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What We’re Watching: Iranian cat cornered on nukes, Italy’s political maneuvers, Asian Americans targeted
Iran says "fine, we'll just get nukes then, are you happy?" Iran has threatened to openly pursue the development of nuclear weapons unless the United States removes the sanctions that it has placed on the Islamic Republic. The threat, which came from Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi, raises the stakes as Tehran and Washington explore ways to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration left in 2018. Since then, the US has piled on more sanctions while Iran has breached limits on uranium enrichment. Now both sides are deadlocked over who should climb down first: Iran says the US has to drop sanctions, while Washington insists Tehran resume compliance with the original deal again before that can happen. Iran has for years officially, if not totally convincingly, denied that its nuclear program is for military use — but "if a cat is cornered," Alavi warned, "it may show a kind of behavior that a free cat would not." We were disappointed to learn that Mr Alavi passed up the opportunity to make this statement while using a cat filter on Zoom.
Italy's two Matteos: As former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi continues talks to form a new Italian coalition government, two powerful politicians named Matteo are jockeying for his attention. The first is former prime minister Matteo Renzi, who is taking credit for forcing the collapse of the previous cabinet headed by Giuseppe Conte and ushering in Draghi's appointment to avoid a fresh election in the middle of the pandemic. The second is Matteo Salvini, a former interior minister under Conte's first coalition cabinet and leader of the far-right Lega party, who is now embracing Draghi to please his wealthy northern voters after years of railing against the same Brussels bureaucracy that Draghi espoused when he led the ECB. At this point it's unclear if either Matteo, or even both, will join Draghi's government. But having a host of forces willing to offer you their support from the get-go is a rare feat in Italy, which traditionally churns through PMs at rapid pace amid a deeply fragmented and dysfunctional political system. Maybe the widely popular "Super Mario" really can save Italy — as he did with the Eurozone — after all.
Hate crimes against Asian Americans: In recent weeks, Asian Americans — particularly the elderly — have been targeted in a wave of violent attacks. The issue gained nationwide attention following the death of an 84-year-old Thai man violently pushed in San Francisco. US celebrities of Asian origin are now leading calls for justice on social media, and activists worry that it's going to get worse this weekend due to the Lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatowns across America. The National Council of Asian Pacific Americans told us that the spike in hate crimes is "the result of the hostile, xenophobic climate created by scapegoating Asian communities for the pandemic," and stressed that seniors are particularly vulnerable and isolated due to COVID mobility restrictions. We're watching to see if the Biden administration follows through on its promise to tackle racist violence against Asian Americans, and whether a successful vaccine rollout contributes to more safety for members of these communities in the US.Aung San Suu Kyi stencil art outside a garage in Bangkok, Thailand.
What We’re Watching: Suu Kyi charged, Draghi back in Italy, Russian jabs for (some) Ukrainians
Myanmar junta charges Suu Kyi: Days after taking over in a coup, the newly minted military rulers in Myanmar have slapped Aung San Suu Kyi, the country's recently deposed de facto leader, with a flurry of frivolous charges. Among other grave offenses, the Nobel laureate is accused of a vague conspiracy to illegally import walkie-talkies for legal cover to justify her long-term arrest pending an eventual trial. Meanwhile, Western countries are calling for her release because they are "concerned" about the erosion of democracy in Myanmar. But virtue-signaling and even threats of new international sanctions from the US and the EU are unlikely to move the generals, who can look to their trusted allies in China and Russia after they both blocked a UN condemnation of the putsch. We're watching to see how long the West will continue to be interested in Suu Kyi and Myanmar, and how the junta balances forging stronger ties with Beijing without becoming China's puppet.
Can "Super Mario" save Italy? Former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi has accepted Italian President Sergio Mattarella's offer to try to form a new coalition government, following outgoing PM Giuseppe Conte's resignation a week ago. Draghi — known to his fans as "Super Mario" for preventing the collapse of the Eurozone in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis of 2009 — has a tough task ahead. The previous cabinet headed by Conte, a political outsider like Draghi, collapsed in mid-January after a junior partner walked away because of a dispute over how to spend EU coronavirus relief money. And Draghi is presumably aware that the last economist to hold the job, Mario Monti in 2011-2013, was dropped by his own supporters in the cabinet after he proposed too much austerity to address the country's debt crisis. Will Draghi's international fame and track record be enough to convince lawmakers to back a new coalition government? Or will they balk, pushing Italy towards a pandemic general election that the far-right Lega party and its allies are favored to win?
Moscow gives jabs to Ukraine separatists: Even as the government of Ukraine struggles to get enough coronavirus vaccines for its 40 million people, separatists in the east of the country have begun an inoculation drive with thousands of the Russian-made Sputnik V jabs. Leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics — which have been supported by Russia since breaking away in 2014 — said that doctors and soldiers would be first in line. Meanwhile in Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has seen his approval rating plunge to below 20 percent (source in Russian), in part because of the slow rollout of vaccines. Ukraine is expecting 8 million doses from the global COVAX facility, and 1.9 million from China's Sinopharm, but his country is — as ever — caught in the middle of things: unable to access EU vaccination schemes because it is not a member, but left out in the cold by Russia, a country with which it is still at war. "We are not a priority," Zelenskiy lamented in a recent interview with Axios.
Xi Jinping's WEF speech on China's global leadership falls flat; Italy PM resigns over stimulus
Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on global politics on this week's World In (More Than) 60 Seconds:
What did you think of Xi Jinping's speech at the virtual World Economic Forum?
Well, his last speech at the real World Economic Forum in Davos, I remember being there four years ago, and given that Trump had just been elected, Xi Jinping gives this big, "We want to stand up and be leaders while the Americans are doing America first." And generally speaking, was probably the most important speech of the week. People liked it. This is a pretty different environment, not so much because Trump has gone, but rather because support and belief in Xi Jinping is pretty low. I will say one thing that was generally well responded to was the call not to enter into a new Cold War. Anybody in the business community generally supports that. There's so much integration and interdependence between the US and the Chinese economies that when Xi Jinping says, "We need to find ways to continue to work together," I mean, this is the pro-globalization audience he's speaking to. They generally agree. But otherwise, the message fell pretty flat. So, the idea that China is going to be globally useful on issues of leadership, especially when it comes to anything that might threaten Beijing's sovereignty, they check global norms at the door. And a few examples of that, when Xi called for support for the rules-based international order, that's in obvious contrast with China's violation of the one country, two systems framework in Hong Kong. And they said, "Well, that's a domestic issue." Well, actually that's not what your agreement was with the British handover. And just because you're more powerful doesn't mean that norm doesn't matter anymore.
The call for abandoning ideological prejudice in the West, that sounds like, "But out of our affairs, we can do whatever we want to Uyghurs when there are a million in concentration and reeducation camps in our country." And we'll shut down journalists for even mentioning that if they try to operate inside China for that. The idea that the strong should not bully the weak sounds like, "Don't blame the United States. US, you better behave yourself." But what about the way the Chinese are treating Australia right now, or a host of other smaller countries that cross China's political, economic or national security interests? I mean, the willingness of Beijing to really make you pay when you engage in behaviors they don't like, is growing very quickly along with their international capacity to muscle flex.
And then on the pandemic, I mean, China is calling for greater global cooperation, but that also means that they need to cooperate in terms of transparency in what happened with coronavirus. And let's remember that there were, from my perspective, two big obscenities in terms of the world, in terms of coronavirus itself and the pandemic. One is the United States leaving the WHO in the middle of the pandemic, just an extraordinary antithesis of what a country should be doing, a country like the United States. But even more foundational was China lying to the World Health Organization about the lack of human-to-human spread for a month when we could have stopped this thing so much earlier, could have contained it, especially given the capacity we now see that China has to engage in contact tracing, quarantine and lockdown. And they chose not to. And that's a serious problem. For all of those reasons, this speech was not an enormously well-received speech by those watching.
Why did the Italian Prime Minister resign?
Well, I mean, largely it is over disagreement on how money should be spent in terms of massive coronavirus stimulus, sort of like the disagreement, the big disagreement, between Democrats and Republicans on the $1.9 trillion right now. I mean, how green, how sustainable should it be? How much money goes to healthcare? How much money goes to new technologies? How much to the workers? Former Prime Minister Renzi basically pulled out of the governing coalition over disagreements on that. And they weren't able to get a solid majority in a vote of confidence. That makes it much more difficult to governance done. And that's why Conte resigned. He is the 29th Prime Minister since World War II. If he doesn't get elected back in, if they can't put a new coalition together, they will have the 30th in Italy. Italy's kind of like the Doritos of G20 governments. Crunch all you want, they'll make more. That's kind of what we're looking at in Italy. The good news is it's not all that exciting.
Where is the international outrage for what's happening in Ethiopia's Tigray region?
And no question, there's a lot of violence. There are obvious human rights breaches across the board. There's danger of famine. There are tens of thousands of refugees. And this at the hands of a Prime Minister of Ethiopia that had won the Nobel Peace Prize, and some saying he should return the prize, just as they were saying that about Aung San Suu Kyi for some of her nationalist calls to help support minority repression in Myanmar after doing so much to stand up to the authoritarian government. A couple of points here. One is that Ethiopia, talking about this level of conflict at a time when everyone's focusing on coronavirus, everything small and local gets lost in the scrum. But also, Prime Minister Abiy in Ethiopia has led the charge in trying to move away from an ethnic-led federal government, where sort of different groups control political power, to one where it's much more of a traditional political party system, or I should say a modern political party system. And the Tigray in Ethiopia were the group that stood to lose the most party, a minority group that wielded effectively a majority of patronage and power. And so, the willingness to blame Abiy for the violence that we're seeing right now, even though he has the Ethiopian army, there's Eritrean military that's involved. It's an ally of his. I mean, clearly he has more power. But some of the initial violence clearly came at the hands of local Tigray as well who refused to recognize the Ethiopian election process and the suspension because of the pandemic, and instead held their own election, became a breakaway province. And so in these situations, there is so much conflicted narrative in terms of history, and it's very hard to lay responsibility and blame firmly at the hands of one side in this conflict. Those two things together get you why we're not paying as much attention as we perhaps should to a country with over 100 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa, and one of the strongest growth trajectories economically in the entire world.
Why did Italy's PM resign in the middle of a crisis?
When Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte resigned Tuesday — plunging the country into chaos as it faces once-in-a-generation public health and economic crises — he became the fourteenth Italian to vacate the prime ministership in three decades. (For contrast, Germany has only had three chancellors since 1982, and France has had five presidents.)
But Conte, who had no previous political experience until he was tapped for the top job in 2018, is not so much throwing in the towel as he is taking a massive gamble that President Sergio Mattarella will again appoint him to head Conte's third coalition government in less than three years.
The recent dysfunction is unique even within the context of instability-prone Italian politics. How did Italy get here, and what might come next?
Giuseppe Conte — a political chameleon. A law professor with no political chops, Conte came to lead a populist coalition of the anti-establishment Five Star party and the right-wing League party in 2018. But when the coalition of convenience collapsed after just 14 months, Conte quickly learned to navigate Italy's choppy politics and stayed on, leading the successive populist-center left government until its recent collapse.
Risk vs return. Conte decided to resign after a small left-wing party led by former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi pulled its support for the government last week, claiming that the prime minister had let technocrats — rather than elected officials — oversee spending of $200 billion in EU relief funds. But in doing so, Conte is now taking a massive gamble.
Politically diminished after losing his majority in the Senate — which will hamstring his ability to pass legislation during the ongoing national emergency — Conte is betting that he can lie low before being reappointed to head Italy's next government.
But the political risks loom large. If a new government isn't formed in the near term, Italy could go to new elections, which would be a boon for the far-right League party currently leading the polls. (Though there's no guarantee that the League party, led by right-wing firebrand Matteo Salvini, could form a stable coalition either.)
Alternatively, Italy's president could decide that a third Conte-led government is simply untenable, and tap another technocrat to lead a mix of ideologically-opposed parties that's unlikely to remain in place for the long haul. This would only breed further instability as the government is already struggling to roll out a COVID vaccine (Rome has threatened to sue Pfizer over drug shortages), as well as to manage the doling out of billions of dollars in pandemic aid from Brussels.
Indeed, the stakes couldn't be higher for pandemic-battered Italy, which has recorded over 85,000 deaths from COVID-19, one of the highest per capita death rates in the world. After a series of lockdowns, its tourism-dependent economy has been pummeled, with GDP shrinking by around 10 percent in 2020.
When Italy emerged as a COVID epicenter last spring, Prime Minister Conte became a steady presence, addressing the nation frequently, and leading the country's top-down pandemic response. Conte is now betting that the trust he has built with the Italian people (he currently has a solid approval rating of 56 percent) will offset any perceptions of his role in spurring a new chapter of political chaos amid the national emergency.
In Italy's notoriously complicated political system, this sort of upheaval is par for the course. But pandemic politics don't reflect business as usual — and if Conte's gamble backfires, it could dash his hopes of making politics his full-time gig.
What We’re Watching: Tunisian protests, Navalny vs Putin, Italian government survives
Tunisians demand change: Marking ten years since Tunisians sparked the Arab Spring by taking to the streets to demand the ouster of longtime autocrat Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, a fresh generation is now protesting the country's dire economic and social crisis. Security forces responded with a heavy hand, using tear gas and water cannons to disperse protesters who hurled gas bombs, and over 600 demonstrators were arrested. As Tunisia descends further into economic ruin, with youth unemployment hovering at 30 percent, protesters demand a new election (they have not been placated by Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi's recent attempt at a government reshuffle.) Demonstrators say that the political class has failed to follow through on pledges of reform made during the 2011 revolution: since then, living standards for most Tunisians have plummeted while poverty has soared. While Tunisia is the only state involved in the Arab Spring that became a democracy, the political elite has largely failed to root out corruption and inequality. Last year, the government responded to similar protests by creating more public sector jobs, but options are limited now due to pandemic-fueled economic stagnation.
Navalny back in Russia: Top Russian dissident Alexey Navalny was arrested on Monday upon his return to Moscow from Germany, where he was treated after being poisoned in Russia last year. What happens now? The Kremlin must tread carefully. On the one hand, Navalny — an outspoken nationalist and anti-corruption crusader — is a perennial thorn in Putin's side, and enjoys some real support in Russia's big cities. On the other hand, keeping the fearless Navalny locked up could backfire, fueling a fresh protest movement in the run-up to this fall's legislative vote — something the Kremlin is desperate to avoid. The last time Putin — who unlike with other opposition figures, famously never refers to Navalny by his name — headed into Duma (parliament) elections with approval ratings as low as they are now was in 2011, when Navalny himself led hundreds of thousands of protesters angry about election fraud and Putin's tight grip on power. (Also, Putin certainly won't love Navalny's revelations about the president's palatial private strip club). An early test of Navalny's ability to rally crowds will come on January 23, when he called on Russians to stage mass demonstrations "for your future." Before that, get ready for likely fresh sanctions on Russia from the EU and the US.
Conte hangs on in Italy: Italy's fragile coalition government narrowly survived a confidence vote in the Senate on Tuesday, after several senators — including independents and those from the junior party that forced the cabinet's collapse last week— decided to abstain. This will allow political outsider Giuseppe Conte to remain as prime minister, but weakens his power at the worst possible time: Italy is in the midst of a national emergency due to a severe economic crisis and an upsurge in COVID cases after emerging as one of the world's hardest-hit countries back in the spring. The current political crisis was spurred by opposition to the PM's refusal to let Italy take on even more debt to get the economy back on track, and his insistence that technocrats — not politicians — decide how EU pandemic relief money is spent. In the coming weeks, we'll be watching to see if Conte succeeds in lobbying moderate parties to agree to his spending plans, or finally steps down if his minority government can't get key legislation passed. The far-right Lega party, currently leading in election polls, is surely hoping for the latter.What We’re Watching: Navalny’s return to Russia, Italian PM in the hot seat, COVID probe begins
Kremlin critic heads home: Leading Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny plans to return to Russia on Sunday from Germany, where he has been recovering from an August 2020 assassination attempt in Russia widely attributed to agents of the Kremlin. The stakes are high: for one thing, the moment he lands, Navalny faces up to 3.5 years in prison for failing to comply with the terms of a suspended prison sentence he received in a 2014 graft trial. But the Kremlin will have to tread carefully. Navalny, a charismatic, nationalistic anti-corruption crusader with a sizable following among Russia's urban elite, has long been a thorn in President Vladimir Putin's side. But jailing him could turn him into a political martyr (as opposed to a literal martyr, which seemed to be the plan back in August) right as Russia heads towards legislative elections this winter. Those elections could prove dicey for the Kremlin: the Russian leader's popularity is near historic lows and the country is reeling from coronavirus. Putin also remembers that it was the rigged elections of 2011 that provoked the largest street protests in Russia's post-Soviet history. Who led them? Alexey Navalny.
Italy's PM in a tough spot: Following the collapse Wednesday of Italy's government, all eyes are now on Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte's next move. Conte can try to cobble together another coalition by giving more power to the center-left Viva Italia party, but that would be perceived as caving to the demands of a junior coalition partner that caused the current crisis because it wants to dole out more on pandemic economic relief -- a move Conte rebuffed because he says it will plunge Italy further into massive. Conte could also seek a confidence vote in parliament and hope the far-left Five Star platform whips up more votes in favor than against. Or he could give up and ask to call an election, with the far-right Lega party ahead in national polls and poised to win a majority with its allies. The government collapse comes at a perilous moment for Italy, which is battling a surge in COVID cases after being one of the hardest-hit countries in the world back in the spring. With the economy in dire straits, more political instability is the last thing the country needs, but Conte — a technocrat appointed to his position as a compromise between the populist right and left, with no political base of his own — may be powerless to stop it.
WHO in China: After months of delays and refusal, Chinese officials have granted a World Health Organization team of at least 13 experts investigating the origin of the coronavirus access to Wuhan, the Chinese city where the pandemic began over a year ago, as China suffers its worst resurgence of COVID since last summer. It's been a rocky road to get to this point — Beijing initially held up the mission, and is still giving the WHO experts a hard time on the ground as President Xi Jinping tries to control the probe and prevent any finding that may implicate his government in a serious coverup and compromise his country's global reputation. (This also comes as sub-par efficacy rates of a Chinese vaccines threaten Beijing's vaccine diplomacy strategy to win back the trust of some developing nations). But time is on Xi's side: the investigation into the origins of COVID-19 will take months if not years. The pace and accuracy of the probe's findings also depend on how much access the WHO is given to closely guarded sites and data.