Tag: Washington

US Senator Calls for Sanctions for Turkish ‘Escalation in Aggression’

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On June 22, US Senator Robert “Bob” Menendez sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to express “deep concerns” over a Turkish “escalation of aggression.” Menendez, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, expressed “deep concern” about recent moves by Turkey which the senator sees to be “threatening regional stability.”

Menendez pushes Pompeo

In Menendez’ letter to Pompeo, the senator, who receives detailed intelligence briefings as a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, described Turkish foreign policy maneuvering as increasingly aggressive and in need of a US response. Menendez expressed concern that Turkish moves are threatening American “partners” in Greece, Cyprus, and Israel through Turkish foreign policy actions in Libya and Iraq.

As one of the Senate Democrats’ most outspoken hawks, Menendez has regularly shown a preference for strong retaliatory action against perceived opponents to US hegemony, with his support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the “Iran Nuclear Deal,” as a rare exception. The senator now calls on the state department to implement sanctions over Turkish policies abroad and its recent procurement of Russian S-400 missile defense systems.

Russian missiles

The senator asked Pompeo to “follow the law” and apply an existing package of sanctions intended for nations who buy Russian military hardware. The move would come as punishment for Turkey’s recent purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile defense system. Although the S-400 is considered to be a far superior defense system than the outdated US Patriot system, the US aggressively goes after any nation contemplating its purchase.

After China purchased S-400 technology, the US instantly applied sanctions, using the 2017 “Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.” Menendez questioned Pompeo on the motivations for a lack of a similar response to Turkey. Recent revelations from former National Security Advisor John Bolton have renewed worries that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan exercises disproportionate influence over US President Donald Trump.

Increasing aggression

The June 22 letter complained of the Turkish invasion of Kurdish Iraq as an act that further destabilizes “an already volatile and vulnerable region” and violates Iraqi sovereignty and international law. Menendez pitched Turkey’s role in the chaos in Libya as a breach of the Libyan arms embargo and an inconvenience to Greece and Cyprus, but made no mention of its role in the actual conflict.

More important, to Menendez, was the Turkish agreement with Tripoli’s government that allows Turkey to claim a large swath of the Mediterranean Sea as its own. The senator was concerned over Turkish violations to Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone and violations of Greek airspace by Turkish military aircraft. The violations, Menendez wrote, constitute evidence of Erdogan’s “lack of commitment to the rule of law.”

Bolton book

On June 23, Al-Monitor reported that Menendez sent another letter to Pompeo after John Bolton’s new book revealed details of Erdogan and Trump’s dealings. Menendez wrote that Erdogan had received confirmation from Trump that the US president would “take care” of “a Turkish firm accused of the largest violation of Iran sanctions in US history.”

Turkey’s state-run Halkbank has been under investigations for its alleged dealings with Iran. John Bolton revealed that Trump had agreed with Erdogan, and told the Turkish president he would make the issue “go away.” Menendez has asked Pompeo to respond to these allegations and explain progress on the Halkbank affair.

As a member of the Committee on Foreign Relations, Menendez will have a deep understanding of Turkish geopolitical maneuvering. Menendez also released a statement with others on June 19 to oppose Israeli annexation plans as Trump’s favored strongmen in the Middle East appear emboldened to act aggressively during the “historic opportunity” provided by the Trump presidency.

Russian Sources Signal Possible End to Oil Production Cuts

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With oil prices nearing their highest since early March, Kirill Dmitriev, one of Russia’s top oil negotiators  signaled his will to draw down production cuts on Friday June 19. Dmitriev is one of the key players leading negotiations with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Agreements between OPEC and the Russian-led alliance of non-OPEC countries, called OPEC+, have been one of the primary factors in the efforts to stabilize the oil market.

With demand for oil increasing as economies reopen, Russia appears to see no point in further extending production cuts. The existing agreement calls for a global production cut of 7.7 million barrels per day, from August to December. From January 2021, production cuts would drop to 5.8 million barrels per day, lasting until April 2022 when the agreement expires.

Price uptick

In April, oil prices hit their lowest price since the turn of the millennium as high global supply met an unprecedented dip in demand when flights were grounded, citizens faced lockdowns, and non-essential economic activity dissipated. In April prices hit $16 per barrel, with WTI briefly dipping into historic negative territory amid a scramble to offload futures before their expiry.

The extreme fluctuations in the already volatile oil market prompted most of the world’s oil producing countries to come together to establish painful, but necessary, production cuts in order to ease over supply that led to oil storage running out, with tankers and oil bunkers used as temporary storage to accommodate for a lack of buyers.

OPEC+

Ever since, any news around negotiations over production cuts between OPEC and the OPEC+ groups has led to swings in global oil prices. Now that demand is increasing and most OPEC members report compliance with the agreed upon cuts, meetings have revolved more around suring up lagging countries like Iraq and Kazachstan.

The current oil price hovers around $40, sufficient for Russia to balance its budgets. For many higher-cost oil producers however, the current price means losses, involuntary production cuts and even bankruptcies. The US shale gas industry, Canadian tar-sand extraction and Brazilian off-shore oil all struggle to survive at current prices, while countries like Saudi Arabia would be able to live with “lower for longer.”

OPEC

But while many OPEC members in the Gulf could make a profit on current prices, their national budgets have been based on much higher prices, leaving major gaps. A country like Iraq, that has some of the cheapest oil to extract, still needs oil prices to be at $56 per barrel in order to fund the $135 billion in estimated state revenue. The country has struggled to comply with OPEC’s agreed cuts as most of its oil production is done by foreign supermajors, leading to difficult negotiations.

Many countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) similarly presented ambitious budgets for 2020, expecting much higher revenues than those that materialized due to the COVID-19 crisis. For these countries production cuts remain one of the few tools to drive prices up further, but it appears that major players like Russia and Saudi Arabia would prefer oil prices to not increase too rapidly, in order to prevent a resurgence in its higher-cost competitors like shale gas.

Diverging forecasts

Saudi Arabia and Russia are expected to have a much larger market-share in the near future. After a decade of losing market-share to US producers, Saudi Arabia is expected to have the largest market-share since the 1980s. With production down significantly and demand slowly returning, prices are likely to go up in the long run.

Investment bank JP Morgan Chase in early March predicted oil to hit $190 per barrel due to a “supercycle” where a downward swing in prices is followed by equally dramatic upswing. The bank’s predictions were squashed by the COVID-19 related drop in demand, but its experts remain confident that a “bullish supercycle is on the horizon,” according to CNN.

“The reality is the chances of oil going toward $100 at this point are higher than three months ago,” JP morgan’s Christyan Malek. However, uncertainty remains as economic results are highly dependent on public health successes in containing the spread of the coronavirus. BP has slashed its forecast, expecting COVID-19 to have an “enduring impact on the global economy.”

Syrians Brace for Looming Sanctions

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On June 17, the ‘Caesar Act’ will come into effect in the United States, with potentially devastating consequences for Syria’s economy. The act consists of a broad package of sanctions that would, in effect, make it illegal for most countries to do business with Syrian enterprises.

The Caeser act shares the pseudonym of a Syrian military photographer who smuggled thousands of photographs of Syrian torture out of the country, revealing the brutality of the Syrian regime’s practices against detainees.

However, the package of sanctions could have far-reaching consequences for Syria. The war-torn country’s economy is already suffering from hyperinflation that has caused food prices to rise by 50% in a single month.

“Prices of goods in Syria, including locally produced ones, are rising with the exchange rate,” Elizabeth Tsurkov, of the Foreign Policy Research Institute told the Guardian. “The inflation is so rapid that prices in the morning would be lower than in the evening,” she explained.

Looming sanctions

The already dire situation in Syria is about to get worse since the Caesar Act will effectively penalize any country that does business with any company in Syria.

While existing EU and US sanctions already target senior regime officials and aligned business interests, the US sanctions set to trigger on June 17 will target any country that trades with Syrian entities, effectively targeting Syria’s few remaining trade-partners in neighboring countries and with businesses in Europe and the Gulf states.

The largest impact of the sanctions will be felt both in Damascus and Beirut, as trade with Lebanon has been one of the few remaining lifelines on which Syria’s fragile economy depended. Both Lebanon and Syria are facing spiraling currency crises and  the US sanctions aim to exacerbate these troubles in order to weaken Iranian influence in the two countries.

Hezbollah’s role in Lebanon’s government and Iranian support for both countries have long been a thorn in the side of the US military and the US now aims to break business ties between the two countries and plunge both into a dire economic crisis.

Victims

However, the victims of sanctions are rarely the elite that they nominally target. Rising prices of basic essentials and food scarcity are inevitable, but the regime’s leadership will always have enough to eat. The sanctions hope to make the economic situation in Syria and Lebanon so dire that the starving people will rise up and hold the governments responsible.

In over a century of sanctions, they have never actually produced this result. Sanctions on apartheid south-Africa actually further impoverished the black population, according to the then prime-minister de Klerk. Cuba has been under crushing US sanctions since it’s communist revolution, but the sanctions actually allow the regime to blame the US for any economic issues.

In Syria, an already devastated country with its infrastructure in ruins is facing an economic crisis even without the new sanctions. Rising bread prices have sparked protests which were met with counter-protests by government supporters, who directly highlighted Western sanctions as the reason for the economic troubles.

Following a nine-year conflict, Syria has few resources left to rebuild. The US now attempts to once again spark a popular uprising and reduce the influence of Iran and Hezbollah. But, after the first uprising was crushed with little to no official western backing, how are Syrians supposed to topple al-Assad now?

Daily Nile Dam Negotiations Aim to Resolve Tensions

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For almost a decade Ethiopia has been working on the construction of the largest dam in Africa, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Construction has progressed to the point where Ethiopian authorities are preparing to start filling the dam’s giant reservoir, sparking fears of possible water shortages in Sudan and Egypt.

On Monday, June 8, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced that Ethiopia is ready to proceed with a partial filling of the reservoir. “The dam is a project that will pull Ethiopia out of poverty,” Ahmed told lawmakers. “Ethiopia wants to develop together with others, not hurt the interests of other countries.”

However, the opinion was not shared in Egypt, a country that relies heavily on water from the Nile river, downstream from the GERD. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi released a statement on Tuesday, June 9, accusing Ethiopia of “a new tactic of stalling and shirking responsibility” and accused the country of stalling negotiations in order to start filling the reservoir.

Washington deal

“It is a hugely important and sensitive issue,” said Mirette Mabrouk, director of the Middle East Institute’s Egypt Studies program. “It’s a matter of life and death for a lot of people, certainly for more than a million Egyptians.”

The escalation of the war of words between Egyptian and Ethiopian leadership comes after Sudan and Egypt held separate meetings on February 24 where the United States, an observer in the negotiations, presented what is now called “the Washington deal.”

The United States Treasury department released a statement saying the US “believes that the work completed over the last four months has resulted in an agreement that addresses all issues in a balanced and equitable manner, taking into account the interests of the three countries,” urging Ethiopia not to commence the filling of the reservoir “without an agreement.”

Tuesday’s meeting

On Tuesday June 9, Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok got Egypt and Ethiopia back to the negotiating table, joined by EU, US, and South African observers. The meeting resulted in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan agreeing to commit to daily meetings in order to ease tensions.

Ministers from the three countries spoke for five hours as Ethiopia claims sovereignty over the Nile water on its territory, while Egypt accuses Ethiopia of violating an agreement signed at the start of construction.

Ethiopia now claims the United States is overstepping its role as a mediating observer by presenting a deal to Ethiopia that was already signed by Egypt, a strategic ally of the US in the region. Sudan appears to accept much of the US proposal, which Ethiopia, in turn, objects to.

Differing opinions

Sudan and Egypt both want a “comprehensive agreement” before Ethiopian authorities start filling the reservoir, as they fear doing so would cause droughts in an already hot and dry year.

Sudan prefers the “Washington deal”, but Ethiopia rejects it because it did not take part in the February negotiations. Ethiopia also disputes the deal’s characterization that negotiations on guidelines and rules for filling the reservoir have been resolved.

For the foreseeable future, Sudanese, Egyptian and Ethiopian negotiators will now hold daily talks, with the exception of Fridays and Sundays, in order to defuse tensions where Ethiopia feels increasingly backed into a corner by powerful foreign actors aligned with Egypt. Sudan and Egypt, meanwhile, fear that the filling of the giant dam’s reservoir could worsen an already poor year for local agriculture and worsen the chance of famine and droughts in the region.

Is the US Under a De Facto State of Martial Law?

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The United States is in a state of social unrest not seen since protests against the Vietnam War and for civil rights peaked in the 1960s. But unlike during the 1960s, the country is facing an unprecedentedly unresponsive government.

Political silence

Even while politicians espouse the validity of the protesters’ grievances, not a single politician has offered them anything tangible in response. The only response that the self-professed beacon of democracy is offering is for frustrated citizens to “shut up” and go home.

There have been no five-point plans, no official strategies, no bills proposed, and no committees formed to investigate. The US is not even offering these usual empty gestures. The best protesters have received is an indication that Democrats are “considering reforms.”

With few allies in government and no power of redress, protests have spiraled out of control, often provoked by police officers geared-up as if facing a foreign enemy force. With thousands of people on the streets, simple probability tells us that criminal acts would occur.

Government oppression

Instead of framing acts of vandalism and looting as a logical result of years of pent up frustration and despair, or even a statistical likelihood, politicians and celebrities are calling on protesters to stop. Go home and “wait for justice to be served” is the near-universal response.

It is exactly the absence of justice and the clear disregard from their Democratic representatives that is spurring people on to keep up the pressure. Instead of diffusing the tension, the Trump administration is callously adding fuel to the fire in what appears to be a sad and desperate electoral ploy.

The result of pitting protesters against police in riot gear is nothing less than a de facto declaration of martial law. When the state arbitrarily silences, arrests, and attacks citizens, when law enforcement officials shoot, pepper spray, or arrest journalists showing their press credentials, when the government ignores the professed will of the people, only a declaration of martial law is left to formalize the state of the country.

Mock political process

It appears that the protesters in US streets are seeing their government in a new light. Through the lens of black suffering, Americans of all backgrounds are seeing the disingenuous political divide for what it is: A smokescreen to hide that US politicians have become nothing more than the administrators of a country bought and paid for by big business and the extremely rich.

For years the Republicans and Democrats have performed a play reminiscent of the fixed basketball games of the Harlem Globetrotters, with the Democrats taking the role of the Washington Generals, doomed to lose but eager to make a show of it. Rich donors purposely support weak, ineffective Democrats that have no shot or desire to actually change the system, which has resulted in over 1,000 electoral losses since Obama became president.

While many refer to the Trump era as an era of anti-Trump Democratic resistance, in reality 70% of all bills that are signed into law have received bipartisan support, with the common denominator being that both parties’ donors agreed on these bills.

No options

In a state where the government does not respond to the will of voters and social movements, many feel the only response left is civil disobedience and attempts to block the functioning of the economy. The Trump administration appears to recognize this fact in its response to the protests. Calls to “dominate” protesters and heavy-handed police action are the last remaining responses available to a government unwilling to give an inch towards greater social and economic equality.

The only political option left for those hoping for change is to vote for Joe Biden, a man who only promises to “not be Trump,” who said any additional wishes for progress or justice must mean that “you ain’t black.” Trump’s opponent in November has his own archive of problematic statements about the black community and he does not even appear to want to pretend he will bring any change.

Last resort

The only redress left to protesters is to desperately confront the police they meet on the streets. With no legitimately authoritative representative of the state offering them any solutions, the crowds can only channel their anger and frustration towards heavily armed police, most of whom themselves are part of the increasingly shrinking American middle class.

It appears now that the Trump administration is fearing that the men and women in law enforcement might reach a breaking point and turn on the government itself. In Washington, DC, unmarked military forces have started to make an appearance, with no identifying badges or tags. First reported on Twitter, these soldiers have stated they are part of the “justice department,” but the failure to properly identify themselves is a breach of the Geneva Convention.

With both protesters and the government becoming increasingly desperate, the US is in a precarious state that resembles a “state of emergency” in an authoritarian context. Much remains unclear as those on the streets of the United States write a new history.

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