Diplomacy & Crisis News

The New-ish Mexican President showing she knows the Art of Negotiation.

The United States’ upcoming tariff regime was planned to take effect on Tuesday Feb 4th 2025 against traditional NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico, with varying narratives on both sides, many drawbacks, and some breakthroughs. Whether or not either economy would weather a rapid 25% hit remains to be seen, but when taking past measures, it is possible.

Canada’s first major trade agreement came in the 1960s during the auto sector boom in the industrialised border States along the Canada-US border. The Auto Pact linked Canadian manufacturers to the largest auto industry in the world, tying US auto production to Canada as a benefit to Canada’s economy. This agreement ensured a prosperous and peaceful border region between the two countries. While the United States could have kept many of those jobs in the United States, extending economic opportunity across North America made both nations stronger and safer. Previous to the Auto Pact, Canada did have a robust economy that was subject to tariffs, and when the US, Mexico, and Canada entered the NAFTA agreement in the 1990s, the Auto Pact agreements were included in the NAFTA Agreement. NAFTA sought to include many other sectors, sectors that were tariffed before 1994, but sectors that did operate in a profitable position when tariffed pre-NAFTA.

On Feb 3rd, a discussion between the US and Mexican Presidents enabled a one month pause in Mexico’s tariff threat. While doubted by many, the core of President Trump’s tariff regime is to put pressure on other policies, in this case encouraging the reduction of narcotics trafficking from the Southern and Northern borders into the United States. The solutions do not seem to concern trade issues as much as safety and security issue, issues that were suppose to make North America safer under agreements like NAFTA and the USMCA. In their statements, the United States and Mexican Presidents paused the tariffs in acknowledging the Fentanyl crisis, securing armed military on the border region to address it and cracking down on weapons exports. Both issues help promote safety in both countries, and further agreements should be sought between the US and Mexico, not for the political benefit of each leader, but to the benefit of citizens in both countries.

Canada seems to have taken a different track in dealing with the United States, one that looks more cynical than productive. Upon the rally of tariff threats, the very unpopular Governing party in Canada shut down their Parliament and engaged in a new leadership race only for their party, while keeping the same Prime Minister active and making very consequential decisions after he decided to quit. This is uncommon in the British style Parliamentary System as with no popular support, a Government is suppose to resign and have an election. With this absurd action, the Government has locked decision making powers and the ability to address the tariffs out of the hands of Canadians, and into the palms of an unpopular and unelected cabal of the unwanted.

The weakness of Canada over the last ten years and the immediate collapse of a normal Government in the midst of tariff talks has done more to focus positive attention on the Governing party than to actually avoid tariffs. Actions taken by Canada before the US inauguration came off as dismissive or outright dangerous. The narrative that Canada and known issues within the country could never be a threat to the US does nothing to help Team Canada, but does a lot to shadow real border and safety issues between the two countries that hurt both Americans and Canadians. Inside Canada, one would be hard pressed to find a news story discussing the made in Canada Fentanyl crisis, organised crime and foreign influence, despite it being a major issue tied in with many border communities. If you are unable to acknowledge the problem, you are ill equipped to address it, and the Team Canada approach will not be able to negotiate its way out of tariffs if they will only focus on trade and not safety.

Canadians will not be able to have the ability to push back on the US, or any other country, if they are unable to recognise and address the narcotic and terror threats in their own communities. Team Canada cannot exist simply due to a tariff threat, as fighting for your country when the roots have been rotted by international crime will just degrade Canadian communities. The value of strength should be the common lesson here between all USMCA partners, but it cannot be learned from a position of systemic weakness.

When we think of Nobel Peace Prize winners, we imagine individuals working towards a different reality: a better future. A person receiving the Nobel Peace Prize has dedicated years to promoting peace between nations or peoples. This is a person who has contributed to the signing of peace agreements or at least fought against societal norms to achieve peace in the future.

When asked to think of a Nobel Peace Prize winner, I immediately think of Yitzhak Rabin, the former Prime Minister of Israel. He was a person who worked towards peace between Israelis and Palestinians, despite sharp opposition from both sides and ultimately paid for it with his life. However, it turns out that not all Nobel Peace Prize winners are genuinely working to promote peace; sometimes they are just very good actors. A good example of that is Mikhail Gorbachev, a man whose hands are stained with blood, received the Nobel Peace Prize.

From the beginning of his career, Gorbachev was far from a supporter of Azerbaijan, to say the least, as he was heavily influenced by the Armenian mafia in the Soviet city of Stavropol (now part of Russia in the North Caucasus). Despite his deep hatred for anything related to Azerbaijan or Azerbaijanis, Gorbachev obsessively despised Heydar Aliyev, the Azerbaijani leader who was a member of the Soviet Politburo. Gorbachev made it his goal to remove Aliyev from the political scene, and he did everything in his power to push him out.

Aliyev didn’t give up easily and fought to maintain his position as the First Deputy Chairman of the Soviet Union, but Gorbachev was stubborn, patient, and unyielding. Even after Aliyev suffered a heart attack, Gorbachev held official government meetings in his hospital room. During this time, Aliyev was forced to submit his resignation letter. Heydar Aliyev’s son, Ilham Aliyev, the current President of Azerbaijan, recalls that after his father’s resignation, Armenian nationalists and their supporters within the Soviet government began to act against Azerbaijanis.

They started expelling Azerbaijanis from the Karabakh region and from the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia, which eventually led to a long-standing conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. On the other hand, in January 1990, Gorbachev began taking action to suppress the National Liberation Movement in Azerbaijan by force. On January 19, 1990, the Azerbaijani television station was hit by an explosion that disconnected Azerbaijan from the outside world at 7:27 PM. That night, as the date changed to January 20, 1990, the Soviet army entered Baku and began taking control of the city.

 It wasn’t until 5:30 AM that the residents of Baku realized what was happening, thanks to radio broadcasts and leaflets dropped over the city by helicopters. The Soviet army opened fire on the people of Baku without mercy or discrimination. Innocent civilians were shot in the streets and from the balconies of their homes, residential buildings were shelled, and people were killed in their apartments as the buildings collapsed on top of them. The Soviet army acted as if they were occupying an enemy city, using armored vehicles and tanks to advance through the city while firing indiscriminately.

The massacre’s victims were many. On that fateful day, around 150 innocent civilians were killed, including women, the elderly, and children. The massacre ended only after the Soviet army had taken full control of the city. Afterward, the violence against civilians subsided. If you’re wondering about the explosion that disabled the Azerbaijani television station, the answer will not surprise you. Investigations by the Soviet “Shield” organization in July 1990 revealed that the explosion at the station was caused by a special Soviet military unit or the KGB. According to the “Shield” report, the Soviet army did not act in defense against an external threat, but rather to punish its own people in this massacre. This chaos was authorized by Gorbachev on behalf of the Soviet government.

To justify this violent and murderous action against their own people, the Soviet government in Moscow attempted to explain that this military action was necessary due to a significant threat of an Islamic state emerging in Azerbaijan and that the Soviet army had to act to suppress it. In response to this justification, Allahshukur Pashazadeh, the Chairman of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Caucasus, addressed Gorbachev directly.

In his words, Pashazadeh stated: “There can be no justification for the bloody massacre, the monstrous crime sanctioned by you as the head of state. The Azerbaijani people, with outrage and contempt, reject the provocative accusations made against them, which supposedly served as the reason for the deployment of troops, one of which was the so-called ‘Islamic factor,’ presented as a threat to the existence of the Soviet state. A country that has turned its army into a murderer of its own citizens is deserving of nothing but shame. The shots in Baku are shots at living human hearts. By sending punitive troops into Baku, where they acted as occupiers, you discredited Soviet power, confirming that concepts such as sovereignty and the dignity of nations are foreign to it. You have completely discredited yourself as a political figure, proving your incompetence as the head of state. You sanctioned the murder of the people”.

The great yet cruel irony of this story is that in the same year, 1990, Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, with the powerful Western nations completely ignoring what he had done to the Azerbaijani people on that cursed day. Today, efforts are being made in Azerbaijan to revoke Gorbachev’s Nobel Peace Prize. But even before Azerbaijan’s request to revoke his prize, someone had already sought to strip him of the “Order of Saint Andrew the Apostle,” the highest honor in the Russian Federation—Tatiana Poloskova.

Poloskova, who holds a Ph.D. in political science, requested in 2013 that this high honor be revoked due to Gorbachev’s murderous actions, but she was denied. Poloskova supported the Azerbaijani people’s fight to have Gorbachev’s Nobel Peace Prize rescinded, arguing that what Gorbachev ordered the Soviet army to do was not just another crime against humanity. In her view, the Norwegian Nobel Committee had long since become political, and it was time to raise a strong, clear, and firm voice.

Mikhail Gorbachev is undoubtedly responsible for other disasters beyond the Black January massacre, such as the Tbilisi massacre of 1989, and in general, the collapse of the Soviet Union is a direct result of his policies. We hope that the Azerbaijani people will succeed in revoking Gorbachev’s Nobel Peace Prize and that this case will set a precedent for the revocation of other Nobel Peace Prizes awarded to individuals who cynically received a prize for peace while, throughout their lives, working for oppression, like Mikhail Gorbachev.

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Ce qui va s'appeler l'art chorégraphique naît au XVIIe siècle. Le pouvoir entend l'opposer à la tradition populaire ; il va instaurer de ce fait une partition et une hiérarchisation durables. Dans les années 1980, c'est la danse contemporaine qui est instituée comme norme de distinction, tandis que (...) / Sport, Loisirs, Société, Art - 2025/02

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