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TURNING HEADS — DUTCH RIOTS AGAINST COVID-19 RESTRICTIONS: Mark Rutte, the country’s caretaker prime minister until elections in March, described violence in 10 cities and towns as “criminal.” Police reported knives thrown at them and a coronavirus testing center was torched, as supermarkets were looted and rioters set up barricades made of burning bicycles (video).
PUTIN CAN NO LONGER IGNORE NAVALNY: NOW WHAT?
The biggest Russian protests since at least 2017 — across Russia’s 11 time zones — led to 3,000 arrests, including Yulia Navalny, wife of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. President Vladimir Putin appears to recognize an emerging threat: the government this weekend went after Navalny on TV and denied the existence of Putin’s billion-dollar palace, after years of ignoring him.
What’s different about these protests? While young people are taking to TikTok and other platforms to show support for Navalny, “unlike 2017, young people were not the dominant force at Saturday's pro-Navalny protest,” which were broader. The protestors mean business: some protests took place in -50 celsius (pic).
The hope of protestors is a Belarus-style uprising in warmer months: Protestors also need a strategy, as well as bravery, warns Edward Lucas, while Leonid Ragozin sees “Russian society is divided into three unequal parts. Two minorities represent the staunch supporters of Navalny and Putin and a majority in the middle which is comprised of people whose support of the Russian president is tentative and pragmatic.”
Global reactions so far: EU foreign ministers meet today in Brussels, but they’re unlikely to issue sanctions yet, since the same group of ministers two months to blacklist several Putin allies over Navalny’s attempted murder in 2020. The U.S. condemned Russia's arrests. McKinsey emailed staff banning them from attending protests, but later reversed course.
FOLLOWING THE MONEY: Last week’s extraordinary investigation by Navalny (who started as an anti-corruption campaigner) into Putin’s personal wealth, goes further than murdered opposition leader Boris Nemstsov ever did. But for his movement to succeed, Navalny now needs his supporters around the world to cut off Putin’s money options.
Former Ambassador Daniel Fried urges that the U.S., EU and U.K. need to work in parallel to close “channels of corrupt money flows from Russia.” Vladimir Kara-Murza, himself the victim of Kremlin assassination attempt, told the Power Vertical podcast: “the biggest export from Russia to the West is not oil, it’s not gas, it is corruption (and) we have not seen a shortage of people willing to import that corruption.” He's talking about oligarchs living in London, and selling gas via pipelines like Nordstream 2 to Germany, or stashing money in Switzerland and Cyprus.
Hudson Institute’s Nate Sibley — who is co-author with Ben Judah of a report on kleptocracy previously featured in Global Translations — said Russian opposition activists “never ask for help with regime change. What they always ask is that U.S., EU, U.K. stop laundering money for Putin’s regime.” Sibley told Global Translations that while “excellent”, the State Department’s statement on the Navalny protests “did not mention corruption once” which sends the message of “business as usual to allies and adversaries alike”
Among 70 policy recommendations Sibley and Judah have for the new administration that would help Navalny’s work are:
— Expanding the U.S. anti-money laundering regime beyond traditional banks. Incoming Treasury secretary Janet Yellen (yet to be confirmed) has the authority to bring “other key sectors routinely exploited for money laundering—luxury goods dealers, real estate agents, hedge funds and so on” under surveillance, and should, Sibley said.
— U.S. Treasury implementing laws including the corporate beneficial ownership register mandated under the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, and a cross-border electronic funds transfers database authorized under the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004
— Offering rewards to money laundering and bank secrecy whistleblowers
— Announce a high-level interagency kleptocracy task-force, coordinated by the National Security Council, and appoint a Special Envoy for countering kleptocracy.
Who should be sanctioned? Rather than government officials, many campaigners say the focus should really be on people holding and funneling money on Putin’s behalf in Western banks and institutions. Around $1 trillion in Russia assets are stored in the west, “this is the amount of money that has been looted from Russian taxpayers, and much of this is connected to Putin personally,” said Kara-Murza.
Most-high profile target of campaigners is Roman Abramovich: He’s been a darling of the British media for two decades as the owner of the Chelsea football club, who took up Israeli citizenship in 2018 after the U.K. showed signs of cracking down. Alisher Usmanov is another high-profile target.
GLOBAL RISKS AND TRENDS
DAVOS GOES DIGITAL: Do champagne and caviar taste the same at sea level? If no-one’s on a Zoom call to hear their jargon, does a thought leader make a sound? We’re going to get answers to those questions over the next five years as the World Economic Forum (WEF) hosts The Davos Agenda — five days of online discussions in place of its regular Alpine affair, running from 2 a.m. to 2 p.m ET.
Tuesday is Europe day: Top speeches will be delivered by the EU’s Ursula von der Leyen (5.00 a.m. ET), Angela Merkel (7.00 a.m. ET) and Emmanuel Macron (9.00 a.m. ET)
Peak Davos: “You can’t do business in a broken world” | Global economic recovery in eight charts
XI URGES NEW ERA OF MULTILATERALISM
Chinese President Xi Jinping got this winter’s Davos week off to a flying start in his first World Economic Forum speech in four years. The soaring rhetoric of 2017 was replaced by 23-minutes of textbook commitments to multilateralism that align well with the new Biden administration, and a series of intriguing claims that warned Washington to steer clear of Beijing’s chosen path.
Warnings: Xi said “the world will not go back to what it was in the past,” and said “confrontation will lead us to a dead end,” rejecting economic decoupling and sanctions as ways to achieve change.
Xi defined four major tasks of our times:
— “Step up macroeconomic coordination”: which he prefers to see happen at the G-20, and which he promised to play a bigger role in.
— “Abandon ideological prejudice” which translates into: leave China to develop its own way.
— “Close the divide between developed and developing countries”: which means China will “deepen South-South cooperation” including through vaccine diplomacy and its Belt and Road infrastructure deals.
— “Come together against (recurring) global challenges”: namely future pandemic and climate change
Xi Embraced: “a new type of international relations,” yet one still anchored in “ international rule of law” and the global system “based around the U.N., including consensus decision processes that have hamstrung climate efforts and WTO reform. Xi promised “an economy, based on market principles, rule of law and international standards.”
Xi Rejected: “reversing globalization” because “arrogant isolation will always fail,” whether the effort is “cold war, hot war, trade war or tech war”
Further domestic reform: Xi committed to reform at home, including stronger climate action, and “domestic circulation as the mainstay” of “higher quality growth” based on innovation and intellectual property protection
Raising eyebrows: Xi extolling “peace, development, equity, justice, democracy” and announcing that “the strong should not bully the weak.”
LONDON CALLING: Could the real U.K. government Covid policy stand up please? POLITICO’s Emilio Casalicchio concludes from the Cabinet’s Sunday interview rounds: “Ministers don’t know when the lockdown in England will be lifted; whether schools will open before Easter; whether the Kent (U.K.) strain of the coronavirus is more deadly; or how new strains from abroad should be stopped from entering Britain” Chancellor Rishi Sunak backs a new policy of Covid quarantine hotels for all UK arrivals, one of five options that range from GPS tracking of arrivals into Britain, through to a full ban on flights (as Israel is doing).
BIG IN BRUSSELS: Big Tech CEOs on the menu. The CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook have been invited to testify before the European Parliament Feb. 1, regarding the EU’s latest tech regulation proposals. It was a farce the last time one of the Big Four — Mark Zuckerberg — appeared (thinks members taking selfies with him). Alphabet Chief Executive Sundar Pichai is meeting separately with EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager on Jan. 25.
BIDEN MEETS WORLD
Biden and Canada’s Trudeau to meet again next month, billed as a reset of relations.
Biden added a South Africa travel ban and reinstated bans on most travel from Brazil and European countries — all linked to Covid-19 risks.
U.S. reaffirms Taiwan support after Chinese warplanes flew two dozen sorties near Taiwan over the weekend.
Richard Gowan writes that Linda Thomas-Greenfield's top challenges as U.N. ambassador (if and whenever she’s finally confirmed by the Senate) will be to empower diplomats in New York to act again and work out if and how the US can cooperate its main rivals, China and Russia
JOBS RECOVERY SPOTLIGHT
INVEST IN SKILLS TO BOOST GROWTH: A new World Economic Forum and PwC report concludes the world will be $6.5 trillion richer by 2030 if governments do more to invest in skills. The workers that would benefit most are those in business services and manufacturing. The benefits will only kick in around 2024 or 2025, but Saadia Zahidi, the WEF managing director leading the skills platform, told Global Translations, that this skills investment needs to be seen as part of a broader investment in reducing inequality. “Whether it is the decline in wages or the hollowing out of the middle class, we can no longer sort of continue to expect our societies to function if we don't tackle this head on,” she said.
The Forum’s grandly-titled “Reskilling Revolution” platform claimed to have supported 50 million people to gain new skills in 2020. WEF is offering: a common framework for gaining and recognizing skills.
GLOBETROTTERS
VAX VIPS — SIX-STAR VACCINE TOURISM: A few dozen super rich British members of the “Knightsbridge Circle” have splashed out $60,000 for three weeks in a Dubai hotel, jabs and an immunization certificate, all framed as a deductible business trip.
OECD — ANGEL OF ISTANBUL: The OECD is spreading its wings eastward, via a big office (remember those?) in Istanbul. Angel Gurría, the OECD chief in his final year at the helm of the Paris-based economic club, said that Istanbul was chosen because it is the world’s greatest crossroads: “The city bridges both East and West and North and South.” Teams specializing in competitiveness, entrepreneurship, trade, innovation, “mobilization of human capital”, connectivity and “green growth” will be based there.
SWAMP WATCH — TRUMP OFFICIALS NOW FREE TO LOBBY FOR FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS: One ethical bright spot in the storyline of Trump scandals linked to foreign government lobbying was Trump making his own White House staff sign-up to a lifetime ban from that sort of work, but Trump reversed that in a last-minute executive order, Theo Meyer explains. Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, which advocates for tougher ethics rules, told Global Translations that the red flag here is that the Biden administration can’t do anything to undo Trump’s order. The affected staff “signed a contractually binding pledge but Trump released them from that.” The contracts have now ended, and that’s that.
Lobbyists for foreign governments will still need to register under either the Foreign Agent Registration Act or Lobbying Disclosure Act, but those laws don’t prevent former Trump officials doing work outside of the U.S. for foreign governments. Think of all the pipelines and hotels, for example, that those officials are now eligible to cash in on.
Thanks to editor Blake Hounshell
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