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Foreign affairs update - 20th October 2021
- Ecuador’s sudden spurt in crime: Looking at crime statistics over the past decade, Ecuador was a success story. Its homicide rate plummeted year after year, settling at a rate closer to those seen in Europe rather than in South America. In 2021, that’s all changed. The more than 1,800 murders already recorded in 2021 are likely to return Ecuador to rates last seen in 2012. President Guillermo Lasso has sought to stop the surge by instituting a 60-day state of emergency, a move that sends the military out to patrol Ecuador’s streets and restricts movement. Experts put the blame on policies to transform the state security system that began in 2018. These included the elimination of the justice ministry as well as rounds of budget cuts and a hollowing out of state bureaucracies. An epidemic of violence in the country’s prisons has also pushed annual homicide numbers way up; 119 inmates were killed in a single day in a gang battle in late September '21. Overall, prison deaths have increased from 3.7 percent of total homicides in 2020 to 12.5 percent in 2021, according to figures compiled by Pontón.
- Afghanistan meeting: Representatives from Russia, Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, Iran, and India met in Moscow to discuss Afghanistan’s transition following the Taliban takeover in August. Afghanistan’s Acting Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Salam Hanaf led a Taliban delegation. Russian, Chinese, and Pakistani officials all said they would provide aid to Afghanistan, but stopped short of offering full recognition to the Taliban-led government. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said his government was holding off on recognition discussions with the Taliban, adding that Russia is “prodding them to fulfill the promises they made when they came to power.” Meanwhile, the Biden administration had no plans to unfreeze the more than $9 billion in Afghan central bank reserves currently held outside the country.
- North Korea’s missile: The U.N. Security Council held emergency talks following the latest North Korean missile test, officially confirmed by Pyongyang. North Korean state media said a “new type” of submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) was tested on 19th October, equipped with “lots of advanced control guidance technologies.” The test comes soon after South Korea demonstrated its own capabilities in its first successful SLBM test, adding to the handful of nations that have mastered the technology.
- Brazil’s coronavirus inquiry: Brazilian Senator Renan Calheiros, the leader of a congressional investigation into Brazil’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, has recommended the indictment of President Jair Bolsonaro on 11 charges, including homicide and genocide against Brazil’s Indigenous community. The charges are unlikely to stick, however, since they must be must first be approved by a Senate panel and then brought by a pro-Bolsonaro prosecutor. Bolsonaro dismissed the inquiry as a “joke.”
- Energy crisis hits global recovery: The world is gripped by an energy crunch — a fierce squeeze on some of the key markets for natural gas, oil and other fuels that keep the global economy running and the lights and heat on in homes. Heading into winter, that has meant higher utility bills, more expensive products and growing concern about how energy-consuming Europe and China will recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. The biggest squeeze is on natural gas in Europe, which imports 90 per cent of its supply — largely from Russia — and where prices have risen to five times what they were at the start of the year. Europe’s chief supplier, Russia's Gazprom, held back extra summer supplies beyond its long-term contracts to fill reserves at home for winter. China’s electricity demand has come roaring back, vacuuming up limited supplies of liquid natural gas, which moves by ship, not pipeline. There also are limited facilities to export natural gas from the United States. Costlier natural gas has even pushed up oil prices because some power generators in Asia can switch from using gas to oil-based products. US crude is over $83 per barrel, the highest in seven years, while international benchmark Brent is around $85, with oil cartel Opec and allied countries cautious about restoring production cuts made during the pandemic. The crunch is likely short term but it’s difficult to say how long higher fossil fuel prices will last, said Claudia Kemfert, an energy economics expert at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin.
- EXAM QUESTIONS: (1) Explain the nature of Latin American politics, in light of the US presence. (2) What went wrong with global energy markets? What can be done to stabilise the same? (3) The Taliban could not manage to get recognition from many countries, as earlier imagined. Why not?
#Afghanistan #energycrisis #Ecuador #US
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