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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?”
Tajikistan's Russian-allied President looks set for 5th term
DUSHANBE (Tajikistan) • Tajikistan's Russian-allied President Emomali Rakhmon looked sure to secure a fifth term in yesterday's election, as his four competitors' campaigns admitted they did not expect many votes.