The Statesmanls Yearbook 2020

The Statesman’s Yearbook 2020 The Statesman’s Yearbook 2020 The Politics, Cultures and Economies of the World Springer Nature Limited Published annually since 1864 The Statesman’s Yearbook 2020 ISBN 978-1-349-95939-6 ISBN 978-1-349-95940-2 (eBook) ISBN 978-1-349-95941-9 (Bundle) https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95940-2 © Springer Nature Limited 2020 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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Preface It was in the middle of the 19th century that the then British Prime Minister, Robert Peel, suggested to Alexander Macmillan that he should publish ‘a handbook presenting in a compact shape a picture of the actual conditions, political and social, of the various states in the civilised world’. The first edition of The Statesman’s Yearbook was eventually published in January 1864. Our redesigned 156th edition keeps tabs on our uncertain world with its numerous elections and government changes. In Brazil and Mexico, the two largest countries in Latin America, ‘populist’ leaders—one right-wing and one left-wing—were elected as divisive politics seemed to be increasingly the order of the day. Elsewhere, the USA and China, the world’s dominant economies, ramped up their trade war, while the UK struggled to navigate its way through Brexit. Meanwhile, the devastating fallout of Syria’s civil war continued to have an impact across the world. Never have we needed more a compact picture of the current global political and economic situation. With more than 150 years of history, The Statesman’s Yearbook has an illustrious past, and all our previous editions are available as individual eBooks. They are also part of Palgrave’s and Springer’s eBook collections. For details see https://link.springer.com/bookseries/15683. In early 2019 we also published a new title—The Statesman’s Yearbook Companion. This provides detailed biographies of past leaders and figureheads not found in The Statesman’s Yearbook itself, and includes comprehensive chronologies of natural disasters and key political events, as well as overviews of major global cities. It also contains infographics commemorating the anniversaries of key historical events as well as a number of synopses of relevant and related publications. We always welcome feedback, so please email us with any comments at sybcomments@palgrave.com Nicholas Heath-Brown Publisher, The Statesman’s Yearbook v 2018 in 1,000 words Two questions vexed political commentators throughout 2018: would the UK’s intended withdrawal from the European Union (Brexit) in March 2019 be confirmed or derailed and what would US President Donald Trump do next? UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s efforts to establish a government consensus on acceptable terms for Brexit were consistently undermined by Eurosceptics within her own Conservative Party, prompting damaging cabinet resignations, and by Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionists, on whom the government was reliant to maintain its parliamentary majority. The stark divisions were laid bare in December as she controversially deferred a crucial House of Commons vote on her proposed deal (reached with other EU leaders the previous month), acknowledging that the agreement would likely be rejected. She also survived a motion of no confidence in her party leadership triggered by disgruntled Conservative MPs, but with a less than overwhelming endorsement. US President Trump’s second year in office proved as unpredictable as the first. In May he announced that he was withdrawing the USA from the 2015 six-nation agreement with Iran limiting the Islamic Republic’s nuclear develop- ment programme and reimposing sanctions. He then reversed his bellicose stance towards communist North Korea, staging an historic meeting with his counterpart, Kim Jong-un, in June at which they agreed to work towards denuclearization of the Korean peninsula (although there was little apparent progress by the year’s end). In July Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin conducted their first-ever, and seemingly convivial, summit meeting, during which Trump again rejected US intelligence claims of Russian interference in the US elections in 2016. However, in October he announced that the USA would withdraw from a 31-year-old arms limitation agreement with Russia on intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, accusing the Russians of breaking its terms. He was similarly not averse to upsetting long-standing allies, clashing with other Western leaders at a G7 summit over climate change and trade issues and demanding other NATO members increase their defence spending. Further discord within the Trump administration saw the dismissal of Rex Tillerson as secretary of state (and his replacement by Mike Pompeo) and Jeff Sessions as attorney-general, as well as the resignation of James Mattis as defence secretary over the President’s decision in December to withdraw US troops from Syria after claiming that Islamic State extremists had been defeated. The Republicans also lost control of the US House of Representatives at the mid-term elections in November, which heralded a partial government shutdown at the end of the year as the resurgent Democrats refused to approve Trump’s funding demands for a border wall with Mexico to block immigrants from across Central America. The global threat from a damaging trade war between the USA and China escalated during the year as Trump progressively imposed tariffs on Chinese products to stop what he claimed had been the systematic theft of US intellectual property. China similarly retaliated before both sides agreed a temporary suspension in December of further punitive action to allow for more negotiation. More positively, the USA, Canada and Mexico reached an accord to supersede the 24-year-old trilateral North American Free Trade Agreement. Meanwhile, voters in Egypt, Russia and Turkey re-elected authoritarian presidents, as Brazil, Italy and Mexico returned new populist administrations and Colombia opted for a conservative presidential candidate. Former international cricketer Imran Khan became prime minister of Pakistan, while the ruling National Front coalition was ousted in Malaysia as the opposition’s Mahathir Mohamad, at 92, became the world’s oldest premier. Emmerson Mnangagwa and his ZANU-PF party claimed a controversial electoral victory in Zimbabwe, and long-delayed polling in the Democratic Republic of the Congo finally went ahead in December to elect a successor to Joseph Kabila. New prime ministers took office in Australia and Spain, while Cyril Ramaphosa replaced Jacob Zuma as president in South Africa and Raúl Castro gave way to fellow communist Miguel Díaz-Canel in Cuba. And as China’s parliament voted to abolish presidential term limits, paving the way for incumbent Xi Jinping to retain the office indefinitely, Germany’s Angela Merkel relinquished the leadership of her Christian Democrat party ahead of the pending completion of her final term as chancellor. Other significant developments included a peace deal between Ethiopia and Eritrea, ending the state of war existing between them since 1998, as well as The Gambia’s readmission as a member of the Commonwealth and Macedonia’s historic agreement with Greece to change its official name to North Macedonia and resolve a festering bilateral dispute. Greece meanwhile completed its financial bailout obligations, ending eight years of austerity and economic oversight by the EU and International Monetary Fund, in sharp contrast to Venezuela where huge numbers of citizens were fleeing violence, hyperinflation and food and medicine shortages under Nicolás Maduro’s leftist government. And a damning report by the United Nations highlighted the continuing inaction on the part of Myanmar’s government over atrocities perpetrated against the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority. The civil war in Syria seemingly drew to a close, with President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its Russian and Iranian backers having gained ascendancy over most rebel groups. At the same time, the Turkish government stepped up military intervention

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