Signal: North Korea vs Iran, Putin’s People, and a Doomsday Meal
Originally published by Ian Bremmer on LinkedIn: Signal: North Korea vs Iran, Putin’s People, and a Doomsday Meal
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NORTH KOREA VS IRAN
Consider this comment that then-CIA Director, soon-to-be secretary of state, Mike Pompeo made last Sunday to Margaret Brennan, host of the CBS News program “Face the Nation.” Pompeo compared the deal Trump hopes to make with North Korea to the bargain Barack Obama and others struck with Iran:
“Most importantly the conditions are very different. The previous administration was negotiating from a position of weakness. This administration will be negotiating from a position of enormous strength with sanctions that are unrivaled against the North Korean regime.”
Many Americans think of these two countries simply as “rogue states,” the surviving two-thirds of George W. Bush’s “axis of evil,” but there are big differences between Iran and North Korea. In fact, Pompeo’s comparison between them isn’t one Trump should want us to make, because North Korea will be a much tougher problem to crack than Iran was — for any president. Why?
North Korea already has nuclear weapons. Iran doesn’t.
North Korea has enough military power without nuclear weapons to kill millions inside the borders of US allies. Iran doesn’t.
Kim likes isolation. His regime’s survival depends on his ability to isolate 25 million North Koreans from the rest of the world. Iran can’t afford isolation, because its long-term stability depends on the ability of Iran’s economy to deliver improved standards of living to the country’s 80 million citizens. That makes Iran much more vulnerable to sanctions than North Korea, because isolation chokes economic growth.
Kim will be watching how Trump handles the Iran deal. If Trump shreds it — or keeps threatening to do so — Kim will have reason to doubt he can ever commit to any agreement that Trump, or a future US president, might tear up.
NATIONAL INSECURITY IN LATIN AMERICA
Compare the original “BRICs” countries — Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Three of them are situated in regions where rivalries among neighbors can provoke armed conflict, and where governments spend big on their militaries. Aren’t Brazilians lucky that war in 21st century South America seems so unlikely, and that the risk of terrorism is much lower within or near their borders than in the Middle East, Asia, or Europe? Countries across the wider region of South and Central America and the Caribbean have many problems, but their armies matter more for domestic politics than for foreign policy.
Now look again at the idea of “security.” For ordinary people, crime is much more dangerous than hypothetical threats of war. Mexico’s Citizens’ Council for Public Security recently released its annual rankings of cities with the world’s highest murder rates. The top 12 cities are all in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela. In fact, 42 of the top 50 cities are in Latin America and the Caribbean, including 17 cities in Brazil alone. If you count San Juan, Puerto Rico as an American city, which it is, rather than as a Caribbean city, five of the remaining eight are in the US, and three are in South Africa.
With or without the risk of war, this form of national insecurity also comes with political, economic, and social costs.
WHY VOTE FOR PUTIN?
This weekend, Russians will re-elect President Vladimir Putin. As Alex Kliment detailed in the Tuesday edition, many Russians are much better off economically than when Putin replaced Boris Yeltsin on December 31, 1999, and Putin has restored the nation’s public dignity in the eyes of many Russians by confidently antagonizing the Western powers.
Look closer. Russians are not simply voting for the Putin we know today but for the distance they believe he has brought them. In 1993, at a time of post-Soviet economic upheaval, your Friday author spent four months in Moscow. Arriving in February, my dollar bought about 500 rubles. Departing in June, I could buy 1,500. For Russians without dollars, the value of cash disintegrated by the week.
In those days, the walk out of any large metro station in the capital took you through a gauntlet of people lined up to sell home-grown vegetables, greasy used auto parts, and unopened boxes of diapers. Children wore “for sale” photos of their pets around their necks.
Was it Putin or rising oil prices that ended that time of desperation and loss? To voters, especially those over 40, it doesn’t matter. This is just one aspect of today’s Russian politics, but the broader story becomes less abstract when you see the faces and hear the voices of those who will vote.
Side note: I offer deep respect to family and friends of the great Soviet and Russian actor, director, and teacher Oleg Pavlovich Tabakov, who passed away this week. I spent that time in Moscow at his invitation.
PUPPET REGIME: The Great Communicator
Trump’s speaking style may grate for some, but it’s great for others. The President demonstrates the art of communication. Keep it simple.
CORRUPTION AND COURAGE
This week, a Nigerian senator representing the governing party blew the whistle on an amazing story: Beyond their $2,000 per month salaries, senators in Nigeria have been receiving about $37,500 per month to spend on expenses, however they choose. At that rate, a two-term senator can amass $3.5 million in a country with annual per capita income of $2,175.
“It was a moral issue,” said Shehu Sani, the senator in question (pictured above). “You could take care of over 100 graduates from a senator’s salary,” he said. “The legislature should deliberate on the abject poverty and unemployment in the country.” Think Mr. Sani is popular with his colleagues today?
But this is not just a story about corruption, about people going into government to make big money they can hide from the public. It’s also a story about personal and political courage and the fight against corruption in one of Africa’s most economically and politically important countries. This is how nations make progress.
WHAT WE’RE WATCHING
Mike Pompeo — To succeed, a nation’s top diplomat needs three things: an ability to persuade others he speaks for the boss, the freedom to accomplish the boss’s goals in his/her own way, and good working relationships with a strong support staff. Fired US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson finished 0 for 3. No one he met during his brief tenure could believe he spoke for Trump, the president never gave him room to work, he was dogged by criticism that he ignored senior staff, and a stunning number of State Department jobs have become or remain vacant. Will Mike Pompeo succeed where Tillerson failed?
South African Land — The investor class was happy to see Cyril Ramaphosa win control of the African National Congress in December and replace Jacob Zuma as South Africa’s president last month. It was less happy when South Africa’s parliament approved legislation on February 27 that allows government to address inequality by confiscating and redistributing land without compensation. That move raised the specter again that South Africa might follow Zimbabwe down the path to racial violence and economic ruin. There’s reason to believe Ramaphosa is just giving the left wing of his party something they want in order to preserve ANC unity ahead of elections next year, and that the policy will be used mainly to redistribute unused land to black farmers. But the hostile rhetoric from South Africa’s left and from right-wing commentators in South Africa, Britain, and the US is worrisome and worth watching.
A Big Bolivian Flag — On Monday, lawyers representing Chile and Bolivia will appear before the International Court of Justice to argue about whether Bolivia should have a coastline. Bolivia lost direct access to the sea following the War of the Pacific in the late 19th century, but the country has never given up the fight to regain that land from Chile. (It still has a navy.) To cheer on the lawyers, the country has produced a 124-mile long bright blue “flag of maritime revindication.” Yes, the flag, unfurled along a highway, really is 124 miles long. We’re watching this story not because we want to see if this patriotic show can help Bolivian President Evo Morales overcome popular resistance to a fourth presidential term, but just because that’s a really big flag.
WHAT WE’RE IGNORING
Political rebranding in France — In 2015, France’s center-right party formally known as the Union for a Popular Movement changed its name to Les Republicains, boosting its candidate to a third-place finish in last year’s presidential election. Now Marine Le Pen has proposed changing the name of the far-right Front National to Rassemblement National (“National Rally”) to improve its image because, she says, the name “Front National” has become a “psychological barrier” for voters. Maybe she should change the party’s name to “Le Pen.”
Stormy Daniels — The adult film star who alleges an “affair” with President Trump is set to launch a media blitz, and the early word is that parts of her story will be particularly unsavory. We’re ignoring this story because, even if it’s deeply embarrassing for Trump, and even if an exchange of cash is found to have violated election laws, the political impact (and impeachment risk) would be greater if it told a significant number of voters something they don’t already suspect about the president. The White House will watch the projected path of this Storm, but we have eyes only for Special Counsel Robert Mueller — and what he does and does not find.
The Costco Doomsday Kit — Still worried about Kim Jong-un or Putin’s invincible zig-zagging missile? Discount retailer Costco is now selling a food kit that can help you survive “an emergency or natural disaster.” For just $5,999.99, you can have enough freeze-dried broccoli, green beans, corn, dehydrated apples, egg noodles, quick oats, cornmeal, elbow macaroni, potato chunks, instant lentils, instant black beans, freeze-dried banana slices, blueberries, and carrots to feed four people for one year. It’s a wonderful opportunity to face End Times on a full stomach. More good news: You won’t have to share with the neighbors, because the kit is “packaged discreetly for privacy in shipping.” But I’m ignoring this product because the package weighs 1,800 pounds, and I already have a bad back.
HARD NUMBERS
5: In Russia, the latest polls suggest there’s a good chance that none of Vladimir Putin’s seven opponents will receive more than 5 percent of the vote in this weekend’s presidential election. But will Putin achieve his goal of capturing 70% of votes and generating 70% turnout?
14: In Indonesia, police have arrested 14 members of a self-proclaimed cyber-jihadist network known as the Muslim Cyber Army. The group is accused of running an online operation designed to provoke religious and ethnic tension by spreading fake news about gay citizens, alleged communists, and the country’s Chinese minority. They also like to publish defamatory material about President Joko Widodo.
24: In Venezuela, a country trapped in economic crisis, a university study has found that nearly two-thirds of people surveyed said they had lost an average of 24 pounds (11 kilos) in body weight in the past year. About 20 percent of citizens depend on monthly government food deliveries for their survival.
910: In Syria, “extreme and indiscriminate violence” killed 910 children in 2017, a 50 percent increase on 2016 and the most of any year since the war began, according to UNICEF.
0: While per capital income has more than doubled in the US since 1972, subjective measures of well-being, like happiness, remain unchanged, according to the UN’s 2018 World Happiness Report. Health crises — from opioids to obesity — haven’t helped.
WORDS OF WISDOM
“It would not be much of a universe if it wasn’t home to the people you love.”
— Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who passed away this week.
This edition of Signal was written by Willis Sparks, and prepared with editorial support from Kevin Allison (@KevinAllison), Leon Levy (@leonmlevy), and Gabe Lipton (@Gflipton). Spiritual counsel from Alex Kliment (@saosasha). Give a friend the Signal here.
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