Turning this into its own weekly thread. I’m hoping for this not to really be a thing I lead,, more like an open place each week where people can talk foreign policy/international relations. That could mean country updates, analysis of some dynamic (ie the Ukraine War), or even history or interesting books you’re reading.
The response on these have been positive but engagement has been pretty low, I think partially because a lot of the countries I find interesting just aren’t that interesting to other people. I’m trying to address that by finding a balance between the more obscure places I like with bigger name countries like Brazil, Italy, Korea, etc. As always others are strongly encouraged to add on coverage of any country you find interesting, or just anything else you want to talk about.
Guatemala
As mentioned last week, the electoral success of anti-corruption underdog Bernardo Arevalo, son of Guatemala’s first democratically elected leader, represented a major upset. Currently he’s supposed to go into a runoff election with Sandra Torres in August, but the latter has accused voting software of biasing Arevalo. The establishment has responded cheerfully and the courts have suspended the results of the first round of the election and called for a tribunal to review the voting tallies. The US, EU, and OAS election observers have criticized the court’s decision. Regardless of the Presidential results, the current conservative ruling party Vamos has surprised everyone by winning a majority, so there’s a limit to how much an isolated executive will accomplish.
Brazil
Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal has banned Bolsonaro from running for office again for eight years by the for fueling the January 8 uprising:
Brazil’s electoral court ruled that Mr. Bolsonaro had violated Brazil’s election laws when, less than three months ahead of last year’s vote, he called diplomats to the presidential palace and made baseless claims that the nation’s voting systems were likely to be rigged against him.
Five of the court's seven judges voted that Mr. Bolsonaro had abused his power as president when he convened the meeting with diplomats and broadcast it on state television.
He can appeal the ruling but hasn’t made a lot of friends in the high courts and as of now he has accepted the ruling.
Venezuela
While we’re on a roll with candidates being pushed out by their systems, María Corina Machado, the favorite to lead the opposition in the 2024 elections, has been banned from running for 15 years. The charges are based on her being a fifth column for the US, supporting American sanctions and former opposition leader Juan Guaidó. All true, but also nobody expects Maduro to allow a free and fair election under any circumstances:
“If you want free elections, we want sanctions-free elections. Therein lies the dilemma”
Speaking of sanctions, oil production has actually risen recently in spite of them, though much of the gains have gone up in smoke from corruption and crime, with everything from fuel theft to an audit finding that middle men have pocketed an astounding $21 billion in unpaid sales. Partially in light of these finding and PDVSA’s significant debt to its Russian partner, Roszarubezhneft, the European oil magnate has now requested the ability to take control of joint exports itself to avoid massive middle men losses.
At least negotiations over sanctions and the election have resumed, with Venezuela and America resuming direct communications in Qatar, a nation which has unexpectedly come to play the recent role of mediator between the two rival countries.
Italy
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right wing coalition has continued a year of electoral success with victories in the longtime center-left stronghold of Tuscany.
The Eurozone Stability Fund was created in 2012 to provide “eurozone states in difficulty with loans at below-market rates in return for reforms to public finances”. It’s been suspended since the pandemic but its latest iteration is near to passing. However, it requires the approval of every member and Italy remains the last stalwart not having voted for it yet. Italy would actually qualify to use it but Meloni has pledged not to, because she’s afraid of having austerity imposed upon Italy, although the Italian Treasury apparently thinks it might actually lower debt costs.
One way or the other Italy’s enormous 145% debt to GDP ration must be addressed. Bloomberg has an interesting article on Meloni’s turn towards a more industrial policy, increasingly intervening in the corporations the government has a stake in, or buying larger stakes. She’s betting on her pro-business policies getting the Italian economy back on its feet; in particular she cut corporate taxes, taxes on the self employed, and taxes on the rich by phasing in a flat tax on labor. She's partially offset the loss in revenue by cutting benefits, in particular an anti-poverty measure called the Citizen’s Income (remember southern Italy still has exceptionally high poverty for a European country). She also gave employers more flexibility in hiring short term contracts and has strictly opposed public sector unions demands for wage increases. Predictably, this hasn’t made her many friends in the unions, who have been consistently on and off strike (it should be said Italy has more strikes than a normal country in the best of times). Actually there’s another major strike happening tomorrow, a 24 hour nationwide strike tomorrow of all public transit workers, bus, metro, ferry, and even airline staff.
Kosovo
In April Kosovar Serbians boycotted municipal elections, which were then won by Albanian candidates who tried to install their candidates by force, leading to ethnic violence and dozens of injuries. By now 4000 NATO Peace Keepers have entered Kosovo to stave off the rising ethnic tensions. Serbia’s troops are currently mobilized on the border and they have now threatened to militarily intervene if ethnic Serbs aren’t protected from Albanian violence.
South Africa
Seven opposition parties, led by the Democratic Alliance and excluding the radical EFF, have formed a big tent coalition to challenge the African National Congress in the 2024 legislative elections. Popularity with the governing party is at (probably) an all time low with crime, a faltering economy, and mass electricity shortages.
Speaking of which, South Africa’s power grid has been wracked by mass corruption, and instability and load shedding has become a norm this past year. However, blackouts have been reducing recently and surprisingly, Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has said the period of electricity cuts will soon come to a close.
In a contentious case with shades of the America dreamer debate, South African high courts have ruled against the government’s attempt to end the special permitting exemptions for Zimbabweans who fled instability at home. This would require some 200,000 people to return to Zimbabwe if they can’t obtain normal work permits, even if they have had children in South Africa.
Thailand
Eyes are peeled on Thailand as the new parliament has come into session. The major victors of the election, the anti-military, anti-monarchical Move Forward and Pheu Thai, now have the unenviable task of creating a coalition big enough to form a government. This is harder than it might sound because a third of seats are automatically given to the military, and the two upsetters have campaigned on an anti-establishment platforms that made some of their more establishment potential allies understandably skeptical (ex they want to “abolish monopolies,” aka make enemies with every business interest).
For now the two parties have managed to at least work with each other; there was some tension over which party gets to pick the new Speaker of the House but ultimately they settled on a respected Pheu Thai ally from a third party. The real question is who would be the Prime Minister if they can form a coalition. The military’s motivation is to prevent Move Forward’s leader Pita Limjaroenrat from winning at all costs; they might even accept being pushed into the minority if they could avoid that situation. They’re already investigating him to see if he broke election laws and will likely pursue other tricks as well.
Korea
President Yoon Suk-Yeol ran on a comically anti-labor agenda, once quipping that they should replace the 52 hour work week with a 120 hour work week. Since coming to power he’s pushed for and backed away from a 69 hour work week (this is probably much closer to what South Koreans actually do) and has pursued the unions doggedly, attempting to standardize professional requirements, refusing to extend a minimum wage increase, and demanding that labor unions submit their records of spending. In response to his labor agenda the Korean Confederation of Teachers Union (KCTU) has gone on strike (and separately they’re mad about Japan discharging Fukushima waste water into the open ocean). It’s pretty massive in size, a two week strike of over half a million people; this last time a smaller strike happened it led to notable fuel shortages.
Separately (or related?) President Yoon’s popularity has hit a high of 42%, mostly to his restoration of trade ties with Japan and public posture against the “cartels” (Suk-Yeol pursued some of leading Chaebol businessman during his time as a prosecutor, but it remains unclear if he will actually oppose them significantly in office.)
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Notes -
The Korea thing interests me. I always thought that was a pretty left-wing country by rich-world standards. But I guess it's all about the deltas. Maybe Koreans are all for unions, but as a result they've been so powerful that everyone is sick of them now (kind of like Britain under Thatcher).
Korea is definitely on the more conservative end for a rich country, especially socially, and they have a uniquely really active right wing, anti-feminist youth movement. Economically they had a neoliberal reform era in the 80s that has never fully reversed. The country's relationship with unions is complicated because their emergence is associated with the establishment of democracy in the country. Still, there's not much transparency into how they spend their money and corruption is a concern, especially in construction:
There's also the sense that big labor has come to mostly support Chaebols, or the mega-size conglomerates, against small businesses.
Yoon is the anti-corruption, anti-cartel guy so he leaned into it here. The teacher's union also in particular is a notorious conservative enemy because of their really bizarrely pro-North Korean bend, and they are far away one of the largest and most influential unions in the country.
In general though working conditions are really awful. There are a lot of reasons people voted for Yoon but it's still pretty remarkable so many people voted for the guy who wants people to work even more.
Thanks, that's really helpful.
It seems my impression of Korea being left-wing was skewed by emphasis on labour -- Unions being powerful and traditionally respected but now a bit too big for their boots. Kind of similar to my own country, Australia where construction workers are the last holdouts able to engage in actual gangsterism and teachers are radically left wing (of course in Korea that takes a special form).
Yeah of course.
I don't know much about the labor history in Australia. Is there any back and forth between union power as the Labour and Liberal parties trade out or is it pretty entrenched?
Yes, the whole historical point of the Labor and Liberal was to ding-dong the labour laws. It's still true, but less so.
The labour movement used to have a power struggle between the unions themselves and the more PMC-dominated Labor party. The party has definitively one that fight, and the unions are themselves bureaucratic PMC-run organizations (except maybe in construction where thug life requires footsoldiers).
The Liberals are struggling with the fact that their traditional backers (captial) have become woke capital while all the political energy and opportunities are in the fightback against wokism.
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