foreignpolicy--2020-05-02--Hard Times Don’t Make Strong Soldiers

Hard Times Don’t Make Strong Soldiers

“ Hard times create strong men , strong men create good times , good times create weak men , and weak men create hard times.
” The quote , from a postapocalyptic novel by the author G. Michael Hopf , sums up a stunningly pervasive cyclical vision of history .
The idea , which I have termed elsewhere “ the Fremen Mirage ” after the science fiction novel Dune ’ s desert-dwellers , posits that harsh conditions make for morally pure and militarily strong people , while wealth and sophistication make for decadent societies and poor fighters .
Dune is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fiction novels that use the idea , from the Conan stories to dreadful Star Trek episodes .
It is so common as a popular theory of history and military power that it has spawned ( like most bad ideas ) its own genre of internet memes .
It also infects modern strategic thinking , especially about non-Western foes .
Perhaps most famously , after the attack on Pearl Harbor collapsed complacent notions of American superiority , the Allied intelligence community swung wildly from the belief in the Japanese as weak and unmanly to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ training and life in Japan had churned out apparently unstoppable supersoldiers .
More recently , the same trope has reemerged in the invincible insurgent , whose upbringing supposedly renders him immune to the deprivations of combat and campaigning .
As the University of Birmingham researcher Patrick Porter notes , “ commentators have claimed that Iraqis , Afghans , Yugoslavs , Amerindians , Somalis , Turks or Japanese are particularly predisposed to war , ” either to justify or caution against military action or diplomatic engagement .
Because it contains within it an assessment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of foreign cultures , the mirage naturally brings strategic implications with it .
And , after all , it makes a degree of intuitive sense .
Westerners subject their soldiers to harsh conditions to prepare them for the rigors of combat , so why wouldn ’ t whole societies work the same ?
Shouldn ’ t people ( although the trope often specifies men ) who ’ ve dealt with hard conditions all their lives make the best fighters , in contrast to the flabby , decadent inhabitants of the glitzy cities ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ turn out .
The divide between supposedly decadent civilization and its supposedly hard and uncivilized opponents reaches back to the development of farming and the state .
Early farmers , with their higher population density , seem to have outcompeted their nonfarming neighbors .
It seems that in many , perhaps most , cases , it was farmers who expanded , rather than the practice of farming itself , pushing the surviving nonfarmers onto more marginal lands .
Likewise , early states , with their complex and specialized hierarchies , generally outcompeted their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their countryside and then expanded that dominion outward .
Nonstate peoples were often set with a dilemma : develop their own state institutions in order to compete with the brutal efficiency of state violence , or else find themselves violently incorporated into the tributary networks of expanding states .
By and large this process was one in which the “ strong men ” created by “ hard times ” lost , again and again .
This doesn ’ t change in the shift from prehistory to history .
Occasionally the frontiers of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Given enough attempts , nonstate people might eventually win .
But most of the time , it was the urban armies that were doing the pillaging .
Take Rome ’ s frontiers , the limes , as an example .
Rome is , after all , the byword for decadence and decline in Western discourse .
Western cultural memory fixes on the Goths , Vandals , and Huns who broke the Roman frontier , but it is quick to forget the rather longer list of nonstate peoples broken by the Romans .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ambrones , Helvetians , Eburones , Arverni , Celtiberians , Lusitanians , Pannones , Dalmatae , Catuvellauni , Iceni , Marcomanni , Quadi , Iazyges , and all of the other “ hard ” peoples crushed under the Romans do not become household names .
Most successful large states in history can boast similar butcher ’ s bills .
Of course , there are exceptions , like the early Muslim conquests , the Seljuk Empire , and of course the Mongols , which overthrew long-established and long-successful empires .
The horse nomad was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often incorporated into the armies of conventional states .
But the victims of empire , out there on the fringes , left no memoirs of the disasters inflicted upon them ; when the so-called barbarians won , however , it produced entire literary genres lamenting the fall of the great cities .
But if this historical trope is a poor guide to either history or modern strategy , where does it come from and why has it proved so persistent ?
While there are quite a few explanations for the success of nonstate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ least one ) , this mirage has its roots in the Greek and Roman ethnographic tradition .
The literary trope goes back at least as far as Herodotus and his account of the ill-fated invasion of the Scythia by Darius I , king of Persia , in the 6th century B.C .
Herodotus presents the Scythians as ruthlessly expedient , relying on a scorched-earth campaign and their own relative lack of fixed settlements to exhaust the Persian military juggernaut .
Prefacing that narrative is an ethnography of the Scythians , which presents Scythia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unfit for farming—but the nomadic life it forces on the Scythians , Herodotus writes , makes them “ unfightable and unapproachable.
” Except Herodotus never went to Scythia , and his knowledge about Scythian customs , culture , and even local geography is uneven at best .
But , as observed by the historian François Hartog in his landmark The Mirror of Herodotus , none of that matters , because accuracy was never the point .
Rather , Herodotus is using the Scythians as a prelude to the Greco-Persian wars , mirroring the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strategically giving ground ) .
Herodotus ’ s narrative was never about the Scythians or the Persians but about the Greeks , an exercise in self-definition for a people who had not generally thought of themselves as a unified whole .
That is the mirror of Hartog ’ s title : The Scythians and the Persians serve as foils against which Greek identity can be defined .
Likewise , in the Latin tradition , the barbaric “ other ” might be marshaled for political advantage or social self-criticism .
By the time of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1st century B.C.
, the trope of hard-fighting barbarians whose ascetic way of life made them both morally and martially superior was firmly set enough that Caesar could lean on it as a shorthand to build up his own military accomplishments .
Thus , in Caesar ’ s Commentaries on the Gallic War , the tribes he defeats early on , the Helvetians and Belgae , are represented in these terms .
In particular , Caesar claims of the Belgae that “ of all of these people [ the inhabitants of Gaul ] @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they are the furthest from culture and civilization and least often visited by merchants , all things that tend to effeminate the spirit.
” That specific word “ effeminate ” ( effeminandos in the Latin ) provides a clue to why it is always strong men in this historical mirage , as the entire intellectual construct is deeply rooted in anxieties about declining masculinity , specifically .
Later in the narrative , with these early adversaries defeated , he repeats the trope for the German Suebi , who will promptly be defeated by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up as the most “ warlike ” of the Germans , as a direct product of the cold climate and harsh daily conditions they live in .
Yet , Caesar is about to crush these Gallic and German “ supermen ” with an army of excessively civilized Italians who are not only exposed to all of the things that tend to “ effeminate the spirit ” but in fact are responsible for producing those things .
Indeed , of all of the Gauls , it is not the warlike Helvetians or Belgae who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Arverni , who live in what is today Auvergne , France , right up against the areas of Greek and Roman settlement and right on the trade routes bringing supposedly effeminating Mediterranean goods and culture into Gaul .
Caesar knows this , of course , but his Commentaries is a political document , and he also knows good politics : tapping into stereotypes his audience already believes to build up his military success .
Better to brag about defeating the Helvetians , Belgae , and Suebi , which no Roman had done @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had fought and lost against Rome once before .
Accuracy was beside the point .
Perhaps the most influential ancient work of this sort is Tacitus ’ s Germania , written in 98 C.E.
, which sets out to describe the customs and society of the peoples across the Rhine from the Roman frontier .
In brief , Tacitus describes the Germans as indigenous to their lands without being intermixed with other peoples , contemptuous of wealth , beauty and luxury , singularly focused on military virtue , pious , monogamous , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the harsh lands they inhabit .
Again we have our “ strong men ” molded by hard lives .
Except the Germania is not about the Germans at all , but a critique of Roman decline in the tradition of the Roman historian Sallust , thinly disguised as ethnography .
Tacitus ’ s tone in his writing overall is one of frustrated discontent at the moral decay he saw in Rome , and it is nearly impossible not to see this sharping the Germans of the Germania .
Tacitus himself almost certainly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did not speak any German , and only possessed , at best , secondhand information about any German customs .
Instead , he constructed his Germans as a foil for what he saw as Roman moral decline , with German virtues to match perceived Roman vices .
Lest Tacitus ’ s dire moralizing be taken too seriously as evidence of an actual decline , it is worth noting that he was writing at the very beginning of one of Rome ’ s best centuries and an unbroken string of five capable rulers .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in coming , indeed .
This vision of ancient Germans and Gauls was revived in the early modern era ( Tacitus ’ s Germania , lost during the Middle Ages , was rediscovered in 1425 ) and pressed into service as part of the intellectual foundation for 19th-century nationalism , where it congealed with the so-called scientific racism of the era .
Where the ancients believed barbaric strength and decadence to be caused by place , 19th-century nationalists saw it rooted in race , citing these ancient accounts as proof that this or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ superior .
The role of decadence was explained by “ racial mixing.
” As scholars such as Christopher Krebs and Simon James document , Caesar ’ s and Tacitus ’ s descriptions of Northern European “ Celts ” and “ Germans ” ( it is not clear that anyone in Europe thought of themselves by these terms during classical antiquity ) , shorn of their snobbish Roman critique of the “ barbarian ” and contaminated by contemporary racism and orientalism , not only became part of the nationalist ideology of the period but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the West .
A mistaken vision of history and anthropology was effectively etched into the popular consciousness as a guide to understanding the rise and fall of states and the cycles of history .
This creeps into modern policymaking and the pop-cultural understanding of war and foreign policy .
Porter , of the University of Birmingham , neatly sums up one of the central themes of Marcus Luttrell ’ s Lone Survivor , an account of a secret U.S. military operation in Afghanistan , as “ such is the enemy ’ s barbarity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to combat it.
” In this telling , the Taliban was unconstrained by the West ’ s decadent , paralyzing liberalism .
Meanwhile , commentators engage in endless hand-wringing over the fitness of American recruits .
Traces of this ideology can also be detected in the current administration ’ s stance on everything from restrictions on landmines to rules of engagement , which are presented as decadent Western scruples that can be ill afforded when fighting supposedly barbaric foes .
This is a mirage with very real policy implications , even when its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consequence , this cyclical model of history , which never explained anything terribly well , is adopted now as hard-nosed wisdom about the world by policymakers and the general public alike .
However , on closer inspection , it turns out to be a child ’ s version of history : simplistic and unhelpful .
The invincible barbarian ( or insurgent , or terrorist ) was always just a mirage , a trap in strategic thinking .
So why rehearse its intellectual history ?
Well , to indulge in just a touch more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trap is—that ’ s the first step in evading it.
” If we are going to lay strategies to confront the nonstate threats of the world we live in , we must first banish the mirages that prevent us from seeing and understanding both the strengths and the weaknesses of those threats accurately .
We might start by abandoning the pretense that military strength is a product of either “ hard times ” or “ strong men .
”

“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” The quote, from a postapocalyptic novel by the author G. Michael Hopf, sums up a stunningly pervasive cyclical vision of history. The idea, which I have termed elsewhere “the Fremen Mirage” after the science fiction novel Dune’s desert-dwellers , posits that harsh conditions make for morally pure and militarily strong people, while wealth and sophistication make for decadent societies and poor fighters. Dune is just one example of the numerous speculative fiction novels that use the idea, from the Conan stories to dreadful Star Trek episodes . It is so common as a popular theory of history and military power that it has spawned (like most bad ideas) its own genre of internet memes.
“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” The quote, from a postapocalyptic novel by the author G. Michael Hopf, sums up a stunningly pervasive cyclical vision of history. The idea, which I have termed elsewhere “the Fremen Mirage” after the science fiction novel Dune’s desert-dwellers, posits that harsh conditions make for morally pure and militarily strong people, while wealth and sophistication make for decadent societies and poor fighters. Dune is just one example of the numerous speculative fiction novels that use the idea, from the Conan stories to dreadful Star Trek episodes. It is so common as a popular theory of history and military power that it has spawned (like most bad ideas) its own genre of internet memes.
It also infects modern strategic thinking, especially about non-Western foes. Perhaps most famously, after the attack on Pearl Harbor collapsed complacent notions of American superiority, the Allied intelligence community swung wildly from the belief in the Japanese as weak and unmanly to notions of how the harsh conditions of training and life in Japan had churned out apparently unstoppable supersoldiers. More recently, the same trope has reemerged in the invincible insurgent, whose upbringing supposedly renders him immune to the deprivations of combat and campaigning. As the University of Birmingham researcher Patrick Porter notes, “commentators have claimed that Iraqis, Afghans, Yugoslavs, Amerindians, Somalis, Turks or Japanese are particularly predisposed to war,” either to justify or caution against military action or diplomatic engagement. Because it contains within it an assessment of the military strength and combative stubbornness of foreign cultures, the mirage naturally brings strategic implications with it.
And, after all, it makes a degree of intuitive sense. Westerners subject their soldiers to harsh conditions to prepare them for the rigors of combat, so why wouldn’t whole societies work the same? Shouldn’t people (although the trope often specifies men) who’ve dealt with hard conditions all their lives make the best fighters, in contrast to the flabby, decadent inhabitants of the glitzy cities?
Except that’s not how things turn out. The divide between supposedly decadent civilization and its supposedly hard and uncivilized opponents reaches back to the development of farming and the state. Early farmers, with their higher population density, seem to have outcompeted their nonfarming neighbors. It seems that in many, perhaps most, cases, it was farmers who expanded, rather than the practice of farming itself, pushing the surviving nonfarmers onto more marginal lands. Likewise, early states, with their complex and specialized hierarchies, generally outcompeted their nonstate neighbors. Urban communities first dominated their countryside and then expanded that dominion outward. Nonstate peoples were often set with a dilemma: develop their own state institutions in order to compete with the brutal efficiency of state violence, or else find themselves violently incorporated into the tributary networks of expanding states. By and large this process was one in which the “strong men” created by “hard times” lost, again and again.
This doesn’t change in the shift from prehistory to history. Occasionally the frontiers of the zones of urbanized, stratified state-societies broke. Given enough attempts, nonstate people might eventually win. But most of the time, it was the urban armies that were doing the pillaging. Take Rome’s frontiers, the limes, as an example. Rome is, after all, the byword for decadence and decline in Western discourse. Western cultural memory fixes on the Goths, Vandals, and Huns who broke the Roman frontier, but it is quick to forget the rather longer list of nonstate peoples broken by the Romans. The Samnites, Cimbri, Teutons, Ambrones, Helvetians, Eburones, Arverni, Celtiberians, Lusitanians, Pannones, Dalmatae, Catuvellauni, Iceni, Marcomanni, Quadi, Iazyges, and all of the other “hard” peoples crushed under the Romans do not become household names. Most successful large states in history can boast similar butcher’s bills.
Of course, there are exceptions, like the early Muslim conquests, the Seljuk Empire, and of course the Mongols, which overthrew long-established and long-successful empires. The horse nomad was a powerful force for a time—but one often incorporated into the armies of conventional states. But the victims of empire, out there on the fringes, left no memoirs of the disasters inflicted upon them; when the so-called barbarians won, however, it produced entire literary genres lamenting the fall of the great cities.
But if this historical trope is a poor guide to either history or modern strategy, where does it come from and why has it proved so persistent? While there are quite a few explanations for the success of nonstate actors (most historiographical traditions have at least one), this mirage has its roots in the Greek and Roman ethnographic tradition.
The literary trope goes back at least as far as Herodotus and his account of the ill-fated invasion of the Scythia by Darius I, king of Persia, in the 6th century B.C. Herodotus presents the Scythians as ruthlessly expedient, relying on a scorched-earth campaign and their own relative lack of fixed settlements to exhaust the Persian military juggernaut. Prefacing that narrative is an ethnography of the Scythians, which presents Scythia as a hard, cold land, unfit for farming—but the nomadic life it forces on the Scythians, Herodotus writes, makes them “unfightable and unapproachable.”
Except Herodotus never went to Scythia, and his knowledge about Scythian customs, culture, and even local geography is uneven at best. But, as observed by the historian François Hartog in his landmark The Mirror of Herodotus, none of that matters, because accuracy was never the point. Rather, Herodotus is using the Scythians as a prelude to the Greco-Persian wars, mirroring the Greek victory (which will also involve strategically giving ground). Herodotus’s narrative was never about the Scythians or the Persians but about the Greeks, an exercise in self-definition for a people who had not generally thought of themselves as a unified whole. That is the mirror of Hartog’s title: The Scythians and the Persians serve as foils against which Greek identity can be defined.
Likewise, in the Latin tradition, the barbaric “other” might be marshaled for political advantage or social self-criticism. By the time of Julius Caesar’s writing in the 1st century B.C., the trope of hard-fighting barbarians whose ascetic way of life made them both morally and martially superior was firmly set enough that Caesar could lean on it as a shorthand to build up his own military accomplishments.
Thus, in Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic War, the tribes he defeats early on, the Helvetians and Belgae, are represented in these terms. In particular, Caesar claims of the Belgae that “of all of these people [the inhabitants of Gaul], the Belgae are the strongest because they are the furthest from culture and civilization and least often visited by merchants, all things that tend to effeminate the spirit.” That specific word “effeminate” (effeminandos in the Latin) provides a clue to why it is always strong men in this historical mirage, as the entire intellectual construct is deeply rooted in anxieties about declining masculinity, specifically. Later in the narrative, with these early adversaries defeated, he repeats the trope for the German Suebi, who will promptly be defeated by him in the narrative, setting them up as the most “warlike” of the Germans, as a direct product of the cold climate and harsh daily conditions they live in.
Yet, Caesar is about to crush these Gallic and German “supermen” with an army of excessively civilized Italians who are not only exposed to all of the things that tend to “effeminate the spirit” but in fact are responsible for producing those things. Indeed, of all of the Gauls, it is not the warlike Helvetians or Belgae who give Caesar the most trouble, but the Arverni, who live in what is today Auvergne, France, right up against the areas of Greek and Roman settlement and right on the trade routes bringing supposedly effeminating Mediterranean goods and culture into Gaul. Caesar knows this, of course, but his Commentaries is a political document, and he also knows good politics: tapping into stereotypes his audience already believes to build up his military success. Better to brag about defeating the Helvetians, Belgae, and Suebi, which no Roman had done before, than the Arverni, who had fought and lost against Rome once before. Accuracy was beside the point.
Perhaps the most influential ancient work of this sort is Tacitus’s Germania, written in 98 C.E., which sets out to describe the customs and society of the peoples across the Rhine from the Roman frontier. In brief, Tacitus describes the Germans as indigenous to their lands without being intermixed with other peoples, contemptuous of wealth, beauty and luxury, singularly focused on military virtue, pious, monogamous, and chaste, if unsophisticated and uncultured—a product of the harsh lands they inhabit. Again we have our “strong men” molded by hard lives.
Except the Germania is not about the Germans at all, but a critique of Roman decline in the tradition of the Roman historian Sallust, thinly disguised as ethnography. Tacitus’s tone in his writing overall is one of frustrated discontent at the moral decay he saw in Rome, and it is nearly impossible not to see this sharping the Germans of the Germania.
Tacitus himself almost certainly never traveled north of the Alps, did not speak any German, and only possessed, at best, secondhand information about any German customs. Instead, he constructed his Germans as a foil for what he saw as Roman moral decline, with German virtues to match perceived Roman vices. Lest Tacitus’s dire moralizing be taken too seriously as evidence of an actual decline, it is worth noting that he was writing at the very beginning of one of Rome’s best centuries and an unbroken string of five capable rulers. Decadence and decline would be very slow in coming, indeed.
This vision of ancient Germans and Gauls was revived in the early modern era (Tacitus’s Germania, lost during the Middle Ages, was rediscovered in 1425) and pressed into service as part of the intellectual foundation for 19th-century nationalism, where it congealed with the so-called scientific racism of the era. Where the ancients believed barbaric strength and decadence to be caused by place, 19th-century nationalists saw it rooted in race, citing these ancient accounts as proof that this or that European racial group had always been superior. The role of decadence was explained by “racial mixing.” As scholars such as Christopher Krebs and Simon James document, Caesar’s and Tacitus’s descriptions of Northern European “Celts” and “Germans” (it is not clear that anyone in Europe thought of themselves by these terms during classical antiquity), shorn of their snobbish Roman critique of the “barbarian” and contaminated by contemporary racism and orientalism, not only became part of the nationalist ideology of the period but a foundation of historical education in of the West. A mistaken vision of history and anthropology was effectively etched into the popular consciousness as a guide to understanding the rise and fall of states and the cycles of history.
This creeps into modern policymaking and the pop-cultural understanding of war and foreign policy. Porter, of the University of Birmingham, neatly sums up one of the central themes of Marcus Luttrell’s Lone Survivor, an account of a secret U.S. military operation in Afghanistan, as “such is the enemy’s barbarity that the civilized must abandon their restraints to combat it.” In this telling, the Taliban was unconstrained by the West’s decadent, paralyzing liberalism. Meanwhile, commentators engage in endless hand-wringing over the fitness of American recruits. Traces of this ideology can also be detected in the current administration’s stance on everything from restrictions on landmines to rules of engagement, which are presented as decadent Western scruples that can be ill afforded when fighting supposedly barbaric foes. This is a mirage with very real policy implications, even when its evidentiary roots prove ephemeral.
As a consequence, this cyclical model of history, which never explained anything terribly well, is adopted now as hard-nosed wisdom about the world by policymakers and the general public alike. However, on closer inspection, it turns out to be a child’s version of history: simplistic and unhelpful. The invincible barbarian (or insurgent, or terrorist) was always just a mirage, a trap in strategic thinking. So why rehearse its intellectual history?
Well, to indulge in just a touch more of Dune, “knowing where the trap is—that’s the first step in evading it.” If we are going to lay strategies to confront the nonstate threats of the world we live in, we must first banish the mirages that prevent us from seeing and understanding both the strengths and the weaknesses of those threats accurately. We might start by abandoning the pretense that military strength is a product of either “hard times” or “strong men.”


foreignpolicy--2020-05-03--The End of Emerging Markets?

The End of Emerging Markets?

The story of the coronavirus has so far been told mostly from the perspective of rich countries , but its harshest effects will still likely be felt by the world ’ s poor .
Africa ’ s cases rose by nearly half in a single week in April , while India ’ s numbers continue to tick up .
Some of the world ’ s worst outbreaks are taking place in nations such as Brazil , Ecuador , and Turkey .
The pandemic ’ s epicenter could easily return to Asia or move onward to Latin America .
Beyond this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ threat .
Only bold action from the U.S. Federal Reserve has staved off what would almost certainly have been a rolling series of financial crises for emerging markets in the aftermath of March ’ s record $ 83 billion in capital flight .
But the pandemic now threatens a more profound shift , bringing an end to the very idea of emerging markets—namely fast-growing poorer countries able to make rapid strides towards development , becoming the darlings of financial investors in the process .
Some hopes remain that these poorer countries might stage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ escape .
India ’ s official data , although far from reliable , suggests just over 1,000 deaths so far—a small amount when compared to more than 63,000 in the United States .
Southeast Asia has been hit relatively mildly too .
A clutch of theories , ranging from early lockdowns to youthful populations and warm weather , have attempted to explain this resilience .
Sadly , the low caseload thus far may come down to a mix of little testing and much luck , a phenomenon that is unlikely to last .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus , poorer nations will be hard hit by the global economic fallout .
The World Food Programme warned recently that more than 30 poorer countries , many of them in Africa , were on the brink of famine , while the International Rescue Committee predicted as many as 1 billion infections in conflict-affected and fragile states .
Just as troubling will be the process of long-term pandemic management .
Richer countries are only now puzzling through how to restart economic activity while avoiding further waves of infections through mass testing and contact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will be hard even for countries such as Denmark and Singapore .
Nations with limited state capacity and patchy health systems will find it nearly impossible .
Further outbreaks are therefore likely , and with them will come a destructive cycle of reopenings and lockdowns .
Even if a public health calamity can somehow be avoided , developing nations must now deal with two further pressing challenges : the short-term threat of recession and financial panic , and then the longer-term problem of sustained weaker economic performance .
The latest International Monetary Fund @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will contract by 1 percent this year .
This looks far better than the 6 percent decline predicted in richer countries .
But it almost certainly also disguises the true extent of the slowdown , because the emerging-market group includes China , whose giant economy is set to recover relatively quickly .
The picture elsewhere looks dire .
Commodity exporters are being hit as global demand collapses .
Those reliant on tourism are suffering badly too .
Remittances are plunging .
Economies in Latin America look especially fragile .
The likes of Brazil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ until recently as part of the superstar BRICS group—will decline by 5 percent or more .
Still weaker figures are likely if outbreaks spread , which in turn are likely to undermine more hopeful projections for 2021 from bodies like the IMF .
Worse , almost no emerging markets have the resources to fund the level of emergency fiscal support , such as income guarantees and small-business grants , seen in countries such as the United States and Britain .
Some will cut back in other areas , as Thailand did in April @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emergency loans from bodies such as the World Bank .
But countries such as India or Indonesia have little fiscal headroom for huge increases in spending , and are also not able to ramp up borrowing as richer countries have done .
Nor can their central banks risk adventurous monetary policy , for fear of spooking already anxious investors , prompting further capital flight and currency depreciation .
Most alarming of all is what happens if the present period of market buoyancy in advanced economies collapses .
Global markets have risen over recent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ investment strategist Mohamed El-Erian has called a “ massive cognitive failure ” to appreciate the severity of the pandemic , much of it powered by blind faith that the Fed will continue to pump in round after round of new stimulus .
Emerging markets therefore find themselves reliant on the largesse of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and his willingness to keep money flowing .
This has been best seen through new swap lines—meaning guaranteed access to U.S. dollars— for countries such as Brazil , Mexico , and South Korea .
How long Powell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his run of recent balance sheet expansion is anyone ’ s guess .
But if he gives even a hint of running out of ammunition , the flight from developing economies will be rapid and destructive .
This risk is compounded by a further worry , namely how to fund poorer countries ’ precarious new stocks of debt .
The 30 largest emerging nations owed $ 73 trillion last year , an IOU pile that has grown by more than one-and-a-half times during a decadelong recent debt acquisition binge , according to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of central bankers .
Those who have large quantities of debt denominated in U.S. dollars , like Argentina , are especially vulnerable if the U.S. dollar continues to shoot up—as it did in March when panicked investors fled to the relative safety of dollar assets .
Some countries will withstand the blow better than others .
Emerging markets in Asia hold trillions of dollars worth of reserves , a lesson learned from their experience in the 1997 Asian crisis .
Some , like Vietnam , have weathered the coronavirus crisis relatively well thus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gravity of the coming global shock sinks in , some kind of emerging-markets financial crisis remains alarmingly likely .
While global bodies have taken some action , it ’ s far from enough to prevent a crisis .
The IMF has provided debt relief to more than two dozen of its poorest member countries .
The G-20 group of large economies announced in mid-April that it would suspend debt payments until the end of the year .
Other bodies such as the World Bank have offered aid , too .
But together such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the $ 2.5 trillion the United Nations says is needed to help developing economies cope—a target that requires debt cancellations and unconditional aid on a far greater scale .
The burden of debt cancellation must fall broadly too , not just on multilateral bodies such as the IMF and World Bank .
Individual countries must play their parts , with China a particular focus , given it has lent huge sums to emerging economies , including about $ 150 billion to Africa since 2000 .
But while China has so far said it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , so far cancellations have been off the agenda .
Even if immediate health and fiscal crises can be avoided , emerging-economy leaders must also grapple with the second , longer-term change the coronavirus will bring to their growth prospects .
This pandemic is quickly unpicking many of the patterns of commercial and financial integration that powered three decades of rapid globalization , helping to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty .
Global trade and investment levels are already falling , perhaps never to recover to the levels they reached before the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for international business travel and tourism .
Some of these trends predate the pandemic , as does a gradual decline of developing-nation economic performance .
If you take out China and India , emerging markets as a group have barely grown more quickly than developed markets since 2013 , according to Robin Brooks , chief economist of the Institute of International Finance .
The coronavirus is set to accelerate their decline .
In short , this may be the end of emerging markets in the sense meant by author Ruchir Sharma in his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suggested that countries such as Indonesia , the Philippines , Nigeria , or Thailand could deliver eye-catching spells of above-par expansion .
For years after the virus , almost no emerging economy is likely to produce the kind of sustained 7 or 8 percent growth that such markets once promised .
True , some emerging markets might grow at close to this rate next year : the IMF , perhaps hopefully , suggests China will post growth of 9.2 percent in 2021 .
But this will be a one-off bounce-back effect , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the deep coronavirus recession .
After this , their growth outlook is likely to be below what would have been expected prior to this crisis .
This is clearly an alarming prospect for emerging markets themselves , whose leaders ’ legitimacy has long flowed from promises of sustained , rapid rises in incomes .
The model of development pioneered by many in emerging Asia , with its emphasis on rapid export-powered manufacturing , will be much less potent in a world of post-pandemic deglobalization .
Poor countries ’ financial positions will grow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that new debt was taken on the assumption of growth that no longer looks realistic .
But these trends should alarm the rest of the world too .
Emerging economies make up around three-fifths of global output , up from one-fifth in 1990 .
They have generally acted as responsible stakeholders within the global system too , given so many have benefited from its operation .
That may no longer be the case .
Facing slower growth and angry domestic populations , it is entirely plausible that countries such as India and Turkey @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recalcitrance more common from Russia , as it seeks to undermine existing multilateral institutions and bully smaller neighbors .
Even if they don ’ t , the idea that developing nations will lead the global economy out of its current malaise looks increasingly improbable .
Most coronavirus patients stage a full recovery .
Emerging markets are unlikely to be so lucky .

The story of the coronavirus has so far been told mostly from the perspective of rich countries, but its harshest effects will still likely be felt by the world’s poor. Africa’s cases rose by nearly half in a single week in April, while India’s numbers continue to tick up. Some of the world’s worst outbreaks are taking place in nations such as Brazil, Ecuador, and Turkey. The pandemic’s epicenter could easily return to Asia or move onward to Latin America.
The story of the coronavirus has so far been told mostly from the perspective of rich countries, but its harshest effects will still likely be felt by the world’s poor. Africa’s cases rose by nearly half in a single week in April, while India’s numbers continue to tick up. Some of the world’s worst outbreaks are taking place in nations such as Brazil, Ecuador, and Turkey. The pandemic’s epicenter could easily return to Asia or move onward to Latin America.
Beyond this public health emergency lies a devastating economic threat. Only bold action from the U.S. Federal Reserve has staved off what would almost certainly have been a rolling series of financial crises for emerging markets in the aftermath of March’s record $83 billion in capital flight. But the pandemic now threatens a more profound shift, bringing an end to the very idea of emerging markets—namely fast-growing poorer countries able to make rapid strides towards development, becoming the darlings of financial investors in the process.
Some hopes remain that these poorer countries might stage some kind of a miraculous collective coronavirus escape. India’s official data, although far from reliable, suggests just over 1,000 deaths so far—a small amount when compared to more than 63,000 in the United States. Southeast Asia has been hit relatively mildly too. A clutch of theories, ranging from early lockdowns to youthful populations and warm weather, have attempted to explain this resilience. Sadly, the low caseload thus far may come down to a mix of little testing and much luck, a phenomenon that is unlikely to last. Even if they manage to avoid the virus, poorer nations will be hard hit by the global economic fallout. The World Food Programme warned recently that more than 30 poorer countries, many of them in Africa, were on the brink of famine, while the International Rescue Committee predicted as many as 1 billion infections in conflict-affected and fragile states.
Even if they manage to avoid the virus, poorer nations will be hard hit by the global economic fallout.
Just as troubling will be the process of long-term pandemic management. Richer countries are only now puzzling through how to restart economic activity while avoiding further waves of infections through mass testing and contact tracing. A task of this complexity will be hard even for countries such as Denmark and Singapore. Nations with limited state capacity and patchy health systems will find it nearly impossible. Further outbreaks are therefore likely, and with them will come a destructive cycle of reopenings and lockdowns.
Even if a public health calamity can somehow be avoided, developing nations must now deal with two further pressing challenges: the short-term threat of recession and financial panic, and then the longer-term problem of sustained weaker economic performance.
The latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) projections suggest emerging markets will contract by 1 percent this year. This looks far better than the 6 percent decline predicted in richer countries. But it almost certainly also disguises the true extent of the slowdown, because the emerging-market group includes China, whose giant economy is set to recover relatively quickly. The picture elsewhere looks dire. Commodity exporters are being hit as global demand collapses. Those reliant on tourism are suffering badly too. Remittances are plunging. Economies in Latin America look especially fragile. The likes of Brazil, Russia, and South Africa—all lauded until recently as part of the superstar BRICS group—will decline by 5 percent or more. Still weaker figures are likely if outbreaks spread, which in turn are likely to undermine more hopeful projections for 2021 from bodies like the IMF.
Worse, almost no emerging markets have the resources to fund the level of emergency fiscal support, such as income guarantees and small-business grants, seen in countries such as the United States and Britain. Some will cut back in other areas, as Thailand did in April by reducing defense spending, or seek emergency loans from bodies such as the World Bank. But countries such as India or Indonesia have little fiscal headroom for huge increases in spending, and are also not able to ramp up borrowing as richer countries have done. Nor can their central banks risk adventurous monetary policy, for fear of spooking already anxious investors, prompting further capital flight and currency depreciation.
Most alarming of all is what happens if the present period of market buoyancy in advanced economies collapses. Global markets have risen over recent weeks, in part because of what investment strategist Mohamed El-Erian has called a “massive cognitive failure” to appreciate the severity of the pandemic, much of it powered by blind faith that the Fed will continue to pump in round after round of new stimulus.
Emerging markets therefore find themselves reliant on the largesse of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell and his willingness to keep money flowing. This has been best seen through new swap lines—meaning guaranteed access to U.S. dollars— for countries such as Brazil, Mexico, and South Korea. How long Powell will be willing or able to continue his run of recent balance sheet expansion is anyone’s guess. But if he gives even a hint of running out of ammunition, the flight from developing economies will be rapid and destructive.
This risk is compounded by a further worry, namely how to fund poorer countries’ precarious new stocks of debt. The 30 largest emerging nations owed $73 trillion last year, an IOU pile that has grown by more than one-and-a-half times during a decadelong recent debt acquisition binge, according to the Bank of International Settlements, a grouping of central bankers. Those who have large quantities of debt denominated in U.S. dollars, like Argentina, are especially vulnerable if the U.S. dollar continues to shoot up—as it did in March when panicked investors fled to the relative safety of dollar assets.
Some countries will withstand the blow better than others. Emerging markets in Asia hold trillions of dollars worth of reserves, a lesson learned from their experience in the 1997 Asian crisis. Some, like Vietnam, have weathered the coronavirus crisis relatively well thus far. Even so, as the gravity of the coming global shock sinks in, some kind of emerging-markets financial crisis remains alarmingly likely.
While global bodies have taken some action, it’s far from enough to prevent a crisis. The IMF has provided debt relief to more than two dozen of its poorest member countries. The G-20 group of large economies announced in mid-April that it would suspend debt payments until the end of the year. Other bodies such as the World Bank have offered aid, too. But together such measures don’t come close to the $2.5 trillion the United Nations says is needed to help developing economies cope—a target that requires debt cancellations and unconditional aid on a far greater scale. The burden of debt cancellation must fall broadly too, not just on multilateral bodies such as the IMF and World Bank. Individual countries must play their parts, with China a particular focus, given it has lent huge sums to emerging economies, including about $150 billion to Africa since 2000. But while China has so far said it will offer a pause in debt repayments, so far cancellations have been off the agenda.
Even if immediate health and fiscal crises can be avoided, emerging-economy leaders must also grapple with the second, longer-term change the coronavirus will bring to their growth prospects. This pandemic is quickly unpicking many of the patterns of commercial and financial integration that powered three decades of rapid globalization, helping to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty. Global trade and investment levels are already falling, perhaps never to recover to the levels they reached before the pandemic. Much the same is true for international business travel and tourism.
Some of these trends predate the pandemic, as does a gradual decline of developing-nation economic performance. If you take out China and India, emerging markets as a group have barely grown more quickly than developed markets since 2013, according to Robin Brooks, chief economist of the Institute of International Finance. The coronavirus is set to accelerate their decline.
In short, this may be the end of emerging markets in the sense meant by author Ruchir Sharma in his 2012 book Breakout Nations, when he suggested that countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Nigeria, or Thailand could deliver eye-catching spells of above-par expansion. For years after the virus, almost no emerging economy is likely to produce the kind of sustained 7 or 8 percent growth that such markets once promised. True, some emerging markets might grow at close to this rate next year: the IMF, perhaps hopefully, suggests China will post growth of 9.2 percent in 2021. But this will be a one-off bounce-back effect, as countries climb back out of the pit of the deep coronavirus recession. After this, their growth outlook is likely to be below what would have been expected prior to this crisis.
This is clearly an alarming prospect for emerging markets themselves, whose leaders’ legitimacy has long flowed from promises of sustained, rapid rises in incomes. The model of development pioneered by many in emerging Asia, with its emphasis on rapid export-powered manufacturing, will be much less potent in a world of post-pandemic deglobalization. Poor countries’ financial positions will grow more complex too, given that all that new debt was taken on the assumption of growth that no longer looks realistic.
But these trends should alarm the rest of the world too. Emerging economies make up around three-fifths of global output, up from one-fifth in 1990. They have generally acted as responsible stakeholders within the global system too, given so many have benefited from its operation. That may no longer be the case. Facing slower growth and angry domestic populations, it is entirely plausible that countries such as India and Turkey will show the same sour, nationalistic recalcitrance more common from Russia, as it seeks to undermine existing multilateral institutions and bully smaller neighbors. Even if they don’t, the idea that developing nations will lead the global economy out of its current malaise looks increasingly improbable. Most coronavirus patients stage a full recovery. Emerging markets are unlikely to be so lucky.


foreignpolicy--2020-05-04--The Coronavirus Is Cutting Off Africa’s Abortion Access

The Coronavirus Is Cutting Off Africa ’ s Abortion Access When Shali Iminza , 27 , missed her period in March the married mother of three felt her stomach sink with dread .
Iminza , whose first name has been changed for privacy reasons , works as a farmer in western Kenya , and her husband is a motorcycle taxi driver .
Together , they barely make enough money to feed their family .
“ Sometimes we eat three times [ per day ] , sometimes two , ” Iminza told Foreign Policy and Type Investigations over the phone .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to get money nowadays , it ’ s hard.
” Unable to care for another child , Iminza visited a local health clinic , walking more than 3 miles to save money on the taxi fare .
When she arrived , the doctor informed Iminza that the pills she would need to terminate her pregnancy were unavailable because of shortages caused by the novel coronavirus .
“ I ’ m very angry because the more the days are going , the pregnancy is now growing , so I don ’ t know what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her voice trembling from stress .
COVID-19 has created delays and disruptions in every step of the supply chain that brings critical safe abortion medication and contraceptives from Asia to East Africa—halting factory production , delaying air and sea shipments , complicating customs approvals , and restricting in-country transport from seaports and airports to hospitals , pharmacies , and health care clinics .
Lockdowns and curfews have added to the crisis , preventing women from traveling to clinics to get critical family planning and reproductive health care and blocking service providers from conducting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outcome could be disastrous for women and girls , according to experts , who expect to see a rise in unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions in a region where thousands of women already die each year due to restrictive abortion laws and lack of access to reproductive health care and family planning supplies .
The reproductive health organization Marie Stopes Kenya , which normally operates 22 centers and 15 mobile outreach teams , has been forced to temporarily suspend its outreach programs because of Kenya ’ s curfew and restrictions on movements and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the organization says it received around 300 WhatsApp messages from women and girls inquiring if the clinics were still open and what their operating hours were .
Marie Stopes Kenya estimates that if service provision continues to be severely restricted from April through December , a worst-case scenario , the organization could be prevented from averting nearly 100,000 unintended pregnancies , 65,000 unsafe abortions , and 500 maternal deaths .
“ It can be just as deadly as COVID-19 itself if we turned away and closed our doors , ” said Sophie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country director .
This spring , DKT International , one of the world ’ s largest providers of contraception and safe abortion products and services , ran extremely low on its stock of medical abortion pills for its Kenya program when thousands of packs got stuck at the New Delhi airport for nearly six weeks due to air cargo delays .
“ RE : Kenya shipment , 20,000 packs of MA KARE [ the abortion pill mifepristone oral ] lying at Airport : Will have to wait till airport opens as it can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an email from an Indian pharmaceutical manufacturer to DKT Kenya read .
DKT International had read the warning signs earlier in the year .
In January , the organization experienced shipping delays in batches of condoms from Thailand .
In February , one of DKT ’ s India programs ran out of medical abortion pills because the active pharmaceutical ingredient in the pills came from China , the epicenter of the COVID-19 epidemic at the time .
DKT International rushed to place emergency orders of contraceptives and medical abortion pills from Asian manufacturers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enough buffer stock to fill all incoming orders in East Africa while the medical abortion pills were held up in the Indian airport .
DKT Kenya just received its long-awaited shipment of Ma-Kare through Kenya ’ s main airport last week .
But the organization says the delays pushed them to the brink .
“ If there had been another month of delays , we would have likely run out of stock , ” said Lauren Archer , DKT Kenya ’ s country director .
As manufacturing in Asian countries hit hard by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this year , factories temporarily stopped producing critical raw materials for products such as condoms and intrauterine devices and medications including emergency contraception pills and medical abortion pills .
The manufacturing shutdowns created temporary delays in filling orders and resulted in backlogs in supplying key reproductive health medications and commodities to countries around the world .
Severe lockdowns and restrictions on pharmaceutical exports in countries like India compounded the manufacturing delays .
Even as some nations have recommenced production of critical commodities and medications , many of these goods still can not leave @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gradually lifted its restrictions on shipping certain medications and medical devices , but further emails from Indian distributors to DKT Kenya revealed a threefold increase in freight charges due to limited airline staff and flights for medications permitted to leave the country .
This has squeezed organizations like DKT International , whose operating margins are being eaten up by rising prices .
“ My main message is to ring the alarm bells to the reproductive health community , ” said Chris Purdy , DKT International ’ s president and CEO , in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
To help with the crisis , the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency , Sweden ’ s government agency responsible for most official development assistance to developing countries , pledged an additional $ 1.9 million to ensure that DKT International was equipped to handle potential supply shortages and expand access to contraception and safe abortion in countries across East and Southern Africa , including Kenya and Uganda .
But if the COVID-19 pandemic continues to linger , providers say , $ 1.9 million will not be enough to address global supply chain disruptions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ manufactured and shipped and have reached their destinations , COVID-19 delays slow down the supply chain yet again .
In Kenya , the port of Mombasa has been overwhelmed by staff shortages that are hindering the customs and regulatory approval of products .
DKT International has received messages from its contacts telling the organization to expect delays as many of the port authority employees have been put in quarantine .
Goodlife Pharmacy , a chain of pharmacies across Kenya and Uganda , initially experienced two-week delays getting its cargo from the ports .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ port , they don ’ t have enough people to clear the cargo , ” said Amaan Khalfan , the CEO of Goodlife .
Once the products are finally cleared through Kenya ’ s port , they are loaded onto trucks , which bring them to distribution centers in Kenya and Uganda .
But Khalfan ’ s trucks also experienced delays en route to their final destinations because , during the early weeks of Kenya ’ s 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew and a total lockdown in Uganda , the company needed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through checkpoints .
“ Within the city and within the counties , they ’ re a little unclear about what essential services are , ” Khalfan explained .
“ They say pharmacies are essential service , so people can travel if you ’ re working with a pharmacy .
But what about the product that ’ s in a truck ?
” Truck drivers have come under increased scrutiny in recent days for possibly spreading COVID-19 as they transport essential services across the region , prompting the government of Uganda to institute widespread @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relay driving , ” in which truckers must drive up to a border , stop , sanitize their vehicle , and pass it to the next driver to minimize cross-border transmission of COVID-19 .
While important , providers say these safeguards further compound delays in getting contraceptives and safe abortion medication to the women and girls who need them .
DKT International already reports experiencing several days ’ worth of delays for goods being transported into Uganda from Kenya .
The delays and price hikes mean that medical distributors , hospitals , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are running out of essential medications .
Marie Stopes Uganda , which claims to be the largest provider of family planning services and commodities in the country , reported in early April that it has been out of emergency contraception , commonly referred to as the morning after pill , since January of this year and expects to run out of all other abortion and contraceptive supplies by the end of April .
“ Within the first two months of this year , we found ourselves [ selling out of supplies ] that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” said Carole Sekimpi , Marie Stopes Uganda ’ s country director .
“ The product was due to come in the beginning of February .
The COVID conversation started , then it was moved to come in by the second week of March .
COVID got even more serious .
… And now we ’ re having conversations about the end of April.
” Lockdowns and restrictions on movement have added to the crisis , preventing women from traveling to clinics to get critical reproductive care and commodities and prohibiting health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rural areas .
In Kenya , women and girls are facing rising prices due to restrictions on movement .
Kenya ’ s matatus , small buses that are the primary mode of public transportation in the country , have been prohibited from carrying more than a few passengers at a time , prompting them to raise fares to make up the difference .
Passengers must also wear masks , an expensive luxury for many Kenyan women barely surviving hand to mouth each day .
Nelly Munyasia , the head of Reproductive Health Network @ @ @ @ @ @ @ travel expenses , women and girls will choose to visit local neighborhood “ quacks , ” unqualified providers passing themselves off as pharmacists and doctors , rather than traveling to a proper reproductive health clinic that may be located farther away from their homes .
These unqualified providers often use coat hangers , bleach , or even crushed glass to try to terminate women ’ s pregnancies , which can result in the women being permanently maimed or even killed .
“ We will definitely start seeing an increase in unsafe abortion cases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re looking at probably even deaths related to unsafe abortion .
We are looking at girls and women with ruptured uterus .
Cases of girls losing their uterus as a result of this.
” Health care workers say they have already begun to see a rise in unwanted pregnancies and are predicting a correlated increase in unsafe abortions by as early as June .
Elizabeth Nyambura Mariara , a nurse who runs a health care center in rural Kenya , said she saw only one case of teenage pregnancy in January .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ five cases come through her doors .
Though it ’ s too early to attribute the rise in unintended pregnancies to COVID-19 disruptions , Mariara said she strongly suspects the spike could be related because students in Kenya have been out of school since mid-March—now living at home with little oversight from teachers and too much idle time on their hands .
“ I [ normally ] don ’ t see a lot of students .
Now you see 100 percent are students .
Which is really shocking and alarming , ” Mariara @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are going to harm the wanjiku , the poor women who are in the territories of Kenya , ” she added .
In Uganda , 343 women die per 100,000 live births , and unsafe abortions contribute to around 26 percent of these maternal deaths .
In Kenya , too , the issue of unsafe abortion was so grave that in 2013 , the Health Ministry conducted a study to determine the impact of maternal mortality due to unsafe abortions on the population .
For Iminza , access to safe abortion services could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Iminza is aware of the dangers associated with unsafe abortion : She knows women who have bled to death from the procedure .
“ I didn ’ t want to go [ to an unlicensed doctor ] because I can ’ t risk my life , ” Iminza said .
“ My children are depending on me.
” But as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on , Iminza is running out of options .
This story was produced in partnership with Type Investigations .

When Shali Iminza, 27, missed her period in March, the married mother of three felt her stomach sink with dread. Iminza, whose first name has been changed for privacy reasons, works as a farmer in western Kenya, and her husband is a motorcycle taxi driver. Together, they barely make enough money to feed their family. “Sometimes we eat three times [per day], sometimes two,” Iminza told Foreign Policy and Type Investigations over the phone. “Things are very expensive, and to get money nowadays, it’s hard.”
When Shali Iminza, 27, missed her period in March, the married mother of three felt her stomach sink with dread. Iminza, whose first name has been changed for privacy reasons, works as a farmer in western Kenya, and her husband is a motorcycle taxi driver. Together, they barely make enough money to feed their family. “Sometimes we eat three times [per day], sometimes two,” Iminza told Foreign Policy and Type Investigations over the phone. “Things are very expensive, and to get money nowadays, it’s hard.”
Unable to care for another child, Iminza visited a local health clinic, walking more than 3 miles to save money on the taxi fare. When she arrived, the doctor informed Iminza that the pills she would need to terminate her pregnancy were unavailable because of shortages caused by the novel coronavirus. “I’m very angry because the more the days are going, the pregnancy is now growing, so I don’t know what to do,” said Iminza, her voice trembling from stress.
COVID-19 has created delays and disruptions in every step of the supply chain that brings critical safe abortion medication and contraceptives from Asia to East Africa—halting factory production, delaying air and sea shipments, complicating customs approvals, and restricting in-country transport from seaports and airports to hospitals, pharmacies, and health care clinics. Lockdowns and curfews have added to the crisis, preventing women from traveling to clinics to get critical family planning and reproductive health care, and blocking service providers from conducting outreach in hard-to-access rural areas.
The outcome could be disastrous for women and girls, according to experts, who expect to see a rise in unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions in a region where thousands of women already die each year due to restrictive abortion laws and lack of access to reproductive health care and family planning supplies.
[Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak: Get daily updates on the pandemic.]
The reproductive health organization Marie Stopes Kenya, which normally operates 20 centers and 15 mobile outreach teams, has been forced to temporarily suspend its outreach programs because of Kenya’s curfew and restrictions on movements and group gatherings. In just one day, the organization says it received around 300 WhatsApp messages from women and girls inquiring if the clinics were still open and what their operating hours were.
Marie Stopes Kenya estimates that if service provision continues to be severely restricted from April through December, a worst-case scenario, the organization could be prevented from averting nearly 100,000 unintended pregnancies, 65,000 unsafe abortions, and 500 maternal deaths. “It can be just as deadly as COVID-19 itself if we turned away and closed our doors,” said Sophie Hodder, Marie Stopes Kenya’s country director.
This spring, DKT International, one of the world’s largest providers of contraception and safe abortion products and services, ran extremely low on its stock of medical abortion pills for its Kenya program when thousands of packs got stuck at the New Delhi airport for nearly six weeks due to air cargo delays. “RE: Kenya shipment, 20,000 packs of MA KARE [the abortion pill mifepristone oral] lying at Airport : Will have to wait till airport opens as it cannot be moved anywhere now,” an email from an Indian pharmaceutical manufacturer to DKT Kenya read.
DKT International had read the warning signs earlier in the year. In January, the organization experienced shipping delays in batches of condoms from Thailand. In February, one of DKT’s India programs ran out of medical abortion pills because the active pharmaceutical ingredient in the pills came from China, the epicenter of the COVID-19 epidemic at the time.
DKT International rushed to place emergency orders of contraceptives and medical abortion pills from Asian manufacturers. Luckily, it managed to accumulate enough buffer stock to fill all incoming orders in East Africa while the medical abortion pills were held up in the Indian airport. DKT Kenya just received its long-awaited shipment of MA-Kare through Kenya’s main airport last week. But the organization says the delays pushed them to the brink. “If there had been another month of delays, we would have likely run out of stock,” said Lauren Archer, DKT Kenya’s country director.
As manufacturing in Asian countries hit hard by COVID-19 stalled in the early months of this year, factories temporarily stopped producing critical raw materials for products such as condoms and intrauterine devices and medications including emergency contraception pills and medical abortion pills. The manufacturing shutdowns created temporary delays in filling orders and resulted in backlogs in supplying key reproductive health medications and commodities to countries around the world.
Severe lockdowns and restrictions on pharmaceutical exports in countries like India compounded the manufacturing delays. Even as some nations have recommenced production of critical commodities and medications, many of these goods still cannot leave their countries of origin.
India has gradually lifted its restrictions on shipping certain medications and medical devices, but further emails from Indian manufacturers to DKT Kenya revealed a threefold increase in freight charges due to limited airline staff and flights for medications permitted to leave the country. This has squeezed organizations like DKT International, whose operating margins are being eaten up by rising prices. “My main message is to ring the alarm bells to the reproductive health community,” said Chris Purdy, DKT International’s president and CEO, in a global reproductive health webinar on March 27.
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To help with the crisis, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Sweden’s government agency responsible for most official development assistance to developing countries, pledged an additional $1.9 million to ensure that DKT International was equipped to handle potential supply shortages and expand access to contraception and safe abortion in countries across East and Southern Africa, including Kenya and Uganda. But if the COVID-19 pandemic continues to linger, providers say, $1.9 million will not be enough to address global supply chain disruptions.
Even after medications and commodities are manufactured and shipped and have reached their destinations, COVID-19 delays slow down the supply chain yet again. In Kenya, the port of Mombasa has been overwhelmed by staff shortages that are hindering the customs and regulatory approval of products. DKT International has received messages from its contacts telling the organization to expect delays as many of the port authority employees have been put in quarantine. Goodlife Pharmacy, a chain of pharmacies across Kenya and Uganda, initially experienced two-week delays getting its cargo from the ports. “When the product is at the port, they don’t have enough people to clear the cargo,” said Amaan Khalfan, the CEO of Goodlife.
Once the products are finally cleared through Kenya’s port, they are loaded onto trucks, which bring them to distribution centers in Kenya and Uganda. But Khalfan’s trucks also experienced delays en route to their final destinations because, during the early weeks of Kenya’s 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew and a total lockdown in Uganda, the company needed to carry additional authorization letters to pass through checkpoints. “Within the city and within the counties, they’re a little unclear about what essential services are,” Khalfan explained. “They say pharmacies are essential service, so people can travel if you’re working with a pharmacy. But what about the product that’s in a truck?”
Truck drivers have come under increased scrutiny in recent days for possibly spreading COVID-19 as they transport essential services across the region, prompting the government of Uganda to institute widespread testing for drivers as well as “relay driving,” in which truckers must drive up to a border, stop, sanitize their vehicle, and pass it to the next driver to minimize cross-border transmission of COVID-19. While important, providers say these safeguards further compound delays in getting contraceptives and safe abortion medication to the women and girls who need them. DKT International already reports experiencing several days’ worth of delays for goods being transported into Uganda from Kenya.
The delays and price hikes mean that medical distributors, hospitals, and health care clinics across Kenya and Uganda are running out of essential medications. Marie Stopes Uganda, which claims to be the largest provider of family planning services and commodities in the country, reported in early April that it has been out of emergency contraception, commonly referred to as the morning after pill, since January of this year and expects to run out of all other abortion and contraceptive supplies by the end of April. “Within the first two months of this year, we found ourselves [selling out of supplies] that we projected to sell in six months,” said Carole Sekimpi, Marie Stopes Uganda’s country director. “The product was due to come in the beginning of February. The COVID conversation started, then it was moved to come in by the second week of March. COVID got even more serious.”
Lockdowns and restrictions on movement have added to the crisis, preventing women from traveling to clinics to get critical reproductive care and commodities and prohibiting health care organizations from conducting outreach in hard-to-access rural areas.
In Kenya, women and girls are facing rising prices due to restrictions on movement. Kenya’s matatus, small buses that are the primary mode of public transportation in the country, have been prohibited from carrying more than a few passengers at a time, prompting them to raise fares to make up the difference. Passengers must also wear masks, an expensive luxury for many Kenyan women barely surviving hand to mouth each day.
Nelly Munyasia, the head of Reproductive Health Network Kenya, said that to spare the travel expenses, women and girls will choose to visit local neighborhood “quacks,” unqualified providers passing themselves off as pharmacists and doctors, rather than traveling to a proper reproductive health clinic that may be located farther away from their homes. These unqualified providers often use coat hangers, bleach, or even crushed glass to try to terminate women’s pregnancies, which can result in the women being permanently maimed or even killed.
“We will definitely start seeing an increase in unsafe abortion cases,” Munyasia said. “We’re looking at probably even deaths related to unsafe abortion. We are looking at girls and women with ruptured uterus. Cases of girls losing their uterus as a result of this.”
Health care workers say they have already begun to see a rise in unwanted pregnancies and are predicting a correlated increase in unsafe abortions by as early as June. Elizabeth Nyambura Mariara, a nurse who runs a health care center in rural Kenya, said she saw only one case of teenage pregnancy in January. In April, she has already seen five cases come through her doors. Though it’s too early to attribute the rise in unintended pregnancies to COVID-19 disruptions, Mariara said she strongly suspects the spike could be related because students in Kenya have been out of school since mid-March—now living at home with little oversight from teachers and too much idle time on their hands. “I [normally] don’t see a lot of students. Now you see 100 percent are students, which is really shocking and alarming,” Mariara said. “[COVID-19 disruptions] are going to harm the wanjiku, the poor women who are in the territories of Kenya,” she added.
In Uganda, 343 women die per 100,000 live births, and unsafe abortions contribute to around 26 percent of these maternal deaths. In Kenya, too, the issue of unsafe abortion was so grave that in 2013, the Health Ministry conducted a study to determine the impact of maternal mortality due to unsafe abortions on the population.
For Iminza, access to safe abortion services could mean the difference between life and death. Iminza is aware of the dangers associated with unsafe abortion: She knows women who have bled to death from the procedure. “I didn’t want to go [to an unlicensed doctor] because I can’t risk my life,” Iminza said. “My children are depending on me.” But as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, Iminza is running out of options.
This story was produced in partnership with Type Investigations.


foreignpolicy--2020-05-04--Pompeo Continues the China Blame Game

Pompeo Continues the China Blame Game

Here is today ’ s Foreign Policy brief : U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeats coronavirus lab origin claim , North Korea releases new pictures of leader Kim Jong Un , and Italy sees lowest daily death toll since March 10 .
We welcome your feedback at morningbrief @ foreignpolicy.com .
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeated claims that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory in a television interview on Sunday .
Talking to ABC ’ s Martha Raddatz , Pompeo said there was “ enormous evidence ” supporting the claim , later adding , “ I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan.
” Suggesting that China intentionally created or spread the virus has become a favorite tactic of the Trump administration , and reemerged even after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence , the agency overseeing all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies and organizations , issued a statement on Thursday making clear that the U.S. intelligence community agreed with “ the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.
” ( The intelligence agencies did not dismiss @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pathogens being studied in the lab . )
Asked about ODNI ’ s statement in the same interview , the former CIA director replied , “ I ’ ve seen what the intelligence community has said .
I have no reason to believe that they ’ ve got it wrong.
” Pompeo the point man .
Pompeo is becoming U.S. President Donald Trump ’ s most reliable lieutenant as the Trump administration seeks to blame China for mishandling the initial outbreak amid the U.S. government ’ s stumbling public health response and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Robbie Gramer wrote last Friday , Pompeo “ has emerged as the face of the administration ’ s hard-line China strategy.
” Pompeo has increased his engagement with the media since the pandemic began , conducting over 90 interviews and media roundtables with U.S. and international outlets in April alone .
A recent cluster of Trump-friendly conservative talk show interviews are included in that count , leading to criticism that the secretary may be dodging tough questions .
“ He ’ s spending a heck of a lot less time communicating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ administration is doing what it ’ s doing .
The other effect is he ’ s made the role of secretary of state much more partisan , and historically they were supposed to stay above the fray , ” Brett Bruen , a former career diplomat and director of global engagement at the White House under President Barack Obama , told Foreign Policy .
Gunfire at DMZ as Kim Jong Un photos surface .
North Korea appeared to put speculation over Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un ’ s whereabouts to rest on Friday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ touring a fertilizer factory .
On Sunday , an unnamed South Korean official speaking to Reuters dismissed as untrue reports that Kim ’ s absence from the public eye was due to a medical procedure .
Others have speculated that he had gone into isolation to avoid contracting the coronavirus .
There was more drama on the Korean Peninsula over the weekend .
On Saturday , troops exchanged gunfire across the Korean demilitarized zone ( DMZ ) , with South Korea responding to shots fired at a rural guard post .
No casualties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the DMZ said they would conduct a “ thorough investigation ” into whether the actions constitute a breach of the armistice agreement .
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo played down the exchange , calling the gunfire “ accidental.
” Venezuela claims to have stopped armed incursion .
Venezuelan government authorities say they have thwarted an attempted marine incursion north of the capital , Caracas .
The alleged attack took place early on Sunday morning and supposedly involved speedboats ferrying “ terrorist mercenaries ” to the port of La Guaira via neighboring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Reverol .
Diosdado Cabello , the leader of the Socialist Party , said eight people were killed and a further two detained .
The Colombian government has denied any involvement .
Opposition leader Juan Guaidó accused President Nicolás Maduro ’ s government of distracting people from internal issues , such as a recent prison riot that left dozens dead .
“ The regime is seeking to divert attention with a supposed incident plagued with inconsistencies , doubts and contradictions , ” a statement from Guaidó ’ s press representatives said .
The details @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resemblance to an Associated Press investigative report published on Friday about Jordan Goudreau ( a former U.S. Army Green Beret ) and Cliver Alcalá ( a retired Venezuelan major general ) and their hapless 2019 attempt to foment an uprising in Venezuela .
Bolsonaro joins anti-democracy protesters .
Embattled Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro joined anti-democracy demonstrators in front of his presidential palace on Sunday , as they called for the closing of the Supreme Court and a return to measures used during the country ’ s period of military rule .
“ We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s side : the side of order , democracy , liberty , ” Bolsonaro told the crowd .
“ Enough interference .
We ’ re not allowing any more interference .
Our patience is over.
” On Saturday , former Justice Minister Sergio Moro gave eight hours of testimony to federal investigators , and turned over text message exchanges and other electronic communications as the case against Bolsonaro for interfering with the country ’ s federal police gathers pace .
Argentina ’ s debt woes .
Argentina ’ s minister of Economy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the country ’ s debt obligations and for bondholders to accept a reduced return .
Writing in the Financial Times on Sunday , Guzmán said that Argentina ’ s debt troubles are a window into what similarly indebted countries will be facing in a post-coronavirus world .
“ Bondholders have a choice : recognize the historic challenges and seek new ways forward , ” he wrote , “ or stubbornly insist on short-sighted repayment terms that appear to provide quick returns but only degrade debtor countries and undermine their ability to repay.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which include several U.S.-based institutional investors and hedge funds , have to date proved fruitless for the country .
Writing in Foreign Policy on Sunday , James Crabtree highlighted the weak position of emerging market countries such as Argentina and called for a “ far greater scale ” of debt cancellation than what is currently being considered by the IMF and creditor countries .
Italy records lower death toll , begins easing lockdown .
Italy recorded its lowest daily death toll since March 10 as the country begins to ease its lockdown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reported on Sunday , a sharp decline from 474 deaths the previous day .
Starting today , Italians will see a slight easing of the social restrictions put in place over the past eight weeks .
Government guidelines now state that residents will be allowed visit relatives and those with whom they share a “ stable bond of affection.
” After confusion over whether a “ stable bond ” included friendships , Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte ’ s office confirmed that for the time being it did not .
The first round of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , May 5 , via videoconference between U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and British International Trade Secretary Liz Truss .
The initial round of talks will take two weeks , and further talks are scheduled to continue every six weeks .
On Thursday , May 7 , the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its monthly employment situation report , covering the month of April .
The in-depth look at U.S. workforce trends comes amid rising unemployment across the country : 30 million people have filed for unemployment benefits in the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s Supreme Court is expected to rule this week on whether Benjamin Netanyahu can form a government while facing corruption charges , potentially derailing his nascent coalition with rival Benny Gantz and forcing another election .
Netanyahu ’ s trial had been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic and is now slated to begin on May 24 .
Tanzanian President John Magufuli has called for an investigation after coronavirus testing kits his country procured appeared to be defective .
Perhaps wary of the experience of the United Kingdom , which paid $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ test kits , Tanzanian security officials devised a novel solution : They tested the kits by including samples from a goat , a sheep , and a papaya .
The officials assigned the animal and fruit samples human names and dates of birth before sending them to a lab ; all three tests came back positive .
“ There is something happening .
I said before we should not accept that every aid is meant to be good for this nation , ” Magufuli declared .
He confirmed the tests had been imported @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country of origin .
Magufuli has shown no such suspicion when it comes to untested coronavirus treatments , however .
He recently announced that his government would send a plane to Madagascar to import a herbal tonic produced from the artemisia plant—the source of an ingredient in drugs to treat malaria .
The drink has been billed as a cure for the coronavirus despite the World Health Organization ’ s warnings that—after being tested on just 20 people—there was no proof of any cure .
“ We will despatch a flight to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also benefit .
So as the government we are working day and night , ” Magufuli said .
For more from FP , visit foreignpolicy.com , subscribe here , or sign up for our other newsletters .
Send your tips , comments , questions , or corrections to morningbrief @ foreignpolicy.com .

Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeats coronavirus lab origin claim, North Korea releases new pictures of leader Kim Jong Un , and Italy sees lowest daily death toll since March 10.
Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeats coronavirus lab origin claim, North Korea releases new pictures of leader Kim Jong Un, and Italy sees lowest daily death toll since March 10.
If you would like to receive Morning Brief in your inbox every weekday, please sign up here.
Pompeo Ratchets Up China Blame Game as U.S. Death Toll Rises
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo repeated claims that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese laboratory in a television interview on Sunday. Talking to ABC’s Martha Raddatz, Pompeo said there was “enormous evidence” supporting the claim, later adding, “I can tell you that there is a significant amount of evidence that this came from that laboratory in Wuhan.”
Suggesting that China intentionally created or spread the virus has become a favorite tactic of the Trump administration, and reemerged even after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the agency overseeing all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies and organizations, issued a statement on Thursday making clear that the U.S. intelligence community agreed with “the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.” (The intelligence agencies did not dismiss the possibility of accidental release of naturally-occurring pathogens being studied in the lab.)
Asked about ODNI’s statement in the same interview, the former CIA director replied, “I’ve seen what the intelligence community has said. I have no reason to believe that they’ve got it wrong.”
Pompeo the point man. Pompeo is becoming U.S. President Donald Trump’s most reliable lieutenant as the Trump administration seeks to blame China for mishandling the initial outbreak amid the U.S. government’s stumbling public health response and the ensuing economic crisis. As Foreign Policy’s Robbie Gramer wrote last Friday, Pompeo “has emerged as the face of the administration’s hard-line China strategy.”
Pompeo has increased his engagement with the media since the pandemic began, conducting over 90 interviews and media roundtables with U.S. and international outlets in April alone. A recent cluster of Trump-friendly conservative talk show interviews are included in that count, leading to criticism that the secretary may be dodging tough questions.
“He’s spending a heck of a lot less time communicating to the world about why the Trump administration is doing what it’s doing. The other effect is he’s made the role of secretary of state much more partisan, and historically they were supposed to stay above the fray,” Brett Bruen, a former career diplomat and director of global engagement at the White House under President Barack Obama, told Foreign Policy.
What We’re Following Today
Gunfire at DMZ as Kim Jong Un photos surface. North Korea appeared to put speculation over Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un’s whereabouts to rest on Friday by releasing images and video of Kim touring a fertilizer factory. On Sunday, an unnamed South Korean official speaking to Reuters dismissed as untrue reports that Kim’s absence from the public eye was due to a medical procedure. Others have speculated that he had gone into isolation to avoid contracting the coronavirus.
There was more drama on the Korean Peninsula over the weekend. On Saturday, troops exchanged gunfire across the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ), with South Korea responding to shots fired at a rural guard post. No casualties were reported. The United Nations Command at the DMZ said they would conduct a “thorough investigation” into whether the actions constitute a breach of the armistice agreement. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo played down the exchange, calling the gunfire “accidental.”
Venezuela claims to have stopped armed incursion. Venezuelan government authorities say they have thwarted an attempted marine incursion north of the capital, Caracas. The alleged attack took place early on Sunday morning and supposedly involved speedboats ferrying “terrorist mercenaries” to the port of La Guaira via neighboring Colombia, according to Interior Minister Nestor Reverol. Diosdado Cabello, the leader of the Socialist Party, said eight people were killed and a further two detained. The Colombian government has denied any involvement.
Opposition leader Juan Guaidó accused President Nicolás Maduro’s government of distracting people from internal issues, such as a recent prison riot that left dozens dead. “The regime is seeking to divert attention with a supposed incident plagued with inconsistencies, doubts and contradictions,” a statement from Guaidó’s press representatives said.
The details of the reported invasion bear a striking resemblance to an Associated Press investigative report published on Friday about Jordan Goudreau (a former U.S. Army Green Beret) and Cliver Alcalá (a retired Venezuelan major general) and their hapless 2019 attempt to foment an uprising in Venezuela.
Bolsonaro joins anti-democracy protesters. Embattled Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro joined anti-democracy demonstrators in front of his presidential palace on Sunday, as they called for the closing of the Supreme Court and a return to measures used during the country’s period of military rule. “We have the armed forces at the people’s side: the side of order, democracy, liberty,” Bolsonaro told the crowd. “Enough interference. We’re not allowing any more interference. Our patience is over.”
On Saturday, former Justice Minister Sergio Moro gave eight hours of testimony to federal investigators, and turned over text message exchanges and other electronic communications as the case against Bolsonaro for interfering with the country’s federal police gathers pace.
Keep an Eye On
Argentina’s debt woes. Argentina’s minister of Economy Martín Guzmán has called for a restructuring of the country’s debt obligations and for bondholders to accept a reduced return. Writing in the Financial Times on Sunday, Guzmán said that Argentina’s debt troubles are a window into what similarly indebted countries will be facing in a post-coronavirus world. “Bondholders have a choice: recognize the historic challenges and seek new ways forward,” he wrote, “or stubbornly insist on short-sighted repayment terms that appear to provide quick returns but only degrade debtor countries and undermine their ability to repay.”
Negotiations with Argentina’s bondholders, which include several U.S.-based institutional investors and hedge funds, have to date proved fruitless for the country.
Writing in Foreign Policy on Sunday, James Crabtree highlighted the weak position of emerging market countries such as Argentina and called for a “far greater scale” of debt cancellation than what is currently being considered by the IMF and creditor countries.
Italy records lower death toll, begins easing lockdown. Italy recorded its lowest daily death toll since March 10 as the country begins to ease its lockdown measures. Only 174 new deaths were reported on Sunday, a sharp decline from 474 deaths the previous day.
Starting today, Italians will see a slight easing of the social restrictions put in place over the past eight weeks. Government guidelines now state that residents will be allowed visit relatives and those with whom they share a “stable bond of affection.” After confusion over whether a “stable bond” included friendships, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s office confirmed that for the time being it did not.
The World This Week
The first round of U.S.-U.K. trade talks will begin on Tuesday, May 5, via videoconference between U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and British International Trade Secretary Liz Truss. The initial round of talks will take two weeks, and further talks are scheduled to continue every six weeks.
On Thursday, May 7, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its monthly employment situation report, covering the month of April. The in-depth look at U.S. workforce trends comes amid rising unemployment across the country: 30 million people have filed for unemployment benefits in the United States since the pandemic struck.
Israel’s Supreme Court is expected to rule this week on whether Benjamin Netanyahu can form a government while facing corruption charges, potentially derailing his nascent coalition with rival Benny Gantz and forcing another election. Netanyahu’s trial had been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic and is now slated to begin on May 24.