Since assuming office, President Donald Trump’s many encounters with litigation have exposed significant irregularities of the American legal system as it applies to the president.

These encounters – including but not limited to accusations of defamation, obstruction, perjury and non-disclosure agreements – have shown President Trump to hold a particular interpretation of how the rule of law should apply to someone holding the highest elected office in the United States of America.

However, an analysis of Trump’s legal history prior to his assumption of office reveals a tried and tested method of using litigation – or the threat of it – to quieten criticism and opponents. As Trump faces possible impeachment in the House of Representatives, what – if any – influence might his combative approach towards legal battles have on the political proceedings?

Drawing on New York attorney James Zirin’s new book, Plaintiff in Chief, this event examines the relationship between President Trump’s litigation history and his approach to the presidency.

How has the American legal system facilitated Trump’s attitude towards litigation? How can his litigation toolkit be countered?

And what impact has the president’s approach to litigation had on the domestic and global reputation of the American legal system and the office of the president as accountable and credible institutions?

Summary

• Online political campaigning techniques are distorting our democratic political processes. These techniques include the creation of disinformation and divisive content; exploiting digital platforms’ algorithms, and using bots, cyborgs and fake accounts to distribute this content; maximizing influence through harnessing emotional responses such as anger and disgust; and micro-targeting on the basis of collated personal data and sophisticated psychological profiling techniques. Some state authorities distort political debate by restricting, filtering, shutting down or censoring online networks.
• Such techniques have outpaced regulatory initiatives and, save in egregious cases such as shutdown of networks, there is no international consensus on how they should be tackled. Digital platforms, driven by their commercial impetus to encourage users to spend as long as possible on them and to attract advertisers, may provide an environment conducive to manipulative techniques.
• International human rights law, with its careful calibrations designed to protect individuals from abuse of power by authority, provides a normative framework that should underpin responses to online disinformation and distortion of political debate. Contrary to popular view, it does not entail that there should be no control of the online environment; rather, controls should balance the interests at stake appropriately.
• The rights to freedom of thought and opinion are critical to delimiting the appropriate boundary between legitimate influence and illegitimate manipulation. When digital platforms exploit decision-making biases in prioritizing bad news and divisive, emotion-arousing information, they may be breaching these rights. States and digital platforms should consider structural changes to digital platforms to ensure that methods of online political discourse respect personal agency and prevent the use of sophisticated manipulative techniques.
• The right to privacy includes a right to choose not to divulge your personal information, and a right to opt out of trading in and profiling on the basis of your personal data. Current practices in collecting, trading and using extensive personal data to ‘micro-target’ voters without their knowledge are not consistent with this right. Significant changes are needed.
• Data protection laws should be implemented robustly, and should not legitimate extensive harvesting of personal data on the basis of either notional ‘consent’ or the data handler’s commercial interests. The right to privacy should be embedded in technological design (such as by allowing the user to access all information held on them at the click of a button); and political parties should be transparent in their collection and use of personal data, and in their targeting of messages. Arguably, the value of personal data should be shared with the individuals from whom it derives.
• The rules on the boundaries of permissible content online should be set by states, and should be consistent with the right to freedom of expression. Digital platforms have had to rapidly develop policies on retention or removal of content, but those policies do not necessarily reflect the right to freedom of expression, and platforms are currently not well placed to take account of the public interest. Platforms should be far more transparent in their content regulation policies and decision-making, and should develop frameworks enabling efficient, fair, consistent internal complaints and content monitoring processes. Expertise on international human rights law should be integral to their systems.
• The right to participate in public affairs and to vote includes the right to engage in public debate. States and digital platforms should ensure an environment in which all can participate in debate online and are not discouraged from standing for election, from participating or from voting by online threats or abuse.

2019 has seen a record number of people migrating from Central America’s Northern Triangle – an area that covers El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Estimates from June 2019 have placed the number of migrants at nearly double of what they were in 2018 with the increase in numbers stemming from a lack of economic opportunity combined with a rise in crime and insecurity in the region. The impacts of migration can already be felt within the affected states as the exodus has played a significant role in weakening labour markets and contributing to a ‘brain drain’ in the region. It has also played an increasingly active role in the upcoming US presidential election with some calling for more security on the border to curb immigration while others argue that a more effective strategy is needed to address the sources of migration. 

What are the core causes of Central American migration and how have the US, Central American and now also Mexican governments facilitated and deterred migration from the region? Can institutions be strengthened to alleviate the causes of migration? And what possible policy alternatives and solutions are there that could alleviate the pressures individuals and communities feel to migrate?   

Anita Isaacs, professor of Political Science at Haverford College and co-director of the Migration Encounters Project, and Juan Ricard Ortega, principal advisor for Central America at the Inter-American Development Bank, will join us for a discussion on the core drivers of migration within and across Central America.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

In the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election, then-candidate Donald Trump made a series of campaign promises concerning US foreign policy towards the Middle East. Since assuming office, President Trump has withdrawn the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, withdrawn troops from Syria, relocated the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and orchestrated the strike against ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Against a backdrop of Trump's inclination towards withdrawing from the region, countries across the Middle East are being rocked by protests, Turkey’s purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile has threatened to undermine cohesion within NATO and the much hoped for ceasefire in Libya between UN-backed government leader, Fayez al-Sarraj, and opposition leader, Khalifa Haftar, failed to materialize.

In light of the upcoming US elections in November 2020, the future of US national security policy promises to be a prominent issue for the next administration. In this vein, the US and Americas Programme at Chatham House plans a yearlong focus on the pivotal US 2020 elections.

At this event, Dr Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute will discuss the future of US foreign policy towards the Middle East. How have domestic and party politics in the US – and the unfolding presidential campaign – shaped recent policy decisions by the Trump administration? Should we expect policy objectives in the Middle East to remain consistent or shift under a second Trump term? And what direction could US foreign policy towards the region take under a Democratic administration?

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States cemented its role as the leader of a new global order, characterized by the creation of international institutions and treaties like the United Nations and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. More recently, however, the United States has appeared to take an inward turn, a trend which has been mirrored across the globe and has led to the international order being challenged more now than ever before.

As the Trump administration and US members of Congress attempt to address multiple challenges from a rising China and a disruptive Russia to a nuclear North Korea and shifting Middle East, Senator Chris Coons will offer his vision for restoring American leadership on the world stage.What is the role of Congress in setting and shaping US foreign policy?  How will the outcome of the consequential 2020 elections shape the future of America’s global role? Would a change in administration necessarily increase prospects of American reengagement, and if so, across which international spheres?

Trade and investment between the UK and Latin America is woefully underdeveloped. Latin America’s agricultural powerhouses Brazil and Argentina only accounted for a total of 1.6% of the UK’s agricultural market across eight sectors in 2018, all of those areas in which Argentina and Brazil have substantial comparative advantages. 

Conversely, UK exports to the large Latin American economies remain far below their potential.  To cite a few examples, in 2018 in the electrical equipment sector, the UK only exported $95.7 million of those products to Brazil, making the ninth largest economy in the world only the 42nd export market for those goods from the UK; Mexico only imported $91.4 million of UK-made electrical goods, placing it directly behind Brazil as UK’s market for those goods.

As we look to the future, any improvement to the relationship will depend on two factors: 1) how the UK leaves the EU and 2) whether Latin American agricultural producers can improve their environmental practices and can meet the production standards established by the EU and likely maintained by a potential post-Brexit Britain.

In the first meeting of the working group,  Chatham House convened a range of policymakers, practitioners and academics to explore this topic in depth, identify the key issues driving this trend, and begin to consider how improvements might best be made. Subsequent meetings will focus on specific sectors in commerce and investment.

We would like to thank BTG Pactual, Cairn Energy plc, Diageo, Equinor, Fresnillo Management Services, HSBC Holdings plc and Wintershall Dea for their generous support of the Latin America Initiative.

As coronavirus spreads across the globe, states grapple to find the ideal strategy for coping with the global pandemic. And, in China, Singapore, South Korea, the US, the UK, and Europe, divergent policies are a product of state capacity and legal authority, but they also reveal competing views about the optimal role of centralized state authority, federalism, and the private sector.

Although it is too soon to know the longer-term effects, the apparent capacity of centralized state authority in China, South Korea and Singapore to respond effectively and rapidly is making headlines. In the United States, the opposite has been true. 

America’s response is being shaped by its federal structure, a dynamic private sector, and a culture of civic engagement. In the three weeks since the first US case of coronavirus was confirmed, state leaders, public health institutions, corporations, universities and churches have been at the vanguard of the nation’s effort to mitigate its spread.

Images of safety workers in hazmat suits disinfecting offices of multinational corporations and university campuses populate American Facebook pages. The contrast to the White House effort to manage the message, downplay, then rapidly escalate its estimation of the crisis is stark.

Bewildering response

For European onlookers, the absence of a clear and focused response from the White House is bewildering. By the time President Donald Trump declared a national emergency, several state emergencies had already been called, universities had shifted to online learning, and churches had begun to close.

By contrast, in Italy, France, Spain and Germany, the state has led national efforts to shutter borders and schools. In the UK, schools are largely remaining open as Prime Minister Boris Johnson has declared a strategy defined by herd immunity, which hinges on exposing resilient populations to the virus.

But America has never shared Europe’s conviction that the state must lead. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the leading national public health institute and a US federal agency, has attempted to set a benchmark for assessing the crisis and advising the nation. But in this instance, its response has been slowed due to faults in the initial tests it attempted to rollout. The Federal Reserve has moved early to cut interest rates and cut them again even further this week.

But states were the real first movers in America’s response and have been using their authority to declare a state of emergency independent of the declaration of a national emergency. This has allowed states to mobilize critical resources, and to pressure cities into action. After several days delay and intense public pressure, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo forced New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to close the city’s schools.

Declarations of state emergencies by individual states have given corporations, universities and churches the freedom and legitimacy to move rapidly, and ahead of the federal government, to halt the spread in their communities.

Washington state was the first to declare a state of emergency. Amazon, one of the state’s leading employers, quickly announced a halt to all international travel and, alongside Microsoft, donated $1million to a rapid-response Seattle-based emergency funds. States have nudged their corporations to be first movers in the sector’s coronavirus response. But corporations have willingly taken up the challenge, often getting ahead of state as well as federal action.

Google moved rapidly to announce a move allowing employees to work from home after California declared a state of emergency. Facebook soon followed with an even more stringent policy, insisting employees work from home. Both companies have also met with World Health Organization (WHO) officials to talk about responses, and provided early funding for WHO’s Solidarity Response Fund set up in partnership with the UN Foundation and the Swiss Philanthropy Foundation.

America’s leading research universities, uniquely positioned with in-house public health and legal expertise, have also been driving preventive efforts. Just days after Washington declared a state of emergency, the University of Washington became the first to announce an end to classroom teaching and move courses online. A similar pattern followed at Stanford, Harvard, Princeton and Columbia - each also following the declaration of a state of emergency.

In addition, the decision by the Church of the Latter Day Saints to cancel its services worldwide followed Utah’s declaration of a state of emergency.

The gaping hole in the US response has been the national government. President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency came late, and his decision to ban travel from Europe but - at least initially - exclude the UK, created uncertainty and concern that the White House response is as much driven by politics as evidence.

This may soon change, as the House of Representatives has passed a COVID-19 response bill that the Senate will consider. These moves are vital to supporting state and private efforts to mobilize an effective response to a national and global crisis.

Need for public oversight

In the absence of greater coordination and leadership from the centre, the US response will pale in comparison to China’s dramatic moves to halt the spread. The chaos across America’s airports shows the need for public oversight. As New York State Governor Cuomo pleaded for federal government support to build new hospitals, he said: ‘I can’t do it. You can’t leave it to the states.'

When it comes to global pandemics, we may be discovering that authoritarian states can have a short-term advantage, but already Iran’s response demonstrates that this is not universally the case. Over time, the record across authoritarian states as they tackle the coronavirus will become more apparent, and it is likely to be mixed.

Open societies remain essential. Prevention requires innovation, creativity, open sharing of information, and the ability to inspire and mobilize international cooperation. The state is certainly necessary, but it is not sufficient alone.

This event is part of the Inaugural Virtual Roundtable Series on the US, Americas and the State of the World and will take place virtually only.  Participants should not come to Chatham House for these events

This event is part of the Chatham House Global Trade Policy Forum. We would like to take this opportunity to thank founding partner AIG and supporting partners Clifford Chance LLP, Diageo plc, and EY for their generous support of the forum.

As the US surgeon general warns Americans to brace for ‘our Pearl Harbor moment’, the US faces a week in which it may see the worst of the global pandemic. The absence of US leadership at the global level has enabled the Security Council’s inaction. And at the G7, President Trump actively obstructed efforts to agree a joint statement.

US efforts to increase its support of international aid to the tune of $274million are minimal, not least in light of a 50% reduction in its support for the World Health Organization (WHO) and radically diminished support for other global health programmes as well. International coordination is essential to mitigate unregulated competition for critical medical supplies, manage border closures, and guarantee international economic stability.

True, it won’t be possible to control the epidemic at home if the global effort to defeat the pandemic fails. But the absence of leadership from Washington at home is palpable. And what happens at home sets a natural limit on America’s internationalism.

Both solution and problem

In response to the coronavirus crisis, the US state is proving to be a solution - and a problem. The dramatic response to the economic crisis is evident with the $2.3trillion stimulus package signed into law by President Trump boldly supported by both Democrats and Republicans in the most significant piece of bipartisan legislation passed in decades.

America’s political economy is unrecognisable, moving left and looking increasingly more European each week as Congress and the executive branch agree a series of stimulus packages designed to protect citizens and businesses. Some elements of this legislation were more familiar to Americans, notably $200bn in corporate tax breaks.

But Congress also agreed unemployment insurance, and cheques - one in April, one in May – to be sent directly to those Americans most directly hit by the economic impact of COVID-19. In effect, this is adopting a temporary universal basic income.

The stimulus plan also dedicated $367bn to keep small businesses afloat for as long as the economy is shuttered. Already the government is negotiating a fourth stimulus package, but the paradox is that without rigorous steps to halt the health crisis, no level of state intervention designed to solve the economic response will be sufficient.

The scale of the state’s economic intervention is unprecedented, but it stands in stark contrast to Washington’s failure to coordinate a national response to America’s health crisis. An unregulated market for personal protective equipment and ventilators is driving up competition between cities, states, and even the federal government.

In some cases, cities and states are reaching out directly beyond national borders to international organisations, foreign firms and even America’s geopolitical competitors as they search for suppliers. In late March, the city of New York secured a commitment from the United Nations to donate 250,000 protective face masks.

Now Governor Cuomo has announced New York has secured a shipment of 140 ventilators from the state of Oregon, and 1,000 ventilators from China. The Patriots even sent their team plane to China to pick up medical supplies for the state of Massachusetts. And following a phone call between President Putin and President Trump, Russia sent a plane with masks and medical equipment to JFK airport in New York.

Networks of Chinese-Americans in the United States are rapidly mobilising their networks to access supplies and send them to doctors and nurses in need. And innovative and decisive action by governors, corporates, universities and mayors drove America’s early response to coronavirus.

This was critical to slowing the spread of COVID-19 by implementing policies that rapidly drove social distancing. But the limits of decentralized and uncoordinated action are now coming into sharp focus. President Trump has so far refused to require stay-at-home orders across all states, leaving this authority to individual governors. Unregulated competition has driven up prices with the consequence that critical supplies are going to the highest bidder, not those most in need.

Governor Cuomo’s call for a nationwide buying consortium has so far gone unheeded and, although the Federal Emergency Management Agency has attempted to deliver supplies to states most in need, the Strategic National Stockpile is depleting fast. Without critical action, the federal government risks hindering the ability of cities and states to get the supplies they need.

But President Trump is reluctant to fully deploy his powers under the Defense Production Act (DPA). In March, he did invoke the DPA to require certain domestic manufacturers to produce ventilators. But calls for it to be used to require manufacturers to produce PPE (personal protective equipment), control costs, and manage allocations has so far gone unheeded by a president generally opposed to state interventions for managing the economy.

It is true that federalism and a deep belief in competition are critical to the fabric of US history and politics, and innovations made possible by market values of entrepreneurism and competition cannot be underestimated. In the search for a vaccine, this could still prove to be key.

But with current estimates that more Americans will die from coronavirus than were killed in the Korean and Vietnam wars combined, it is clear now is the time to reimagine and reinvent the role of the American state.

In the absence of a coordinated effort driven by the White House, governors are working together to identify the areas of greatest need. Whether this will lead to a recasting of the American state and greater demand for a deeper and more permanent social safety net is a key question in the months ahead.

In the short-term the need for coordinated state action at the national level is self-evident. US leadership globally, to manage the health crisis and its economic impacts, is also vital. But this is unlikely to be forthcoming until America gets its own house in order.

The COVID-19 epidemic has hit every aspect of American life. The upcoming November general elections will not be immune to the virus’ impact and may be scheduled to happen while the pandemic remains active, or has returned.

There is a danger the epidemic forces change to the way voting takes place this fall, amplifying risks around election security and voter suppression that ultimately undermine the integrity of the elections.

This is further highlighted by the US Supreme Court’s last-minute ruling along ideological lines to restrict an extension on the absentee voting period in the Wisconsin Democratic presidential primary despite the level of infections in the state, forcing voters into a trade-off between their health and their right to vote. The US could be thrown into a political crisis in addition to the health and economic crises it already faces.

Bipartisan sentiment

While France, Chile and Bolivia have already postponed elections in the wake of COVID-19, there is a bipartisan sentiment that the US elections should be held as scheduled on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. This is enshrined not only in America’s sense of itself – having weathered elections during a civil war, a world war and heightened terrorist alert before – but also in its federal law since 1845.

Despite increasing appetite for federal elections to go ahead in November, there are serious vulnerabilities, which are already becoming visible as connections are drawn between mail-in voting and voter fraud, greater voter access and disadvantages for the Republican party, and city polling closures and Democratic voter suppression.

Concerns around voting access have gained the most attention. If voting in-person is untenable or risky (especially for vulnerable health populations), voters must have alternative means to cast ballots.

During negotiations for the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives proposed $4 billion in state election grants and a nationally-mandated period for early voting and no-excuse absentee voting.

But the final CARES Act sidestepped the access question and stripped funding to $400 million for election security grants to ‘prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, domestically or internationally, for the 2020 Federal election cycle’. Without knowing exactly what is in store from a cyber-threat perspective, the actual cost for basic election security upgrades is estimated to be $2.1billion. And that is a pre-COVID-19 calculation.

With social-distanced voters likely to be getting more election information than ever from social media, information security is critical to prevent influence from untrustworthy sources. And opportunities for cyber intrusions are likely to increase as states transition to greater virtual registration, plus absentee and mail-in balloting.

This will open new doors on well-documented, existing voter suppression efforts. With the Supreme Court clawing back the Voting Rights Act in 2013 - allowing certain states to make changes to election and voting laws without federal pre-clearance - heightened election security requirements, such as exact match campaigns and voter purges, have been used to justify voter suppression.

As more vote remotely in the remaining primaries (many now rescheduled for 2 June) and the November general elections, the added burden on states around verification will only increase temptation to set aside ‘non-compliant’ ballots. Especially as some in the Republican Party, including Donald Trump, have advocated a contested view that higher turnout favours the Democratic Party.

A fundamental principle of US democracy is that losers of elections respect the result, but history shows that election results have been contested. In 2000, it took weeks for a result to be confirmed in the presidential election. More recently, in the 2018 race for governor in Georgia, allegations of voter suppression raised questions about the validity of the eventual result.

Without proper access, security, and verification the electoral process – whenever it takes place – will become vulnerable to questions of integrity. The federal response to the initial spread of COVID-19 saw costly delays which pushed the US into a public health crisis and economic contraction.

Any narrative thread of election illegitimacy with November’s elections will further pull apart the fabric of a country already frayed by coronavirus. Federal and state authorities must start planning now for how the US will hold elections in the midst - or immediate aftermath - of COVID-19.

Differing approaches across the hemisphere have had different impacts on presidential popularity and, at least in one case, on democratic institutions and human rights. Yet, even within that diversity, South America’s Southern Cone countries (Argentina, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) have shown a sign of solidarity: protecting and facilitating trade flows, sponsoring cross-border research and ensuring citizens’ return to their home countries.    

The response from populist leaders

On the extreme have been the responses of presidents of Brazil, Nicaragua and Mexico, all of whom have ignored the science of the virus and of experts and refused to implement isolation policies.  President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil fired his health minister, Luis Henrique Mandetta on 16 April for contradicting him and earlier had claimed that the pandemic was a hoax or little more than a ‘measly cold.' 

Meanwhile, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega has resisted closing businesses and schools.  After a mysterious 34-day absence, Ortega appeared on television on 15 April reinforcing his refusal to close businesses saying that Nicaraguans must work or they will die and claiming that the virus was ‘imported.’ 

Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has also resisted the call for strict stay-at-home policies, though with his Deputy Health Minister, Hugo López-Gatell, has closed schools – recently extending the closure to the 1st of June and urging non-essential businesses to close – but focusing primarily on social distancing. 

In contrast to his deputy health minister and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard – who had declared the situation a health emergency on 30th March, later than many neighbouring countries – AMLO has largely attempted to avoid discussion of the pandemic, claiming that in his case he has lucky charms that prevent him from contracting the virus. 

And both Bolsonaro and AMLO have participated in large public rallies, doing all the things that politicians love, shaking hands and hugging babies, and in the case of the former even wiping his nose before embracing an elderly woman.

The Nicaraguan, Brazilian and Mexican presidents make an odd grouping since one (Bosonaro) is considered of the extreme populist right and the others (Ortega and AMLO) of the populist left. What unites them is good old-fashioned populism, a belief in a leader who represents the amorphous popular will and should be unfettered by checks and balances on his power, including something like… science.  

An eclectic group

At the other extreme have been the quick responses by governments in Peru, Argentina, Chile, El Salvador and Colombia which put quarantine measures in place in mid-March. In these cases, governments have even banned outdoor activities and in the case of Peru and Colombia (in the large cities) have imposed alternating days for when women and men can leave the house so as to better control outside movement.  

This too, though, is an eclectic group. It includes a Peronist president Alberto Fernández in Argentina, conservative presidents Sebastian Piñera in Chile and Ivan Duque in Colombia, interim president and relative political neophyte Martin Vizcarra in Peru and outsider president Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. 

El Salvador’s strict quarantine measures have led to rising concerns that Bukele is using the crisis to consolidate personal power, using the national police and the armed forces to enforce the quarantine and ignoring three rulings by the Supreme Court urging the president to end the abuses. In Argentina, Peronist Fernández has shown a surprising commitment to containment even as it hurts his party’s working-class base, not something typically expected of the populist Peronist Party.   

In all of these cases, the quick, strong responses by the presidents shored up their popularity. Peru’s Vizcarra saw his popularity shoot up 35 points in a week to 82 per cent according to surveys taken in March. In late March 2020, Fernández in Argentina saw his approval ratings swell to 79.2 per cent with 94.7 percent of citizens approving of the government’s strict shelter-at-home policies.   Even presidents Piñera and Duque who had struggled with low approval ratings throughout 2019 and saw those numbers sink even lower after the social protests that ended the year have seen their numbers rise.  

According to an 20th April poll, Piñera’s popular approval rating swelled from 13 percent in March 18th at the start of the crisis to 25 per cent by 20th April; while hardly a sweeping popular mandate, even that level was unthinkable only a few months ago when administration was battered by social protests. 

In Colombia, after a series of political missteps and the popular protests, Duque’s popular approval rating had slumped to 26 per cent; by April 2nd, 62 percent of Colombians supported the once-beleaguered president.   (No recent surveys were available for Bukele in El Salvador.)

In contrast, Bolsonaro’s in Brazil has only nudged up.  Before the crisis hit, the president’s popularity had been in steady decline from a high of 49 per cent in January 2019 to 30 per cent by early December 2019. But by the first week in April, in the midst of a crisis in which other presidents saw their approval ratings increase by double digits, after his public disagreements with the health minister, Bolsonaro’s had sunk to 33 per cent while the soon-to-be-fired Mandetta’s stood at 76 per cent.  

AMLO in Mexico has fared no better. The populist leftist scored a high 86 per cent approval rating in February 1, 2019. By March 28, 2020 with concerns over his weak and flippant COVID-19 response and a severe contraction in economic growth, AMLO’s approval rating had sunk 26 points to 60 per cent and his disapproval stood at 37 per cent.    

In the midst of disharmony, coordination

Despite these differences, many countries in the region have shown the solidarity they often speak of but rarely follow in policy or practice. Peru, Chile and other countries have collaborated in repatriating citizens back to their home countries in the midst of the crisis.  

Even the countries of the Southern Cone common market, MERCOSUR, have pulled together on a number of fronts.  The trade bloc had effectively been ruled a dead-man-walking after its failed efforts to integrate Venezuela into the bloc, lowering its standards to let in the petroleum dependent semi-authoritarian government of then President Hugo Chávez. 

Even on the basics of internal cooperation, the block was struggling, unable to coordinate monetary policies and non-tariff trade barriers between the original founding member states, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

The 35-year-old customs union seemed to get a breath a new life with the announcement that it had concluded 20-year-long negotiations with the EU for a free trade deal. Ratification of that deal, however, ran aground on the political differences between the recently elected governments of Bolsonaro in Brazil and the Peronist Fernández in Argentina. 

Bolsonaro refused to attend the Fernández December 2019 inauguration, in protest of the newly elected president’s leftist leanings.  And this was well before their sharply divergent reactions to the COVID-19 virus. 

How surprising then that Mercosur has served as an effective coordination mechanism for these different and once opposed governments. The trade body is collaborating among member states to ensure the repatriation of citizens and has agreed to coordinate to ensure that trade flows, especially of medical supplies, are not interrupted by shutdown measures. 

Mercosur has even gone one step further than several other bodies have failed to take.  In early April the bloc’s governing body, based in Montevideo, Uruguay created a $16 million (12 million pound) fund to augment country research and assist in the purchase of supplies needed to combat the virus.  

Now if Brazil, Argentina and the others could only coordinate their domestic coronavirus responses and economic policy. In late March Fernández announced he was pulling Argentina out of a possible Mercosur-EU trade deal.

The US government recently announced restrictions on immigration, stating the new measures were necessary due to COVID-19 and the effect the pandemic has had on the US economy. But what is the role of immigrants in the essential official and unofficial services in the COVID-19 stay-at-home era? How is COVID-19 affecting immigration from Central America and Mexico? 

Separately, there have also been instances of outbreaks among detainees in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement centers and claims that immigrants who are returning to Guatemala are spreading the virus. How have US immigration policies affected infection rates in Central America and Mexico and among its citizens?

Arturo Sarukhan, Mexican Ambassador to the US from 2007 - 13, and Anita Isaacs, Benjamin R. Collins Professor of Social Sciences, Haverford College, will join us to discuss the impact COVID-19 is having on migrants.

Chatham House would like to thank BTG Pactual, Cairn Energy plc, Diageo plc, Equinor, Fresnillo Management Services, HSBC Holdings plc and Wintershall Dea for their generous support of the Latin America Initiative.

This event is scheduled to take place from 15:00 – 16:00 BST.

This event is part of the US and Americas Programme Inaugural Virtual Roundtable Series on the US and the State of the World and will take place virtually only.

This event will take place from 14:00 – 15:00 BST.

Belarus’s parliamentary elections, held on 17 November, were predictably non-transparent, with numerous violations. The regime of Alexander Lukasheka allowed no opposition candidates as members of parliament – in contrast to the previous parliament, in which there were two opposition MPs. While this might seem to be a return to ‘business as usual’, three key takeaways from the elections highlight a shifting political and social landscape.

1. Lukashenka is appeasing his ruling cadre by promising to increase their role in the political system.

With several influential officials becoming new MPs, it is more likely that parliament will be more involved in any forthcoming discussion of a new constitution. Lukashenka has been promising constitutional reform for several years; he has said publicly that it will lead to an increased significance of government agencies as well as parliament. The aim of this is to keep them more engaged and on Lukashenka’s side.

In terms of the composition of the new parliament itself, there are some key differences with previous years. It is no longer a comfortable place for officials to while away their pre-retirement: many MPs are now in their fifties or younger, and have plans for careers beyond parliament.

It also looks as if small steps are being taken towards the emergence of a party system in Belarus. The leader of Belaya Rus, a pro-government association of Belarusian officials, got a seat in parliament for the first time, increasing the likelihood of it becoming a political party. The number of MPs from different parties has increased to 21 (out of 110 in total). Although these still all broadly support Lukashenka, they can differ from the president in policy positions. For example, the Labour and Justice Party, with 6 seats in parliament, supported the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Change, of course, may not necessarily be in a pro-Western direction.

Moreover, the newly elected members of parliament look more like real politicians. They go to debates, speak to independent journalists and have their own social media channels. Some have even felt able to criticize the actions of the authorities.

Similar changes have been taking place in other institutions in Belarus. The government is now more competent than it has ever been. The National Bank has managed to carry out macroeconomic stabilization on one of the most unstable currencies in Europe, while the ministries responsible for the economic development have implemented certain small-scale reforms. The Minister of the Interior has even acknowledged mistakes made by his department (under his predecessor), and undertaken to make improvements.

This has resulted in a near-comical situation, whereby the Belarusian non-state media outlets have an increasingly positive view of some state officials, such as Prime Minister Siarhei Rumas, while the state media has been scaling back its coverage of him to ensure he does not become too popular.

2. Belarus has less need for the West and is reluctant to make even small concessions.

Since the slight warming of Belarusian relations with the West in 2014, Lukashenka has been having more meetings with prominent Western officials. Western institutions began trying to cooperate more closely with Belarus, but soon saw that it was not very interested. In 2018, the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development allocated €360 million to Belarus. However, it is now considering a reduction, as reforms in Belarus have not, in its view, gone far enough. The European Union has also committed considerable time and money to regional authorities, but this has not brought any significant changes to Belarusian local government.

The absence of opposition candidates also demonstrates that the Belarusian authorities are prepared for a new deterioration of relations with the West. The authorities could certainly have afforded some opposition in parliament, especially since they themselves choose whom to appoint. Given that they did not, they either do not consider worsened relations a problem or are confident that the West will continue to cooperate with Belarus in order to limit Russian power, regardless of its violations of the rule of law.

3. There is growing popular dissatisfaction with the current regime, but the state has no good plan for how to deal with it.

Parliamentary election campaigns in Belarus are traditionally low-key, but this year they were particularly muted. The authorities tried to ensure that people knew as little about the election as possible. Campaign posters appeared on the streets just two weeks before polling day. It seems the authorities were reluctant to politicize society, as further resentment at autocratic rule is brewing.

Many Belarusians who previously supported Lukashenka now have a very critical opinion of him. Take political blogging: the most popular political blogger in Belarus is a 22-year-old man who goes by the name of NEXTA. He produces low-quality videos which are highly critical of the authorities. A film by him about Lukashenka, released a month ago, has already received 1.8 million views, even though there are only 9.5 million people in Belarus.

The authorities are not in a concessionary mood. The presidential elections in 2020 will also likely be a sham. If the authorities’ grip over the country is weakened, they will fear an outbreak of anger, resulting in widespread protests which the regime might once again have to meet with violence.

In 2012, Kenya joined the swathe of East African countries with recent significant oil and gas discoveries. Long-established as a regional leader in terms of economic growth, foreign investment and technological innovation, Kenya's leaders are now assessing how to establish an effective policy framework to manage oil revenues while at the same time managing the expectations of its citizens.  

At this event, the panel will discuss how transparency and accountability can be strengthened as Kenya moves to become an oil-producing nation. This event will mark the UK launch of a report by the Kenyan Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas, entitled Setting the Agenda for the Development of Kenya's Oil and Gas Resources.

LIVE STREAM: This event will be live streamed. The live stream will be made available at 12:00 BST on Wednesday 8 October 2014.

THIS EVENT IS NOW FULL AND REGISTRATION IS CLOSED.

This paper is part of a broader Chatham House study which assesses the global response to illegal logging and the related trade. 

This assessment of the extent of illegal logging in Cameroon and the response to this issue suggests that progress has stalled since 2010. The reform of the legislative framework for the forest sector has yet to be completed; and while there have been improvements in the availability of forestry information, there remain many gaps. Furthermore, the principle of transparency has yet to be broadly accepted within the government. Enforcement is weak and information management systems are deemed inadequate. Most important, corruption remains widespread and the political will needed to drive change is felt to be lacking.

While there is evidence of progress in the private sector – the area of forests with legality verification and certification has increased – illegal activities are rife throughout the forest sector. Half of all timber production is estimated to come from the informal artisanal sector – mainly supplying the domestic market. However, illegal activities are also common in supply chains for export: timber originating from ‘small permits’ and sales of standing volume permits is thought to be particularly problematic. This is of particular concern, as the supply of timber from such permits is expected to increase owing to the growing pressure on forests from other sectors.

Since 2000 trade has shifted away from sensitive markets: the EU market’s significance as a destination for Cameroon’s exports of timber-sector products has decreased, while China’s significance has increased enormously. This has important implications for strategies on how best to tackle illegal logging in Cameroon.

In order to make further progress, markets for legal timber need to continue to be developed in key consumer countries – which, in the case of Cameroon, are now both the EU and China. Within Cameroon, further analysis of the political economy of the forest sector is required. Attempts to tackle corruption should be reinforced, and this would be facilitated by examining the experience of anti-corruption efforts elsewhere in the world. Further improvements to transparency are needed; the establishment of a new independent observer will be important in achieving this goal.

The next stages of legal reform will require broad consultation among stakeholders, in particular small-scale producers as well as local communities and indigenous peoples. Efforts to promote a legal domestic market should be intensified, including more extensive training and outreach for small-scale producers and processors. Finally, to improve enforcement efforts, continued investment in the training of enforcement agents and the provision of adequate resources are required.

To identify and promote collaborative opportunities for an inclusive and sustainable circular economy transition at the international level, a clearer understanding and discussions of the potential winners and losers of such a transition is needed. In short, a ‘win-win-win’ vision for the environment, people and the economy, needs to be built and credible pathways to achieving this vision.

This research workshop, organized by Chatham House and UNIDO, will build on previous and ongoing research by Chatham House, and others, to drive forward an inclusive circular economy agenda and promote a just transition from linear to circular economic models. Chatham House, in collaboration with partners, aims to provide a strong evidence base of the opportunities and trade-offs in this transition from linear to circular models by robustly analysing the political economies in key regions in the developing world and engaging with leading stakeholders from governments, international organizations, civil society and the business community.

Latin America is an important geographical region for the circular economy especially in view of the circular bioeconomy and the agenda around inclusiveness. Several countries are beginning to embrace the circular economy concept and related policies. This workshop will bring together circular economy leaders from policy, business and civil society across Latin American countries to identify and discuss challenges, large-scale positive sum opportunities, investment needs, existing alliances and the potential to scale up circular economy practices. The second day of the workshop includes site visits to various circular economy projects in Uruguay.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only. 

Historically, Iraq lay claim to one of the most abundant water supplies in the Middle East. But the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers has reduced by up to 40% since the 1970s, due in part to the actions of neighbouring countries, in particular Turkey, upstream.

Rising temperatures and reduced rainfall due to climate change are also negatively impacting Iraq’s water reserves. Evaporation from dams and reservoirs is estimated to lose the country up to 8 billion cubic metres of water every year.

A threat to peace and stability

Shortages have dried up previously fertile land, increasing poverty in agricultural areas. Shortages have also served to fuel conflict: communities faced with successive droughts and government inertia proved to be easy targets for ISIS recruiters, who lured farmers into joining them by offering money and food to feed their families. Economic hardship for those whose livelihoods relied upon river water has also driven rural to urban migration, putting significant strain on already over-populated towns and cities, exacerbating housing, job and electricity shortages, and widening the gap between haves and have-nots.

But scarcity isn’t the most crucial element of Iraq’s water crisis – contamination is. Decades of local government mismanagement, corrupt practices and a lack of regulation of dumping (it is estimated up to 70% of Iraq’s industrial waste is dumped directly into water) has left approximately three in every five citizens without a reliable source of potable water.

In 2018, 118,000 residents of Basra province were hospitalised with symptoms brought on by drinking contaminated water, which not only put a spotlight on the inadequacies of a crumbling healthcare system but sparked mass protests and a subsequent violent crackdown.

The water crisis is also undermining the stability of the country’s federal governance model, by occasionally sparking disputes between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government, as well as between governorates in the south.

The crisis is both a symptom and a cause of poor governance. Iraq is stuck in a cycle whereby government inaction causes shortages and contamination, which result in economic losses, reduced food supply, increased prices and widespread poor health. This in turn leads to increasing levels of poverty, higher demand on services and civil unrest, increasing the pressure on a weak, dysfunctional system of government.

What can be done?

The first priority should be modernising existing water-management infrastructure - a relic of a time when the problem was an excess rather than a shortage of water (the last time Iraq’s flood defences were required was 1968). Bureaucratic hurdles, widespread corruption and an endless cycle of other crises taking precedent prevent good initiatives from being implemented or scaled up.

Diversifying energy sources to improve provision is crucial. Baghdad has a sewage treatment plant that originally ran on its own electricity source, but this capacity was destroyed in 1991 and was never replaced. The city continues to suffer from dangerous levels of water pollution because the electricity supply from the grid is insufficient to power the plant. Solar energy has great potential in sun-drenched Iraq to bridge the gaping hole in energy provision, but successive governments have chosen to focus on fossil fuels rather than promoting investment to grow the renewables sector.

Heightened tension with upstream Turkey could turn water into another cause of regional conflict. But, if approached differently, collaboration between Iraq and its neighbour could foster regional harmony.

Turkey’s elevated geography and cooler climate mean its water reserves suffer 75% less evaporation than Iraq’s. Given that Turkey’s top energy priority is the diversification of its supply of imported hydrocarbons, a win-win deal could see Turkey exchange access to its water-management infrastructure for delivery of reduced cost energy supplies from Iraq.

German-French cooperation on coal and steel in the 1950s and the evolution of economic integration that followed might provide a model for how bilateral cooperation over one issue could result in cooperation with other regional players (in this case Iran and Syria) on a range of other issues. This kind of model would need to consider the future of energy, whereby oil and gas would be replaced by solar-power exports.

These solutions have been open to policymakers for years and yet they have taken little tangible action. While there are leaders and bureaucrats with the will to act, effective action is invariably blocked by a complex and opaque political system replete with vested interests in maintaining power and wealth via a weak state and limited services from central government.

Breaking the cycle

To break this cycle, Iraq needs a group of professional and able actors outside of government to work with willing elements of the state bureaucracy as a taskforce to pressure for action and accountability. Publishing the recommendations from a hitherto withheld report produced in the aftermath of Basra’s 2018 heath crisis would be a great start.

In time, this taskforce could champion the prioritisation of water on the national agenda, the implementation of infrastructure upgrades, and hold more productive conversations with neighbour states.

With such a high degree of state fragmentation and dysfunction in Iraq, looking to the central government to provide leadership will not yield results. Engagement with a coalition of non-state actors can begin to address the water crisis and also open a dialogue around new models of governance for other critical issues. This might even be a starting point for rewriting the tattered social contract in Iraq.

This piece is based on insights and discussion at a roundtable event, Conflict and the Water Crisis in Iraq, held at Chatham House on March 9 as part of the Iraq Initiative.