Author Archives: Tom Arms

Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 13th October 2024 - 10:25 am

France

As I sat down to write, French Prime Minister Michele Barnier was making last minute adjustments to his budget before presenting it to the National Assembly.

So, there may be a few unintentional omissions from this piece, but not too many because the problems of the French economy have been widely circulated in advance of the Barnier budget.

On Friday morning Barnier was widely expected to introduce an austerity budget of cuts and higher taxes totalling $66 billion – or two percent of the French GDP. Two-thirds will come in cuts in government spending and one third in tax increases.

The savings will come from a six-month delayed pension increase and $20 billion in cuts to government departments. The newly-appointed Barnier also wants to cut local government subsidies for businesses. To raise money, Barnier plans to introduce a temporary super tax on firms with more than a $1.1 billion turnover and households with earnings over $547,000.

The super tax is likely to have no problem in the French legislature. There is very little sympathy in France – or most everywhere else – for the rich. Pensioners are another problem. National Rally leader Marine Le Pen has already accused the government of “stealing from the elderly.” As for government cuts, the devil is in the detail and those details will only become clear in the coming weeks of debate.

It is clear, however, that something must be done to deal with the government deficit which is expected to exceed six percent of GDP in 2024.

President Emmanuel Macron had a reputation as a good money manager. And back in January 2020 he appeared to have the economy under control. Then the pandemic struck. Macron pledged to “protect” the French people “whatever it costs.” Government spending leapt to 59 percent of GDP – more than Germany or Spain or any other OECD country.

As the pandemic eased, Russia invaded Ukraine and the price of oil and grain rapidly rose along with almost every inflation marker. Macron’s economic plans went out the window.

But the parlous state of the French economy is not Barnier’s only problem. He is prime minister of a minority government with France’s left and right wing parties broadly united in their opposition. But not completely, Le Pen’s RN favours cuts in government but not cuts in pension payments.  The left joins them on behalf of pensioners but also opposes any cuts in government spending.

Barnier’s hope is to gain broad support from the Gaullist parties and then play off the left and right over specific aspects of France’s finances.

The budget has to be agreed by December. If Barnier fails to win the support of a majority of the National Assembly then he has the option of using emergency measures to push it through. But that is highly unpopular and could easily lead to the collapse of his government.

United States

Trump may have broken the law – again. This time the law in question is known as the Logan Act.

The Logan Act was passed in 1799 shortly after the creation of the United States. It makes it illegal for private individuals to conduct diplomacy or negotiations with foreign governments without authorisation from the federal government. Breaching it can cost a fine and three years in prison

The law makes sense. The Secretary of State – or any of his officials – don’t want their efforts being contradicted or undermined by an individual negotiating with a different agenda.

According to the latest book by investigative journalist Bob Woodward, Donald Trump spoke with Russian president Vladimir Putin at least seven times since leaving the White House. Of course, they may have just been exchanging recipes or discussing when to send Putin the latest health care products. That, however, seems unlikely given wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

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Tom Arms

Observation of an Expat: Florida – The Submersible State

By Tom Arms | Sat 12th October 2024 - 9:22 am

Hurricanes are only part of Florida’s climate change problem.

That is not to in anyway minimise the dangers of extreme weather. Hurricane Helene is estimated to cost up to $47.5 billion and 227 lives. Milton, which struck only 22 days later has so far taken 11 lives and left three million people without power.

But more insidious is the impact rising sea levels are having on what has been nicknamed “The Sunshine State.”

One of the most significant consequences of global warming is melting polar ice caps. This is expected to raise sea levels globally by up to three feet by the end of this century. But tides and currents in the Gulf of Mexico mean that the sea levels around Florida could go up by six feet and four feet by the half century mark.

This means visitors to Miami’s popular South Beach would require snorkels at the very least. In fact Miami as a whole would be in danger as most of it is less than six feet above sea level.

It is not just the beaches that are in danger. The rising sea levels have caused salt water to flood fresh water aquifers. This has affected the state’s drinking water supplies and water needed for agriculture, which, after tourism, is Florida’s biggest industry. The everglades could easily become the saltglades with all the consequential damage to wildlife that such a name change implies.

Florida’s Governor Ron de Santis is a climate change sceptic. He does not believe that fossil fuels are responsible for global warming. But, to give him credit, he does accept the proof of his own eyes that rising sea levels are threatening his paradise state, and he is dealing with it.

Miami’s South Beach, for instance, has invested in a sea wall, pumping stations and elevated roads. The South Florida Water Management District has outlined a $2.5 billion plan to upgrade infrastructure including the installation of pumps and key floodgates. Miami has plans to spend $3.8 billion on storm water management systems.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 6th October 2024 - 10:25 am

China

The Chinese leadership is worried. Their country’s long history is peppered with instances of the “Mandate of Heaven” falling from the rulers’ shoulders because of economic problems.

On top of that there is the obvious fact that autocracies run the risk of violent dissent because the non-violent avenues of protest are banned.

Paramount Leader Xi Jinping has warned of “potential dangers” and added that the Chinese Communist Party must be “well-prepared” to “overcome grave challenges.” In Xi-speak this means a crackdown on dissent accompanied with measures to help the middle classes  and criticism of wealthy people who flaunt their riches.

In this week alone. The party has authorised cash hand-outs, tried to shake up the ailing property market and held a surprise meeting to kick start the economy. But three years of economic slowdown and Covid lockdown have taken a toll and economists believe that it is unlikely that China will hit the relatively modest (for China) target of 5 percent growth in the economy.

The Chinese young people have been particularly hard hit. Unemployment among the 16 to 24 year olds hit 21.3 percent in 2023. In January this year the government stopped issuing figures which implies that the youth jobless statistics have soared even higher. Also impacted has been the promotion prospects for those fortunate enough to be in employment.

For decades the Chinese have been admired – and feared—for their extraordinary work ethic. The changes in the economy, however, have created a shift in attitudes towards work. According to a recent survey by American online pollsters, in 2013, 63 percent of recent graduates said hard work paid. Ten years later the figure had dropped to 28.3 percent.

The survey by N. Aliskey, S, Rozelle and M. Whyte also revealed a fear for the future. In 2014, 76.5 percent of those polled were optimistic about the future and said that the economy and their lives had improved over the past five years. In 2023 the figure was 38.8 percent.

According to the think tank Freedom House, in the second quarter of 2024 there has been an 18 percent rise in protests and three-quarters of these were based on economic grievances. From June 2022, Freedom House has logged 6,400 incidents of dissent, and their research does not include Xinjiang or Tibet where dissent is the strongest.

United States

J.D Vance won the vice-presidential debate. That was the general consensus. That consensus is not good news for J.D. Vance. Donald Trump does not like the spotlight being shifted away from him.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Middle East Consequences

By Tom Arms | Sat 5th October 2024 - 10:23 am

The Gaza War has escalated to become the Middle East war and Israel is winning – for now.

But the problem is that the Israeli government’s strategy is based entirely on total military victory over Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and their backer Iran.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – pushed by his ultra-orthodox allies – has left no room for political compromise or any consideration of the wider consequences.

At the UN General Assembly this week, the Israeli Prime Minister declared: “There is no place” In the Middle East that Israel’s “long arm cannot reach.” He then left the chamber to make a phone call ordering the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. He and a large slice of Hezbollah’s senior command structure were dead within the hour.

Shortly afterwards, Israel launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

Iran could be restrained no longer. They were being humiliated. Tehran launched the largest ever missile attack on Tel Aviv. Thanks to Israel’s iron dome and American and British jets, only a handful of the missiles broke through. Netanyahu responded by pronouncing: “Iran made a big mistake…and it will pay for it.”

How will Israel make Iran pay for their attack? What will be America’s response? How about Russia, China and the Arab states? What are the likely consequences of what appears to be the start of a Middle East war?

First of all, we should examine the role of Hezbollah in the context of the wider relationships of the Middle East. Hezbollah is, first and foremost a creature of Iran. Its primary purpose is to act as a deterrent defensive shield against a threatened Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Its estimated 45,000-strong military force and 100,000-plus missiles were thought to be enough to keep Israel off balance and occupied but not nearly enough to invade the Jewish state and defeat it in a proper war.

But even as a defensive shield, Hezbollah has been weakening in recent years. Lebanon’s multiplying political and economic problems have been largely blamed at the party’s insistence of working as a state within a state while at the same time attempting to control the legitimate Lebanese political apparatus. Hezbollah is unpopular with the Lebanese people.

Then there are the missile attacks it has launched on northern Israel since 8 October. It may have started with 100,000 rockets and drones, but military analysts believe that at least half of Hezbollah’s arsenal has been either fired or destroyed by Israeli counterattacks.

Finally, there is Israel’s infiltration of Hezbollah’s communications system and the assassination of key figures. The destruction of pagers and walkie talkies indicates that Mossad has the ability to tell where almost every Hezbollah fighter is at any given time and the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) has the ability to destroy them with sophisticated guided missiles.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review – 22 September 2024

By Tom Arms | Sun 22nd September 2024 - 8:30 am

What next in the Lebanon?

Destruction of your enemy’s communications is usually a prelude to an all-out attack. But so far Israeli ground troops appear to be focused on Gaza.

Such an attack could provoke a violent response from Hezbollah. But so far they have been relatively restrained. Hezbollah’s 64-year-old leader Hassan Nasrallah said on Thursday that the exploding pagers and walkie talkies was a “severe blow” and that Israel had crossed a “red line.” But he made no explicit threats.

It is thought that the Israeli government is trying to decouple the tit for tat missile attacks on the Israeli-Lebanese border from the Gaza War so that it is not fighting on two fronts.

Hezbollah launched its attacks in support of Hamas on 8 October, the day after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. It said the missile attacks would continue until a permanent ceasefire is agreed in Gaza. The resultant tit-for-tat missile exchanges has led to the evacuation of 80,000 Israelis from the north of Israel and 90,000 Lebanese from the south of Lebanon.

Decoupling would imply that the Israeli government believes that Hezbollah could be persuaded through violence to stop its missile attacks. Based on past performance, the opposite seems more probable.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: The Keystone State

By Tom Arms | Sat 21st September 2024 - 8:30 am

Pennsylvania’s is known as “The Keystone State.” There are lots of reasons for this moniker but the one most pertinent at the moment is that it holds the key to the White House.

It is generally agreed that whomever tops the poll in Pennsylvania will also pull in the vital swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan. Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by the narrowest margin since 1840. But then Biden didn’t do much better in 2020. His margin of victory was only 80,555 out of a total of 6,725, 902 Pennsylvania votes cast.

The Keystone State is a microcosm of divided America. In the East you have Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley. Rich and filled mainly with liberal democrats, it has a population of about 5.7 million–almost half of the total state population of 13 million. In the West you have 2.3 million people in steel town—Pittsburgh. There is also J.D. Vance’s downtrodden Appalachia and fracking country which translates as Trump territory. In the middle there is a mix of rural voters vs liberals inhabiting the largest number of colleges and universities in America.

Up until Kamala Harris’s entry into the race, the opinion polls showed Trump and Biden either neck and neck or Trump slightly ahead. The latest post-debate polls show Kamala Harris with a 4 to 6 point lead. But it is early in the race and that lead could evaporate as her debate victory fades in the voters’ memories. There have been no polls since the second assassination attempt or the Federal Reserve Bank’s cut in interest rates.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 15th September 2024 - 9:35 am

United States

Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene WAS the female darling of the Republican far-right. No longer. The new girl on the block is 31-year-old Laura Loomer who is so far to the right that right-wing Ms Greene has called her “mentally unstable and a documented liar.”

Ms Loomer is also emerging as a confidante of Donald Trump. She travelled on his plane to the 10 September presidential debate in Philadelphia and is said to have fed him the story about immigrants eating pets in Ohio.

She continued with the former president to New York and was with him when he attended the bipartisan services to commemorate the 9/11 terrorist attack. This despite the fact that Ms Loomer has claimed that 9/11 was an “inside job” perpetrated by the Deep State liberal elite.

Laura Loomer loves right-wing conspiracy theories. In her playbook the mass shootings at Last Vegas, El Paso and Parkland were all staged by the anti-gun lobby. The winter storm that disrupted the Iowa caucus was created by meteorologists hired by Deep State Democrats to help Republican candidate Nikki Haley.

Ms Loomer proudly identifies as an “Islamaphobe.” When told that 2,000 Muslim immigrants had drowned while crossing the Mediterranean, she tweeted: “Good. Here’s to 2,000 more. “

Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have all banned her for spreading hate speech and misinformation, although Elon Musk reinstated her account. She has also been banned by the online banking services Paypal, Gofundme and Venmo. The taxi services  Uber and Lyfft have barred her from using their vehicles because of her attempts to ban Muslim taxi drivers. She is suing all of the above – unsuccessfully.

Twice Ms Loomer has run for Congress for a Florida seat. Twice she lost and twice she was endorsed by Donald Trump. She has written for Alex Jones’s Infowars; The Geller Report which pushed the Obama birther lie; Rebel Media which describes as a counter-Jihad platform and Veritas, a major broadcaster of conspiracy theories.

Ms Loomer denies that she is a White Supremacist but proudly admits to being a White Nationalist. She is not a Christian nationalist because she is Jewish and has been the target of death threats from the anti-Semitic wing of America’s far right.

Her loyalty to Donald Trump is rock solid. She told the Washington Post: “If Trump doesn’t get in I don’t have anything. Ms Loomer attacked Florida governor Ron de Santis and his wife for daring to challenge the former president and has advised Trump that he should make a list of those who have challenged him in the courts and elsewhere and, when re-elected president, “execute them for treason.”

United States – more

What if Trump loses? Will there be a repeat of January 6 when rioters stormed the US capitol in a vain attempt to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory?

Unlikely. But only because this time around Biden – not Trump – controls the security apparatus. And he has put in place an array of measures to protect not only the capitol building, but the entire metropolitan area of Washington DC.

No. If there is a threat to the election it will be in the voting booths, the counting rooms, the election boards and the courts.

As in 2020, Trump is planting the seeds for a legal challenge in case the vote goes against him. This time his objections will be based on illegal immigrants voting for Harris. He told a rally in Las Vegas this summer that “the only way they can beat us is to cheat.”

In the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin the Trump-controlled Republican National Committee has put 102 election deniers on local and state election boards. In Georgia, for instance, the election deniers control the state-wide board and have already introduced rules that allow them to delay voter certification while they conduct “investigations” into “unspecified irregularities.”

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: The Debate

By Tom Arms | Sat 14th September 2024 - 9:27 am

Trump lost. In the words of his acolyte Senator Lindsey Graham: the debate was a “disaster.” Not surprisingly, Trump has refused to debate Kamala Harris again, making it one of the few times that he has turned down the opportunity to blow his horn.

The former president did land a few punches in Tuesday’s verbal brawl. In fact if you listen to the first and last ten minutes then you might come away thinking that Trump won.  But the political theatre will be remembered for how he was mocked, rattled and lied, lied and lied.

Millions around world sniggered or guffawed when the former president claimed that immigrants were eating the pets of the residents of Springfield, Ohio.

He was clearly rattled when Kamala Harris invited viewers to attend one of his rallies and added the pointed observation that numbers of attendees are dropping and people are leaving early, bored with his rambling monologues. Rubbish, he retorted, and then falsely claimed that Kamala Harris paid people to attend her rallies.

The lies came fast and furious – Millions of criminals are flooding across America’s borders. In reality, of the 1.4 million illegals who entered the US in the past year, 14,700 were found to have a criminal record or .01 percent. They were immediately deported. Among native-born Americans there were 16.5 violent crimes for every 100,000 in 2021.

Violent crime, claimed Trump, was going through the roof (again, he said, because of immigrants). Wrong. According to the FBI homicides were down 26 percent in 2023 and violent crime as a whole is at its lowest level in 50 years.

Abortion is a hot election issue. Trump claimed that the Democrats want abortions in the ninth month of pregnancies and are killing babies after they are born. This earned a gawp of disbelief from Kamala Harris and was quickly corrected by moderator David Muir.

Inflation, according to the former president, “is the worst in US history.” It was bad. It reached 9.7 percent. But it has been higher five times since they started keeping records.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 8th September 2024 - 10:28 am

Gaza

In a month it will be first anniversary of the start of the Gaza War. There is no end in sight.

The two sides – Israel and Hamas—have two diametrically opposed positions. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will accept nothing less than the total destruction of Hamas. He might reluctantly accept a temporary ceasefire if the Israeli Defence Forces or Mossad manage to assassinate Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. That would enable him to retrieve at least some of the hostages. But once those hostages are returned expect the attacks to resume.

Hamas leader Sinwar is holding out for nothing less than a permanent ceasefire. This means that at least a Hamas remnant would remain intact for Palestinians to build on. Netanyahu would regard such a result as failure.

The American, Qatari and Egyptian negotiators meanwhile are trying to bridge these apparently irreconcilable positions with a diplomatic agreement couched in terms of “constructive ambiguity” which allows both sides to claim concessions, if not total victory.

The cost of failure is high. At stake is not just the plight of millions of Gazans and the future security of the state of Israel. Hanging over the talks is the threat of a wider regional war. A slight misstep by Israel, Iran, Hezbollah or the Houthis can easily set off a major conflagration.

Ironically, escalation can work to the advantage of both Netanyahu and Sinwar. From the point of view of the Hamas leader, a full-throated Middle East conflict would draw Israeli forces away from Gaza to attack Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon. There is also the possibility that an escalation could pull the Arabs off the fence and onto the Palestinian side.

Looking at the advantages of escalation through Israeli eyes, Netanyahu has been pressing the US for some time to join him in a direct attack on Iran which he sees as the fount of all of Israel’s problems. The Israeli prime minister was explicit in stating that goal in his recent address to a joint session of congress.

In the meantime, Netanyahu is no nearer to reaching his goal of the total destruction of Hamas and Yahya Sinwar is no nearer to admitting total defeat.

Immigration

There is a new forest of placards at Trump rallies: “Mass Deportation Now!” The same cry is being heard in Spain at Vox rallies. In France when the National Rally gathers. It is barked by some members of Britain’s Reform Party. In Germany The far-right Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) has this week managed to gain control of the East German Lander of Thuringia.

And it is not just the far-right that is pushing the anti-immigrant line. Joe Biden’s tough new executive orders have dramatically reduced the number of illegal immigrants crossing America’ southern border. Stefan Lofven The leader of the centre-left, previously pro-immigrant Swedish Social Democrats recently reversed party policy to declare: “The Swedish people can feel safe in the knowledge that Social Democrats will stand up for a strict immigration policy.”

The Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, Serbia, the Czech Republic… Virtually all of the Western world has turned anti-immigrant. Opposing immigration wins votes. Backing deportation is a bit iffy, but the debate is moving in that direction. The problem is that mass deportation is wholly impractical.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Kamala’s Foreign Policy

By Tom Arms | Sat 7th September 2024 - 8:23 am

Foreign policy analysts are sifting through documents and speeches and even casting a few runes and studying used tea leaves to determine what foreign policy directions a Kamala White House may take.

It is still a bit murky. Constructive ambiguity, is one of the buzz soundbites of 21st century diplomacy and is heard often in the Harris camp. But outlines are appearing, especially in contrast to a Trump foreign policy.

The transactional diplomacy favoured by the former president is out. Gone – and hopefully forgotten – will be days when American support was tendered only when Washington could point to easily quantifiable successes negotiated along narrow obvious channels of self-interest. Aka transactional diplomacy.

Instead, expect a move towards consensus building and closer work with allies. This implicitly means closer relations with America’s oldest allies – NATO – who since 2016 have lived in constant dread of an American pull out. A Harris Administration would be pro-NATO which in turn means very pro-Ukraine. Perhaps more so than Biden

The Asian Pivot, however, is still very much on the cards. But it is expected to be based more on alliance-building than military ship building, specifically with Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, the Philippines and India. America cannot afford a two-front war and will need to shift some of its regional military responsibilities onto local shoulders. The Biden Administration has already started the ball rolling. Harris is expected to push it further down the road.

At the same time, a Harris Administration, will also want to continue to attract more businesses from China and the Asian tigers to American shores. Harris is opposed to the Trans Pacific Partnership and wants to continue tariffs ranging from 25% to 100% on $18 billion of Chinese exports. Trump, on the other hand, proposes a 60 percent blanket tariff on $551 billion of Chinese goods. Economists fear that a Trump Administration would push up inflation in America and create deflation in China.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 25th August 2024 - 10:51 am

United States

The Kamala Harris bandwagon continues to gather momentum. Going into this week’s Democratic National Convention “The Economist” poll tracker put her three points ahead nationally. The convention dividend should add another two to three points easily.

Kamala’s rapid rise, however, has less to do with her policies and more to do with vibes. Her main attributes are that she is younger than Joe Biden, pro-abortion and anti-Trump, which, for the Democrats, is more than enough.

In her 40-minute conference speech a few foreign policy hints slipped out. On the Middle East she supports Israel while sympathising and empathising with the Palestinians. On NATO she is pro-Alliance. As for Ukraine, she is anti-Putin and on China Kamala Harris remains a bit of a mystery.

Ms Harris’s recent speech in Philadelphia on Kamalanomics failed to impress the professionals. Her plans to end price gouging with federal regulations; raise child tax credits by $4,000 and hand-out $25,000 to first time home buyers, was derided by most economists as inflationary left-of-centre crowd-pleasing populism. It was not, however, as Trump claimed, communism.

Former prosecutor Kamala Harris is, however, proving adept at deflecting criticism; coming up with resonating slogans and landing punches. Two placards keep popping up at her rallies: “Freedom” and “We Will Not Go Back.”

The first encompasses a broad swathe of issues to include reproductive rights, racism, misogyny, health care, for the elderly, the electoral process, the rule of law, the constitution and democracy itself. All of which either have been, or are perceived to be, threatened by Donald Trump and his Republican acolytes.

“We Will Not Go Back” refers to the belief that Republicans want to turn the social clock back to the 1950s – perhaps even further – when Jim Crow ruled in the South and a woman’s place was in the home.

Trump is the master of the personal insult. Vice President Harris has fostered a unique method for countering them. She ignores them. Then she turns the debate on her opponent’s weaknesses. Project 2025, for instance, is a major embarrassment for the ex-president. He has repeatedly disavowed it. But Kamala Harris refuses to let it go.

Finally, there is the fact that Kamala Harris ticks almost every diversity box there is. She is a female, part-Asian, part-African all-American. Yet she rarely mentions her gender or mixed-race background. Perhaps it is time for Martin Luther King Jr’s dream. The dream that the day will come when a person will be judged not by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.

China and the United States

China appreciates Donald Trump. It is too much they say they like him. His threatened tariffs and bellicose rhetoric would undoubtedly put a strain on Sino-American relations.

But at the same time, the ex-president has shown little inclination to defend Taiwan and Trump’s transactional diplomacy could simplify relations. Most of all, Donald J. Trump is a known quantity.

Kamala Harris, on the other hand, is an unwelcome mystery.

For a start, Beijing is unhappy with the end of the battle of the geriatrics that a Trump-Biden race represented. The Chinese have their own problems with a perceived gerontocracy and Kamala Harris presents an unflattering contrast with 71-year-old Xi Jinping. Since Ms Harris emerged as the Democratic nominee, all hints of a Biden-Xi comparison have been erased from the Chinese internet.

Then there is the problem of racism and misogyny. At least America’s problem as portrayed by the Chinese Communist Party. In May Beijing published a report on human rights in America which said racism is getting worse and gender discrimination is “rampant”. Kamala Harris – in case you missed it – is female and of mixed Asian-African heritage.

It is expected that Kamala Harris’s China policy will largely be a re-run of Joe Biden’s. She will likely leave in place the tariffs imposed by her mentor and continue the commitment to defend Taiwan and attack China’s human rights record.

The choice of Tim Walz as Harris’s running-mate adds an interesting wrinkle to Sino-American relations in a possible Harris administration. He taught in China and has visited the country dozens of times. In contrast, Ms Harris has made only the rare visit to Asia.

This indicates that Walz may break with vice-presidential tradition and have a role to play as the administration’s point man on China. Republicans are ready for it. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives have already launched an investigation into Walz’s “longstanding and cosy relationship with China”.  Unfortunately for the conservatives they are unlikely to find skeleton’s in Walz’s Chinese wardrobe. His time in and out of Congress has been marked by repeated attack on Beijing’s human rights record, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by China’s state-controlled media.

Trump, on the other hand, is more concerned with trading rights than human rights. So, all things considered, Xi Jinping is likely to prefer Trump over Harris.

India

Last month Moscow. This week Kyiv. What is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi up to?

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Defense Cooperation – Back Door to Europe

By Tom Arms | Sat 24th August 2024 - 11:42 am

If Britain’s Labour government is looking for it, there is a gaping door back into a new relationship with Europe – defense cooperation.

And this door has the added advantage that increased defense cooperation between Britain and its European NATO allies is becoming essential to counter growing American disillusionment with Europe.

Whether it is a MAGA-fied isolationism or a pivot to Asia, it is clear that foreign policymakers in both the Democratic and Republican parties are questioning America’s commitment to Europe.

For those on both sides of the English Channel this creates an opportunity to start to repair the damage of eight years of Conservative Party Brexiteering. It could also strengthen European defences and, ironically, help to retain the American nuclear umbrella.

Europe faced the problem of American isolationism and problems with Asia before—in the run-up to the creation NATO and within a year of its founding. When the idea of linking America to the defense of post-war Europe was first mooted, Senator Arthur Vandenberg, leader of the Republican-controlled Senate, insisted on proof that the Europeans were jointly committed to their own defense.

This was proven by British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin with a 50-year Anglo-French Treaty of Alliance and Mutual Assistance in 1947 and then a year later with an extension of the mutual defense pact to include Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Vandenberg and the Republicans were impressed, and on April 4, 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty was signed.

A year later Europe panicked when North Korea invaded South Korea. What if the Soviet Union took advantage of Korea to attack Europe? Could America afford to fight on two fronts? Which was the more important to Washington—Europe or Asia? The result was the Pleven Plan (named after French Prime Minister Renee Pleven). It proposed strengthening the European arm of NATO with a European Army headed up by a European defense minister.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 18th August 2024 - 9:49 am

United States

Kamala Harris, asserts Donald Trump, “is a communist.” The assertion is, of course, another blatant falsehood.

And the fact that the former president is resorting to the well-tried, but somewhat discredited, tactic of red-baiting demonstrates how desperate the Trump campaign has become since Harris took over from President Joe Biden.

Kamala Harris does have certain political beliefs and policies that run counter to those of Donald Trump, conservative voters and the Republican Party. The one that rankles most with conservatives is her support for America’s limited social safety net. Vice President Harris supports the universal retirement benefits (ie social security), Medicare (health benefits for the elderly) and Medicaid (health care for low-income Americans). She also favours abortion rights which puts her on a collision course with the evangelical right.

In European terms, such views would put Kamala Harris on the right wing of social democrats. The problem is that a large number of Americans – especially Republicans – drop the word “democrats” when talking about their allies and refer to Europeans simply as “socialists.” Furthermore, many of them wrongly equate democratic socialism with a slightly lesser form of communism.

Communism, however, is different. It promotes a classless society where all property is communally owned and the state controls the means of production. Because this system runs counter to human nature, a repressive government led by an unelected elite is require to enforce it. That is not being proposed by Kamala Harris. But hey ho, Donald Trump has never let the truth stand in the way of a good dog whistle conspiracy.

Gaza

The Gaza ceasefire talks appear to be going nowhere. According to the New York Times, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tabled a new set of conditions which will almost certainly be rejected in Hamas who are refusing to attend talks in Qatar.

In addition, the assassination of negotiator Ismail Haniyeh has elevated hardliner Yahya Sinwar to the job. He is hiding in Hamas’s tunnel labyrinth and has said he would fight to the last Gazan.

Hanging over the ceasefire talks is the threat of Iran to retaliate for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil. What that retaliation will involve is a worrying unknown, and the Iranians are keen to keep that way.

To confront the fear the Americans have ordered a nuclear-powered submarine equipped with cruise missiles to the Middle East. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also despatched to the region a second aircraft carrier group and amphibious craft capable of landing several thousand marines. The Israeli government has told its citizens to stockpile food and water in safe rooms.

The Iranians have been briefing journalists that the one thing that would stop a retaliation would be a Gaza ceasefire. But that prospect is slipping further and further away.

The New York Times reported that this week the Netanyahu government has tabled several more conditions to the proposal they issued in May.  These include Israeli control of the Egyptian-Gaza border and a series of obstacles to the return of refugees to their homes in north Gaza. It has been reported that the new proposals are opposed by both the Israeli negotiators in Qatar and senior military people.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Ukraine – Shrewdness or Mistake?

By Tom Arms | Sat 17th August 2024 - 9:36 am

Ukraine has introduced a new strategic weapon in its war with Russia. How it uses this weapon could determine the course of the conflict.

There is a heavily-defended 600 mile frontline between the Russian army in Eastern Ukraine and the Ukrainian military, grouped mainly on the western bank of the Dnieper River. Movement along this frontline has been incremental, much like the western front of World War I.

Defended by poorly-trained Russian conscripts is the 650-mile border between northeast Ukraine and the Russian oblasts of Kursk, Bryansk and Belgorod.

Ukraine’s military commander Oleksandr Syrsky has crossed a 10-mile stretch of that border to become the first military leader since World War Two to invade Russia. As of Friday, Ukrainians have established their dominance in 800-square miles of the Kursk oblast; set up a military administration in the Russian town of Sudzha and gained control of 81 other towns and villages.

General Syrsky declared: “We are here to stay.  A spokesperson for the Ukrainian foreign ministry, said: “We have no intention of staying. We will leave.”

The Syrsky stay strategy is likely to lead to failure and defeat. The diplomats’ approach contains the seeds of victory.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 11th August 2024 - 10:21 am

United States

Weird is the new catchword of the American presidential elections. It is weird that Donald Trump – a convicted felon – is the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States.

It is weird that J.D. Vance – an anti-abortionist who claims that America is run by a miserable “bunch of childless cat ladies” – is the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States.

It is weird because both those images sound totally “un-American” and thus unlikely to win the votes of the American electorate. So it is weird that those two men have been nominated for the two highest offices in America.

Not weird is that Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, has been chosen by Kamala Harris to be her running mate in the presidential elections. Governor Walz is – as they like to say – as American as apple pie.

For a start he is from the mid-West which is often viewed as the traditionally American part of America. He attended Nebraska State College where he met his wife Gwen. They have two children – very American.

He taught high school social studies and coached the football team. The team went on to win the state championships. That is very, very American story almost worthy of a based-on-a-true-story Netflix film.

Walz was in the National Guard for 24 years, and reached the rank of Master Sergeant. Military service is almost a requirement for American politicians.

He served six terms in Congress before being elected Governor of Minnesota in 2018. He was re-elected in 2022. It was while he was Governor that Republicans have veered away from his all-American roots and towards what they might regard as weirdness. Walz legalised marijuana, passed strict gun laws, affirmed abortion rights, introduced free school meals and free college tuition. The liberal democrats love him. Which could explain why he is also chair of the Democratic Governors Association.

Walz is also credited with coming up with the catchword “weird” to describe Trump and Vance. President Biden had been focused on Trump’s threat to democracy. Walz reckoned that threat talk was a bit of a stretch for most American voters. “Weird” is easier to understand.

Bangladesh

From Nobel prize-winning micro-banker to leader of Bangladesh is quite a leap. But at the tender age of 84 Professor Muhammad Yunus has made the jump.

He replaces Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed who has fled the country after an estimated 400 people died in student-led riots against her quota system for the civil service.

Yunus probably doesn’t need the headache of running a country of 170 million people. He already secured the Nobel Peace Prize for creating the micro-finance banking system which has lifted millions out of poverty.

Yunus’s Grameen Bank pioneered micro-credit which is acknowledged as one the factors that transformed Bangladesh from the world’s second poorest country to the 38th wealthiest.

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Observations of an Expat: Creator of the Great Replacement Theory

By Tom Arms | Sat 10th August 2024 - 10:15 am

Holed up in a 14th century castle in southwestern France is the philosophical architect of the far-right right race riots that have recently swept Britain and inspired White supremacists around the world.

77-year-old Renaud Camus is the man responsible for the “Great Replacement Theory.”

This race-driven conspiracy theory claims that a liberal elite is plotting the destruction of White civilisations by encouraging African and Asian immigrants to replace European culture with their own.

So who is Renaud Camus? For a start he is quite bright and quite driven. He has degrees in history, literature, philosophy and law and has taught at American and French universities and contributed to various encyclopaedias. At the age of 21 he came out of the closet to help establish a gay brigade during the 1968 student riots in Paris. For the next 20-odd years Camus established himself as one of France’s leading gay icons as an award-winning journalist and prolific author.

In 1992 Camus sold his Paris apartment and moved to the crumbling hilltop Chateau de Pilieux. While taking a break from restoring the castle to edit a local guidebook Camus noticed that the demography’s of the populations in France’s old villages had “totally changed,” and, in his view, not for the better.

He described this realisation as an “epiphany” which quickly morphed into The Great Replacement Theory. This was elaborated in three subsequent books: “Abedarium of No Harm,”  “The Grand Replacement “and “You Will Not Replace Us.”

Camus asserts that ethnicity plays a defining role in a country’s identity and he warns that “immigrants are flocking to predominantly white countries for the precise purpose of rendering the white population a minority within their own land or even causing the extinction of their own populations.”

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Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 4th August 2024 - 9:35 am

Donald Trump is the “Great Obfuscator.”

When asked to clarify his outrageous claims he muddies the political waters even more in an attempt to be all things to all people.

Last Friday he told the Christian political pressure group Turning Point Action that if they voted for him in November they wouldn’t have to vote again. He would “fix it.”

Liberals immediately raised the anti-democracy hue and cry. Donald Trump, they said, planned to either abolish elections or rig the system so that conservative Republicans would stay in power forever.

No, no, no, say the MAGA people. That is not what he meant at all. He meant that they won’t have to vote for Donald Trump again because he is prohibited by the constitution from running for a third term.

It was left to Fox News—Trump’s chosen television medium—to clarify the muddle. Interviewer Laura Ingraham pressed him to explain. Trump said the statement was made to encourage Christians to vote in November because American conservatives don’t often vote. He added that the same could be said for gun owners.

This was patently false. As a group, America’s Christians and gun owners are among the largest proportion of voters in the US. His clarification made no sense. So what did the Great Obfuscator mean?

Just as confusing…

…is Trump’s position on the much-discussed Project 2025.

For the benefit of those who have been trapped in a sealed cave for the past six months, Project 2025, is a 900-page report compiled by the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation. It sets out in great detail a programme for Donald Trump if he is inaugurated president in 2025.

Among its provisions are proposals to gut the FBI and Department of Justice and replace tens of thousands of federal civil servants with loyal MAGA Republicans. It wants a national ban on abortion and restrictions on contraception and IVF treatments. Project 2025 proposes a strong “unitary executive branch;” an “end to civil rights protections” and no more “safeguards on drinking water.” All efforts to combat climate change would end” and America would focus more on drilling for fossil fuels. The Department of Education would be scrapped along with all economic ties to China.

Democrats immediately denounced Project 2025 as anti-constitutional, anti-Democratic, anti-American and verging on the illegal. And they added that all those antis pretty well summed up Trump himself.

A fair amount of the mud stuck and Trump quickly started to distance himself from Project 2025. This proved difficult because one of the main contributors to the report was his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The Director of the Heritage Foundation, and the main impetus behind the report, Paul Dans, was Trump’s Chief of Staff for the Office of Personnel Management.

This week Mr Dans resigned as Director of the Heritage Foundation and claimed that Project 2025 was not meant to be an action plan for Donald Trump. Instead, he said, it was merely some thoughts for any future conservative administration.

The Trump campaign immediately put out an “I told you so” release. But then we need to look at what Trump has personally promised to do: Gut the Department of Justice and the FBI and put on trial for treason the “Biden Crime family” and political opponents such as Liz Cheney. “Drill, drill, drill for oil.” Raise tariffs on Chinese exports for between 65-100 percent. Pardon most of the Capitol Hill rioters. Round-up and deport up to 15 million illegal immigrants and “fix it so you won’t have to vote for me again.”

What next in the Middle East?

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Great green box ticker

By Tom Arms | Sat 3rd August 2024 - 9:55 am

As a box ticking exercise it is difficult to beat the Great Green Wall of Africa.

For those not familiar with this incredibly important and ambitious project, the Great Green Wall (aka GGW) is an international undertaking to prevent creeping desertification in Africa. It proposes to plant and maintain on the southern border of the Sahara Desert a nine-mile wide forest stretching 4,831 miles from Dakar on the Atlantic to Djibouti on the Red Sea.

It is estimated that the GGW will create 10 million jobs in one of the most poverty-stricken regions of the world. That means 10 million people less likely to seek survival in Europe and America.

More jobs means more income for governments which means increased political stability and improved governance in one of the most of the world’s most politically unstable and corrupt regions.

From a climate change perspective the GGW is potential wonderful news. The proposed grass and tree coverage is projected to restore 250 million acres of degraded land and capture 250 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Trees also play a major role in reducing global temperatures.

So far about $30 billion has been pledged from a variety of sources to complete the project by 2030. There has already been extensive planting in Senegal, Chad and Ethiopia.

But according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, one of the GGW’s major sponsors—the Great Green Wall is in danger of collapse. The number one threat is violence. Nine of the countries through which the GGW crosses are in the top 20 of the 2024 Global Terrorism Index.

They are the victims of civil war; Jihadist terrorist attacks; the withdrawal of French troops from the Sahel region and their replacement by Russian forces. The Jihadists in particular—and the Russians to a lesser degree—feed on political instability. The GGW encourages stability, so the Jihadists do whatever they can to disrupt the planting regime.

Violence is not the only problem. Critics also claim that the environmental initiative lacks political leadership. That is not surprising. Its roots stretch back to 1952-53 when one of the early climate change activists, British explorer and botanist Richard St Barbe Baker, first proposed the Great Green Wall. He went on to found the International Free Foundation which has since planted an estimated 26 trillion trees.

Many of the foundation’s trees were planted in the Sahel Region. But the foundation is a charity. Governmental coordination and vast amounts of aid were needed to ensure success. In 2002 the project was revived at a special African summit in Chad to launch World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. In 2012 the African Union took it on as a flagship project and in 2014 they were joined by the EU and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). At the One Planet Summit in 2021 various partners pledged $14.3 billion.

But the widespread interest also created problems. At the beginning of 2024 the project involved 21 countries and the same number of international organisations as well as a plethora of charities at international, national and local level. The wall needs directed political leadership and instead is plagued by a confusing babel of competing interests.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 28th July 2024 - 10:30 am

Gaza

The world was presented with two alternative approaches to the Gaza War this week. The first was brokered by China. The second was outlined by Benjamin Netanyahu in an address to a Joint Session of the US Congress.

The first was supported by the feuding leaders of Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, 12 other Palestinian factions and a big chunk of the Global South. The second was received with a standing ovation by America’s Republican lawmakers but boycotted by dozens of Democrat Congressmen.

The Chinese-brokered deal is aimed at ending the schism between Fatah which rules the West Bank as the Palestinian Authority and Hamas which has governed Gaza since ejecting Fatah in 2007. The bitter split between the two has been one of the chief obstacles to implementing the much sought after two-state solution.

On Tuesday the Palestinian factions agreed to form an interim reconciliation government. They also agreed to jointly demand a ceasefire; a total withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the West Bank; elections and they established the bones of a reconstruction programme for Gaza.

On Thursday, Netanyahu denied that Israel was blocking aid to Gaza; claimed that only a few civilians had died; called for the total destruction of Hamas; made no reference to the two-state solution and insisted that a post-war Gaza should be a “demilitarised and de-radicalised” enclave under Israeli military control.

Among those boycotting Netanyahu’s address was former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. She described his speech as “by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honoured with the privilege of addressing the Congress of the United States.”

Ukraine

Another visitor to Beijing this week was Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba. It was the first visit to China by a Ukrainian official since the Russian invasion, and indicates a Ukrainian shift in emphasis from the military to the diplomatic.

The Ukrainians see the Chinese as the only third party power with any leverage over Vladimir Putin. Kuleba told his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi that Ukraine was ready to negotiate in good faith, but he added: “No such readiness is currently observed on the Russian side.” Wang agreed that that the “conditions and timing are not yet ripe.”

Vladimir Putin, for his part, is sticking to his demands that Ukraine handover the four regions his troops have occupied in eastern Ukraine; promise not to join NATO and agree to demilitarisation.

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Observations of an Expat: Kamala v. Donald

By Tom Arms | Sat 27th July 2024 - 10:01 am

Three days, to coin a phrase, is a long time in today’s Tik Tok politics. This time last week wounded and bandaged Donald Trump was basking in what the New York Times called his “mythical status.” He appeared unbeatable. Liberal democrats around the world were in despair.

Then 81-year-old stumbling, crumbling President Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he was dropping out of the White House race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.

She in turn surprised pundits with a rousing Milwaukee speech and 40,000 Americans registered to vote in one day this week – a 700 percent increase on the daily average. What looked like a Republican walk-over has been transformed in an instant to a to-close-to-call fight to the finish.

Up until this week the age factor had been the major political issue, especially after Biden’s painful to watch performance in his debate with Trump. But at 78 Trump is no spring chicken and is often guilty of stumbling over thoughts and words. The dementia shoe is now on the Republican foot.

Age, however, will only be one of several issues in the roughly 100 days before the election. More than ever, the contest is now between the American left and right. There is no doubt about Trump’s far-right credentials. The Republican hierarchy tried to push him as a unity candidate at the convention. His acceptance speech at the party convention started along those lines. But he quickly lapsed into his rambling, mean-spirited right-wing attack on opponents real and imagined.

One of the reasons Harris’ 2020 bid for the White House foundered so quickly is that she was perceived as a far-left candidate. If she is going to be successful in 2024 she has to shed that image and capture the centre ground of American politics.

Not helping her are the problems on America’s southern border. Immigration is a major political issue and early on his administration President Biden handed Harris the poisoned chalice of managing America’s southern border. She failed. In 2023 a record 2.3 million people crossed from Mexico into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

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Observations of an ex pat: Despair

By Tom Arms | Sat 20th July 2024 - 5:13 pm

My overwhelming emotion in the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump is despair.

My crushing depression is not caused just by the attempted assassination. It has been triggered by the host of events that led up to and followed the shooting in Pennsylvania.

It started with the Republicans thirst for power at any price. Between 1933 and 1995 they were the minority party in the House of Representatives for all but four years.  Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich had the answer. He embraced wedge politics by unjustifiably labelling Democrats as “traitors,” “communists,” or “un-American”. Republicans were “patriots,” and the only “true Americans.”

It worked. Republicans have held the majority in the lower house for 22 of the past 30 years.

Then in 2009 along came the Tea Party with its demands for lower taxes, a reduced national debt and federal budget and decreased government spending.

The Tea Party was followed in 2015-16 by Donald Trump. He married wedge politics to the populism of the Tea Party. At first the Republican old guard opposed him. Then he started to win with a mixture of wedge rhetoric, scapegoating, and dangerously over-simplified answers to complex problems.

After winning the presidency in 2016 he set himself up not as the leader of the Republican Party but as THE Republican Party. If you wanted to secure the Republican nomination for an elected office you first had to pledge fealty to The Donald and his increasingly right-wing policies. If you refused you were branded a RINO (Republican in Name Only) and destined—in many cases—to fail at the first hurdle.

Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 should have been the end of the cult of Donald Trump. It wasn’t.  He kept it alive by donning the mantle of victimhood and claiming– without a shred of evidence—that the 2020 election was stolen by Biden and that he was the real winner. On January 6, 2021, a mob incited by Trump’s lies and rhetoric stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 14th July 2024 - 11:15 am

European Parliament

Patriots for Europe is a political oxymoron designed to confuse the public about its true intentions. It stands alongside other political oxymorons such as The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, aka North Korea, which is neither democratic, a republic or run for the benefit of the North Korean people.

Patriots for Europe is a new political grouping in the European Parliament. And the political reality is that none of the national political parties that belong to this group feel the least patriotic leanings towards the European concept.

In fact, they are all Euro-sceptics whose main mission in life is to undermine the concept of a united Europe and drag their countries back to the 19th century when Europe was a patchwork of feuding nationalistic states.

The intellectual driving force behind Patriots for Europe is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. His Fidesz Party was booted out of the centre-right European People’s Party in 2022 for being too right-wing and has been politically homeless ever since.

Soon after the announcement of the results for the recent European Parliament elections – a victory for the far-right – Orban flew to Vienna to launch Patriots for Europe alongside Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis and former Austrian Interior Minister Herbert Kickl. Their stated manifesto was: weaken the EU, focus on European cultural identity, introduce stronger anti-immigration measures and oppose the EU’s climate change policy which aims to make Europe carbon neutral by 2050.

The core trio quickly attracted far-right groups from across the EU. By the end of this week it had grown to 84 seats drawn from 12 member states. This places it in third place behind the centre-right European People’s Party (176 seats) and the centre-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (139 seats). There are a total of 720 seats in the European Parliament.

Conspicuous by its absence from the new party is Germany’s AfD (Alternative for Deutschland). Recent Nazi-related scandals have put the far-right Germans beyond the pale even for the likes of Viktor Orban.

A catch was France’s National Rally (RN). It achieved a major victory in the European Parliamentary elections with 30 of France’s 79 MEPs. National Rally then went on to place a disappointing—and surprising—third in French parliamentary elections.

RN’s Jordan Bardella had expected to be French Prime Minister. He has had to settle for the job of President of Patriots for Europe. He secures the job as leader of the national party with the largest number of MEPs in the new political group.  He will be using the parliamentary building at Strasbourg as a platform from which to attack France’s left and centre in preparation for the French presidential elections in 2027.

Iran

“I am a reformist principlist”, declares Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s newly-elected president.

But what is a “reformist principlist”? According to Pezeshkian it is someone who is loyal to the principles of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, but wants to liberalise/reform the principles of that revolution.

That means, for a start, swearing allegiance to Supreme Ruler Ayatollah Khameini, which he did throughout his campaign. In fact, in his victory speech Pezeshkian praised the “guidance” of Khameini which he described as a major factor in his electoral success.

Khameini, for his part, made a rare post-election speech in which he acknowledged that some Iranians dislike his regime. He then added: “We listen to them and we know what they are saying.”

The question is: What is Khameini hearing and what will he allow Pezeshkian to do about it?

The new president campaigned on a pledge to rein in the morality police who had been arresting women who refused to wear head scarves. He also wanted to improve relations with the West and resume talks on Iran’s nuclear development.

The headscarves issue is likely to be a win for the protesters. The government is unlikely to make a song and dance about it, but they will probably inform the morality police to turn a blind eye to the absence of scarves.

An Iranian initiative to resume talks on nuclear development may also be on the cards. This is because, according to US intelligence, the Iranians have recently slowed down their race to develop nuclear weapons. Thus there is more scope for talks on time limits and associated issues.

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Observations of an Expat: Special Relationship

By Tom Arms | Sat 13th July 2024 - 9:48 am

It’s time for the Special Relationship to be extracted from the diplomatic cupboard and dusted off.

Britain needs it. Europe needs it. And, although they are less keen to admit that they need help from any quarter, the US needs it to become the cornerstone of a new Transatlantic Alliance.

For years the UK shared the “Special Relationship” tag with France and Germany. In fact, after Brexit, Britain probably slipped into third place in Washington’s relationship arrangements.

But French President Emmanuel Macron has politically castrated himself with the recent political elections and the dull and dreary German Chancellor Olaf Scholz fails to inspire either the Germans or the wider world community

Britain may no longer be an EU power, but Sir Keir Starmer’s landslide victory gives him latitude at home and kudos abroad.

He is helped by a foreign secretary who has the potential to go down in history as one of the best in modern times. David Lammy wasted no time in stamping his image on British foreign policy. Almost before Sir Keir had finished his acceptance speech, Lammy was on the plane for Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and Kyiv. This week he was at the prime minister’s elbow for the NATO summit in Washington where Sir Keir was the only NATO leader awarded a tete a tete with President Joe Biden.

Lammy also has extensive American connections. The new foreign secretary has worked, studied and lived in the US. He has family in America and his father is buried in Texas.

But what if Donald Trump returns to the White House? A prospect which appears increasingly likely as Joe Biden ages with every passing day. Lammy is on record as labelling Trump a “woman-hating neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” and a “profound threat to international order” as well as a racist and a fascist.

But both Sir Keir and Lammy have said that the transAtlantic relationship remains the “bedrock” of British foreign policy. And in a recent speech at the conservative US think tank the Hudson Institute, Lammy said that Trump’s comments on European security had been “misunderstood.” He has also gone out of his way recently to meet senior Trump foreign policy advisers.

Unfortunately, Trump’s negative policy towards Europe is based on good, sound politics. It is a reflection of a growing US isolationism which in turn is a reaction to series of foreign policy reversals. That feeling of being hard done by the rest of the world (especially its European allies) will continue regardless of whomever win the November election.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 7th July 2024 - 10:45 am

United States

It’s official: The United States judicial system is no longer independent.

And by destroying its independence the Supreme Court has knocked away one of the main pillars of American democracy and left the constitution’s carefully structured and revered system of checks and balances heavily politicised and largely controlled by the executive.

Of course, the US judicial system was already heavily politicised. But the Supreme Court took its role as the top court seriously enough to avoid political judgements. No longer.

America’s legal system is based on English Common Law. Many of the structures were determined by the great 18th-century British jurist William …

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Observations of an Expat: How Did We Get Here?

By Tom Arms | Sat 6th July 2024 - 10:06 am

It has been a bad week for democracy. In fact it has been a bad year for democracy. The only exception is the UK. But don’t worry Britain’s time will come.

Now, however, the rise of the populist far-right just about everywhere else is dominating the world’s headlines. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally is knocking on France’s gates to power. A conservative-dominated US Supreme Court has granted serial law breaker and liar Donald Trump immunity from prosecution. A cognitively-impaired Joe Biden is endangering democracy by clinging to power. A far-right anti-immigrant government has been formed in the Netherlands.

And those are only the most recent examples. In Israel, Hungary, India, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Austria, and Germany the far-right is either in government or growing in power and influence.

So how did we get here and where are we going?

Back in the naughty nineties everything looked so different. The collapse of the Soviet Empire appeared to be a great victory for liberal democracy, globalism, free markets and capitalism. We won, and countries around the world flocked to democracy’s banner.

First in the queue were the members of the old Soviet system, with Russia right at the front. That was the first problem. The transition from a Soviet-style command economy and from dictatorship to democracy was more difficult than envisaged.

A broken system was replaced not with capitalist prosperity but with hyper-inflation, economic breakdown and mass unemployment. Life expectancy in Russia fell with up to five million excess adult deaths between 1991 and 2001. Birth rates collapsed and organized crime grabbed the levers of power.

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Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 30th June 2024 - 10:25 am

United States

Unedifying train crash. That is possibly the most charitable portray of President Joe Biden’s performance in Thursday night’s debate. The 81-year-old candidate had a simple task: Don’t look old and expose Trump as the convicted felon and serial liar that he is. He failed.

The result is that Joe Biden now faces a crushing tsunami of party and public opinion to perform his final act of public service:  step aside and let a younger Democratic leader shoulder the job of preventing a dangerous demagogue from returning to the White House.

The problem is that there is no mechanism for allowing him to do so. The US constitution does not specify how presidential candidates are chosen. In fact, the founding fathers were dead set against the creation of political parties which they condemned as “factionalism.”

But human nature being what it is political parties quickly emerged and politicians hived off into camps labelled Republican, Democrat, Whig, Federalist, Nativists, Progressives…

From the early years of the 19th century until relatively modern times, the party machinery in each state would select delegates to attend a national convention where a presidential candidate would emerge from a series of knock-out ballots.

The first state primaries were not held until 1901 when Florida broke ranks with convention. Between 1901 and 1968 only twelve states held primaries which pledged their convention delegates to a particular candidate. Then came the chaos of the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention with delegates deadlocked while anti-Vietnam War demonstrators rioted outside.

To avoid a repetition of this unedifying spectacle the Democratic Party leadership decided to extend the primary system. The Republican Party followed suit. By 1992 Democrats had primaries in 40 states and Republicans in 39 and presidential conventions had been converted from a week of back-room horse trading and multiple ballots to a coronation party.

If Biden steps aside then the Democratic Party will have to revert to the pre-1968 format at its convention in (ironically) Chicago, on 19-22 August. The problem is that there are few – if any – people alive today who attended an old style nominating convention. Old rule books will need to be pulled out or archives, dusted off and studied thoroughly.

They have just over a month to prepare, and that is if Biden decides to hand in his notice today. Presidential contenders have the same time frame to start securing delegates’ support. And then, assuming all goes well on the night in Chicago, the party has only three months to unite behind a new candidate and persuade the American electorate that their choice is better than a lying convicted felon.

France

French voters troop to the polls on Sunday for the first round of parliamentary elections that are likely to open the door to the country’s far-right.

The latest opinion polls put Marine Le Pen’s National Rally well ahead with 37 percent of the vote. Not enough for the absolute majority so it will probably need to form a coalition with the Gaullist Les Republicains (eight percent) and some of the smaller parties (five percent). President Macron’s centrist Ensemble Alliance Renaissance lags far behind at 19.6 percent.

But a huge fly in the French political ointment is the 29 percent who say they will vote for the far-left New Popular Front led by former Trotskyist Jean-Luc Melenchon. It appears that the unpalatable choice for French voters is between the extremes of left and right.

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Observations of an Expat: Putin’s War Conundrum

By Tom Arms | Sat 29th June 2024 - 9:33 am

Putin can’t afford to stop fighting. To do so would mean either crashing the economy or handing it over to the Chinese. But then the Chinese might end up controlling it anyway.

Russia is now a war economy. Six percent of GDP and 40 percent of the government budget is spent on “special operations” In Ukraine. Millions are employed at top dollar jobs in armaments factories that have sprung up over the past two years.

The lives of Russian soldiers have been commoditised. Families with a dead son receive $53,800. An injured son costs Putin’s Treasury $32,280. It is estimated that so far the war has cost $18 billion in compensation alone.

War is the most financially unproductive activity known to mankind. With what it costs to build a missile you can construct a building which can be used as a school to educate future generations or a factory to produce goods for export. When the missile blow up it is gone. And so is the building which it blew up and the people who can rebuild it.

But in the short-term war can be good for the economy. That is the case in Russia today. Putin was recently able to boast that at 2.6 percent, the Russian economy was growing faster than all the other European economies combined. But that growth must be set against inflation of seven percent – and rising – and interest rates at an unsustainable 16 percent in an effort to prevent runaway inflation.

Sanctions have contributed to the boom economy by forcing Russians to develop home grown alternatives, increase imports from Asian friends and the Global South, and/or pay inflated prices for Western goods imported through third-party intermediaries such as Turkey, the United Arab Emirates or Hong Kong. The growth may also be helped by the imposition of financial controls that make it impossible to take money out of the country.

That may, however, be coming to an end. President Joe Biden recently tightened the sanctions screw by expanding the powers of the US Treasury to allow it to cut off any banks in third countries deemed to be helping the Russian military-industrial complex. Turkish and UAE banks have already started cutting back on their facilities for Russian clients. Chinese banks are starting to follow suit, or insisting that all deals are made in Yuan.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 16th June 2024 - 9:28 am

Gaza

 Benjamin Netanyahu and the Hamas leadership share a common interest: It is to neither’s advantage at this stage to end the Gaza War. But neither is in either party’s interests to be seen as the bad guy.

In the case of the Israeli prime minister it is the fact that once the war is over he will face an overpowering clamour for a general election. It is an election which he will almost certainly lose as the Israeli electorate will hold him to account for the events that led up to the October 7th Hamas attack.

And then, once he is out of office, Netanyahu is likely to exchange the prime minister’s official residence for a prison cell via a trial on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust. Fleeing the country is not an option because by then the International Criminal Court will have issued an arrest warrant for war crimes – unless he flees to America.

With Hamas the story is different. There are two wars being fought in the eastern Mediterranean. One is on the ground and in the air over a strip of land 26 miles long and 2.5 miles wide. The other is a war in the court of international public opinion. Hamas is losing the first and winning the second.

The longer the military war continues. The greater the disproportionate losses in human terms between Palestinians and Israelis and the greater the victory for Hamas. Already it has secured diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state from six EU countries—Norway, Spain, Slovenia, Cyprus, Sweden and Ireland.

Hamas has repeatedly proven that it puts political objectives before Palestinian lives. A string of historical precedents would have told them that the October 7th attack and the taking of hostages would have resulted in a highly disproportionate number of dead and injured Palestinians. It is also clear that Hamas has used hospitals, schools and Palestinian civilians, as shields.

So, where does that leave the prospects for peace and the diplomatic brokering of the US, Egypt and Qatar? At the moment US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is focused on the lack of Hamas’s enthusiasm for the latest peace proposal. Hamas say they have responded with “positivity” but Blinken says that the Hamas’s “positivity” includes “unworkable” changes.

Part of the latest problem is ownership of the plan currently on the table. It was announced by President Biden. But in his announcement he said it was an Israeli plan. However, as Hamas’ has been keen to point out, no Israeli official has publicly endorsed the plan.

In fact, official Israeli pronouncements continue to focus on continuing the war until Hamas’s “governing and military capabilities have been destroyed and the hostages returned.” There is also the political problem that Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners will withdraw from the government if the plan outlined by Biden goes ahead. This would result in an election which Netanyahu would lose.

Israeli problems and positions in turn appear to be in direct conflict with a Hamas demand that Israel commit in writing to ending the fighting before it agrees to any plan from anyone. Until this deadlock is resolved and the Americans come up with a plan that allows both sides to achieve the aims they want without fighting, then the war continues.

Ukraine

Shortly after the Russians invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the West froze $325 billion in Russian assets.

Almost immediately the call went out to hand the money over to Ukraine to finance its war against Russia. But there was a problem with this tactic which can easily be summed up with one word – hypocrisy.

Putin was being condemned for contravening international law with his naked war of aggression. But confiscating Russian assets and handing them over to Ukraine would also break international law. And respect for international law is at the root of what Ukraine and the West is fighting for. Putin wants to create a world where might is right. America and its allies want to retain a world based on respect for international law.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Macron’s Gamble

By Tom Arms | Sat 15th June 2024 - 10:23 am

Emmanuel Macron is either a fool, a political genius or – what is most likely – supremely arrogant. Or perhaps it is a confusing mix of all three.

His decision to call early parliamentary elections is – on the face of it – a gamble worthy of a high stakes Las Vegas poker game.

But then, within hours of the president’s televised announcement, things were looking up for Macron as France’s political right started tearing itself apart. Then there is the strong possibility that a far-right victory could prove to be the poisoned chalice that keeps Marine Le Pen out of the Elysee Palace after the 2027 presidential vote.

That must be Macron’s goal. He is barred from running for a third term, but he firmly believes that Ms Le Pen and her National Rally (RN) is an existential threat to France, Europe and the wider world. He is determined that his political legacy should not read: “The man who put Le Pen in power.”

Most pundits agree that Macron had to call an election soon, but they expected it in the autumnal afterglow of the Paris Olympics. The poll has been on the cards ever since Macron lost his parliamentary majority in 2022. Since then he has either had to shift to the right or resort to ruling by decree with Article 49.3. The latter meant that he would eventually face and lose a vote of censure which would have forced him to hold an election. This way he chooses the date and the context.

Marine Le Pen has worked hard to de-demonise the far-right National Rally founded by her father as the National Front. She went so far as to expel her familial predecessor from the party and changed its name to National Rally.

Bowing to opinion polls, she has even also diluted the party’s euro-scepticism. Calls for “Frexit” and withdrawal from the Euro have been abandoned. But some of RN’s other policies make it hard for the party to shed the extremist label. RN opposes French intervention in Africa; wants to leave NATO’s integrated command structure, supports economic intervention and protectionism; seeks a “privileged partnership” with Russia; is anti-globalist and supports a policy of zero tolerance on law and order issues.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 9th June 2024 - 9:57 am

Gaza War

Sometimes the most shocking statements are the most obvious. Especially when they are spoken by those encumbered with having to be the most diplomatic.

This week President Joe Biden publicly stated what everyone knows but he has been reluctant to confirm: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is dragging out the Gaza War as a way to stay in office.

He might have also added that the war is keeping Netanyahu out of prison as he has been indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. As long as he is prime minister he cannot be tried.

The latest Israeli opinion polls indicate that if an election were held in Israel today Netanyahu’s Likud-led coalition would win 46 seats compared to the opposition parties’ 68 seats. But, at the same time, polls show strong support for the war and its goal of eliminating Hamas. If Netanyahu achieves the total destruction of the enemy then the voters might just forgive him for creating the conditions that allowed the 7 October attack to happen.

Biden’s comments came in an interview with Time magazine and only a few days before he announced another plan to end the Gaza War. This one is in three phases.

Phase one would last six weeks and include a total ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. Some hostages would be released. Hundreds of Palestinians would be released from Israeli prisons and there would be an immediate and massive influx of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Under phase two the remaining hostages, including soldiers and the remains of any dead hostages would be released and the IDF would complete its withdrawal from Gaza. Phase three would involve reconstruction which would last three to five years. The two-state solution is not mentioned in this latest plan.

Despite the fact that President Biden has made it clear that there would be no future role for Hamas, the terrorist organisation has said that they view the plan “positively.”  Biden claimed that his phased proposal had been endorsed by the Israeli government, but then a spokesperson said: “Israel has not changed its conditions to reach a permanent ceasefire. That will only happen after our objectives are met including destroying Hamas’s military and governing capabilities.” He added that that is estimated to take seven months.

Meanwhile, a new front is opening on the border with Lebanon. Actually, it is an old front, but the fighting between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel is worsening. Hezbollah is now using explosive drones which are more difficult for Israel’s iron dome to stop and can reach further south. Israel, for its part, is levelling the southern Lebanese city of Sidon. Within the Israeli cabinet there is talk of creating an Israeli-occupied “security zone” in southern Lebanon, similar to the one Israel maintained until 2000.

The US has responded to the Lebanon threat with another three-part plan. First part is a ceasefire to allow residents on both sides of the border to return to their homes. Phase two is US economic assistance for financially-strapped Lebanon and the final phase calls for a newly demarcated border to improve security.

The problem is that the negotiations are with the Lebanese government while the power is with Iran-backed Hezbollah. They are unlikely to accept any ceasefire until a truce is agreed and implemented in Gaza. And, as President Biden acknowledged, that truce is against the political interests of Bibi Netanyahu.

European Parliament

Europe’s far-right is expected to sweep the board in this weekend’s elections to the European Parliament. This could mean problems ahead as a centre-left council and commission clash with a right-wing parliament.

This didn’t use to be a problem. It used to be that the European Parliament was a talk shop with limited oversight powers. The real power lay with the member states through the European Council which in turn effectively appointed the President of the European Commission and the 27 commissioners.

But over the years, increasing pressure has meant that more and more power is vested in the directly elected parliament rather than the indirectly elected council. Parliament has progressed from an advisory body to a co-decision maker.

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