#Winners and #Losers: Not A Turkish Delight

The Week in Diplomatic Snubs

Winner: Turkey—US National Security Advisor John Bolton travelled to Ankara this week to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan… only to have his meeting cancelled. Erdogan apparently took offense at Bolton’s public insistence that Turkey not attack US-backed Kurds in the wake of the US pullout from Syria. Good luck with that one. #OutOfSightOutOfMind

Loser: The EU—We learned this week that the United States downgraded the EU’s diplomatic status… without telling Brussels about it. For years, the EU and its representative had been treated as a country rather than an international delegation. That’s been called into question by the Trump administration, which has apparently decided no fight is too small to pick. #EUGottaBeKidding

The Week in Fueling Anger

Winner: Bibi Netanyahu—the Israeli prime minister went on television this week to make a “dramatic announcement”… and then proceeded to denounce the corruption investigations of his administration as a politically motivated “witch hunt.” It would be unfair, he insisted, for him to be indicted without a chance to personally confront witnesses before April elections. That would be pretty bad, if he weren’t still the heavy favorite to win that vote. #AprilComeSheWill

Loser: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador—Mexico’s new president is learning the hard way that having a good idea is no substitute for bad execution. To crack down on gasoline thefts from pipelines, AMLO has ordered that certain pipelines be shut down and gas be delivered instead by truck. This has turned into a logistical nightmare, and now thousands of Mexicans face crippling gas shortages. #PavedWithGoodIntentions

The Week in Making Political Waves

Winner: 20-year old German hacker—revealed this week that the hacker behind last week’s information dump of prominent German politicians wasn’t a foreign state or hacking collective but a 20-year old man, living with his parents, who was ticked off by politicians. Kid has a future… once he gets out of jail. Lucky for him, being 20 in Germany means his acts fall under juvenile law. As with Mathias Rust (remember him?) in 1987, youthful exuberance apparently works as an excuse. #TheKidsAreAlright

Loser: Indian scientists—the Indian Science Congress had some interesting speakers this year. One academic cited a Hindu text to argue stem cell research originated centuries ago in India; another one accused a demon king of having two dozen aircraft parked in Sri Lanka. But the most outrageous thing was the scientist who wanted to rename gravitational waves “Narendra Modi waves,” since both Newton and Einstein were so incredibly wrong. #ItsAllRelativity

The Week in Controversial Beginnings

Winner: Nicolas Maduro—the Venezuelan president began his second six-year term this week with an inauguration largely devoid of foreign heads of state—more than sixty countries refused to recognize the legitimacy of Maduro’s election win this past May. So too the 2.3 million Venezuelans that have fled the country since 2015. But that’s 2.3 million fewer people ready to raise a ruckus in Venezuela’s streets. #TemporaryCeasefire

Loser: Democratic Republic of Congo—Joseph Kabila, the man who has spent nearly two decades as president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, saw his best-laid plans to remain in power blown up this week as he was forced to announce that an opposition figure, rather than his preferred candidate, won the Congolese presidency. Of course, it wasn’t the opposition figure international observers actually think won, making this a rather naked attempt to skirt the will of the people. There’s little chance this ends peacefully. #FightThePower

*

Be sure to sign up for Signal, arriving in your inbox first thing every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday morning: gzeromedia.com

Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group, foreign affairs columnist at TIME and Global Research Professor at New York University. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook.