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THESE DAYS IN HISTORY
March 30, 1856: Representatives of Austria, France, the Ottoman Empire, Prussia, Russia, Sardinia, and the United Kingdom sign the Treaty of Paris, ending the 1853-1856 Crimean War. The war was a serious Russian defeat, and the terms reflected that. The Black Sea was designated as neutral territory, barring all warships—but especially Russian warships—from its waters. Russia was also forced to give up territory in the Danube region and forfeited to France any claim it has as being the protector of Christian subjects in the Ottoman Empire.
March 30, 1867: US Secretary of State William Seward and Russian minister Eduard de Stoeckl agree on a sale price of $7.2 million for the US to purchase Alaska. The sale would be finalized in a treaty that was ratified by the US Senate that October. The Russians had realized they couldn’t hold on to Alaska in the event of a US migration there (a la the California Gold Rush), and the Russian government needed the cash. Reception in the US wasn’t uniformly positive, but the whole “Seward’s Folly” sentiment has been exaggerated in the contemporary consciousness and for the most part the US public seems to have supported the acquisition.
March 30, 1912: Sultan Abd al-Hafid of Morocco and French diplomat Eugène Regnault sign the Treaty of Fez, making Morocco a French protectorate. Abd al-Hafid signed the treaty with a French army encircling the city, so you might say he was well motivated to agree to a lopsided arrangement that looked more like a colonial capitulation than a protectorate along the lines of Egypt’s relationship to Britain. Of course, in fairness, Egypt’s relationship to Britain looked increasingly like a colonial one by this point too. The treaty was not well received by the Moroccan public. Riots broke out the following month in Fez, and concessions made to Spain in the Rif (or “Spanish Morocco”) helped fuel the Rif War, which ended in 1927, between Spain and the Berber tribes of the region.
March 31, 1146: At the Council of Vézelay, charismatic monk Bernard of Clairvaux issues his call for a new crusade to support the suddenly beleaguered Christian principalities in the Levant. In attendance was King Louis VII of France, who took up the cross on the spot for what we now know as the Second Crusade. Suffice to say it did not end well.
March 31, 1492: The proto-Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile issue the Alhambra Decree, expelling all Jews from their kingdoms by the end of July. The decree’s goal was two-fold. One, the expulsion of practicing Jews was meant to eliminate their influence on the region’s conversos, those who had converted from Judaism to Christianity. Two, the terms of the expulsion, which required those being expelled to finance their own relocation, were made deliberately onerous in order to encourage more Jews to convert to Christianity as an alternative. Isabella seems to have been the driving force behind the decree, likely influenced by her new confessor, Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros.
COVID-19
Worldometer’s pandemic tracker, which rolls over every day at midnight GMT, puts COVID-19’s March 31 figures at 858,377 confirmed cases worldwide (+73,718 over yesterday), 638,300 of which are still active, with 42,146 reported fatalities (+4378).
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday called the pandemic “a global health crisis unlike any in the 75-year history of the United Nations” and the world’s most challenging crisis since World War II, which is probably fair when you factor in the economic devastation it’s causing and is likely to cause. Analysts are predicting downturns the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Great Depression, save in very specific cases involving countries mired in civil war or struggling under heavy sanctions. The UN and the World Trade organization are urging governments to ensure the stability of the global food supply chain, which is not the sort of thing one typically has to urge in normal times.
The impact will be felt most heavily, as it always is, at the bottom of the ladder, with the World Bank predicting that the pandemic’s effect will keep at least 24 million people in poverty who otherwise might have clawed their way out of it in 2020, just in East Asia and the Pacific. Indigenous peoples around the world, vulnerable both in terms of economic security and sheer numbers, are asking outsiders to steer clear so as not to risk the virus taking root in their communities:
The pandemic is exacerbating deep-seated health and socioeconomic inequities throughout the world. Analysts say that makes indigenous peoples particularly vulnerable. In many communities, key services such as water and housing are chronically underfunded. Many are remote, leaving residents no choice but to travel long distances to access anything beyond basic health-care services. And indigenous peoples may suffer from higher rates of chronic illnesses, underlying conditions that can put them at greater risk of severe complications from covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
“You combine all these factors together and what you see is a perfect storm of risks,” said Jeff Reading, a health sciences professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. “If the virus gets into a community . . . it will spread like wildfire.”
Anna Banerji, director of global and indigenous health at the University of Toronto’s medical school, said the coronavirus is particularly dangerous for tribal elders, who occupy a special place in their communities as knowledge keepers and language holders.
“To lose, potentially, some elders or many elders all at once could be really devastating,” she said.
MIDDLE EAST
SYRIA
10 confirmed cases of COVID-19 (unchanged since yesterday), 2 reported fatalities (unchanged)
Syrian media is reporting that the country’s air defenses intercepted several Israeli missiles fired from Lebanese airspace late on Tuesday. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights the target was a Syrian airbase in Homs province that’s used by Iranian personnel. Generally when Syrian media reports that an Israeli attack has been intercepted, we learn a few hours later that it was only partially intercepted. Assuming that’s the case here I’ll likely have more information on this tomorrow.
TURKEY
13,531 confirmed cases (+2704), 214 reported fatalities (+46)
Like his right-wing brethren in the US and Brazil, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s main concern when it comes to the pandemic is that he not be made to look ridiculous because of it. Consequently, as with Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, he looks increasingly ridiculous.

No, you’re right, how could these two guys ever look ridiculous? (White House photo via Flickr)
Erdoğan has steadfastly refused to impose a strict lockdown regimen due to his concerns about what that might mean for the Turkish economy, despite a rapidly worsening (see above) outbreak. At the same time, he’s steadfastly refusing to offer economic relief to Turkish workers who can’t go to work or would be among those actually hard hit by a lockdown. All Erdoğan’s government has done has been to enact a $15 billion or so pittance of a stimulus that’s mostly in the form of small treats for business and a few laughably insignificant measures for pensioners and people who are now out of work. To be fair, the Turkish lira was not doing so well before this crisis hit, so deficit spending now will come with a downside, but it seems like a small price to pay.
On top of his failure to respond adequately to the crisis, Erdoğan’s response to anyone who criticizes him is to—what else—toss that person in jail whenever possible. So at least he’s got that going for him.
IRAQ
694 confirmed cases (+64), 50 reported fatalities (+4)
As I noted yesterday (for subscribers), the Iraqi government is trying to respond to the pandemic even though it doesn’t currently have a cabinet or a prime minister. It does have a prime minister-designate, though—Adnan al-Zurufi. Zurifi was appointed by Iraqi President Barham Salih two weeks ago because the country’s major Shiʿa political parties couldn’t agree on a new candidate to replace Adel Abdul-Mahdi (who still technically has the job but stopped doing it earlier this month). He has no real base, and despite some rosy projections from people close to him it looks like he’s struggling to get any traction, even as an emergency PM to get the country through this crisis. Zurufi is close with Washington and so he’s anathema to Iraq’s pro-Iran parties, which include a couple of parliament’s largest Shiʿa blocs. He does seem to have support among the Kurds and Sunni Arabs, but that’s not enough to get him the premiership. Abdul-Mahdi could reemerge as the only candidate acceptable enough to a broad enough segment of Iraqi MPs to get (or in his case, keep) the job.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
5358 confirmed cases (+663), 20 reported fatalities (+4) in Israel; 119 confirmed cases (+2), 1 reported fatality (unchanged) in Palestine
Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities are being hit hard by COVID-19, in part because many have ignored warnings to stay at home and avoid gatherings. Israeli police have begun enforcing quarantine restrictions more vigorously in these communities, leading to clashes in the streets and discussion of a full lockdown on neighborhoods with predominantly ultra-Orthodox populations.
On what remains of the Israeli political left, meanwhile, there are reports that the Labor Party, led by Amir Peretz, is going to join the emerging Benjamin Netanyahu-Benny Gantz national unity government. It’s unclear why. Labor only has three seats in the Knesset (and one of those three MKs has already rejected the idea of joining a unity government) so it won’t add much to the new cabinet in terms of seats. Casting its lot with Netanyahu is likely to do irreparable damage to the party among its core voters. What it can do is give the unity government a fig leaf of actual “unity,” when in reality it’s going to be Netanyahu’s usual far-right coalition with the addition of Gantz, who is by any objective measure himself a far-right politician. Now it can wave Labor’s husk around as proof of its inclusivity.
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
664 confirmed cases (+53), 6 reported fatalities (+1)
Officials in Dubai announced on Tuesday that they will bail out that emirate’s suddenly beleaguered Emirates airline while also closing down Dubai’s historic Al Ras shopping district, one of the city’s main tourist destinations. To this I can only say, you mean they hadn’t already shut down the shopping district? Are you kidding me?
IRAN
44,605 confirmed cases (+3110), 2898 reported fatalities (+141)
Iranian authorities on Tuesday said that their natural gas exports to Turkey had been interrupted by “terrorists” who bombed a pipeline on the Turkish side of the border. It’s unclear who these alleged terrorists were but the Iranians are suggesting it was the work of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Turkish media, meanwhile, says the cause of the pipeline explosion is still undetermined.
France, Germany, and the United Kingdom exported medical supplies to Iran on Tuesday in a test run of their Instrument In Support Of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), which is supposed to shield commerce with Iran from US sanctions but is only being used for humanitarian goods that shouldn’t be subject to those sanctions anyway. The transaction appears to have gone through without causing an international incident, which could pave the way for additional transactions to come. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo offered the first sliver of a suggestion that the Trump administration might ease sanctions on Iran in light of the pandemic. But all he told reporters was that it’s conceivable the administration could rethink its sanctions policy—implying that it thought about them in the first place, which is debatable—and that doesn’t seem like very much of a concession.
ASIA
AFGHANISTAN
174 confirmed cases (+4), 4 reported fatalities (unchanged)
A Taliban negotiating team has reportedly arrived in Kabul to work out details on a prisoner swap that could open the door to peace talks. It’s still unclear whether the Afghan government is willing to release all 5000 Taliban prisoners envisioned under the deal the US and the Taliban signed last month, but it must have made some gesture in the Taliban’s direction for things to get to this point. The Taliban sent a three person team instead of the expected ten person team in a concession to the COVID-19 pandemic.
I don’t know if there’s a lesson to be drawn here but it would appear that the Trump administration couldn’t have negotiated its deal with the Taliban without the involvement of the five Taliban prisoners Barack Obama traded for then-Taliban captive Bowe Bergdahl back in 2014. You may recall that, at the time, the same Republicans who’d been angrily demanding that Obama secure Bergdahl’s release turned on a dime and accused him of committing high treason in agreeing to the prisoner swap. Again I don’t know what conclusion you can draw from that but it seemed worth noting.
CHINA
81,518 confirmed cases (+79), 3305 reported fatalities (+5) on the mainland; 715 confirmed cases (+32), 4 reported fatalities (unchanged) in Hong Kong
France 24 looks at some of the anecdotal evidence suggesting that COVID-19 killed many more people in Wuhan than the Chinese government has acknowledged:
I know there’s a tendency to try to score points on China over this, for whatever good that does, but while it’s entirely possible that authorities there deliberately and nefariously undercounted the number of coronavirus deaths, there are less sinister explanations as well. Even in Western countries people have been dying of COVID-19 without ever setting foot in a hospital, and those cases aren’t tested for the virus because we don’t have enough tests as it is. In China, moreover, people may have been dying of the virus before anybody even knew there was a virus. It’s impossible to know whether there was an undercount let alone why there might have been one. Does it matter at this point? I’m not sure it does. It might have been good to know a couple of months ago by way of warning, but it seems to me that ship has sailed.
NORTH KOREA
No confirmed cases as yet
Getting any news out of North Korea about anything is daunting, let alone about COVID-19, but The Daily NK’s Gabriela Bernal suggests the economic impact of the pandemic alone has been dire:
According to Daily NK sources inside North Korea, 23 people had died of COVID-19-related symptoms and 82 were under quarantine as of early March. Although the government is trying its best to prevent an all-out health pandemic, its strict measures are having adverse side-effects on its already vulnerable economy. Kim Jong Un began taking measures to curb the spread of the virus very early on, ordering all harbors in Sinuiju port — responsible for a substantial portion of trade with China — to close on January 25. Two days later, he ordered the borders with China to be closed completely.
Trade with China came to an abrupt halt and, with North Korean merchants unable to get goods from China to sell in local markets, a shortage of supplies quickly ensued. This shortage then led to a sharp increase in prices of staple ingredients like flour and rice. By early February, the price of soybean oil had risen by 68 percent compared to early January while flour prices increased by 47 percent. Since then, authorities have imposed strict price limits to prevent prices from skyrocketing out of control but, although the prices of some goods have gone down, the price of rice remains more expensive than usual.
SOUTH KOREA
9786 confirmed cases (+125), 162 reported fatalities (+4)
The Pentagon has announced that around half of the almost 9000 South Korean nationals it employs will be put on unpaid leave starting Wednesday, because the US and South Korean governments have failed to reach agreement on a military cost sharing arrangement. A bit over half have been deemed essential employees and their salaries will be covered by the US government for the time being. The Trump administration wants Seoul to pony up substantially more than it was already paying—$5 billion initially, though Washington says it’s come down from that figure—for the privilege of hosting US forces on its territory. There’s apparently been some progress toward a deal but the two sides haven’t yet concluded their talks. The South Korean government is limited by the fact that polling shows there’s almost zero appetite among South Korean citizens for any increase in its level of support for the US garrison.
AFRICA
ETHIOPIA
26 confirmed cases (+3), no reported fatalities
The Ethiopian government has postponed its upcoming parliamentary election, which was scheduled for August, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That contest was shaping up to pit long-suppressed ethnic nationalism within Ethiopia’s minority communities against Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s vision of a unified Ethiopian people. Its suspension may give Abiy’s government time to address nationalist resentments, or it could escalate those resentments with potentially violent results. Or it could do a bit of both. This is the first national election in Africa to be postponed due to the pandemic, and chances are it will not be the last.
EUROPE
HUNGARY
492 confirmed cases (+45), 16 reported fatalities (+1)
The European Union issued a pointed warning to the Hungarian government on Tuesday that the new indefinite dictatorship that its parliament has now bestowed upon Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is not really in keeping with the whole EU ethos. While acknowledging that the current situation may warrant emergency powers, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement that “any emergency measures must be limited to what is necessary and strictly proportionate. They must not last indefinitely ... governments must make sure that such measures are subject to regular scrutiny.”
Orbán’s own history strongly suggests he will not allow himself to be scrutinized and will not willingly give up the power he’s now gained, and there’s really no party or authority left in Hungary that can compel him to do otherwise. Nor is there one in Brussels, since any action the EU takes to punish Hungary would require a unanimous vote of the other member states and Poland, whose government is in the same right wing authoritarian boat as Orbán, would almost certainly veto it. Ishaan Tharoor’s headline on this story—“Coronavirus kills its first democracy”—would seem to be an apt summary of the situation.
THE NETHERLANDS
12,595 confirmed cases (+845), 1039 reported fatalities (+175)
Orbán’s actions are enabled in part by a European Union whose institutions have shown themselves to be pathetically weak in the face of COVID-19, and whose wealthier members only deign to show any solidarity with its poorer members when it suits their purposes. To wit, the Democracy in Europe Movement’s David Adler and Jerome Roos of the London School of Economics look at the refusal by the EU’s “Frugal Four,” led by the Netherlands, to assist their fellow eurozone members in this time of crisis:
Last Thursday, the leaders of the European Union convened a video conference to deliberate the escalating Covid-19 crisis. On the agenda was a simple proposal co-signed by nine different eurozone governments: the “coronabond”, a new type of public debt instrument backed by all the members of the currency union as they come together to combat the virus.
After a long decade of crisis fighting in the eurozone — pitting north against south, creditor against borrower — the proposal marked a rare display of unity, and the meeting was a perfect opportunity to ratify it. Issued collectively, the “coronabond” would drive down the borrowing costs of some of Europe’s most heavily affected countries, staving off another sovereign debt crisis and freeing up much-needed resources to invest in public health and economic recovery. “We are all facing a symmetric external shock,” the proposal read, “and we are collectively accountable for an effective and united European response.”
Alas, the request for solidarity was swiftly rejected. At the video conference, the eurobond motion came up against the eurozone’s “frugal four” — Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland — who argued that the issuance of a common debt instrument would punish the countries that had saved for such a rainy day, and encourage further fiscal mismanagement by those who did not. Solidarity, they claimed, just created moral hazard.
As Adler and Roos note, the rest of the eurozone seems uninterested in a lecture on fiscal prudence, especially from a country that brings in much of its revenue by serving as a tax haven. But the most inexplicable part is that not only is this the kind of thing that weakens European solidarity, it weakens Europe’s response to the pandemic as well. The Netherlands can’t wall itself off from the rest of Europe indefinitely, so its refusal to help the rest of the eurozone combat COVID-19 means that it too will be stuck with the coronavirus longer than it needs to be.
AMERICAS
VENEZUELA
135 confirmed cases (unchanged), 3 reported fatalities (unchanged)
In a new gambit to rid itself of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration has floated an exciting new idea. If both Maduro and opposition leader/would-be president Juan Guaidó agree to step aside, the offer goes, their supporters could form a transitional government and thereby begin to obtain relief from US sanctions. That transitional government would be charged with overseeing a new election in 6-12 months, one in which the administration’s Venezuela point person, Elliott Abrams, even suggested to Reuters that Maduro would be allowed to run for president again.
It’s unclear why Maduro, who retains a pretty firm grip on the Venezuelan military and, therefore, on power, would go for this. He’s previously rejected similar offers from Guaidó that would have left him in a stronger position during the transition period. Presumably the administration is looking at the effect of sanctions, the COVID-19 pandemic, and very low global oil prices, and seeing a future wherein Maduro is no longer able to retain that grip on power. There’s already evidence that those challenges are starting to hit Venezuela hard, and it’s likely to get much worse. It’s hoping he sees it too and would be willing to accept a soft exit now. Perhaps that soft exit could be extended to the drug charges on which Maduro has now been indicted in the US. But despite all these factors, his government’s initial response to the idea was cool, to say the least.
If Maduro doesn’t see the light, the thinking probably goes, then maybe those around him in the Venezuelan security establishment and the Socialist party will, and maybe they’d be willing to turn on him in order to get a deal that, at least until the election, would leave their positions more or less untouched. Again this seems like a long shot. Venezuelan prosecutors on Tuesday separately ordered Guaidó to appear before them next Thursday to answer questions about his alleged involvement in a “coup plot,” which doesn’t seem promising.
UNITED STATES
188,530 confirmed cases (+24,742), 3889 reported fatalities (+748)
Finally, I don’t have a piece to share with you in this space tonight, just my own unfounded skepticism. The Trump administration is projecting 100,000 to 200,000 COVID-19 fatalities in the United States before the pandemic subsides. It’s portraying these figures as a huge win, compared with the 2 million or so it says would have died had no social distancing measures been put into place. I have to say I’m not sure how to react to this. I’m by no means a Coronavirus Truther or whatever, but given the administration’s track record I can’t help but wonder if we’re now at a stage where it’s throwing around incomprehensible numbers of fatalities as a conditioning tool, so that Trump can later claim victory because he only oversaw a catastrophe as opposed to the apocalypse. I have no basis for this suspicion beyond the thorough and consistent contempt that Donald Trump and everyone around him has shown for the truth, so don’t quote me on it or anything. I’m probably wrong. It’s just how I feel.