Helmut Sorge
| Posted : December 31, 2018
“THE WARNING LIGHTS ARE BLINKING RED”
He does not want to be emperor. Certainly not like Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the most celebrated and controversial leaders in human history. Triumph in Jena and Austerlitz, defeat in the battle of Trafalgar, exiled by the British to a remote island named St. Helena in the South Atlantic. Bill Gates is part of history himself, a symbol of the computer age, the digital revolution, the second upheaval after the Industrial Revolution to touch the globe. He was one of the genial pioneers helping to wire the world. The co-founder of Microsoft, computer genius, without equal or university degree to prove his breathtaking inspirations, is fascinated by Napoleon and did read most of the biographies, but “not all thousand” written about the Corsican, who reigned from 1804 to 1814.Gates: “At least they left the emperor a horse on his island prison to ride around all day.”
Mokhtar Ghailani
| Posted : December 31, 2018
Les travaux de la 3ème édition du Forum Malabo Montpellier (MaMo Forum), organisés le 17 décembre 2018, à Rabat -réunissant des délégations et experts représentant plusieurs pays d’Afrique, aux côtés de participants provenant d’autres régions du monde, notamment des Etats-Unis, de France et du Royaume-Uni-, étaient venus confirmer, si besoin est, la vocation Sud du Policy Center for The New South. Ce Forum a constitué une plateforme d’échanges qui a permis aux représentants des départements d’Agriculture de nombreux pays africains de présenter leurs expériences respectives en matière d’irrigation. Dans son allocution introductive, Dr. Karim El Aynaoui, Directeur général du Policy Center for The New South, soulignera la pertinence de la tenue de ce Forum, arguant du fait que « la thématique débattue revêt une grande importance pour l’avenir du continent africain ».
Karim El Aynaoui
| Posted : December 18, 2018
This article was originally published in Farming First, a multi-stakeholder coalition, written by Dr. El Aynaoui, Managing Director of Policy Center for the New South and member of the Malabo Montpellier Panel.
With the rolling dunes of the Sahara desert overlapping its borders, Morocco may be an unlikely candidate to lead the region in water control and management.
Helmut Sorge
| Posted : December 17, 2018
A PROBLEMATIC PIECE OF REALPOLITIK
Lindsey Graham dreamed of being elected President of the United States, some years ago. He failed. The influential and seasoned Senator from South Carolina was a merciless critic of Donald Trump, but recently Graham defended his nationalist and popular policies and fought, among other issues, immigration, with verbal venom publicly for the appointment of the contested supreme court candidate Brett Kavanaugh. Trump could count on Graham’s vote in congress—until the news shook the political establishment in Washington that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, the future king and de facto ruler, was accused of being involved in murder. A bloody mess indeed, an incredible drama, worth a Hollywood thriller, with political and military consequences yet to grasp in its dimensions and geopolitical consequences.
Suddenly, the senator changed his tone, because for the conservative politician, the Royal was “on a bad track,” a “wrecking ball.” On TV, the Republican pointed into the distance, towards the desert kingdom and stated: “The guy has to go, Saudi Arabia, if you are listening. There’s a lot of good people you can choose, but MBS has tainted your country and tainted himself.” Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and White House advisor, spoke on the phone to the beleaguered prince, and exchanged text messages, encouraging the 33-year-old friend to ignore the media and other critics and instead trust the loyalty of the American President and himself. The US head of state is obviously convinced that all relationships are transactional, based on which foreign nations buy the most weapons, and moral or human rights considerations must be sacrificed to the higher cause-power, money. Ego. America first. A President, the New York Times judged on its front page, documenting “that raw, mercantilist calculations” should guide the United States’ decision about the Middle East and the wider world: “American jobs outweigh American values.”
Mokhtar Ghailani
| Posted : December 15, 2018
La 7ème édition des Atlantic Dialogues Emerging Leaders Program (ADEL), tenue les 11 et 12 de ce mois de décembre 2018, à l’Université Mohammed VI, à Benguérir, est venue confirmer la reconnaissance mondiale dont jouit désormais cette plateforme d’échanges et de dialogue dédiée aux jeunes entrepreneurs et décideurs appartenant aux pays de la communauté atlantique (Afrique, Caraïbes, Europe, Amérique latine et États-Unis). Reconnaissance témoignée aussi bien par des pairs du Policy center que par les jeunes leaders si l’on en juge par le nombre de plus en plus croissant des candidatures. Sur ce dernier point, il convient de savoir qu’en vue de cette 7ème édition, le nombre des candidats est passé à 3000 contre un millier en 2017. Sur les 3000 candidats, seulement quelques 45 ont été retenus. Depuis 2012, date de son lancement, ils sont quelque 300 jeunes et dynamiques leaders de divers horizons à avoir bénéficié de cette initiative du Policy Center for the New South.
Helmut Sorge
| Posted : December 11, 2018
If you haven't read Trump and his Friends (Part 1), click here.
FOOLISH AND CONSEQUENTIAL DECISIONS
Trump symbolizes brute force, the permanent search for power, pressure and disregard of the fragile web of global treaties, historic understanding and compromise. “A brutal Realpolitik approach,” stated the New York Times, “American capriciousness after decades of order and predictability. One recent example of populism and illogical foreign policy decisions-Iran.” Don Coates, the US director of National Intelligence had confirmed that Tehran has complied to all obligations of the nuclear deal that Iran was further away from nuclear weapons than without the agreement, and “we know more about the Iran nuclear program with this deal then without it.” No way. Trump wanted to please the Israelis and the Saudis, his closest allies in his fight against Tehran. Berlin, Paris, the Russians and Chinese trusted the regime in Tehran, willing to encourage the mullahs to negotiate about their ballistic missiles, which Trump requested.
Uri Dadush
| Posted : December 10, 2018
The Entrepreneurship of Migrants was one of the topics under discussion in the UN Global Forum, which just concluded in Marrakesh with the adoption of a Global Compact on Migration.
Otaviano Canuto
| Posted : December 06, 2018
The trade truce between the United States and China, announced after the dinner of the presidents of the two countries in Buenos Aires on Saturday after the G20 meeting, must be assessed in accordance to three different motivations that can be attributed to President Trump as reasons for starting the war. Although special attention has been given to immediate implications of the truce for the global macroeconomic environment and its impact on financial markets, it is important to keep in sight what it will take to become either a short time-out or a step to armistice.
Yves Jégourel
| Posted : December 04, 2018
Are the relationships between global commodity markets and the developing economies that export them being properly analyzed? After more than half a century of economic research on this issue, the answer, paradoxically, remains uncertain. While the well-known "natural resource curse" tells us that the exploitation of a nation's geological endowment often leads to the implementation of inappropriate economic policies, corruption and rent-seeking strategies, or even to conflicts and civil wars, "Dutch disease" suggests that the economic development of extractive sectors can lead to a deterioration in national price competitiveness and, as a result, to macroeconomic vulnerability. The so-called Prebisch-Singer hypothesis, formulated in 1950, shows, for its part, that the terms of trade for commodity exporting countries deteriorate over time. While these different approaches have been the subject of the most serious empirical tests, the implicit assumption on which they are based still surprises, namely that of being able to apprehend raw materials as a homogeneous whole. They are anything but the latter.
Youssef Tobi
| Posted : December 03, 2018
Pour leur 4ème édition, tenue du 22 au 24 novembre 2018 à Rome, en Italie, pays initiateur de l’événement, les Dialogues méditerranéens (Med Dialogues) ont réuni une pléiade d’acteurs de la scène internationale : Ministres, dirigeants d’Organisations internationales, diplomates, académiciens, hommes d’affaires…
