The torch arrives in Paris, the birthplace of the Enlightenment Revolution whose motto remains the emblem of France (freedom, equality, fraternity), but in the light of that torch too many long shadows were reflected more or less clearly against the background of the Olympic Games. If the Olympics won the challenge with COVID, they didn't win it due to the yearning for participatory freedom that is now too often denied in various countries. And the requests for political asylum are back, as in the past, during the Cold War.
If the USA leads the medal standings overtaking China, Russia, with the acronym ROC, took part in these Olympics without being able to play or sing the anthem, an almost paradoxical situation for the Russian team, which in fact lined up a team undersized. It is around these three players from the Olympics, sport and geopolitics that a new world balance gravitates, in which Biden, the US President, tried to shuffle the cards already during the G7 with a frontal attack on China and decidedly more moderate towards Russia.
Foreign policy is Biden's Achilles heel (as it was for Obama): if the mantra is to reduce the presence in the Middle East and go on to conquer Asia to break Chinese domination, probably the President he has made a bad deal with COVID, which has offered authoritarian regimes the possibility of enslaving the restrictive pandemic policies to the personal interests of the current dictator, through easily manipulated social control, and much more difficult to manage in modern democracies. So we went from trade wars to vaccine wars, for areas of relevance, up to the resumption of territorial conflicts. Further pressed by the US positions, China has strengthened the commercial ties with Iran and Russia to preserve the efficiency of the management of the New Silk Road, and Russia for its part continues to underline its transversal diplomatic positioning from the Syrian theater of war, to the Doha conciliation tables for Afghanistan.
AFGHANISTAN, KABUL LIKE SAIGON
The Americans left the Afghan base in Bagram at night and unceremoniously earlier this month, and now with bombers and drones from Qatari bases they are trying to back up the government and pro-government militias, a question and answer that reflects a situation he now sees the Taliban raid capture three major cities and over ten provincial capitals. And, according to US military sources, the Taliban will arrive in Kabul in 90 days.
The meeting between the Taliban representatives, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and the Chinese Foreign Ministry highlights how many economic interests are at stake in Afghanistan, where the Taliban draw economic resources not only from the duties charged at the borders and imposed on the conquered land ( or rather violently snatched from the resident population), but also from the exploitation of energy resources. Dialogue with the Chinese has been active between ups and downs for more than five years, since a Memorandum was signed precisely to insert Kabul on the New Silk Road: thus a series of loans were started, useful for laying the foundations also for the rail and air connection between the two countries for commercial traffic. So much so that Afghanistan has rightfully entered the Chinese multilateral bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
It is crucial for China to implement the extraction and commercial rights on precious minerals and rare minerals (copper and lithium, but also oil), also to settle permanently in a country where the need for infrastructure is enormous. There are still few Chinese companies already present and they are only the advanced tip of a large front of investments that the Chinese are willing to concentrate to strengthen their dominance in Central Asia, as has already been done in Africa. Furthermore, the rail corridor will draw the map of the alliance crossing Afghanistan towards both Iran and Pakistan.
COLLAPSING SYRIA AND LEBANON, HOT SEASON FOR THE MIDDLE EAST
And if the defeat of the USA, but more generally of the West, is evident in Afghanistan it is no less so in Syria, 10 years after the beginning of the civil conflict. Once again, the EU will have to worry about migratory flows which also in this case cause concern, intertwining with the pandemic emergency. Meanwhile, Russia leads the diplomatic axis, sharing the negotiating table with Iran, Turkey and with President Assad as a stone guest. By now the USA seems to have been satisfied with having defeated ISIS and also in Syria they have been the protagonists of a retreat, if not at night, certainly dark. The American demobilization has allowed the Turks to create buffer zones against the Kurds and to continue using the weapon of financial blackmail on the skin of displaced Syrians with the EU.
The Syrian government is also trying to stifle the last resistance in Idlib and Daraa to fully implement the agreement signed in 2018, but the pandemic has further worsened the country's economic situation, where food and consumer goods are scarce.
Economic situation worsened also in Lebanon, a year after the terrible explosion at the port of Beirut, which killed more than 200 people and injured 6.500, and where so far they have not been found guilty, even though everyone was aware of the danger of the situation.
The incalculable damages were added to the economic ones caused by the default of the Lebanese Central Bank in March 2020 and by the banking crisis that directly affected savers. The rescue packages of the International Monetary Fund, which exceeded 10 billion US dollars, were of no avail.
It suffices to consider the trend of the local currency (which has lost 95% of its value and is currently traded on the black market at 22.000 against the dollar, i.e. 15 times the official exchange rate at 1.500) to understand the seriousness of a collapsing situation where there is a lack of medicine, gas, electricity and basic necessities.
The World Bank talks about Lebanon's worst financial crisis in more than 150 years. The total absence of political decisions to curb the humanitarian catastrophe that is envisaged remains incomprehensible. More than half of the population lives below the poverty line, according to the Crisis Observatory of the American University of Beirut. The cost of food has increased by 700% and even primary goods such as sanitary pads and diapers are nowhere to be found, except at very high prices.
At the table of the international conference in Riyadh led by France and the United Nations, attempts are made to run for cover in every possible way. Saudi Arabia, USA and France are ready to support the Lebanese army to prevent the country from falling into civil chaos, where Hezbollah's armies would have the upper hand if not contained. Once again, however, the intervention of US Secretary of State Blinken proved to be tardy and unfair in the face of the resignation of Premier Hariri, opposed by President Aoun, directly linked to the radical Islamist movement of Hezbollah, defined as a terrorist group by many countries (but not from the EU) and with one of its militants guilty of killing former Premier Rafik Hariri in 2005, in turn supported in all respects by Iran.
In nine months the outgoing government has achieved nothing, and the political vacuum weighs on the consciences of a West distracted by COVID but still guilty of an error of underestimating the dynamics of the area, where all these situations of instability will lead to big troubles for the middle eastern picture.
The Biden administration wants reassurance from a new government to release funds from the International Monetary Fund, but the social bomb risks exploding. Suffice it to say that in Lebanon the supply of vaccines is now managed by private individuals.
And to think that just two years ago, President Aoun played the bulldog between American and Russian diplomacy to guarantee the security of land and sea borders with Israel, and to seek negotiating space on the dispute over oil and gas reserves off the coast. its coasts. A game of chess with the aim of securing access to offshore hydrocarbon fields that would have definitively enriched Lebanon.
The Russians, strengthened by their diplomatic victory in Syria, were already ready to become protagonists of mediation with Israel in exchange for investments in transport infrastructures, even expanding the port of Tripoli. It is therefore not surprising that only last May the Russian Foreign Minister announced an agreement with Hezbollah both to resolve the government crisis in Lebanon and for the territorial disputes in Syria. But the political situation has become even more complicated.
Between the pandemic and economic chaos, Hezbollah has extended its area of influence in the country thanks to the support of funds from Iran and has thus been able to exacerbate the political confrontation, blocking international aid. But even here, if the internal political compromise is difficult to resolve, the Chinese variable enters to complicate the diplomatic framework: Beijing dialogues with Hezbollah in an anti-US key. The recent rocket attacks on Israel certainly do not bode well for a short-term solution.
BELARUS REDUCED THE SILENCE
Russia remains the protagonist not only in the balance of the Middle East, but also in those of Eastern Europe. One year after the start of the civil protest, born as a response to the sixth disputed re-election of Alexandr Lukashenko, the efforts of the expected winner of those elections, Svetlana Tsikanouskaya, continue to strengthen the sanctions by the international community. However, there is a deafening silence surrounding the trials against male and female students and all possible or presumed opponents of the regime, because the repression is very harsh and the demonstrations are increasingly weak. In Belarus, over 35 people have been arrested, not to mention the closure of regional radio and media, in a trickle of increasingly isolated voices weakened by unprecedented repression. The sanctions by the British - in coordination with Canada, the US and the European Union - have been further strengthened recently.
Last May, two Belarusian fighter jets forced the landing of a Ryanair civilian plane flying between Athens and Vilnius. As a pretext, the regime invented the story of an alleged bomb on board, but in reality the real objective of Lukashenko's police was to arrest one of the passengers: Roman Protasevich, a 26-year-old dissident journalist. An unprecedented fact in the history of post-war civil aviation.
Moreover, the country is standing economically only thanks to the financial support of Russia, which has strengthened government resources with new loans, also intended for the security apparatus. Despite this, the deficit has grown dramatically, returning to the crisis levels of 1990, and the banking system and state-owned subsidiaries remain immobilized by the shortage of financial liquidity, with a level of NPLs that has exceeded the 15% threshold.
After the 1,9% drop in the economy last year, the dispute with Russia certainly weighed, drastically reducing oil supplies to the country causing a contraction of the industrial sector, which is mostly in government hands and counts for two-thirds of GDP. Exports were then penalized by the collapse in fertilizer prices, which represent 20% of the country's exports. Thus the deficit doubled of the trade balance, due to the weight of imports made increasingly expensive by the devaluation of the currency. In fact, the Belarusian ruble in 2020 had already lost 34% against the euro and 22% against the US dollar. With such a deteriorated purchasing power and average wages between 500 and 600 US dollars a month, one can understand the state of difficulty of families, exacerbated above all by the pandemic situation, as well as by the strikes and protests that have dramatically affected the world of work. It is no wonder that corporate bankruptcies have soared and manufacturing sector profits have plummeted by 40%.
Taking into account that 50% of exports go to Russia it can be said that it keeps Belarus under tight control, with a total amount of loans disbursed that has exceeded 100 billion US dollars, more than half of which in the last 10 years, according to analysts. With the Chinese at the window and the isolation given by the sanctions, the regime is now close to economic collapse and is also seeing its currency reserves dwindling. And the hypothesis of annexation to Russia is not excluded, even if in fact this can already be glimpsed from an economic link which has by now become vital for the only European country where the death penalty is still in force.
CONCLUSION
The next Winter Olympics will be held in six months in Beijing and China, albeit in a B-series Olympics compared to the summer ones, will try to show off its meticulous organization also for the media apparatus that will be made available to Xi Jinping, a fantastic showcase for his politics and… for the Chinese products. Furthermore, the Olympic interests for certain nations, as we know, go well with nationalism and authoritarianism and see ancestral clashes intersect in sporting competitions, as already well perceived in Tokyo.
But in the meantime, in these six months, the civil and humanitarian crises described will have to find an embankment because the geopolitical equilibrium, even if it casts its long shadow over these global sporting events, remain the priority for those populations for which medals no longer matter than survival and a future put into question by too many interests that seem to take advantage of the COVID emergency without mercy or respect for civil rights.
It's a good thing that the Yankees are home for three years after decades of useless wars waged even economically on the skin of many peoples with the excuse of exporting democracy. The dollar will soon no longer be the only reference currency and so will the New York Stock Exchange.