and prejudices that colonialism had crafted over hundreds of years, making for some very odd bedfellows. Those who dreamed of re-constituting the ancient kingdom of Meath manned barricades with students of Karl Marx. Illiterate tenant farmers took up arms with Countess Markievicz, who counseled women to “leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver.”

Many of those divisions remain.

There will be at least two celebrations of the Easter rising. The establishment parties—Fine Gael, Fianna Fail, and the Labor Party—have organized events leading up to the main commemoration March 27. Sinn Fein, representing the bulk of the Irish left, will have its own celebration. Several small splinter groups will present their own particular story of the Easter rising.

And if you want to be part of it, you can go on the Internet and buy a “genuine” Easter Rebellion T-shirt from “Eire Apparent.” Everything is for sale, even revolution.

In some ways, 1916 was about Ireland and its long, strange history. But 1916 is also about the willingness of human beings to resist, sometimes against almost hopeless odds. There is nothing special or uniquely Irish about that.

In the short run, the Easter rebellion led to the executions of people who might have prevented the 1922–1923 civil war between republicans and nationalists that followed the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1921. The Free State was independent and self-governing, but still part of the empire, while the British had lopped off Northern Ireland to keep as their own. Ireland didn’t become truly independent until 1937.

In the long run, however, the Easter rising made continued British rule in Ireland impossible. In that sense, Pearse was right: The blood sacrifice had worked.

The New Colonialism

Does the centennial mean anything for today’s Europe? It may.

Like the Europe of 1916, the Europe of 2016 is dominated by a few at the expense of the many. The colonialism of empires has been replaced by the colonialism of banks and finance.

The British occupation impoverished the Irish, but they weren’t so very different from today’s Greeks, Spanish, and Portuguese—and yes, Irish—who’ve seen their living standards degraded and their young exported, all to “repay” banks from which they never borrowed anything. Do most Europeans really control their lives today any more than the Irish did in 1916?

How different is today’s “troika”—the European Central Bank, the European Commission, and the International Monetary Fund—from Whitehall in 1916? The latter came uninvited into Ireland; the former dominates the economic and political life of the European Union.

In his poem, “Easter Week 1916,” the poet William Butler Yeats called the rising the birth of “a terrible beauty.” And so it was.

But Pearse’s oration at the graveside of the old Fenian warrior Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa may be more relevant: “I say to the masters of my people, beware. Beware of the thing that is coming. Beware of the risen people who shall take what yea would not give.”

Conn Hallinan is a columnist for Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), where this article was originally published. This commentary is a joint publication of FPIF and TheNation.com.

Viewing all 20 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images