North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un allegedly reappeared in public yesterday — at the ribbon cutting of a fertilizer plant — after being MIA for 20 days following rumors of him being "gravely ill" after heart surgery.
Trump confusing said Monday evening, “I do know how he’s doing, relatively speaking," and "I hope he’s fine," before stating, "I can’t tell you, [but] yes, I do have a very good idea... I just wish him well. You’ll probably be hearing in the not too distant future.”
Two years ago, Trump said of himself and Kim, "The relationship is very good. He likes me. I like him. Some people say, 'Oh, you shouldn’t like him.' I said, 'Why shouldn’t I like him?' I like him. We get along great. We’ll see what happens.” His comments made sense considering his admiration for strongman leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte.
But Trump was far terser and much less chummy about Kim this last Friday though. When asked about Kim's health shortly before the North Korean leader's reappearance, Trump said, "I'd rather not comment on it yet. We'll have something to say about it at the appropriate time." It was a rather short reply for a guy who has boasted about re-kindling warm relations between the U.S. and the Stalinist dictatorship.
Trump could just be choosing his words carefully now because Margaret Croy, an expert on East Asian nuclear proliferation, has said North Korea's fertilizer plants could actually help the country create nuclear materials by extracting uranium from phosphoric acids.
If so, then Trump's newfound silence about Kim may underscore Trump's failure to achieve his Sept. 27, 2017 goal of North Korea's "complete denuclearization."
Quick history recap: After nearly two years of saber-rattling — with Trump tightening sanctions and cutting off humanitarian aid while Kim tested missiles towards Japan, South Korea and Russia — Trump met with Kim in a June 2018 Singapore summit. There, Trump declared Kim "an honorable partner," despite Kim murdering his own half-brother, his own uncle, American student Otto Warmbier and using secret camps to work, torture, and starve political dissenters and their families.
Thinking the U.S. could get more with honey than vinegar, Trump furthered his historic ambitions with Kim in late June 2019 by meeting him North Korea — a U.S. presidential first. By then, Trump said he wasn't in a rush to rid the country of its nukes; he later tweeted that it was no longer a threat, though he didn't say why.
Even though Trump and Kim “fell in love” after meeting, bringing the two closer than any U.S. and North Korean leader ever have been, and even though North Korea hasn't launched a missile or conducted a nuclear test since fall of 2017, Trump knows he hasn't de-neutralized Kim as a regional threat. In fact, as recently as a year ago, Kim was busy rebuilding a long-range rocket test site.
Now, as Kim's first public appearance in two weeks hints at his continuing nuclear ambitions, it highlights Trump's failure to secure a North Korean peace declaration or nuclear ban — something no American president has been able to do — effectively undermining his persona as a dealmaker and showing just how little he has actually achieved with his new friend.
Over 1.5 million cases of coronavirus have been recorded in Europe, just under half the worldwide total, according to an AFP tally at 0850 GMT on Saturday.
With at least 1,506,853 infections, including 140,260 deaths, Europe is the hardest-hit continent. Across the world, 3,350,224 cases and 238,334 deaths have been recorded.
Spain, with 215,216 cases and 24,824 deaths, Italy with 207,428 cases and 28,236 deaths, Britain (177,454 and 27,510), France (167,346 and 24,594) and Germany (161,703 and 6,575) are the five European countries with official tolls over 150,000.
The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections. Many countries are testing only the most serious cases.
Virus-hit Italy has closed its schools until September, but is drawing up plans to re-open nurseries and hold mini summer schools for children desperate to play after two months of lockdown.
Kindergartens and day nurseries may be used from June for small groups of children aged zero to six years, according to plans being drawn up by the education ministry and published Saturday by the Corriere della Sera daily.
The proposals, based on strict systems used in Denmark and Norway to reopen nurseries, will need the go-ahead from a scientific committee.
The closure of schools until the end of the academic year has been one of the more controversial anti-coronavirus measures imposed in Italy, with many saying it overly penalizes working women and children.
The country has been one of the hardest hit by the virus, which has claimed over 28,000 lives so far.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has insisted that children carry a very high risk of contagion. Part of the reason for keeping schools closed is the risk of infecting vulnerable teachers.
Italy has the oldest teachers across OECD countries, with nearly 60 percent of them aged over 50.
But as the country prepares to ease lockdown measures, Conte said reopening nurseries may be possible on a trial, experimental basis.
The proposal is for micro-groups of between three and six children to attend in shifts. Their temperatures would be checked on entry and they would only be allowed to play with pre-sterilized toys, nothing brought from home.
The same children would attend each group each time. They would not wear masks, but the teachers would.
Education minister Lucia Azzolina has said the playgrounds and gyms of primary and secondary schools could be used. The idea is for them to spend as much time outdoors as possible, the daily said.
- 'Woods, museums, parks' -
Patrizio Bianchi, who heads the committee of experts studying how to reopen schools in September, told the Repubblica daily the system would need to be revolutionized.
Over 8.5 million children and teens have been missing classes, and efforts to offer online schooling have been patchy and have skipped completely those in families without computers or Internet access.
Bianchi called for three billion euros to be spent each year for the next five years to restructure Italy's crumbling school buildings and boost Internet connectivity to allow home study.
"Parents and students have told us they want a school for the times we live in," he said in an interview.
"One big national digital platform, dedicated entirely to schooling. It will be the basis of a new style of teaching."
Under his plan, many lessons would move outdoors.
"Trentino (in northern Italy) will have to exploit its woods, Milan its museums, Rome its parks," he said.
Classrooms would also be restyled so far fewer pupils -- 10 at most -- sit in a semi-circle rather than twice that number staring at the back of their fellow students' heads.
Entry times to school would be staggered. And teachers, he suggested, should be paid more.
The United States tweeted its support for Taiwan’s participation in the United Nations Friday, provoking a sharp response from China expressing “strong indignation and firm opposition.”
The tweet from the U.S. Mission to the United Nations said the 193-member global organization was founded to serve “all voices,” welcome “a diversity of views and perspectives” and promote human rights. It said “Barring #Taiwan from setting foot on UN grounds is an affront not just to the proud Taïwanese people, but to UN principles.” It was retweeted by U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft.
The decision by the U.S. administration to suddenly raise the Taiwan issue follows President Donald Tump’s criticism of China over the coronavirus pandemic after weeks of elaborate praise of President Xi Jinping’s performance in tackling the crisis.
Trump is now blaming China for not acting quickly to inform the world of exactly what was happening and halted U.S. contributions to the World Health Organization, accusing it of parroting Beijing.
China claims sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan and uses its diplomatic clout to stop the island from joining any organizations that require statehood for membership. Taiwan left the United Nations in 1971 when China joined and is excluded from all of its agencies, including the WHO’s assembly where its observer status has been stripped. At the same time, it has one of the most robust public health systems in the world, and has won praise for its handling of the virus outbreak.
The spokesperson for China’s U.N. Mission called the U.S. Mission tweet “a serious violation” of the General Assembly resolution that gave China the U.N. seat, three U.S.-China joint communiques and China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
'One China'
“It gravely interferes with China’s internal affairs and deeply hurts the feelings of the 1.4 billion Chinese people,” said the spokesperon, who was not named. “There is only one China in the world. The government of the People’s Republic China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China, and Taiwan is an inalienable part of China.”
China’s mission accused the United States of ”hypocrisy” for citing the U.N.’s welcome of diverse views while repeatedly using its power to issue visas to block or delay U.N. member states and civil society organizations from attending activities at the United Nations.
China strongly urged the United States to abide by the one-China principle, the three joint communiques between the two countries and the General Assembly resolution “and immediately stop backing the Taiwan region, politicizing, and undermining international response to the pandemic.”
“While the coronavirus is raging across the world, people of all countries are calling for international solidarity in fighting the pandemic,” the Chinese spokesperson said. “Political manipulation by the United States on an issue concerning China’s core interests will poison the atmosphere for cooperation of member states at a time when unity and solidarity is needed the most.”
Rarely have two words ignited such a firestorm of controversy.
"So what?" said Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday when a journalist asked him about the fact that more than 5,000 Brazilians had died of the coronavirus.
The far-right leader's off-the-cuff comment has been sparking anger ever since, with governors, politicians, healthcare professionals and media figures all weighing in to express their outrage at his lack of empathy.
Bolsonaro is no stranger to controversy. But his latest remark sparked such a fury because Brazil is facing a seemingly uncontrollable outbreak of the disease and is still several weeks away from the peak of the pandemic, with a death toll that threatens to surpass even the most dire predictions.
There have been more than 91,000 officially confirmed cases so far but scientists warn the real figure could be 15 to 20 times higher.
With a death toll that has already topped 6,300, the giant South American country is facing as grim a scenario as Italy or the United States.
"So what? I'm sorry. What do you want me to do?" Bolsonaro said Tuesday when questioned about his country passing the 5,000-death mark, more than China. He joked that even though his middle name is Messias, or Messiah, "I don't do miracles."
Wilson Witzel, the governor of Rio de Janeiro state, called the president's remarks "absolutely unacceptable."
With his own state on the verge of a public health meltdown, Witzel slammed the president for "being ironic about the deaths" rather than "being a leader at such a moment."
"Do your job," he said on Twitter Wednesday, the day when the pro-gun president was training at a target range, far from the woes of Brazil's 210 million citizens.
- 'Brasilia bubble' -
Joao Doria, governor of Sao Paulo state which is also on the frontlines of the battle against the coronavirus with more than 2,500 deaths already, replied furiously to Bolsonaro in the capital Brasilia.
"Get out of your Brasilia bubble," he retorted, urging Bolsonaro to visit hospitals "in this country which is crying for its dead and infected."
Unlike many other heads of state, the Brazilian leader has not been seen in any hospitals nor has he expressed much solidarity with victims of the disease, bereaved families or healthcare staff who have condemned the lack of ventilators or beds.
The head of the doctors' union in Sao Paulo, Eder Gatti, called on television for "a more serious attitude from the president of the republic."
Bolsonaro "shows very little sensitivity to the tragedies that the families of those directly affected by the pandemic are going through," said Lucio Renno, director of the Institute of Political Science at Brasilia University.
"His style is the iron fist, to be hard rather than to show solidarity or empathy," he told AFP.
It is a style that inevitably draws comparison with Bolsonaro's own role model, US President Donald Trump.
That type of reaction is "shocking for a large part of the population" and "reinforces the idea for a good part of the elites and for the Brazilian people that he is not fit to govern," Renno said.
Miriam Leitao, an op-ed writer at the daily O Globo, wrote on Thursday that with his "So what?" Bolsonaro had "renounced the presidency."
"Anyone who shows such contempt for his own people can no longer be president," she wrote.
- 'Judged by history' -
In a tactic he has honed since becoming president, Bolsonaro quickly went on the offensive in the face of criticism from the governors and mayors, whom the Supreme Court has granted the power to call the shots in the fight against the pandemic.
"Ask Joao Doria or (Bruno) Covas [the mayor of Sao Paulo] why people continue to die even when they have taken such restrictive measures," said the president.
"They are the ones who should have the answers, you can't pin that on me."
Bolsonaro's "So what?" has "underscored how little importance he has attached to the situation," said political analyst Andre Pereira Cesar.
"If the president does not assume a wartime leadership stance against the virus he will be judged harshly -- by history and by voters," he warned.
Rock legend Mick Jagger and Hollywood's Will Smith will be among dozens of international and Bollywood stars taking part in a four-hour concert Sunday to raise funds for the battle against coronavirus in India, where the number of cases is surging.
The country's cricket captain Virat Kohli, actors Priyanka Chopra and Shah Rukh Khan are some of the top domestic names set to perform or read messages from their homes.
Organized by Bollywood directors Karan Johar and Zoya Akhtar, the show will be live-streamed by Facebook and pay tribute to workers fighting the pandemic.
t aims to raise millions of dollars for more than 100 groups providing food and other essential services during the crisis.
Concert organizers said the money was needed "for those who have no work and no home and do not know where their next meal is coming from".
India's 1.3 billion people have been under lockdown since March 25 with the restrictions, while recently eased, set to last until at least May 17.
The shutdown has especially hit millions of migrant workers stranded in cities with little food or money. Special trains were being organized Saturday to help thousands of laborers finally return home.
India has so far reported 37,335 coronavirus cases and 1,218 deaths, with more than 2,000 new infections in the last 24 hours.
Experts fear a lack of testing and poor reporting procedures mean the death toll is much higher.
The government has announced a string of special activities to rally support for frontline workers.
The Indian Air Force is set to stage a flypast Sunday and military helicopters will shower petals on hospitals caring for coronavirus patients. Navy warships will also put on a special display.
The Trump administration has expanded its trade war against China to include the COVID-19 pandemic. With more than 1 million already infected in the United States and about 60,000 dead, Trump’s assertions in February and March that the coronavirus is just “like a flu” and will disappear have now been replaced by ‘China did it,’ even talking about making China pay reparations. A part of this is Trump’s dire need to scapegoat someone, or some country, for the United States’ total incompetence in handling the COVID-19 epidemic.
But that is not all. The anti-China campaign fits into the larger war that the United States was already waging against China. The U.S. hegemony as the sole superpower is being challenged—economically by China with its manufacturing strength, and strategically by Russia, with its re-emergence as a global player. In the U.S. domestic politics and its presidential election cycle, Russia is rapidly being replaced by China as the new arch-villain.
As always happens, the U.S. mainstream media loyally follows suit, whether it is the fiction of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, Syria’s use of chemical weapons, or Russia hacking the 2016 U.S. elections. The recurring theme emerging from the U.S. media, helped by suitable “leaks” from the U.S. intelligence agencies, is that China did it, or hid it, and that is why the virus got away infecting the world. Trump’s China virus narrative is also tapping into the deep reservoir of xenophobia and racism, that is why it is so potent.
Let us look at the facts as we know them. This is from scientific studies that are emerging worldwide, and not from social media, or planted stories; or the ravings of Trump on prime-time TV. The timeline of how the epidemic unfolded in Wuhan and what we know about it are given below:
The Nextstrain computational biology team’s collection of 4,246 genomes sampled between December 2019 and April 2020 shows that in their record, an ancestor with the first mutation would have emerged probably in mid-December 2019.
Zhang Jixian, director of the respiratory and critical care medicine department at Hubei Provincial Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, on December 27 was the first to detect SARS-CoV-2 symptoms in three patients of the same family. Alarm bells rang when the blood tests showed a viral infection but not a flu virus. This meant a possible novel virus, and was immediately communicated to Wuhan and Hubei authorities.
On December 30, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission “sent out an urgent notification to medical institutions under its jurisdiction about an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause in the city.”
China’s “National Health Commission (NHC) dispatched a working group and an expert team in the wee hours of December 31 to Wuhan to guide epidemic response and conduct on-site investigations.”
On “the same day, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission released its first briefing about the outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause on its website, in which it confirmed 27 cases,” “told the public not to go to enclosed public places or gather” in numbers, and also “to wear masks when going out.”
On January 1, they closed down the Wuhan seafood market, which had reported a number of cases. It was later found that a number of infections originated outside the market, as reported in Lancet, so this was not the likely origin of infection, but an amplifying source.
Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was briefed about the severity of the virus by his Chinese counterparts around New Year’s Day. In one grim conversation with Dr. Redfield about the virus, Dr. George F. Gao, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, burst into tears.
A few days later (January 17), the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF) at Charité University of Medicine, Berlin, the leading center for medicine in Germany, used the genetic data to create a test kit for the virus, which the WHO adopted and made available to all countries.
On January 23, Wuhan imposed complete lockdown of the city of 11 million people when officially only 400 cases had been identified through testing. Clearly, they were signaling to the world that this disease was highly infectious and dangerous.
Soon after, another 15 cities were shut down in Hubei province.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, Dr. Kristian Andersen commented, “In scientific terms, this is lightning speed.” Dr. Andersen is the director of infectious disease genomics at Scripps Research Translational Institute in California and the lead author of an influential paper in Nature on the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. He continued, “This is difficult stuff. We have to remember that all of this happened during flu season, so a lot of people would have had symptoms that looked like COVID-19. But because of flu, discovering a novel coronavirus this fast against that backdrop is simply unprecedented” (italics mine). Andersen also said, “ Zika circulated in Brazil for a year and a half before anyone realized they had an epidemic. Ebola took three months to diagnose. Importantly, these are known pathogens and not a novel pathogen like SARS-CoV-2.”
The Western media has made a lot of noise about Dr. Li Wenliang, a young ophthalmologist, who was reprimanded on January 3 by the Wuhan police authorities, and later died fighting the disease. He was not directly dealing with the disease, nor did he submit a report to the authorities that was suppressed, as the Western media is reporting. Dr. Li shared some information on the infections in his hospital on social media for which the Wuhan police authorities reprimanded him for “spreading rumors” in social media. It was a bureaucratic knee-jerk reaction by the authorities to control social media reports in the early stages of the epidemic. Later, Chinese authorities accepted that this was a mistake, and commended Dr. Li on his work and bravery in combating the epidemic. But this incident—the official reprimand of Dr. Li—took place on January 3, by which time China had already informed the WHO and the U.S. CDC. It had no bearing on the course of the epidemic in China, or anywhere else in the world.
Have governments in other countries been more transparent? Only look at the way CDC in the United States and the Trump administration dealt with the testing fiasco; the scenario in India in which there is no transparency about how policies are framed; in the UK, where initially the policy, without any public discussion, was to promote herd immunity, risking millions of its citizens! Governments talk of models, but the models they are using (whatever they may be) are shrouded in mystery! In India, a directive has been issued by the government that media can report only information regarding COVID-19 given out by or confirmed by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare or the Indian Council of Medical Research!
The question to answer is: Did this affect the information that was shared with the world? China shared all the information it had on the nature of the infections, the genome sequence of the virus, and that it was seeing not only human-to-human transmission, but also that this transmission was high enough that it necessitated a total lockdown of a city of 11 million, and another 15 shortly after. This at a time when Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease, had only 400 known infections! Action speaks louder than words, and if global leaders were not listening, that is something they have to explain to their people—instead of China-bashing.
The pandemic is only uncovering the deeper fissures that already existed, and widening existing fault lines in the world. The United States has gotten away with brazenly stealing Iran and Venezuela’s wealth, a significant part of which was either within the U.S. banking system, or under the financial control of the United States. Can they do this with China—for instance, refusing to pay back the $1.11 trillion that the United States owes China as debt? Or will any such overreach finally sink the dollar as countries realize the risk in making the dollar the de facto global reserve currency?
Prabir Purkayastha is the founding editor of Newsclick.in, a digital media platform. He is an activist for science and the Free Software movement.
The last couple of weeks have obviously been very hard for President Trump. His public mood has been even more volatile than usual. What with being humiliated for showing his monumental ignorance on national television when he tasked his government scientists with studying the possibility of injecting disinfectant into the human body to “clean the lungs” and then finding out that his fantastic miracle cure, hydroxychloroquine, appears to make people worse rather than better, it’s been a rough time.
His White House coronavirus rallies have been canceled for the time being, cooler heads having evidently persuaded Trump that they were doing him more harm than good. Now he’s gone back to his usual short pool sprays and semi-formal events with visitors, where he takes a few questions until some staffer screams at the top of her lungs for the press to get out of the room immediately. The hope, obviously, is that he will get in less trouble the less he’s exposed to hard questions.
It doesn’t really help. He’s definitely brittle and out of sorts, resorting to the kind of magical thinking he was using back in January and February when he was living in denial about the approaching catastrophe.
Trump is also having a hard time dealing with “the numbers.” You’ll recall that just a month ago, out of the blue, Trump started talking about lifting the federal COVID-19 guidelines by Easter and “filling the pews” because someone had whispered to him that the “cure is worse than the disease.” Health experts rushed to show him models that showed millions of possible deaths if everyone just went back to “normal,” as he seemed to be suggesting. So he backed off and agreed to extend lockdown guidelines until the end of April. At the time he made it pretty clear that if we were below the then-proposed estimate of 120,000 deaths, he planned to take a victory lap. Since then, he’s gotten more specific — and a bit overconfident — and predicted that the total death toll would likely be between 50,000 and 60,000. We passed that number this week, with no particular indication that the end is near.
From the beginning, Trump’s primary goal was to “keep his numbers down,” but the virus just refuses to cooperate. With the willy-nilly reduction or abandonment of mitigation strategies all over the country, we can be pretty sure those numbers aren’t going down anytime soon. Most experts agree that there will be a spike in new cases in the fall.
But there’s another reason for Trump’s funk, and it also has to do with his numbers. I’m speaking, of course, about his poll numbers. Numerous reports in the press this week have suggested that Trump has been going ballistic over internal polls showing that he’s losing to Joe Biden, both nationwide and in key swing states.
CNN first reported that Trump had blown up at campaign manager Brad Parscale over the phone, screaming, “I’m not losing to Joe Biden.” This prompted Parscale to jump on a plane to D.C. to give the president some personal hand-holding. Having been soothed with some good old-fashioned magical thinking, Trump has now calmed down a little, and told Reuters on Wednesday that he just doesn’t believe the polls, not even his own:
I don’t believe the polls. I believe the people of this country are smart. And I don’t think that they will put a man in who’s incompetent.
I’m afraid that ship has sailed. And it’s not working out too well.
The strange thing is that the polls really aren’t much different than they have been all along. I think the real reason he was so upset is that he’s always counted on his rallies to serve as a check on the numbers, and to feed his ego. This is a person who believes his “gut” is infallible, and when he stands before his ecstatic, shrieking MAGA crowds, his gut tells him that he is beloved by the American people. With no rallies, he doesn’t get that affirmation and it’s bringing him down.
Meanwhile, the campaign is trying to get him to back off the day-to-day focus on task force matters and refocus the campaign on China-bashing. The New York Times reported a few days ago that Republicans are convinced “that elevating China as an archenemy culpable for the spread of the virus, and harnessing America’s growing animosity toward Beijing, may be the best way to salvage a difficult election.”
It’s a natural go-to for a man whose calling cards are racism and xenophobia. The problem here is that the administration is using the power of the federal government to help his campaign. Again. (You may recall he had a little impeachment issue a few months back about that very issue. No harm, no foul, apparently!)
Just a few days after the media reported on this big GOP plan, the White House decided to dust off the Dick Cheney playbook and instruct the intelligence community to find evidence to support the theory that the virus outbreak began in a government biodefense lab in the city of Wuhan.
On Thursday, they reported back and it wasn’t good news for Trump. They found no evidence that the virus was anything but naturally occurring. Of course. Trump wasn’t impressed:
Trump answered the follow-up question, about whether he had seen any evidence that the virus came from a lab by saying, “Yes, I have” but claiming he wasn’t “allowed” to say where he got the information. Since he didn’t get it from actual intelligence sources, it likely came from his team of medical and China experts — meaning Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
Apparently, Trump wants people to believe the Chinese may have created or released a deadly virus in order to destroy his chances of re-election. He told Reuters, “China will do anything they can to have me lose this race.” As always, it’s all about him.
But that’s not all. Regardless of the truth of the matter, Trump is forging ahead with this plan to attack and punish China, as Dan Froomkin of Salon and Press Watch reported on Thursday evening. The New York Times reports that the Trump administration is discussing stripping China of “sovereign immunity,” which would hypothetically allow the U.S. or its citizens to sue the Chinese government, Trump’s favorite retaliatory gambit. According to the Times, “legal experts say an attempt to limit China’s sovereign immunity would be extremely difficult to accomplish and may require congressional legislation.” Unidentified White House officials have also reportedly discussed having the U.S. cancel its debt obligations to China.
That’s entirely absurd. Jonathan Chait at New York magazine points out “the blowback would be enormous” as “other potential buyers of Treasury bills would be demanding higher interest rates forever.” Talk about the cure being worse than the disease.
But none of this will actually happen. As Chait astutely observes, this is modeled on Trump’s famous promise that Mexico would pay for the wall — this time, China will pay for the coronavirus. It’s a campaign strategy, not a policy. With Trump, that’s all there is.
It’s just one more sign that an empire in decline goes slowly at first, and then all at once. And when a declining empire takes on a rising superpower, history suggests it won’t go well for the former.
A tweet by the U.S. President Donald Trump on April 22 said, “I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at sea.” Trump seems to be talking the language of war while indulging in politics by other means. Like his ban on immigration, Trump is resorting to distractions to turn attention away from his incompetence in tackling the COVID-19 crisis in the United States.
The Time report while referring to the tweet said, “The White House had no immediate comment. The U.S. Navy’s Bahrain-based 5th Fleet referred questions about the tweet to the Pentagon, and the Pentagon referred questions to the White House.”
Meanwhile, Tehran is plainly dismissive. The spokesman for the Iranian armed forces Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi said disdainfully, “Instead of bullying others today, Americans should put their efforts into saving their forces, who have contracted coronavirus.”
Trump was ostensibly reacting to an allegation by the U.S. Navy on April 15 that 11 Iranian vessels had “repeatedly conducted dangerous and harassing approaches against multiple U.S. naval ships operating in international waters.” Speedboats belonging to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy (IRGCN) apparently came too close to a squadron of U.S. warships sailing close to Iranian waters.
These warships included the expeditionary mobile base vessel Lewis B. Puller—a ship designed to serve as a platform for a U.S. invasion—the Paul Hamilton, a guided-missile destroyer, two coastal patrol boats and two Coast Guard ships.
The U.S. Navy statement said, “The IRGCN’s dangerous and provocative actions increased the risk of miscalculation and collision… and were not in accordance with the obligation under international law to act with due regard for the safety of other vessels in the area.”
The Iranians have since released a video on April 19 that showed the IRGCN warning off a flotilla of U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf as they tried to approach the Iranian territorial waters. Following the Iranian warning, the U.S. ships apparently moved away.
Such incidents are not uncommon and the two sides know how to de-escalate. Trump had no reason to meddle. He must be really out of his mind to kickstart a military conflict in the Middle East over such incidents at this point when the U.S.’s Gulf allies are preoccupied with COVID-19.
In fact, the specter of an ever-widening spread of the coronavirus among American sailors haunts the U.S. Navy too. The U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt is detained in the Pacific Island of Guam, its crew was quarantined after hundreds of its sailors tested positive.
Three other aircraft carriers, the Nimitz, the Ronald Reagan, and the Carl Vinson, are also being docked in ports because of sailors testing positive, while a fourth, the Truman, is being kept at sea for fear that its crew will become infected if it comes into port.
A former Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who held the post from 2009 to 2017, said, “I think what they need to do is bring every ship in… Offload most of the crew… leave a very skeletal force on board, sanitize the ship, quarantine people for two weeks, make sure nobody’s got COVID.” After that, he added, crews would have to be kept on the ships indefinitely until the pandemic is mitigated.
Arguably, Iran is not spoiling for a fight, either, as it emerges out of the pandemic. The struggle took a heavy toll; over 6,000 people died. In reality, what unnerves Washington is that Iran weathered the storm despite the U.S.’s “maximum pressure” approach.
The Trump administration even obstructed an Iranian request for a $5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to fight COVID-19, although Iran was the regional epicenter of the pandemic and dozens of frontline health workers and health care professionals died due to non-availability of personal protective equipment, and shortages of medicines and medical devices, including respirators.
The UN, the European Union, Russia, and China have called on the U.S. to ease sanctions. Even within the U.S., Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden joined members of Congress in urging the Trump administration to suspend sanctions on Iran. But all that fell on a stony heart. The Secretary of State Mike Pompeo kept advancing the ridiculous argument that Iran will divert IMF funds away from coronavirus relief and toward weapons of mass destruction programs.
Thus, the Trump administration watched with shock and awe when on April 22, a three-stage Qased rocket lifted off from the Markazi Desert in central Iran and successfully delivered a military reconnaissance satellite to orbit 425 km above earth’s surface. By doing so, Iran joined an elite club of superpowers with the capability to launch a military satellite using combined fuel in satellite carriers.
The Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Hossein Salami said, “Today, we can visualize the world from space, and this means extending the strategic intelligence of the powerful defense force, the IRGC.” All parts of the satellite, including the carrier and satellite, have been produced by the Iranian scientists and the message behind this important achievement is that sanctions are not an obstacle in the way of Iran’s progress.
Clearly, Trump has run out of options. Looking back, he made a ghastly mistake to order the murder of the Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani in January. The months since the incident took place go to show that Trump’s decision turned out to be a strategic blunder.
Soleimani’s murder has not exactly strengthened Trump’s prospects in the presidential election in November; it has not weakened Iran’s resolve in leading the “axis of resistance” in Syria and Iraq; but, it has weakened the U.S.’s standing in Iraq. Most importantly, Iran’s attitude toward the Trump administration has hardened.
Iranian diplomacy, which was low key in the last couple of months, has shifted gear as the country emerges out of the COVID-19 crisis. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif paid a visit to Damascus on April 20; Soleimani’s successor Esmail Ghaani was in Baghdad. During his meeting with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, Zarif said that Iran’s “path in support of the resistance” remains unwavering.
Meanwhile, Tehran has switched to a proactive policy toward Afghanistan. Tehran’s key interlocutor and veteran Afghan hand, Mohammad Ebrahim Taherian visited Kabul on April 20. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Seyed Abbas Mousavi on this occasion said in Tehran:
“Iran’s efforts are independent and within the framework of the interests of the Afghan government and nation. We hope that our efforts would yield results, an inclusive government would be formed in Afghanistan, stability and calm would return to Afghanistan, and then intra-Afghan talks would be held.”
Tehran so far allowed a free hand to Washington but is now stepping in to try to consolidate the forces of Afghan nationalism who are incensed over the U.S.’s prescriptive approach. From April 12 to April 15, Zarif held consultations regarding Afghanistan with his counterparts in Kabul, Ankara, Beijing, New Delhi, Moscow, and Doha.
Tehran is determined to challenge Washington’s self-appointed role to navigate an Afghan settlement. The eviction of U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan has become top priority in Tehran’s regional strategies.
On CNN Friday, correspondent David Culver reported that Chinese state media have focused on Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as a scapegoat for the U.S. coronavirus failure, and for the propagation of the theory that the virus originated in a Chinese research laboratory.
"They are are very strategic in their criticisms, much like President Trump has been in not going directly after President Xi Jinping, instead calling out China as a whole," said Culver. "For China's part, through its state media, it is going not after President Trump, but after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo."
"This week, a near daily CCTV commentary attacks Pompeo for calling out China's mishandling of the coronavirus," said Culver. "One saying he is turning himself into the 'enemy of humankind' by 'spreading a political virus.' On Thursday, the People's Daily, the official newspaper for China's Communist Party, ran an editorial saying Pompeo's rhetoric makes the U.S. look like it's dealing with a 'colossal moral deficit.' Government-controlled Xinhua tweeted an animation portraying the U.S. as hypocritical. In the shadows of the coronavirus outbreak, the war of words is creating a deepening rift between the U.S. and China."
London and New York stocks sank on Friday after US President Donald Trump lashed out at China over the coronavirus crisis, bringing back bad memories of a damaging standoff between both countries over trade.
The eurozone's key equity markets were shut for a public holiday as were several exchanges in Asia.
Investor nerves were tested further by a weak bottom line for Amazon even after the retail giant's revenues received a boost from online shopping under the coronavirus lockdown.
The company warned earnings in the second quarter would be entirely wiped out by expenses related to COVID-19.
"Global markets continue to languish in what Amazon highlighted. That is, top-line growth is not translating into profit growth," said Stephen Innes, chief global market strategist at AxiCorp.
The Dow finished 2.6 percent lower, an ugly start to a new month after major indices scored their biggest monthly gains in decades in April.
Besides Amazon, which plunged 7.6 percent, Exxon Mobil was another big loser following disappointing earnings, while airlines and hotels suffered brutal losses.
- 'An eternity ago' -
Investors were spooked by comments from Trump indicating he could hit China with additional tariffs over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, claiming he had seen evidence linking a Wuhan lab to the contagion.
"Trump sharpening his rhetoric against China is unnerving investors, as his team look into retaliatory measures over the coronavirus outbreak," said City Index analyst Fiona Cincotta.
"The China trade war seems like an eternity ago after coronavirus has dominated market movements with such intensity over recent weeks.
"However, threats of more tariffs from Trump have hit a nerve... and (are) adding to the downbeat sentiment heading into the weekend," she added.
Investors in Britain took their cue from earlier losses in Tokyo and Sydney in Asia, where most bourses were closed.
London's FTSE 100 index had already tanked Thursday on mounting evidence that the virus was slamming the global economy and investors "reacted to some stinky data from Europe and the US," Markets.com analyst Neil Wilson said.
Sentiment was also hit after Spain said Friday that its gross domestic product was projected to fall by 9.2 percent in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, while the unemployment rate would reach 19 percent.
The gloomy forecast compared with two percent growth recorded last year.
In Asia and the Pacific, Japanese and Australian stocks tumbled, with traders tracking Thursday's sell-off on Wall Street. Tokyo was down nearly three percent at the close.
- Key figures around 2040 GMT -
New York - Dow: DOWN 2.6 percent at 23,723.69 (close)
New York - S&P 500: DOWN 2.8 percent at 2,830.71 (close)
New York - Nasdaq: DOWN 3.2 percent at 8,604.95 (close)
London - FTSE 100: DOWN 2.3 percent at 5,763.06 (close)
Tokyo - Nikkei 225: DOWN 2.8 percent at 19,619.35 (close)
Brent North Sea crude: FLAT at $26.44 per barrel
West Texas Intermediate: UP 5.0 percent at $19.78 per barrel
Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0978 from $1.0955 at 2100 GMT
According to the Yonhap News Agency in Seoul, South Korea, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has made his first public appearance in nearly three weeks.
Kim's lengthy absence from the public view, coupled with rumors that his health was in "grave danger" following a heart procedure, had led some to speculate that he might be dead or dying — something that was difficult to confirm or deny due to North Korea's infamously secretive and propagandized environment.
No details about the nature of Kim's public appearance have yet been released.
The Covid-19 outbreak found China uniquely positioned for a global soft power grab with its “mask diplomacy” supply of medical equipment. But then a drip of anti-Beijing headlines followed by an aggressive diplomatic onslaught unravelled the gains. The race for world power dominance is now up for grabs.
On April 14, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian summoned China’s ambassador, Lu Shaye, over a coronavirus fake news article on the Chinese embassy website. And a few Asia experts in Canada could barely contain their glee.
Canadians had experienced the whiplash of Ambassador Lu’s diplomacy – or lack thereof – while he was Beijing’s envoy in Canada and gained national notoriety for accusing Ottawa of “white supremacy” for calling for the release of two Canadian nationals arrested in China during the Huawei scandal last year.
In his new post as China’s ambassador to France, Lu was at it again. In the controversial embassy “article”, an anonymous Chinese diplomat claimed French care workers had abandoned the elderly to die in nursing homes. It also accused French lawmakers of using a racist slur against Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO). Both the allegations were false.
So when Le Drian summoned Lu, Canadian experts on Twitter were keenly monitoring the developments in Paris.
"As Canadians, we both miss and don’t miss Lu Shaye, China’s rude and highly undiplomatic envoy to Ottawa before he was dispatched to Paris. For us, he epitomized everything that’s wrong with the CCP,” said J. Michale Cole from the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.
The French dressing down had been weeks in the making. “The embassy in Paris had been putting out these kind of communiqués, articles, quotes which were terrible, the classic propaganda of lies and insults required by [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s diplomats in 'fighting spirit',” said Dorian Malovic, Asia editor of French daily, La Croix, and author of several books on China.
“These were, of course, on Twitter accounts,” he continued. “While Twitter is banned in China, what is forbidden inside China is used outside to counter criticism of Beijing’s handling of the Covid-19 outbreak,” said Dorian Malovic, Asia editor of French daily, La Croix, and author of several books on China.
But the French foreign ministry summons did little to halt Beijing’s diplomatic offensive. A week later, the German interior ministry said Chinese diplomats had approached German officials to encourage them to make positive statements on Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.
The policy of “encouraging” positive messages on state-controlled social media has worked inside China. But Beijing has been unable to control the international narrative amid mounting demands for an independent international investigation into the origins of the virus and questions over China’s handling of the outbreak.
The tide of opinion changed just as China’s “mask diplomacy” – sending planeloads of medical supplies to hard-hit countries like Italy and France – was taking off.
“China thought it was coming out on top from the crisis by sending planes with face masks and medical equipment. Beijing thought it could reap the benefits from being the only power with the capability for this. It’s a very weird thing that it has instead provoked a backlash,” said Pierre Haski, a veteran French journalist and longtime former Beijing correspondent and editor of the book, “The Diary of Ma Yan”.
The daily drip of bad press for China from across the world is turning into a flood. In the US, the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are battling over who is “weaker on China”, with the Trump campaign running “Beijing Biden” ads as Joe Biden’s team responds with, “Trump rolled over for the Chinese” ripostes. Trump meanwhile has insisted he has seen evidence that Covid-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan, but he has offered no details and US intelligence agencies have not backed up his claim.
Outside the Beltway, headlines on substandard Chinese medical goods are pouring in from Japan, Finland, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Canada and India, to name a few.
China’s response to these complaints – particularly from East and South Asian countries – has been harsh, accusing India’s top medical body, for instance, of being “irresponsible” for advising against the use of “faulty” testing kits exported from China. When Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an international investigation into the outbreak, Beijing’s excoriating ripostes included a Communist Party tabloid comparing Australia to “chewing gum stuck on the sole of China’s shoes”.
Perhaps the most surprising PR defeats have come from Africa, a continent Beijing has used as a petri dish to test its global soft-power grab. In a rare diplomatic dust-up, the governments of several African countries – including Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Uganda – summoned Chinese ambassadors last month to receive formal protests over the racist treatment of their nationals in China. Media reports have also focused on Beijing’s silence on any Africa debt relief, following the Covid-19 rescue measures announced by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
As the pandemic shifts the tectonic plates of global power, China is at a pivotal point with its economic might – including market size and manufacturing base – squared off against the power of public opinion.
Cornered by international criticisms on several fronts, Beijing’s “offense is the best form of defence” response has taken aim at the democratic system of government by highlighting the inefficient responses of elected leaders scrambling to cope with the crisis.
Europe – with its internal divisions and precarious go-between position of trying to negotiate US might amid the competition for global markets – has been identified as the soft underbelly for this attack.
Beijing’s diplomatic campaign has been particularly brazen in France and it has continued despite Le Drian’s summoning of the Chinese ambassador. Another article (in French) posted on the Chinese embassy website on April 26, for instance, offers explanations for “Why the Covid-19 outbreak is so politicised”. They include an ineffective European response to the crisis, which it claims has led “some Westerners ... to distrust liberal democracy. In the response to the epidemic, socialism with Chinese characteristics has demonstrated its ability to concentrate resources in the service of great achievements.”
In the US, where the stakes are high and the Trump administration’s erratic policies are a diplomatic minefield, China’s ambassador in Washington, Cui Tiankai, an old-school Beijing diplomat, has adopted a careful, measured line. The onus has therefore fallen on Europe’s leaders to respond to the Chinese PR and disinformation campaign. The question now is whether they are willing to rise up to the challenge and balance popular demands for transparency on the Covid-19 outbreak, on the one hand, and domestic business interests eyeing China’s resources during an economic recession.
‘Wolf warrior’ envoys answer President Xi’s call
Aware of these stakes in the post-coronavirus era, Beijing is relying on its new breed of ferocious diplomats, dubbed “wolf warriors” after a 3-D blockbuster starring a muscle-bound Chinese commando who saves his people by killing American baddies in Africa and Southeast Asia with his bare hands. China’s “wolf warrior” diplomats emerged last year after President Xi issued a memo calling on envoys to show more “fighting spirit” in the war for global influence.
Video screen showing scenes from the movie " Wolf Warrior 2" in Beijing in August 2017.AFP - GREG BAKER
The alpha male of the pack, Zhao Lijian, cut his teeth in Pakistan as deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Islamabad, when he engaged in a war of words with former US national security adviser Susan Rice over China’s mass incarceration of Uighur Muslims.
Upon his return to Beijing, Zhao was rewarded with a promotion to foreign ministry spokesman, in which post he has kept up the offensive, including a suggestion that the Covid-19 epidemic was a US army biological war strike against China.
The 55-year-old Chinese ambassador to France is another celebrated pack member. Lu’s aggressive track record during his Canadian posting was so well established that in June 2019, when his appointment as ambassador to France was announced, the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders issued a statement warning the incoming envoy not to “try to intimidate the media of the country where he is posted”.
Businesses rethinking supply dependence
The anti-China backlash following the Covid-19 outbreak has renewed the pressure on China’s envoy in France – the EU’s only permanent member of the UN Security Council – to bare his diplomatic claws.
But the strategy, according to some experts, appears to be backfiring.
“This propaganda narrative is totally counterproductive for Western nations, especially now that the world knows China lied on the virus,” explained Malovic.
China’s myriad problems, from its crackdowns on free speech to the difficulties of doing business in the one-party state, are well known. But the fallout from the pandemic crisis is sparking a re-examination of the pros and cons of engaging with China on Beijing’s unyielding terms.
“People already knew about China’s quality problem. French businessmen in China privately complain all the time about how difficult it is to do business there. Now with the faulty, substandard tests, masks and ventilators, it’s going downhill for China and it’s a big challenge to get back credibility,” said Malovic.
The pandemic’s disruption of supply chains has also forced countries and companies to reexamine China’s competitive advantage as a manufacturing hub.
Japan, for instance, has earmarked $2.2 billion of its economic stimulus package to help its manufacturers shift production out of China. The decision is a major blow for Beijing as China is Japan’s biggest trading partner while Japan ranks third on the list of China’s top export destinations.
Trump’s trade war with Beijing had already led some international businesses to re-evaluate their dependence on China, with “companies actively rethinking their supply chain, either convincing their Chinese partners to relocate to southeast Asia to avoid tariffs, or by opting out of sourcing from China altogether”, noted a recent article in Forbes.
In Europe, the coronavirus crisis may give a boost to voices calling for less dependency on China for security reasons, noted Erik Brattberg, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Philippe Le Corre, of the Harvard Kennedy School. “The European Commission has already issued new guidelines for the implementation of a common EU investment screening framework specifically mentioning the protection of critical European medical assets. The EU is also wary of a repeat of the post 2008 financial crisis, which led to opportunistic Chinese investments in key European infrastructures,” noted Brattberg and Le Corre writing in The Diplomat.
Wuhan lab, a ‘Chinese tool’
The pandemic has also cast a spotlight on Chinese breaches of bilateral agreements, which partnering countries have been reluctant to disclose fearing a backlash from Beijing against their investments and nationals in China.
Franco-Chinese cooperation on a maximum security biological laboratory in Wuhan has come under particular scrutiny following US media reports of Washington’s concerns, dating back to 2018, of inadequate security measures at the facility.
While there is no evidence the Covid-19 outbreak emerged from the Wuhan Class 4 pathogens (P4) laboratory, media reports have exposed China’s cooperation breaches on the project. In a recent investigative report, public radio station France Culture detailed how a team of 50 French scientists who were supposed to provide training and expertise at the P4 laboratory for a five-year period starting in 2017 never made it to Wuhan.
This happened two years after French billionaire businessman Alain Mérieux resigned as co-chairman of a joint commission supervising the project. In a 2015 interview with Radio France, Mérieux said he quit because the P4 project had turned into “a very Chinese tool – it belongs to them, even though it was developed with technical assistance from France”.
Beijing playing EU divisions
The breaches never stopped the project from proceeding, Malovic suggests, due to the lack of unity and competition among Western – particularly European – powers, for investment and partnership projects in China. “Every high-level businessman says yes, there are many problems, but if we don’t do it or sell it, the Germans will or the Americans will,” explained Malovic.
“China is very adept at playing the divisions within the EU,” he noted.
The bloc is nevertheless aware of the need for unity on China’s unfair trade practices. Last year, in a major departure from Brussels’ softly-softly position on Beijing, the European Commission called China “an economic competitor in pursuit of technological leadership and a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance” in an EU strategy briefing.
While Rome has traditionally been more open to Beijing, anger over China’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak has been mounting in Italy. The latest crisis could provide an opportunity for Europe to re-calibrate its China policies. “The virus is a big blow to China – they won’t easily escape this whatever they do,” Malovic noted.
But few are willing to bet on a complete geopolitical overhaul just yet. “We’ll have the answer after the US presidential election,” said Haski. “If Trump wins, China is in for a tough ride. If it’s Biden, the issues won’t change, but you may have a more consensual attempt to restore bilateral discussions and that could diffuse the more nationalistic aspects of China’s rhetoric.”
The Covid-19 crisis nevertheless has sparked a “global change of attitude” to China, according to Haski, which will be marked by “more suspicion and vigilance to all issues that have been known for years”.
Avoiding anti-Asian racism
But European countries such as France will have to be careful about their messaging, noted Haski. “There is a big Chinese community in France and no one wants to have anti-Asian racism as in the US,” said Haski, referring to the rise of attacks against Asian Americans following Trump’s use of the term “Chinese virus”.
France is home to Europe’s largest Chinese diaspora – estimated at between 600,000 to 700,000 – and witnessed a surge in anti-Asian racism in March, when the extent of the coronavirus crisis and allegations of a Chinese cover-up started to emerge.
A local newspaper, Le Courier Picard, for instance, faced an outcry for its inflammatory headline, "Alerte jaune" (Yellow alert), forcing the paper to quickly apologize. That sparked a campaign by French-Asians (including members of the significant Vietnamese and Cambodian diasporas) on social media sites using the hashtag “JeNeSuisPasVirus” (I’m not a virus).
“Everybody in government will be very careful about the atmosphere in France. Everybody wants to avoid a climate of stigmatization,” said Haski.
The challenge for European governments in the months to come will be to calibrate a targeted, effective response to the “wolf warrior” attacks by Chinese officials while avoiding a backlash against Asian immigrant groups on their soils.
