Transnational Thursdays 10
Happy 10th TT guys, feels like some kind of accomplishment.
This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from around the world. Feel free to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the Ukraine War, or even just whatever you’re reading. Last week’s thread covered forgotten wars, to give a sense of how flexible it is.
Spain
Observers expected Spain’s elections to bring a right wing government into power. However, the ruling socialist PSOE did better than expected (given their recent large losses in municipal and local elections) and the far right Vox did far worse. The center right PP pulled ahead of PSOE, but Vox’s loss of 19 seats prevents the two parties from together forming a majority. PSOE and the farther left Sumar together are smaller still, but probably have better odds of finding a third coalitional partner due to Vox’s toxicity for third parties. This probably means that current PM Sanchez would need to coalition with the Basque or Catalan independence parties, who he has decent relations with but would still likely require playing to some of their demands.
Niger
Niger’s president Mohamed Bazoum yesterday announced the presidential guards had locked him inside the palace in what seems to be an attempted coup. He says the army stands ready to defend him but apparently not so - the military has now taken him prisoner and announced they’ve taken power of the country. Niger is legendary for their coups and no one would pretend Bazoum was a great leader, but coming on a string on military coups across West Africa it’s mostly just depressing.
Ecuador
Violence has been bad in Ecuador for a while now, culminating in the high profile assassination of a mayor last week. President Guillermo Lasso, who a few months ago dismissed Congress and has ruled by decree since, recently declared a state of emergency in two affected provinces suspending freedom of assembly and movement. You may remember also Honduras declaring a state of emergency after a prison riot and giving control of the prison system to the military. Ecuador has now done the same for Ecuador's own prison system following a strangely similar prison riot. Lasso has said that he will not run for reelection but his increasing authoritarianism has kept watchers skeptical.
Guatemala
As of now it looks like Bernardo Arévalo will be legally allowed to participate in the runoff election but the Attorney General has been cracking down however possible, recently issuing a police order to raid his campaign headquarters. Semilla supporters and civil society groups have been protesting in response. The US has now added several related prosecutors to the Engels targeted sanction list along with officials who participated in the politically motivated crackdown against the journalist José Rubén Zamora for criticizing government corruption.
Argentina
Argentina and the IMF are supposedly near to reaching yet another agreement to help pay back the $44 billion they took on under the previous administration. The payments were conditional on Argentina doing some fiscally responsible stuff like shoring up reserves and moderating their deficit, which they definitely didn’t do, but they have now demonstrated some reform willingness by announcing a new preferential exchange rate for export goods and raising some import taxes. This is a five month deal so it would last until a new president takes office in December.
Kenya
President William Ruto, who took office last year as a progressive champion of the poor, recently raised taxes to help Kenya pay back its debts. Coming during a period of prolonged inflation, this spurred waves of protests against the government, led by the opposition coalition Azimio and their leader Raila Odinga. Police brutality has responded in turn and things have spiraled further. The protests have grown increasingly looting-filled, but the allegations about police brutality aren’t a joke either:
More than two dozen rights groups including Amnesty International last week said they had evidence of 27 “extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions” in July alone.
Ruto has formerly offered to have a sitdown meeting with Odinga but the latter has refused. Odinga was the opposition candidate in the last two elections and feels 2017 was stolen from him (it probably was), so is now unwilling to deal with current government.
Burkina Faso
France has withdrawn its troops as well as its ambassador yesterday following the demands of Burkina Faso’s military junta. This is despite the fact that almost half of Burkinabe territory is considered to be dominated by radical groups, whether Taureg secessionists from Mali or Islamist fundamentalist groups. The conflict has been especially bad lately and over a tenth of the population has been displaced, causing the Norweigan Refugee Council to rank Burkina Faso as the world’s most neglected displacement crisis. Still, the new government has made an anti-French stance a central plank of their governance and has alo suspended French owned media channels. Following their departure from Mali, also at the behest of a military junta, France only has about 3000 troops left, mostly in Niger and Chad.
India
You may remember previous coverage of the escalating ethnic violence in the Manipur region. Opposition parties in India are now initiating a vote of no confidence against Modi for his refusal to address the conflict, which has displaced over 60,000 people. The vote is assuredly stillborn against a BJP majority.
Modi has “revealed” his plank for a third term. Unfortunately I can’t really find details but it’s completely oriented around development. India was the tenth largest economy when Modi took office and is now the fifth; Modi has promised to raise it to third place. Obligatory pinging of /u/self_made_human.
Cambodia
Cambodian President Hun Sen, who has ruled essentially since the collapse of the Khmer Rouge, claimed another landslide win a few days ago in a completely farcical election. A tragedy for the good people of Cambodia but a huge W for dedicated Hun watchers hoping for their boy to hold onto his high score:
Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen, 70, has been in power since 1985 – only the leaders of Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, both also authoritarians, have held office longer.
I wonder if when you reach this level you feel like you’re in a competition with the other heavy hitters.
Perhaps not, because shockingly yesterday he announced his formal resignation, ending his tenure as Asia’s preeminent dictator. That said, Hun has said that he will stay on as leader of the communist party and his son - who was literally only just elected as an MP - will now become Prime Minister, so we certainly haven’t heard the last of him yet.
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Notes -
What is the wider effect of Sahel countries (Niger/Burkina Faso/Mali/etc) moving away from France? Has this kinda stuff happened before?
For Burkina Faso and Mali it meant a realignment away from France and towards Russia. They both forced the French military to withdraw and instead invested more heavily in the Wagner Group. It's highly likely Niger (along with CAR, one of the last countries with meaningful French military presence) will do the same, and France has already been evacuating its citizens.
It's interesting from the perspective of a sort of quiet death of the French overseas Empire though arguably Mali was the only really important country to France because that's where they source a lot of their uranium. And even as their boots-on-the-ground presence reduces, France still exhibits significant economic control over many of these countries by their financial integration via the CFA Franc, holding a bunch of the West African countries' reserves in French banks, etc.
The real largest long term question is how this will impact the fight against ISIS/Al Qaeda/Boko Haram, which is currently the biggest security threat in the region.
Coups are super common in West Africa, and in Niger in particular, but I don't know if we've seen exactly this kind of large realignment. The last analogous situation might be the reverse dynamic in the Cold War, when Soviet Union sympathetic leaders like Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso were couped and replaced with pro-French leaders.
Interesting. I wonder how Macron and the French establishment, or the French public, feels about this.
If anything, it speeds up uranium mining projects in europe, like Sweden and so on. And of course there are other sources of uranium.
I have heard Thomas Sankara's name before but did not know who he was. Thanks for the comments.
I honestly don't follow France very closlely so there's probably other users who could comment better on it, but Macron definitely started with a strong Africa focus in his foreign policy, apologized to Algeria and also Rwanda for their role in the genocide, and has been trying to promote French language schools in the former Françafrique, so he's likely disapointed. He has tried to adjust accordingly though. He recently agreed to them replacing the CFA Franc with their proposed regional currency the Eco and has now announced an updated security approach of "a new, balanced relationship," drawing down troops and co-administering bases with host countries.
I really don't know how the French public feels about it. My anecdotal impression from a distance is some people were feeling like they were turning into forever wars but I could be wrong about that being widespread; I think I've seen polls that a majority favor staying in Africa. A French soldier who had been stationed in Mali once told me they had made a deal with the Taureg rebels to not crack down upon them if the rebels left their mines alone, so it sounds like their efforts against the insurgency were pretty mercenary in nature.
Sankara is an interesting guy for sure, probably one of the more successful African socialist leaders in terms of growth and HDI.
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