Cross-strait tensions and Polexit
Plus, we look at COP26 – the big climate action conference happening soon
Hello there! Hope you have an awesome weekend ahead. This week, we’re examining Poland’s possible path to exiting the European Union, feeling the heat in the Taiwan Strait and looking at COP26 – the big climate action conference scheduled to begin later this month.
This day that year
2005: At least 87,350 people were killed after an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the seismic scale rocked Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. Strong tremors were felt in neighbouring Afghanistan and India.
1967: Che Guevara, one of the prominent communist leaders of the Cuban Revolution, was captured and later shot dead by Bolivian forces.
Path to Polexit?
Are we likely to see Poland walk out of the European Union (EU) like the United Kingdom? A Polish tribunal’s latest ruling has put the country on the path to ‘Polexit’, some argue.
What’s happening?
EU members are required to sign a treaty provision that says that European-level laws have primacy over the country’s own laws. The final arbiter of EU law is the European Court of Justice, not the country’s top court.
However, on October 7, Poland's Constitutional tribunal ruled that some provisions of EU treaties are incompatible with the Polish Constitution. This ruling effectively challenges the link that keeps Poland in the EU, threatening the 27-member bloc’s integrity.
This development is being seen as the first legal step towards Poland’s exit from the EU.
It is to be noted that the Polish tribunal’s legitimacy is questioned by opponents of the government. They accuse the ruling side of having packed the court.
Will Polexit really happen?
It’s difficult to say. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s right-wing populist Law and Justice party wants just that. In fact, it was Morawiecki who took the matter to court earlier this year arguing that the EU had no right to interfere with a member state’s judicial system.
The prime minister has argued that his government’s reforms were needed to remove communist-era influences. The Polish government has also been locked in a dispute with Brussels over other issues such as LGBT rights and freedom of press.
The number of Poles who want their country to leave the EU is now the highest proportion recorded since Poland joined the bloc in 2004, according to opinion surveys. However, 80 percent Poles still want to remain in the EU. They may also be considering the arduous exit process and the negative impact UK seemingly faced when it exit the EU.
Taiwan Strait concerns
Military tensions with the People’s Republic of China are at the worst level in over four decades, Taiwan’s Defence Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said on October 6 as he promoted a new defence spending package to his country’s lawmakers.
He was pushing for a $8.6 billion-plan that would see procurement of home-made weapons, including missiles and warships, over the next five years.
This came days after a large number of Chinese aircraft flew into Taiwan’s air defence zone. In four days starting October 1, the country reported nearly 150 air force aircraft from the mainland entering its air defence zone. Yet, those aircraft have stayed away from the main island of Taiwan and no shots have been fired so far. Taiwan, or the Republic of China, has termed this as harassment.
Tensions between Beijing and Taipei have been simmering over the last year more than ever before. China has for long claimed Taiwan – a democratically-governed island – as its own territory. Beijing says Taiwan is just a “breakaway” province that will eventually be reunified with the country. However, Taiwan stresses that it’s a sovereign nation.
BBC has explained in detail about what's behind the China-Taiwan divide.
US President Joe Biden said that he had drawn an agreement from Chinese President Xi Jinping that the mainland would abide by the “Taiwan agreement”. Biden appeared to be referring to the US’ policy under which Washington DC maintains diplomatic ties with Beijing instead of Taipei. But this arrangement rests on the expectation that Taiwan’s future will be determined by peaceful means, not by conflict or a Chinese invasion. The arrangement also binds the US to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself.
Yet, the US acknowledges Beijing’s position of “one China” and doesn’t take a position on Taiwan's sovereignty.
China is doing this to demonstrate power and doesn’t really intend to spark an armed conflict, according to Ian Bremmer, a political risk analyst and the founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media. However, he cautions that there’s always a chance of accidents.
Battle of our lives
Starting this week, I’ll try to squeeze in a bit about climate change in this section titled the ‘battle of our lives’. This is in the lead up to the big 2021 UN Climate Change Conference to be held at Glasgow, United Kingdom in October-November. I contend that climate change and its impact will be the defining issue of our lives.
Focus on COP26
This week we’ll look at the conference itself and what’s in store. The Glasgow event will be the first time that parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are expected to commit to improved goals since the landmark Paris Agreement was reached in 2015.
‘COP’ is Conference of the Parties and this is the 26th edition. About 25,000 people including world leaders, government officials, negotiators and journalists will attend the conference.
In Paris, about 200 countries had pledged to make amends to keep global warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above industrial levels, to be able to avert a climate catastrophe. Countries also agreed to keep the rise in the average global temperature below 1.5 degree Celsius compared with the pre-industrial era.
To achieve these lofty goals, countries need to keep making significantly bigger emissions cuts until we reach net zero emissions by 2050. But the first step in getting there is to make a big cut by 2030 itself, so that we know if we’re on the correct track.
Some nations, including China (considered most populated country), have already started announcing their updated targets. Chinese President Xi Jinping informed the UN General Assembly last month that his country will “strive to peak” carbon dioxide emissions before 2030, but added that carbon neutrality would be achieved before 2060 (not by 2050).
We can expect a number of announcements during the two-week event. The aim would be to hasten the transition to electric cars, funding infrastructure to defend coastline against rising sea levels, phasing out coal power plants and stopping deforestation.
Doing this, while imperative, is expensive. So developing and poor countries want the ‘developed’ countries to monetarily contribute more towards these transitions. This could be in the form of financial packages, subsidies and funding programmes.
There’s also likely to be some sort of a declaration by the end of the conference.
It is to be noted that there are some who believe that most countries aren’t doing enough to achieve these goals. There are some scientists who think that it’s too late already and agreements reached at these conferences will not help us achieve the target anyway.
In the meanwhile, I’m linking the BBC’s guide to understanding climate change. It can be read here.
What else?
Nobel Peace Prize
The 2021 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov for their “efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said Ressa and Muratov were receiving the prize for their “courageous fight for freedom of expression” in the Philippines and Russia. “They are representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions,” the committee said in a statement.
Last year, the peace prize was awarded to the World Food Programme for its efforts to “combat hunger”, bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and acting as a “driving force” in efforts to prevent use of hunger as a weapon of conflict.
Pandora’s box
Last week, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) published the ‘Pandora Papers’ made up of 11.9 million leaked documents with 2.9 terabytes of data.
It exposed secret offshore accounts of several world leaders, heads of state (and their associates), billionaires and celebrities from across the world.
I’m not talking about this in detail as you would have already gone through the motion over the past week. But I’ll still link explainer videos posted by The Guardian and The Washington Post.
‘Strongman’ Duterte announces retirement
Rodrigo Duterte, the president of the Philippines, has announced that he’ll retire from politics. This put an end to speculation that he planned to run for the vice-presidential office next year.
Duterte’s six-year single non-renewable presidential term will end in 2022 and is barred from seeking a second term in the Southeast Asian country’s highest office. But the 76-year-old, often described by international news media as ‘brash’ and ‘aggressive’, and his supporters were briefly interpreting the Constitution as permitting him to contest for the vice president’s post.
“The overwhelming … sentiment of the Filipinos is that I am not qualified and it would be a violation of the constitution to circumvent the law, the spirit of the constitution” to run for the vice presidency, Duterte said in a statement.
He remains perhaps as popular as he was in 2016, when he stormed to power pitching himself as someone who’ll rid the country of drugs. Duterte’s opponents claim that his move to run for vice president was to an attempt to extend the immunity he currently enjoys against criminal charges. In fact, the vice president is allowed to get elected to two consecutive six-year terms (providing much longer immunity).
However, Philippine online news website Rappler cites law experts as saying that there's nothing in the Constitution or in precedence to suggest that vice presidents enjoy immunity.
So now, the ‘strongman’s’ exit from the overt political scene is being seen as a move to clear the decks for his daughter Sara to run for president. She’s 43 years old and is the mayor of Davao City. Her campaign would be challenged by a number of opposition candidates, including boxing star Manny Pacquiao.
We had briefly discussed Pacquiao’s candidature in the previous edition:
But if her candidacy is successful, Sara would likely shield her father from criminal charges he faces in the Philippines as well as in the International Criminal Court, where prosecutors are investigating his deadly war on drugs. Philippine authorities deny police misconduct, but human rights groups estimate that the ongoing conflict has led to thousands of deaths.
Ladakh standoff
About 100 troops and 55 horses of Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) transgressed 5 kilometres into India’s Barahoti region in the northern state of Uttarakhand's on August 30, Indian news media reported last week.
The PLA troops damaged some infrastructure, including a bridge, before returning to Chinese-controlled territory after about three hours, The Economic Times reported citing unnamed officials aware of the situation.
A report by the Press Trust of India, an Indian news agency, suggested that Indian soldiers responded with a “tit for tat strategy” and “carried our patrolling”, in an area guarded by India’s Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP).
While the incident did not lead to a face-off, it serves as a reminder of last year’s India-China standoff along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) – the de-facto border in the area between the two Asian countries.
But it also comes at a time when the disengagement of forces in eastern Ladakh, after the bloody skirmish in 2020, is still underway. The deadly face-off in the Galwan Valley led to the death of 20 Indian soldiers as well as an unknown number of PLA troops in July 2020. Several others were injured. It also led to a massive mobilisation of battle tanks, artillery and air power on both sides.
Interesting stuff
Have you ever wondered what is your personal ecological footprint? How many Earths will we need if everyone lives like you, and when is your personal 'overshoot day'? Global Footprint Network’s footprint calculator helps you do that. I was shocked to see my score.
In this video, Bloomberg QuickTake talks about the inside story of Ever Given – the ship that broke global trade in March after getting stuck in the Suez Canal. The video explains how and why it happened, and how authorities freed the vessel.
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