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Diari De Les Idees 17 Diari de les idees 17 The American Senate’s absolution verdict in the impeachment process against President Donald Trump is somehow the starting point of the campaign for the autumn presidential election. As Peter Baker points out in an article in the New York Times, the possibility of continuing to investigate in the Congress the president’s attempts to coerce Ukraine will serve to grind the national debate over the next few months and also the Democratic primaries to choose who will be Trump’s opponent. This victory of the American president coincides in time with the announcement of his plan of peace for the Middle East. A plan that as soon as released has raised a backlash of criticism since the so-called “Agreement of the century” has been made behind the back of one of the two protagonists of the conflict, the Palestinians. One of the most critical and authoritative voices is that of the Middle East policy expert in the British newspaper The Independent where Robert Fisk reports that the plan means to hush the Palestinian refugees issue up and their right to return, reject the city of Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital and to shelve the mission of the UNRWA, the UN agency supporting the relief and human development of Palestinian refugees. At the same time, this means legitimizing the permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the annexation of almost all the Jewish colonies established against what has been dictated by international laws. Another relevant issue is discussed by Martin Chulov in The Guardian where he warns that the announcement of the plan has not provoked any anger in the Arab countries, only apathy, in a region which no longer seems to consider the fate of the Palestinians as the centerpiece of the policy or as a cause worth supporting. Relate to these two issues, a long article in Foreign Affairs is highly critical towards the U.S. foreign policy under the presidency of Trump, emphasizing that the current White PÀGINA 1 / 16 House is carrying on its foreign policy with irreconcilable goals, without internal coherence and without prior assessment of the scope and the consequences of the decisions taken. Ultimately, the current crisis in the Middle East demands a return to the most basic principles of a consistent foreign policy, where goals are clearly established as well as the appreciation of the available resources needed to achieve them. Within this context of the disorientation of the American administration, several voices emphasize the new prominence Putin’s Russia is acquiring. Almost completely absent from the region for a quarter of a century after the Soviet Union breakup, today Russia has turned as one of the leading actors in the entire Middle East, with a huge military influence and good relations with all the main protagonists, from Israel to Saudi Arabia, as reports Alec Luhn in the magazine Politico. This is a paradox as Russia has a weak economy (it only occupies the eleventh place in the world ranking) and therefore needs to compensate it in other areas through diplomacy, military force and its capacity to appear as a problem solving factor. This paradox is defined by Moisés Naim in Le Monde Diplomatique as that of a low cost superpower insofar as Russia is taking advantage of the shortcuts that now allow a government to intervene in another country and weaken or dominate its international adversaries, without being forced to devote important and expensive investments. In this sense, Vladimir Putin has proven himself to be a master in the art of projecting his power over other countries with a limited budget and has turned Russia into a key player in most major conflicts thanks to its mastery of ITC. The disorientation we are referring to not only affects US foreign policy but is becoming a systemic problem that leads Foreign Policy to inquire if socialism, or at least social-democracy, will be able to stand up again as an alternative to neoliberalism. In recent years, the economic growth promised by neoliberal heralds has slowed down, profit and earnings are shared in an increasingly uneven way, and at the same time, this inequality has been accompanied by a growing sense of insecurity. This is what has to bring to remember and value the positive experience underlying the application of social democratic policies after World War II. And insofar as the warning signs are relevant enough (rising of populisms, increasing citizen unrest and protests, etc.) the whole political spectrum should recognize the advantages of a social democratic solution to the current crisis, which affects the core of democracy. We consider therefore The Economist warning touch as a highlight as its annual survey shows that democracy is retreating all over the planet and that the overall score of democratic health is the lowest registered since the index began to be released in 2006. According to the survey, only 22 countries can be regarded as complete democracies, while more than one third of the world population still lives under authoritarian regimes. This threat to democracy is also the subject of a report from the Center for the Future of Democracy of the University of Cambridge that reveals that worldwide democracy lies in a state of growing weakness. The authors of the report describe the situation in terms of global democratic recession, the turning point of which they place around 2005 and they warn we have reached the highest level of democratic discontent ever recorded. Even more important, not only citizens are increasingly dissatisfied with their political leaders, but they are also disappointed with the democratic system as a wholes. Finally, the report also points out that History suggests that disillusioned citizens do not come easily to the streets to support a system that has not been previously able to defend them. PÀGINA 2 / 16 At the European level, the UK’s official departure from the European Union on 31 January has been one of the most relevant news and the editorial of the British newspaper The Guardian claims once again its Europeanness and stresses the challenges the country will have to face from now to find a new place in the world. From a domestic point of view Timothy Garton Ash considers that the main issue that remains pending is that of to know whether Scotland will leave the British Union to return to the European one by holding a second referendum on independence. Finally, the British farewell is also reviewed by Jacopo Barigazzi in the pages of the magazine Politico where he underlines the influence the United Kingdom has had on the design of the current European Union and highlights some of its major contributions such as the impulse given to the creation of the single market and the free trade agreements, or the United Kingdom’s resolute support to the EU enlargement to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe as a fundamental tool of European geopolitics. Inequality is the concept that best helps to explain the crisis of the democratic system, the rise of populisms and the various manifestations of discontent, protest and unrest that are occurring with a growing intensity around the world. In an interview granted to La Vanguardia, Josep Stieglitz states that we are living a triple crisis – that of capitalism, climate and values- and attributes it to the unlimited confidence in the markets carried by the neoliberalism since the Reagan era. In his opinion it would be necessary to solve this triple crisis to return to a form of capitalism that guarantees a shared prosperity, in which politics controls the economy and it’s assumed that education and, by extension, the creativity and the productivity of the citizens are the basis of a country’s wealth. This inequality has also been one of the central points of the agenda of the World Economic Forum held in Davos at the end of January. Social Europe highlights that this year’s manifesto affirms that companies should pay their fair share of taxes, show zero tolerance towards corruption, support human rights in their global supply chains and defend a competitive and fair playground. In short, inequality does not have to be a fateful consequence of globalization and the rise of new technologies, and it can be fought through political action. In the magazine CTXT Manuel Garí proposes formulating realistic although difficult goals to attain: social and public ownership of the means of production, of finances, of credit and of money; democratic planning as a way to generate the will of the majority social and to satisfy its needs respecting the limits of the biosphere; and to bring life to the center of the economy and politics. In short, solving the inequality problems involves dismantle, and not merely improve, the current social regime. Finally, and as showed by the cancellation of this year’s edition of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the battle for supremacy in the field of ITC and Artifical Intelligence is already a geopolitical reality. Indeed, in the race for the mastery of AI, the United States and China struggle for gold and silver medals, leaving the other countries the crumbs as noted by Tyson Barker in Foreign Policy, although the European Union sees things differently and both in the field of AI and other strategic technological areas, the new President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, wants to fight for the first place. Artificial Intelligence is also discussed from philosophy and we stress the contribution of Daniel Innerarity in La Vanguardia, where he points out that the disturbing issue is to know to what extent the benefits of automation allow us to consider that intelligent systems still have some kind of PÀGINA 3 / 16 relationship with the logic of human decision.
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