Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
Protestors gather outside the U.S. Supreme Court ahead of the oral arguments in two cases that challenge President Joe Biden's $400 billion student loan forgiveness plan.
What We’re Watching: SCOTUS mulling student debt relief, Blinken visiting Central Asia, Biden's partial TikTok ban, Petro’s post-honeymoon phase
US Supreme Court weighs student loan forgiveness
The US Supreme Court began hearing arguments on Tuesday in a pair of cases that will test the limitations of presidential power and could derail Joe Biden’s plan to forgive $400 billion in student debt. Biden campaigned on debt relief, promising to help families burdened by the pandemic-fueled economic crisis. But now the court will decide whether Biden has the authority to forgive student loans. The White House cites a 2003 law aimed at alleviating hardship suffered by federal student loan recipients following a national emergency, but opponents say debt relief should require congressional approval. Biden hopes to fulfill his campaign promise ahead of next year’s presidential race, and millions of millennials and Gen-Z scholars – many of whom could see up to $20,000 of their federal student loan debt wiped away – will be waiting with bated breath. A decision will drop before the court adjourns in June, but so far, justices in the conservative majority seem critical of Biden’s move.
Blinken’s trip to Central Asia
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday met with foreign ministers from five former Soviet Republics: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. Blinken wants to signal solidarity with Russia’s neighbors and try to ensure that trade routes in these countries are not used by Russia to evade Western sanctions. The 'Stans are happy for the support because they have all felt pressure from Moscow to form closer ties with Russia. In particular, Putin has pressed Kazakhstan’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, without success, to support Russia’s war in Ukraine. Tokayev has a reason for concern: Putin has cited the defense of persecuted ethnic Russians in Ukraine as a motive for his war, and Kazakhstan is home to the second-largest population of ethnic Russians among former Soviet Republics. These states, faced with varying degrees of economic trouble exacerbated by the food and fuel inflation that followed the invasion of Ukraine, could also use some direct US help. During the visit, Blinken announced $25 million of new funding to support economic growth in the region in addition to $25 million the Biden administration had already pledged.
Will China respond to Biden’s government TikTok ban?
China hit back at the US on Tuesday for joining the European Union in banning TikTok from government devices. China’s foreign ministry said that Washington’s move – which gives government employees 30 days to remove the social app from their phones – is an abuse of “state power.” Canada, for its part, followed up with a similar ban. These developments come amid fears that the app, owned by Chinese company ByteDance but based in Singapore, is being used by China’s Communist Party to gather government data. Will Beijing retaliate? Anna Ashton, a China expert at Eurasia Group, thinks any significant reprisal by Beijing for a partial or even a full TikTok ban in the US is unlikely. “It isn’t clear that Beijing will bear any significant loss if TikTok stops operating in the United States, nor is it clear that there would be any real gain in lashing out over such a ban,” she says, noting that there was no clear retaliation from Beijing when India banned TikTok a few years back. What’s more, Ashton says, “TikTok is a private company, and social media companies (much like online sales platforms) are not strategic priorities in China’s technological development plans.” Meanwhile, Congress will proceed on Wednesday to further a bill that would allow the Biden administration to ban TikTok for America’s 100 million users. Being tough on China is a rare bipartisan policy issue. Still, it’s unclear whether the Democratic-controlled Senate will back the GOP-sponsored legislation.
First cabinet reshuffle in Petro’s Colombia
A clash over healthcare and education reforms has provoked the first reshuffle of Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s government since he took power last August. The left-wing leader’s plans to expand the government’s role in both sectors drew a public backlash from several of his more centrist cabinet officials. Among them was Education Minister Alejandro Gaviria, whom Petro promptly sacked along with the ministers of sport and culture. Petro – a notoriously headstrong former guerilla – was elected on a change platform, but at the outset of his term, he brought in centrist allies to quell fears that he’d govern as a wild-eyed revolutionary. Now, as his honeymoon period melts away, is this reshuffle simply a necessary move to preserve policy unity, or is he starting to show his true colors?Protest against the war in Ukraine outside the consulate general of Russia in Almaty.
“How do we live?” Central Asia treads carefully with Ukraine war
The impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has echoed around the world, but spare a thought for the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia. All have close economic and cultural ties to Russia, but they also have reasons to be wary of what Vladimir Putin has done in Ukraine.
For one thing, Western sanctions meant to cripple the Kremlin war machine could cause serious collateral damage in the region. Over the past several decades, millions of people from Central Asia have migrated to Russia in search of work. The most famous one outside of Russia was probably this guy.
Today, the money they send home keeps the region’s smaller economies afloat. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, two of the poorest countries in Asia, rely on remittances for between a quarter and a third of their economies overall. Most of that comes from Russia.
But now, with sanctions projected to shrink the Russian economy by as much as 7% this year, millions of those people could be out of work. The World Bank already says remittances to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan alone will fall by up to 30% this year.
What’s more, says Erica Marat, a regional specialist at the National Defense University, there is a real fear of what could happen if large numbers of migrants or second generation citizens of Russia decide to come home looking for work. The official unemployment rate in Tajikistan, for example, is already at 7%.
“We’ve never seen such a large population returning home,” Marat says, “and everyone sort of hopes it won’t happen because it would destabilize a lot of things. It’s just a huge wild card.”
At the same time, Russia’s invasion sets a scary precedent. The sight of Putin invading a neighboring country under the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians raises some uncomfortable questions for the Central Asian countries, all of which, like Ukraine, have sizable ethnic Russian minorities of their own.
That’s especially true in Kazakhstan, where Russians make up some 30% of the population, and are heavily concentrated in northern regions that border Russia. Prominent Russian officials have in the past questioned whether Kazakhstan is even a real country at all — an echo of Putin’s views on Ukraine.
Within the region, everyone is treading carefully, but some more so than others. No one has openly criticized Putin, of course. And Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan – both of which also depend on Russian troops for security — have kept particularly mum.
But energy-rich Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the region’s top two economies, have sailed a little closer to the wind, declaring support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sending aid to the country directly.
Kazakhstan, for its part, even refused a Russian request to send troops to Ukraine — a striking move for President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, whom Russia saved from a popular uprising just months ago.
In part, says Marat, that could be because Tokayev wants to demonstrate, however carefully, that he is not in fact totally beholden to Moscow. Kazakhstan has always prided itself on having a “multi-vector” foreign policy — carefully balancing its ties with Russia, China, and the West. It may also be a shrewder play to attract Western businesses that are fleeing Russia but wish to stay in the region.
Overall, the Central Asian states are in a kind of limbo — waiting to see how bad the economic fallout in Russia is, and how far Putin really tries to go in Ukraine. Everyone understands that they are now living with a new and more internationally isolated Russia, says Marat, but it’s a Russia that they are still tied to in many ways.
The prevailing mindset right now, she says, is an anxiously pragmatic one: “How do we live?”
What We’re Watching: US pokes China on Taiwan, Yemeni rebels blacklisted, new Kyrgyz president
Embracing Taiwan and provoking China: Over the weekend, the Trump administration eased long-standing restrictions on US diplomatic relations with Taiwan. In essence, just as President Trump is preparing to exit the White House, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has lobbed a diplomatic Molotov cocktail toward Beijing and doubled down on the outgoing president's challenge to US orthodoxy on cross-Strait relations. In 1979, the US cut ties with Taiwan to open a new era in relations with China. Though Washington has continued to support Taiwan's security against possible Chinese attack, including by selling Taipei sophisticated weapons, Pompeo's directive goes much further in establishing new US-Taiwan ties — diplomatic and military — than any US administration in four decades. Although this isn't a complete break with the "One China Policy" and the US-Taiwan relationship remains "unofficial," we're watching now to see how the Chinese government will respond. It has good reason to wait to see what the incoming US president will say and do. That leaves Joe Biden with interesting problems, and Beijing wondering whether a future Republican president will push even harder on this hottest of hot-button issues.
US blacklists Houthis in Yemen: Washington now considers the Iran-backed Houthi rebels of Yemen to be a terrorist group, based largely on their history of cross-border attacks on Saudi infrastructure. The designation makes it illegal, under US law, for banks or companies to do business with the Houthis. The trouble is that in practice the Houthis now control most of Yemen, after overthrowing the previous government and fighting a six-year ongoing conflict against a coalition led by Saudi Arabia. As a result, humanitarian groups are worried that blacklisting the Houthis will make it harder for them to bring food and aid into the country, where a staggering 80 percent of the population depends on external assistance. It's also unclear whether this move will help or hinder extremely tenuous UN-led peace talks that are aiming to end Yemen's devastating civil war.
From prisoner to president: Sadyr Zhaparov, an outspoken populist who spent three years in jail for kidnapping of a regional governor, is the new president of Kyrgyzstan after winning Sunday's election in a landslide. The vote was a rerun of the October presidential election, which resulted in mass street protests that led to the resignation of then-President Sooronbai Jeenbekov, whom the opposition accused of rigging the vote. Amid the post-election unrest Zhaparov became prime minister after his supporters broke him out from prison. Zhaparov's victory is expected to bring long-overdue stability to the mineral-rich country, but some fear that he may use a June constitutional referendum to turn Kyrgyzstan into a more authoritarian state like most of its Central Asian neighbors. Outside players are also watching closely: Russia is delighted that the new leader of this former Soviet republic favors close ties with Moscow, while China worries that Zhaparov may dusts off his old plans to nationalize Chinese-owned gold mines.What We’re Watching: Europe battles COVID second wave, Bolivians vote, Kyrgyz president quits
Europe's disastrous "second wave:" As COVID-19 cases continue to surge across Europe, the European Parliament cancelled plans to reconvene next week in Strasbourg, France, saying that the current uptick means that "traveling is too dangerous." It's the second time since September that in-person meetings at the EU legislative body have been cancelled, as countries including France, Spain, Belgium, and the Czech Republic grapple with serious "second waves" of infection, causing hospitals to fill up again in several European cities. In a drastic move Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron reimposed strict lockdown measures, including overnight curfews in multiple cities — including the Paris region — to stop the spread of the disease. (France reported 22,591 new cases on Wednesday alone.) After the 53 European states recorded the highest-ever weekly number of new COVID cases, the World Health Organization issued a dire warning Thursday saying that death rates from the disease could reach four to five times higher than their April peak in the near term if things don't turn around — and fast.
Bolivia's first election since that last one failed: On Sunday, Bolivians will go to the polls to elect a president for the first time since a disputed election last fall led to mass protests and the ouster of Evo Morales, the country's long-serving leftwing populist president. Since then, power has been split between Congress, which is still controlled by Morales' Movement for Socialism (MAS) party, and interim President Jeanine Áñez, a right-winger. Clashes between riot police and Morales' predominantly lower-income and indigenous supporters have flared in Bolivia, which is deeply polarized along political, socioeconomic, and racial lines. At the moment, the MAS party candidate, Luis Arce, is leading the polls at 42 percent. If he comes in first on Sunday with more than 40 percent of votes and a 10-point margin over his main challenger — center-right former President Carlos Mesa — he would win outright. If not, there would be a second round between the two men. Whoever wins the presidency will face the daunting task of reuniting a bitterly divided country, while also addressing its biggest economic crisis in 40 years.
Kyrgyz power vacuum: Kyrgyz President Sooronbai Jeenbekov resigned on Thursday after more than a week of mass protests over an election that local critics — and international observers — say was tainted due to vote-buying. Kyrgyzstan is clearly no stranger to political unrest — Jeenbekov is the third president ousted by street protests in the last 15 years. But with the president now out of the picture, there's uncertainty over who will step in. The constitution says the interim leader should be the parliament speaker, but there's growing pressure by opposition groups to appoint current Prime Minister Sadyr Japarov, a populist who wants to nationalize Kyrgyzstan's gold mines. Japarov hasn't been on the job long: he took office just days ago after his supporters freed him from prison, where he was serving a 12-year sentence for kidnapping a governor during a protest against a gold mine project. Whatever happens in Bishkek will be closely watched by Russia —which has close ties to all the former Soviet republics in Central Asia — and China, always wary of potential instability on its borders.
What We're Watching: Bibi's trouble, Putin's Kyrgyz problem, Bolsonaro "ends" corruption
Netanyahu on the ropes: Things have gone from bad to worse in recent days for Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longtime prime minister. Protests — the biggest anti-government mobilization in years — swept the nation after Israel recorded the highest number of new daily COVID cases amid its worst-ever recession. But one thing Netanyahu has always had going for him is the steadfast loyalty of his Likud party… until now. As the Israeli PM's approval rating dipped to 26 percent, several Likud members broke with decades of precedent by speaking out against his poor handling of the country's "second wave." (A whopping 49 percent of Israelis say they've lost faith in the government and want new elections.) Meanwhile, Naftali Bennett, a former protégé of Netanyahu who heads the far-right Yemina party, is surging ahead in the polls. In recent weeks it seemed increasingly likely that Netanyahu would steer the country towards new elections (the fourth in less than two years) in order to bypass a parliamentary stalemate on key issues. But with his upcoming corruption trial and cratering support, it seems like the forever leader's options might be running out…
The Kremlin's Kyrgyz concerns: The prime minister has resigned. Opposition parties are squabbling over who is in control. Mass protests are calling for the ouster of the president. The political crisis in Kyrgyzstan, which began with allegations of fraud in last weekend's parliamentary vote, is deepening by the day, and Russian president Vladimir Putin can't be happy about it. Alongside the recent democratic uprising in Belarus and a spiraling war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, this is the third major new crisis to flare up among former Soviet republics that Russia considers to be within its sphere of influence. On Thursday, the Kremlin weighed in saying Kyrgyzstan is "in chaos" and cited its treaty obligations to stabilize the country. We are watching to see if local forces can settle their differences enough to get to an election re-run, or whether Putin — who just two weeks ago pledged his support to the embattled Kyrgyz President — feels he has to act more decisively before things get worse.
No more corruption in Brazil? Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has decided to end the landmark "Operation Car Wash" corruption investigation because, he says, under his watch, government corruption is no longer a problem. "Operation Car Wash" was a sweeping graft probe that landed hundreds of businesspeople and former President "Lula" da Silva in jail for accepting illegal kickbacks from construction projects — and helped Bolsonaro win Brazil's 2017 presidential election after it exposed rampant corruption linked to the then-ruling Workers' Party. It seems Bolsonaro may have forgotten that Sergio Moro, the federal prosecutor who led that probe before he became Bolsonaro's former justice minister, quit months ago after the president fired the national police chief for looking into the alleged criminal activities of several Bolsonaro allies (including two of Bolsonaro's sons). We're keeping an eye on how the president's latest gambit plays out in next month's municipal elections.