| | | | Fareed: Why Iran Has the Ingredients for Revolution | | To understand why Iran looks poised for a period of instability, look to Alexis de Tocqueville's assessment of the French Revolution, Fareed argues in his latest Washington Post column. Sometimes a country is most vulnerable to revolution just as it is reforming.
"Iran's Green Movement of 2009 is an illustration of Tocqueville's thesis. It happened only because the country held elections, complete with debates, candidates with opposing views and secret balloting. The process raised the hopes of many Iranians, who were then deeply disappointed when, in the end, the elections were thought to have been rigged and the more reform-minded candidate was defeated. In Egypt today, no one expects an actual election, so when Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi wins 97 percent of the vote, no one protests," Fareed notes.
"Iran has the ingredients for a revolution. More than half of the population is younger than 30, many youths are educated yet unemployed...and reformers have consistently raised expectations yet never delivered on their promises. But the regime also has instruments of power, ideology, repression and patronage, all of which it is ready to wield to stay in control." "[A]fter the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, Saudi leaders and their allies also realize how quickly protests in the region can jump borders and topple leaders who had been in power for years, if not decades. That year, Saudi Arabia dispatched troops to neighboring Bahrain to help quash an uprising of the country's majority Shiite population against its Sunni rulers. The move snuffed out demonstrations of the kind that swept countries like Egypt and Tunisia," they write.
"Saudi Arabia, a hereditary monarchy, itself faces economic pressures, with lower oil prices straining the budget and forcing the government to roll back some of the cradle-to-grave services that underpin the relationship between the monarchy and its subjects."
| | Why Pakistan Won't Be Changing Soon | | The US announcement Thursday that it is suspending security assistance to Pakistan over its alleged failure to adequately crack down on terror groups operating in the country is likely to further fuel tensions between the two nations. But while the move has made headlines, Michael Kugelman, a South Asia specialist at the Woodrow Wilson Center, emails Global Briefing that there are three reasons why the significance and impact of the Trump administration's aid suspension shouldn't be overstated.
"First, aid freezes to Pakistan are nothing new. After US forces raided Osama bin Laden's compound, Washington suspended $800 million in military aid," Kugelman says.
"Second, Pakistan has overcome these freezes before, and it will this time, as well—especially because it can turn to its deep-pocketed Saudi and Chinese allies.
"Third, don't expect the aid freeze to have its desired effect of curbing Pakistan's ties to terrorists that target US troops in Afghanistan. Pakistan believes critical national interests are served by maintaining ties to militants. The Haqqani Network and Afghan Taliban help push back against a presence by India, Pakistan's bitter enemy, in Afghanistan. So, for Pakistan, using non-state actors against its stronger foe is a powerful tool it won't easily give up.
"Ultimately, it will take much more than aid freezes—think harsher measures like expanded drone strikes or sanctions—to induce changes in Pakistan's behavior. But then again, pressuring Pakistan more may only cause it to double down. Either way, Pakistan will only change its ways when it feels that its interests are better served by severing its ties to militants. To this point, it has no incentive to think that way."
| | No, Russian Submarines Won't Cripple America's Internet Access | | | Growing US concerns that Russia might try to cripple internet communications by attacking fiber optic cables in the Atlantic Ocean that connect America to the global internet are likely misplaced, suggests Louise Matsakis for Wired. Even if it did, "the consequences would likely be less severe than the picture the US military paints." "For one, ruptures aren't exactly an anomaly. One of the estimated 428 undersea cables worldwide is damaged every couple of days. Nearly all faults aren't intentional. They're caused by underwater earthquakes, rock slides, anchors, and boats. That's not to say that humans are incapable of purposefully messing with the cables; off the coast of Vietnam in 2007, fishermen pulled up 27 miles of fiber cords, disrupting service for several months. (It wasn't cut off completely, because the country had one more cable that kept the internet going)," Matsakis writes. "That means Russia snipping a handful of cables in the Atlantic, where its submarines have been spotted, would disturb the global internet very little. In fact, even if it ruptured every single cable in the Atlantic Ocean, traffic could still be re-routed the other way, across the Pacific." "That's not to say that the world's undersea cables aren't at risk, or that they don't need protection—especially in areas of the world with less internet infrastructure, like Africa and some parts of Southeast Asia. When a fault happens there, the consequences can be more severe, including genuine internet disruption." | | Get Ready for Africa's Generational War | | The past few months have suggested that Africa is undergoing a "deepening of a democratic recession…driven by elites' development of new and subtle forms of political and electoral manipulation," John Githongo writes for Foreign Policy. But the growing pressure for change from Africa's youthful population is a better barometer of the continent's future.
"In several countries, institutions that were once firmly under the thumb of elites are showing glimmers of independence—from the media (including social media) to the church and the judiciary," Githongo argues. "The question now is whether this grassroots democratic consolidation, exemplified by the massive anti-Mugabe protests and the armies of lawyers and human rights campaigners fighting for transparency in Kenya, can check or begin to reverse the tide of authoritarianism being unleashed by elites from above.
"In the long term, demographic shifts make democratic change seem inevitable. Africa's population is the youngest, fastest growing, and, in many places, the most rapidly urbanizing on the planet. The individuals driving this youth bulge are increasingly globalized in their aspirations, more digitally savvy than preceding generations, and far more impatient with the authoritarian leaders their parents long ago learned to tolerate."
| | Disasters in 2017 Were Extremely Costly. It Will Get Worse: Report | | | Last year saw the biggest expected insurance losses on record, thanks largely to the "hurricane trio of Harvey, Irma and Maria…[and] a severe earthquake in Mexico," Munich RE notes in a new report. And things are only likely to get worse. "[O]verall losses—i.e. including uninsured losses—amounted to US$330 [billion], the second-highest figure ever recorded for natural disasters. The only costlier year so far was 2011, when the Tohoku earthquake in Japan contributed to overall losses of US$354 [billion] in today's dollars," the report notes. "[A] key point is that some of the catastrophic events, such as the series of three extremely damaging hurricanes, or the very severe flooding in South Asia after extraordinarily heavy monsoon rains, are giving us a foretaste of what is to come. Because even though individual events cannot be directly traced to climate change, our experts expect such extreme weather to occur more often in future." | | | | | | |
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