World update: April 2 2020
Stories from China, Kenya, Uruguay, and more
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It’s been one year since I moved to Substack and started Foreign Exchanges. Well, technically it was one year yesterday, but yesterday’s update was for subscribers only so I figured I’d wait to say something until today, and also I may have forgotten about the anniversary by the time I’d finished last night’s update. Regardless, I want to thank everybody who’s been a part of FX’s first year, from our guest writers to podcast guests to the people who have been kind enough to spread the word about this newsletter and/or have me on their platforms to spread the word myself. Most of all I want to thank you, the readers/listeners/etc. for being here, and offer a special thanks to those of you who have subscribed because you’re quite literally the only way I’m able to do this. Thanks and on to year 2!
THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
April 1, 1939: The Spanish Civil War comes to its official end when Nationalist leader Francisco Franco announces the surrender of the remaining Republican forces. The March 28 fall of Madrid to Franco’s besieging army had rendered the war pretty much over at that time, so this announcements was a bit anti-climactic. Franco went on to rule Spain, quite brutally as it happens (check out the “White Terror” if you’re unfamiliar, it’s got a very appropriate name), until his death in 1975.
April 1, 1941: An anti-British military coup in Baghdad ousts King Faisal II’s regent, Abd al-Ilah, as well as his prime minister, Nouri Al-Saeed, and restores a pro-Axis (not pro-Nazi, necessarily, but definitely friendly with the Germans) former prime minister, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, to power. Concerned that their empire was about to be severed by a pro-German government in the Middle East, Britain moved in to reverse the coup. The subsequent Anglo-Iraqi War lasted about a month and ended with Gaylani fleeing the country and Abd al-Ilah back in charge in Baghdad.
April 1, 1976: Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne co-found Apple, Inc. If you’ve never heard of Wayne that’s because less than two weeks later he sold his 10 percent stake in the company to the other two for what wound up being $2300. Apple is now worth about $1.3 trillion, so I think we can all agree he made the right decision.
April 2, 1982: The Argentine military invades and occupies the Falkland Islands, a British colony that Argentina had long claimed (and still does claim) as its territory. The ensuing 10 week undeclared “Falklands War” ended in mid-June with a decisive British victory. The victory bolstered the flagging political fortunes of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, so that’s…nice, I guess. On the flip side, the defeat was so embarrassing for Argentine President Leopoldo Galtieri was ousted days after the war ended and the National Reorganization Process, the military junta that had ruled Argentina since 1976, lost popular support and was forced to restore civilian governance in 1983.
COVID-19
Worldometer’s COVID-19 count for April 2 put us at 1,014,943 confirmed cases worldwide (+79,747 since yesterday), 749,759 of which are active, with 53,166 reported fatalities (+5,974). At Foreign Policy in Focus, John Feffer says the world needs a “coronavirus truce”:
We are now in the early stages of another world war, call it World War III, this time against the common enemy of pandemic. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres last week called on all countries to observe a global ceasefire to focus all resources on beating back the coronavirus. “The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war,” he concluded.
Meanwhile, eight countries that have been suffering under economic sanctions — China, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela — have appealed for an end to the economic sanctions that are hampering their efforts to battle the disease.
And a number of civil organizations are pressing for the release of political prisoners, jailed journalists, and as many nonviolent offenders as possible to reduce the crowding that makes prisons a potential killing ground for the coronavirus.
Not surprisingly, there has been pushback to the idea of even temporarily ending these three expressions of state power: military conflict, war by economic means, and mass incarceration. But this pandemic, for all of its ongoing horrors, can serve as a jolt of smelling salts. International cooperation needs to take priority right now, and countries must stop their wars against one another and against their own populations.
Bombs, sanctions, and prisons are not effective tools in the fight against the coronavirus. Indeed, by aiding and abetting the enemy, they will only make the war worse.
MIDDLE EAST
TURKEY
18,135 confirmed cases of COVID-19 (+2456 since yesterday), 356 reported fatalities (+79)
In case it’s not obvious, I am no expert in big time politics. But it seems to me that if you were the president of a country with a large prison population, in a situation where you have a dangerous pathogen spreading around the world to which prisons are particularly susceptible, it would make sense to reduce that prison population as much as possible as quickly as possible. Allowing that fundamental criminal justice reform is unlikely in the best of circumstances and impossible to imagine right now, it seems like the most constructive thing to do immediately would be to release non-violent offenders, people who aren’t likely to hurt anybody else upon their release.
It makes even more sense to release political prisoners, if you have them, because usually they haven’t done anything more harmful than, say, comparing your photo to a screen grab of Gollum from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. They shouldn’t even be in prison anyway, if we’re being totally honest with one another. It’s a no brainer. Which is why it’s odd that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan isn’t doing that, even as he’s releasing 45,000 prisoners and moving another 45,000 to house arrest. Or I guess it’s not odd so much as it’s illuminating. If it’s true, as people mistakenly claim Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote, that “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons,” then I think it’s also fair to say you can judge a leader based on what he considers to be a serious crime.
IRAQ
772 confirmed cases (+44), 54 reported fatalities (+2)
Reuters is reporting, via anonymous sources, that the Iraqi government is covering up “thousands” of cases of COVID-19. Three doctors involved in Iraq’s testing program in Baghdad reportedly gave figures between 3000 and 9000 for the total number of cases, I assume for the whole country though that’s unclear from the Reuters piece. Commensurate with the higher infection rate the sources also say the death toll has been a bit higher than acknowledged by the Iraqi government. They cited a desire to avoid a panic—which could actually make it harder to contain the virus—as the reason for suppressing the actual figures.
Iraqi Prime Minister-designate Adnan al-Zurfi is still struggling to gain support among Iraqi Shia parties, mostly because he’s pro-US and therefore has no backing from Iran. No Iraqi PM candidate can succeed without at least the grudging acceptance of both outside powers. Zurfi has tried saying nice things about Iraq’s pro-Iranian militias and has called for the US to ease sanctions on Iran amid the pandemic, but that doesn’t seem to have budged the Iranians.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
6857 confirmed cases (+765), 36 reported fatalities (+10) in Israel, 161 confirmed cases (+27), 1 reported fatality (unchanged) in Palestine
The Israeli military is evacuating some 4500 elderly people from the predominantly ultra-Orthodox town of Bnai Brak, outside of Tel Aviv. Israel’s ultra-Orthodox communities have been hard hit by the virus due to a combination of high population density and a resistance to containment measures, and by some estimates almost 40 percent of Bnai Brak’s population has been infected.
SAUDI ARABIA
1885 confirmed cases (+165), 25 reported fatalities (+1)
Donald Trump says the Saudis and Russians may be close to a deal to cut global oil production:
Donald and his good friend, who when he’s not mucking around with global oil prices likes to pass the time by ordering the dismemberment of journalists (White House photo via Flickr)
Trump wrote in a follow up tweet that the cut could be as high as 15 million barrels per day. Is this actually true? Probably not. The Russian government threw cold water on it later in the day, and really if Moscow is trying to price US shale producers out of the market it would make no sense to quit now. Nonetheless, Trump’s mere tweet was enough to spike oil prices into the $30s per barrel, up from the low $20s, even though—and here’s my favorite part—a 15 million bpd cut still wouldn’t be enough to match the decline in demand caused by the pandemic.
IRAN
50,468 confirmed cases (+2875), 3160 reported fatalities (+124)
Iranian hackers have allegedly been targeting the personal email accounts of World Health Organization staffers with phishing attacks. The Iranian government is denying the claim. There’s no indication the attacks have been successful and it’s unclear what the alleged attackers might have been after, though presumably it has something to do with the coronavirus.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
273 confirmed cases (+36), 6 reported fatalities (+2)
The Afghan government and the Taliban began their staged prisoner swap on Thursday, with Kabul freeing 100 Taliban prisoners and the Taliban releasing 20 captive Afghan security forces. If all goes well they will continue to engage in these limited swaps (they might get larger over time) until they arrive at the 6000 prisoners (5000 held by the government, 1000 by the Taliban) whose release was part of the recent US-Taliban deal and is a precursor to direct intra-Afghan talks.
PAKISTAN
2421 confirmed cases (+303), 34 reported fatalities (+7)
A Pakistani court on Thursday overturned the convictions of four men allegedly involved in the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The main defendant, Omar Saeed Sheikh, had been sentenced to death for allegedly masterminding Pearl’s kidnapping and killing, but subsequent investigations have shown that it was actually Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man accused of planning the 9/11 attacks, who led the Pearl kidnapping. Mohammed is in Guantanamo Bay, and while he hasn’t been charged specifically in the Pearl murder it seems unlikely he will ever be released. Pakistani authorities say they plan to appeal the court’s decision to the country’s Supreme Court.
INDIA
2543 confirmed cases (+545), 72 reported fatalities (+14)
Indian and Pakistani officials have identified a Muslim missionary group called Tablighi Jamaat as having played a major role in spreading COVID-19 in both countries. More than 400 cases in India have been connected to a pilgrimage event the group held in Delhi in early March, and there may be more since the group doesn’t do very much by way of keeping records. Another Tablighi Jamaat pilgrimage in Kuala Lumpur in February has been linked to hundreds of coronavirus cases across Southeast Asia as well.
CHINA
81,589 confirmed cases (+35), 3318 reported fatalities (+6) on the mainland; 802 confirmed cases (+36), 4 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Hong Kong
One of the wild things about watching a presidential administration that doesn’t really know what it’s doing is the abrupt mood swings:
For weeks, President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo forcefully used the controversial terms “Chinese virus” and “Wuhan virus” in public and said they intended to hold Beijing responsible for the crippling coronavirus pandemic.
Now, they have avoided using those phrases, and the administration is welcoming planeloads of medical equipment from China. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump was effusive in describing his relationship with President Xi Jinping of China, whom he spoke with last week.
“The relationship with China is a good one, and my relationship with him is really good,” Mr. Trump told reporters. The president added that he “will always assume the best” of China’s leaders. Asked whether American intelligence agencies have assessed that China falsified case and fatality numbers over the virus, Mr. Trump said, “I’m not an accountant from China.”
This is of course what the administration should have been doing all along, because global crises require global solutions and those only come through cooperation. But as usual, even when Trump eventually lands on the right policy he does so through a process that forces everybody to consider their own mortality for no discernible reason. This is what comes from having a president who doesn’t really know anything and surrounds himself with whoever is most effective at kissing his ass, adjusted daily. There’s no ideological coherence to anything. That’s fine if you have a president who’s able to consider multiple points of view and still adopt his own coherent set of policies, but Trump in manifestly incapable of doing that.
AFRICA
GUINEA
52 confirmed cases (+22), no reported fatalities
Although the results have been questioned by international observers, a referendum last month in which Guinean voters adopted several changes to their country’s constitution resets President Alpha Condé’s term limit counter. So even though he’s actually in his second and legally final term, he could now serve up to two more six year stints. Condé has yet to say whether or not he plans to run, but he sure sounds like he will, and opposition leaders are warning of a shift from Guinea’s fragile democracy toward something more authoritarian:
Four decades in opposition gave Condé time to nurture a grandiose vision for his legacy. “My mission is to make Guinea one of the most developed countries in Africa. I want the person who comes after me to no longer have to resolve the problems of electricity, nor the problem of water, nor the problem of roads,” he says.
“The countries that develop the fastest – how long have their leaders been in power? I’m not naming names, look at the map.”
The reference is to Rwanda’s leader, Paul Kagame, who was re-elected to a third term in office in 2017 with 99% of the vote.
For all Condé’s ebullience, however, opposition parties and civil society groups are worried by changes granting the president more power and more opportunities to dissolve the national assembly. “They are breaking down the checks and balances on presidential power,” says Alpha Dramé, a lawyer representing the main opposition groups at the Ecowas court of justice.
KENYA
110 confirmed cases (+29), 3 reported fatalities (+2)
Concern is growing that some of the responses African governments have had to the pandemic are actually going to make the situation worse:
About 23,000 people fled South Africa on the eve of its lockdown, rushing the border into neighboring Mozambique on March 27. In Kenya, among a number of other countries on the continent, security forces have beaten, whipped, humiliated, and even killed civilians, including a 13-year-old boy, in an attempt to enforce curfews, bans on movement, and lockdowns. Similar pictures have emerged from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, with armed, uniformed men lining up people and shoving them onto the beds of police pickup trucks or encircling groups of people sitting on the ground.
“When it comes to the arrests of those ‘violating’ regulations not deliberately, we see them packed like sardines in police trucks. This is sure [a] breeding ground for the spreading of the virus,” said Jestina Mukoko, the national director for the Zimbabwe Peace Project. “The police are also being heavy-handed with citizens—we have seen some citizens being assaulted. We are also worried that the police are at risk of catching the virus because we do not see them in protective clothing. We wish the police would issue warnings and avoid having too many people in small spaces.”
Many critics say the lockdowns and nighttime curfews recently put in place across Africa the past weeks have prompted unrest and disarray that may only help spread the disease, including mass cross-border migration, state-sponsored violence, and economic strife. Across Africa, borders and airspaces have mostly closed, and even though they are treated as an exception, humanitarian agencies are concerned they might not be able to move relief goods in time, and food cuts could also cause people to move.
Those Mozambican workers fled South Africa over concerns that the lockdown would interfere with their resident status. In Kenya, meanwhile, the violent police crackdown has left many stranded in packed urban centers and hasn’t done much to inspire people to cooperate with government containment measures.
EUROPE
RUSSIA
3548 confirmed cases (+771), 30 reported fatalities (+6)
The United States is apparently paying Russia for the medical supplies it sent to New York City yesterday. So it’s not aid, and we can all take a deep breath and go back to feeling superior to the Russians for some reason. Thank goodness. Sure, the Russian government says the US only paid half price and the rest was charity, but that’s just more of the same kind of depravity that motivated them to send the supplies in the first place, or something. I’m not sure what the narrative around this is supposed to be yet so please bear with me.
UKRAINE
897 confirmed cases (+103), 22 reported fatalities (+2)
The International Red Cross has begun delivering medical supplies to war-torn eastern Ukraine to help that region battle the coronavirus under an agreement it reached with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy earlier this week. The supplies should also help hospitals that have been overwhelmed trying to treat injuries caused by the mostly frozen conflict between Donbas separatists and the Ukrainian military.
REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA
384 confirmed cases (+30), 11 reported fatalities (unchanged)
North Macedonia became the 30th member of NATO on Thursday in what was probably the most subdued entrance ceremony in the organization’s history. Now they’re eligible to get yelled at by Donald Trump for not paying what he thinks are their membership dues, just like the rest of the alliance. Enjoy!
ITALY
115,242 confirmed cases (+4668), 13,915 reported fatalities (+760)
In a letter on Thursday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen issued a rare and shocking apology to the Italian government over the EU’s refusal to do anything to help mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic, right before reiterating that the EU isn’t going to do anything to help mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic. Well, that’s not entirely fair. But while she decried a lack of European solidarity in the continent’s early COVID-19 response, von der Leyen very pointedly said nothing about an Italian request (backed by several countries including France and Spain) for the issuance of new European bonds to help countries like Italy get on their feet. Von der Leyen’s home country of Germany opposes such a measure, along with Austria and the Netherlands. She did mention an EU allocation of 100 billion euros to help workers who have lost salary in the countries hardest hit by the virus, which is not only woefully inadequate but will insultingly be distributed as loans, not aid. Meaning Italy will at some point have German bankers knocking on the door demanding repayment. You know, solidarity.
SPAIN
112,065 confirmed cases (+7,947), 10,348 reported fatalities (+961)
In both Italy and Spain there are once again some tentative reasons for optimism in the COVID-19 numbers, as daily figures for both new coronavirus infections and deaths look like they might be stabilizing. It’s much too soon to say those outbreaks have peaked but at least it’s some reason for hope. Things have gotten bad enough in Spain that the separatist Catalan government has reversed its stance of a mere month ago and is asking the Spanish military to help with its COVID-19 fight. The Spanish military has been contributing medical personnel and facilities to the cause in other parts of the country, but until this week Catalonia had been insisting it didn’t need the assistance.
AMERICAS
URUGUAY
350 confirmed cases (unchanged), 4 reported fatalities (+2)
At World Politics Review, Curry College’s Grant Burrier argues that Uruguay’s dramatic and (he seems to think) politically durable shift to renewable energy should be a “model for the world”:
This small country of 3.5 million people has also burnished its environmental credentials, conserving native forests, protecting biodiverse areas and striving to be carbon neutral by 2030. Few countries have demonstrated a comparable commitment to reducing emissions. Beyond lowering emissions of methane, a harmful greenhouse gas, from livestock and increasing forest coverage to promote greater carbon sequestration, Uruguay has radically transformed its energy grid.
Since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, hailed as the first major international treaty on climate change, Uruguay’s aggregate renewable energy supply has grown by 93 percent. According to the International Energy Agency, only Denmark, Lithuania and Luxembourg are more reliant on wind and solar power. Between 2008 and 2017, Uruguay went from having virtually no wind power to nearly 4,000 megawatts of installed capacity. Emissions have fallen roughly 20 percent from their 2012 peak.
Uruguay’s successful shift to renewables was spearheaded by the leftist Broad Front coalition—the Frente Amplio, or FA—which controlled the national government for 15 years until last month. A new center-right president, Luis Lacalle Pou of the National Party, was sworn in on March 1 after narrowly winning election in November. But Lacalle Pou’s government is unlikely to drastically reverse Uruguay’s shift to renewable energy. By building a broad consensus with a wide range of national and international stakeholders, the FA adopted an inclusive strategy for energy transformation that will be difficult to undo. Its playbook offers a model response for other countries seeking to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.
BRAZIL
8044 confirmed cases (+1164), 324 reported fatalities (+82)
With the number of COVID-19 cases rising drastically in Brazil this week, Jair Bolsonaro’s government has reportedly turned to China for supplies. Bolsonaro’s relationship with Beijing has had its ups and downs but lately he seems to have ratcheted down his rhetoric and has been more amenable to doing business with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Bolsonaro’s government is also reportedly in talks with the Trump administration about coordinating pandemic efforts.
UNITED STATES
244,877 confirmed cases (+29,874), 6070 reported fatalities (+968)
The US military has not escaped the effects of COVID-19. It’s had to postpone training exercises, divert resources to civilian use, and of course many service members have contracted the virus. Recently the pandemic struck a US aircraft carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, while on deployment. After the Navy did little to help alleviate the problem of a deadly contagion sweeping through a ship of 5000 personnel, its captain, Brett Crozier, wrote a letter criticizing his superiors for their inaction. As a result the ship was ordered to dock at Guam so its crew could be treated and isolated. For protecting the lives of his crew, the Navy rewarded Crozier by relieving him of command. His letter became public, you see, and embarrassed everybody. So he had to go. Classy. Presumably they’re hoping the next captain whose crew contrasts the virus will just keep his mouth shut while the whole ship gets sick.
Meanwhile, at World Politics Review, the Quincy Institute’s Steven Metz suggests that there may also be some longer term changes in store for the Pentagon:
Eventually, though, the pandemic will fade or be brought under control. Then, the military will face the massive long-term effects of the crisis. The U.S. government has already spent more than $2 trillion on economic relief, and may need to spend trillions more. That money will have to come from somewhere; some of it will be reallocated from the defense budget, and the rising debt will put pressure on future military spending. While the military’s leaders have more pressing challenges to think about now, they must know that they will face a long period of austerity, postponed or canceled acquisitions and shrinking force sizes.
Even more broadly, the coronavirus crisis will change the way that Americans conceptualize national security. Throughout most of the 20th century, national security meant defending against the armed forces of adversarial nations, so it was military-centric and something that largely played out overseas. The 9/11 attacks expanded the scope of national security, making transnational terrorists core enemies and demonstrating the importance of homeland defense. The military remained first among equals in national security, but less dominant than before.
The coronavirus crisis will expand the scope of security even further by making public health and resiliency as or even more important than countering foreign adversaries. Americans may decide that pandemic preparedness and health care are more pressing priorities than being equipped to fight wars and thus shift additional resources from the military, transforming it from the dominant component of U.S. national security to a supporting one.
I’m not sure I see it, myself, but maybe I’m just too cynical.
Wish that Uruguay article wasn't paywalled.