Signal: Macho vacations, South Asian birthdays, and pre-dawn raids

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The Word This Week

Let’s start with this… Many world leaders are enjoying some summer relaxation this week, and the US and Russian presidents are vacationing in characteristic style. By now, you’ve surely seen the latest shirtless photos of Donald Trump. The US president got in some quality kayaking this week before showing off his spearfishing skills in a lake near the border with Mongolia. After sunbathing for the cameras, Mr. Trump then went mushroom hunting.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin stuck to a “working vacation” that included several rounds of golf photographed by reporters hiding in the bushes at his 37 billion-acre private club in New Jersey. Mr. Putin followed that up with a delicious meal capped off with the most beautiful chocolate cake that you, and everyone you know, has ever seen. [Editor’s note: This section has not yet been fully fact-checked.]

Elsewhere… we now have a disputed election in Kenya, a farcical “truth commission” in Venezuela, another suspected terrorist attack in France, and yet another political reprieve for South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma. (After surviving eight attempts at his ouster, the latest coming through a vote of no confidence by secret ballot, this cat looks to have more than nine lives.) President Trump, doing a credible Kim Jong-un impersonation, threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Kim Jong-un responded with a threat to attack Guam.

Next up… India and Pakistan turn 70 next week. The world will mark the anniversary of the partition that gave violent birth to two nations, even as low-level violence continues to claim lives in Kashmir.

 Comparisons between India and Pakistan are inevitable. India has become one of the world’s most important emerging market success stories. It enjoys stronger economic growth than any large economy in the world, despite a recent slowdown which temporarily dropped it below China during the first quarter of the year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi remains popular enough to advance a long-overdue reform agenda that includes an important centralization of the tax system and major investment in the country’s notoriously dilapidated infrastructure. Development of Aadhaar, a biometric identification system, is on pace to connect well over one billion people to essential services. The project is controversial for many reasons, but it can help the government with the distribution of important subsidies, and it can sharply cut fraud and reduce official corruption. In a nation with hundreds of millions living in rural areas far from the largest cities, this is a project that can benefit all of India — and those who learn from the opportunities and risks it creates can apply its lessons in other developing countries. 

In Pakistan, the resignation of prime minister Nawaz Sharif last month reflects the country’s struggle to develop a tradition of stable civilian rule. Whether the result of corruption charges, assassination, or a military coup, the country has never established the lasting political stability needed to ensure that high growth rates are sustainable and broadly shared among its citizens. Both India and Pakistan have a long way to go to establish lasting security and prosperity for their people, but one of them looks to be headed in the right direction, and the other is not.

Finally… There’s been a lot of talk, including in recent editions of Signal, about the risk that Kenya’s presidential election will provoke violence, even if the killing doesn’t reach the storm surge levels of the vote in 2007. It’s encouraging that there’s been little trouble so far beyond protests and angry threats in response to preliminary results, though the recent murder of a senior election official certainly raised the temperature before the vote. But it’s concerning that challenger Raila Odinga has accused the government of “hacking” the election to protect the incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta — whether his charge is true or false.

We noted three weeks ago that “Ninety percent of Kenyans have seen or heard false news related to the country’s upcoming presidential election.” And last week we raised the specter of fake video poisoning public confidence in elections worldwide. There’s nothing new about contested elections, particularly in developing countries, but there are now political and technological reasons why cynicism about election results could soon reach an all-time high.

Self Promotion Interlude: Eurasia Group’s Scott Seaman explores this week’s war of words between the US and North Korea.

What we’re watching

Desperation in Yemen: We’ve highlighted Yemen’s humanitarian disaster in the context of a broader crisis also affecting South Sudan, Somalia, and northeastern Nigeria, but one statistic underscores the immediacy of Yemen’s needs: 60 percent of people in that country don’t know where their next meal will come from, according to the UN. An unknown number of those people are children.

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner: The former Argentine president will compete on Sunday in “open” primary elections in Buenos Aires. This race will allow voters to select their favorite candidate irrespective of party affiliation ahead of a crucial election there on October 22. Want to know how strong President Mauricio Macri and his reform agenda are? Check out the results this weekend. A strong performance for the “Notorious CFK” in Buenos Aires, the electoral district that’s home to 38 percent of Argentina’s voters, would be bad news for Macri. Our man Daniel Kerner thinks we’ll be watching this story closely for the next two months.

Trump investigation drama: Loyal Signal readers know that I’m solidly in the “Wait for Mueller” camp when it comes to establishing truth and consequences in the Special Counsel’s investigation into possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia. But we learned this week that we’ve already reached the “pre-dawn raid” phase of the probe following reports this week of a July 26 FBI raid on the home of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. As anyone under federal investigation can tell you, nothing good ever happens “pre-dawn.”

What we’re ignoring

North Korean threats against Guam. The generals in Pyongyang surely understand the sizeable risk that any large-scale military attack on a population center will ensure they’re all dead within a matter of days. No disrespect to Guam, but if these guys are serious about going out in a blaze of glory, they’ll probably pick a higher-profile target.

Speculation about Mark Zuckerberg’s political future: In the United States, elections are still won by Democrats and Republicans. This is not a man running for the Senate, and if he were ever to run for president, it’s hard to see which party would give him its nomination.

Flesh-eating sea bugs in the waters off Melbourne, Australia: Having clicked on one too many stories about weird animals attacking people in Australia, Signal refuses to acknowledge that this story even happened.

Your Weekly Bremmer

Hard Numbers

1000: North Korea’s “miniaturized” nuclear warhead is estimated to weighbetween five hundred and one thousand kilograms, making it about as miniature as a Toyota Corolla.

$1 billion: This week Zimbabwe announced that it is planning to build a one billion dollar university to honor its ailing President Robert Mugabe. Given the treasury’s balance was down to $217 just a few years ago, that might be a bit of a heavy lift.

1: Iran has selected only one female cabinet member since the Islamic Revolution in 1970. Recently reelected President Hassan Rouhani nominatedthree women to serve as vice presidents, running government organizations connected to the presidency, but zero to serve within his cabinet.

100: Terrorists have killed more than 100 people in France since a state of emergency was declared in November 2015. An attack on a group of soldiers in Paris this week is being investigated for connections to terrorism.

11: Indonesia is set to trade palm oil, coffee, and tea for 11 Russian-made Sukhoi fighter jets. #GunsforButter

Words of Wisdom

“I want to thank him because we’re trying to cut down on payroll, and as far as I’m concerned, I’m very thankful that he let go of a large number of people, because now we have a smaller payroll.”

– President Trump offers a word of thanks to Vladimir Putin for the recent expulsion of American personnel from the US embassy in Moscow. The American president has made it clear that his current vacation is indeed “working” through his consistent use of Twitter.

Signal is written by Willis Sparks with editorial support from Gabe Lipton (@gflipton). Don’t like what you read? Feel free to yell at us on Twitter.

If you like what you see, be sure to sign up to receive it in your inbox first thing every Friday morning: eurasiagroup.net/signal.