Diplomacy & Crisis News

Brazil is often seen by its own people as a fallen economic angel. Once the great success story of an emerging market titan and key member of the BRICS, Brazil is now returning to the poor economic conditions it was stuck in twenty-five years ago. Many Brazilians were proud to see their country break out from a history of credit devaluations and transform itself into one of the only countries that successfully weathered the 2007–08 economic crisis, better than most of their European and North American counterparts.

Today, protests against the government are fueled by the realization that the opportunity to change Brazil has been squandered. Corrupt practices by large industry leaders and the ruling political party were exposed after President Dilma Rousseff narrowly won her second term as president. This scandal came about after years of pouring money into national infrastructure projects that were designed to satisfy the needs of foreign companies and the International Olympic Committee over those benefiting the citizens of a democratic Brazil.

The August 2015 protest is the fourth mass protest that has taken place pushing for the Rousseff’s impeachment. While there is no legal mechanism to force her impeachment, her political party’s connection to a scandal linked to one of Brazil’s biggest oil companies has led to her having one of the lowest approval ratings of any elected official in the world. While the strength of Brazil’s economy has dwindled, peaceful protests and the actions by some in Brazil’s activist community to expose the scandal have shown Brazil to be a country that holds values like fairness and democracy close to its heart.

The catalyst for the first wave of protest movements was Brazil hosting the 2014 World Cup. Many in Brazil resented the fact that the country’s love of the beautiful game would take away from the government’s ability to look after the country’s more basic needs. Funds went to various international agencies in order to put on sporting events and were given precedence over building up Brazil and its people. The government’s actions sparked anti-FIFA protests, some of which ended with the deaths of several protesters. The recent corruption scandal and the upcoming Olympic Games has done nothing more than fan the flames of almost universal outrage among all Brazil’s political factions, placing the PT party in jeopardy and getting even the once-loved former president, Lula Da Silva, into legal trouble.

With the 2016 Olympic Games coming up, mass protests could reach such an extreme so as to lead to the end of the PT party in Brazil and perhaps even the Olympics as beloved “brand.” That would be more than acceptable if it meant Brazil would become a more democratic country. The hit the games can have on the democratic system has scared, and perhaps will continue to scare, some away from bidding for the Olympic Games.

Nevertheless, a number of cities and countries still view hosting the games as an appropriate and responsible idea even when they are burdened by massive amounts of debt. Sure, Boston wisely backed out of the most recent bid process. But Toronto is currently considering a bid despite the fact that Ontario has the highest amount of sub-sovereign debt in the world. Los Angeles is also under consideration even though California has the second highest sub-sovereign debt in the world, second only to Ontario. Along with the economic conditions of candidate cities being ignored, investigations into allegations of corrupt practices are being currently conducted against IOC officials. It seems that some will just never learn.

Last week, the Chautauqua Institution dedicated its programming to “Redefining Europe.” Then, last Friday, amid all the Europe talk, both the Greek parliament and the Eurozone finance ministers approved a bailout to keep Greece in the Eurozone. European Commissioner Jean-Claude Junker acknowledged that EU leaders have “looked into the abyss” of a Eurozone breakup this year, suggesting that they are now back from the brink of it. Eurozone leaders, once again, showed their intent to preserve the Euro and have chosen to take politically difficult actions to defend the credibility of the European Union. But Junker’s abyss is still there, even if the Eurozone has backed away from it. Europe still must be “redefined.” Part of that “redefining,” as the past few months have shown, will involve concessions to keep Europe’s perennially weaker economies in step with its stronger ones. Beyond that, how does Europe need to be “redefined”?

It is far from an academic question, and the Chautauqua speakers had some ideas. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen defended the EU as the 20th century’s “dullest miracle” for preserving peace during its tenure despite continually wrestling with budgetary and immigration issues. The EU has achieved its fundamental aim: preserving Europe’s stability.

To buy into the argument that EU expansion in any way pushed Russia into its current aggression in Ukraine, Cohen suggested, was to accept a myth that serves Putin. Meanwhile France and Italy, he argued, are powers to be taken more seriously than America currently sees them. In response to the Charlie Hebdo shootings in early 2015, France has explored enhanced intelligence capabilities to address domestic terrorist threats. Italy, meanwhile, under the leadership of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and with Mario Draghi leading the European Central Bank, has assumed a greater role in EU affairs than it did under former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Finally, German Chancellor Angela Merkel finds Germany in the EU’s captain’s chair, a state of affairs the EU itself was designed to prevent. America has prodded Merkel to lead Europe, in a manner that she, her fellow Germans, and many of her fellow Europeans (Greeks, in particular) find discomforting. Reluctance towards German leadership stems from a firm historical base, and the best that can be hoped for, Cohen argued, is a Germany that does just enough to keep Europe stable. Proactive leadership, particularly in the realm of defense, is asking too much.

Constanze Stelzenmuller, Robert Bosch Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, painted a different picture. German leaders, she argued, hold both the lessons of their nation’s past and the need for its contemporary leadership concurrently in their minds. In her view, Germany is intent on playing all of the leadership roles — economic and strategic — that its economic weight begs of it.

Stelzenmuller spoke of her advisory role on a current German Defense Ministry initiative to reassess the role of the German military in light of the renewed Russia threat. Tellingly, this initiative includes town hall meetings with German citizens to calibrate what level of support to expect for a more assertive strategic stance. Germans have balked at such efforts in the past; attempts to re-establish a standing army in West Germany early in the Cold War met with ambivalence among politicians and protests among citizens. Stelzenmuller suggests that decades-long tide is turning. Still, Germany’s leaders preserve the anti-Nazi graffiti that was placed on Berlin’s Reichstag by that cities’  liberators for a good reason. Germany’s role in Europe’s defense will change only after careful and public consideration.

It was not a coincidence that the writings of the late Tony Judt were discussed repeatedly. Judt, a former New York University professor and author of the classic Cold War history of Europe Postwar, analyzed the fundamental differences between the development of democracy in Europe and the United States. Building off the pre-World War II example of the Fabians in Britain, the role of democratic government in Europe had less of a free market character than America. Even before the rise and fall of the Nazis underscored the connection between economic and strategic stability, a broader belief prevailed in Europe than in America that government should maintain backstops for basic human needs.

As a result, taxes that were high enough to provide universal health care and stronger unemployment and social insurance have a level of support in Europe they do not, and likely will not, have in America. But Judt’s point is broader: Apples-to-apples comparisons of American and European democracy, while tempting, are not possible. Having endured the horrors of war on their own soil, many European countries see government as a force that stabilizes society. More insular and self-sufficient than most of Europe, many Americans still see government as a financial drag and creative constraint on its citizens’ inherent dynamism. When another post-World War II generation comes of age, the gap between the two may close. For now, it remains.

The EU’s latest actions towards Greece demonstrate an enduring commitment to the European project. Without minimizing its challenges, “redefining,” or even “reforming” Europe is a simpler job than rebuilding it. That is a blessing, and a mark in the EU’s favor during a challenging time in its history.

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By Katherine Tan

Conflict, persecution, and human rights violations have forcibly displaced an unprecedented 59.5 million people worldwide at the end of 2014, according to a recent UNHCR report. That figure, roughly equivalent to the population of the United Kingdom, was up from 51.2 million the previous year, already a level unseen since World War II. From 2011 to 2014 alone, the total number of forcibly displaced people increased by 40 percent. The international community must do more to support them. Inaction will not stem the tide of forced migration; it will simply exacerbate the toll on countries already struggling to bear the burden. Developed countries must come to terms with the scale of this escalating crisis and commit to resettling more of the most vulnerable and persecuted refugees.

The global forced migration crisis is perhaps the most under-reported and disturbing development facing the world today. Even more troubling than the staggering figures are the tragedy’s human dimensions and governments’ hesitance to address the plight of refugees stranded in horrific conditions along coastlines and borders worldwide. This year, an estimated 1,750 migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean Sea, over 30 times more than during the same period last year. Meanwhile, in Southeast Asia, over 100,000 Rohingya have fled persecution and apartheid-like conditions in Myanmar. Many have endured starvation and brutality aboard overcrowded boats as they are ping-ponged between nations refusing to accept them. Others have suffered imprisonment, torture and death at the hands of Thai traffickers with alleged government complicity.

The international community’s response to this humanitarian crisis has been anemic at best and morally negligent at worst. The United Kingdom recently announced that it would not accept any migrants as part of the European Union’s agreement to redistribute 40,000 Syrian migrants already in Italy and Greece. London has faced backlash for accepting just 140 Syrian refugees so far this year. Indonesia and Malaysia, two comparatively well-off Southeast Asian nations, previously announced that they would turn back any Rohingya boats found along their shores. They later agreed to accept 7,000 stranded migrants, but only on the condition that those migrants would be resettled elsewhere within a year.

Underlying this crisis is an international system ill-prepared to tackle the current scale of displacement head on. According to Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, Research Director of the Danish Institute for Human Rights, developed states are primarily concerned with keeping migrants outside their borders so they can avoid responsibility for admitting refugees while technically complying with international law. This simply “passes the buck” to poorer states without addressing the problem. According to the UNHCR, the world’s poorest countries bear the brunt of the refugee burden, with 86 percent of refugees hosted by developing countries and one in four hosted by the least developed countries. This imbalance threatens to destabilize states already under pressure at the periphery of conflict zones and may lead to even greater migration rates if unaddressed.

The plight of Myanmar’s Rohingya poignantly demonstrates the international system’s failure to protect the most vulnerable refugees and the broader consequences of inaction. Stripped of citizenship rights by Myanmar’s military government in 1982, the Rohingya face severe persecution and mob violence as a Muslim minority in a majority Buddhist state. Today, they are confined to heavily policed ghettos where they are forbidden access to basic services and international aid.

The United States and human rights organizations have called upon Myanmar to recognize the Rohingya as citizens, but the ruling regime has shown little interest in stemming what observers call a “slow genocide.” Whether any appeal to Myanmar’s government will gain much traction in the foreseeable future is questionable. In the meantime, the international community has failed to resettle Rohingya refugees at rates necessary to ease regional pressures. Many Rohingya have flooded into Bangladesh, a country even poorer than Myanmar and with its own migration problems, thereby exacerbating the crisis.

These circumstances make a compelling case for developed countries to offer long-term resettlement to the Rohingya. However, Australia, one of the Asian-Pacific region’s wealthiest countries, has categorically refused to resettle any Rohingya, despite urging from the UNHCR.

“Australia will do absolutely nothing that gives any encouragement to anyone to think that they can get on a boat, that they can work with people smugglers to start a new life,” said Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Abbott’s callous statement ignores the fact that most Rohingya aren’t voluntary migrants, but victims of ethnic cleansing fleeing a state that has branded them pariahs. India and China, regional giants that share borders with Myanmar, also remain on the sidelines, despite holding significant sway with Myanmar’s government.

The international community has resettled refugees en masse before, most notably after the Indochina Wars of the mid-1970s, when the United States, Australia, Canada, and others resettled more than 3 million refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

With such a precedent, one must ask why states are failing to act decisively now. Indeed, they may soon have little choice. Even if humanitarian motives aren’t enough to compel action, these crises’ destabilizing effects may well prove difficult to ignore.

Katherine Tan is a fellow at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy and a development professional, specializing in private sector development.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect the views of their employer or Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.

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