Recommended Weekend Reads
November 10 - 12, 2023
Here are our recommended reads from reports and articles we read in the last week. We hope you find these useful and that you have a relaxing weekend. And let us know if you or someone you know wants to be added to our distribution list.
Russia
“Be Careful What You Wish For Putin’s Replacement Might Not Be Better” Stimson Center
Crumbling autocratic regimes usually spawn authoritarian successors, not a turn towards liberal democracy. This has been the case for other dictators who were overthrown, such as Egypt’s Mubarak, now under military rule, or Venezuela’s Chavez, who was replaced by Maduro. With popular approval still high, Putin will most likely be re-elected next year and continue to rule Russia for the foreseeable future. Only death, a debilitating disease, or a humiliating rout on the battlefield would cause his ouster. It is a risk to assume Putin’s successor would be more likely to end the war in Ukraine or more likely to espouse liberal values.
“Putin’s Cannon Fodder” Foreign Affairs Interview
In this audio interview, Dara Massicot, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, explains that in Ukraine, where war with Russia grinds on, the dominant question has become: Can one side outlast the other? This is especially true as both sides face another grueling winter. One thing Russia has in ample supply is men. But how it treats its soldiers is having an effect on the battlefield.
The Middle East
“Five Questions About Gaza” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle Eastern Center
Middle Eastern scholar Nathan Brown looks at the ongoing Gaza military operation and suggests the question is not “tell me how this end” but “tell me how this will evolve.” And that the answers are still a bit hazy. He argues many of the uncertainties are known: What will Israel actually accomplish? How many more people will die? How serious are the growing signs of U.S.-Israel tension? But to know more about likely trajectories, he tries to answer five questions that may only be answered by events.
“Israel Could Lose” Center for Strategic and International Studies
Most discussions about the war in Gaza assume that, in the end, Israel will win. The stakes are so high for Israel, and Israel’s edge over Hamas is so large that any outcome other than victory is unthinkable. The only questions are in what timeframe and at what cost. And yet it is quite possible that the war in Gaza will be the first war in Israel’s history that the army has fought and lost. That loss would be catastrophic for Israel and deeply damaging to the United States. Precisely because of that, it must be considered.
China
“Can China Catch Up with Greece?” New York Federal Reserve Bank’s Liberty Street Economics Blog
China’s leader Xi Jinping recently laid out the goal of reaching the per capita income of “a mid-level developed country by 2035.” Is this goal likely to be achieved? Not in our view. Continued rapid growth faces mounting headwinds from population aging and from diminishing returns to China’s investment-centered growth model. Additional impediments to growth appear to be building, including a turn toward increased state management of the economy, the crystallization of legacy credit issues in real estate and other sectors, and limits on access to key foreign technologies. Even given generous assumptions concerning future growth fundamentals, China appears likely to close only a fraction of the gap with high-income countries in the years ahead.
Economics and Business
“Report to Congress: Macroeconomic and Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States” U.S. Department of Treasury
The Treasury Department presents an in-depth study of international economic and exchange rate policy over the last four quarters through June 2023.
“The proliferation of corporate war-crimes cases” International Institute for Strategic Studies
The ongoing criminal trial of former energy executives in Sweden is groundbreaking and marks the first prosecution of corporate leaders for complicity in war crimes since the Nuremberg trials. There is a growing trend in European national courts to attempt to hold corporate leaders responsible for alleged human-rights violations abroad, but in doing so, prosecutors must navigate legal complexities and challenges.
“If markets are right about long real rates, public debt ratios will increase for some time. We must make sure that they do not explode” Peterson Institute for International Economics
Peterson’s Senior Researcher Olivier Blanchard looks at debt ratios globally – and also specifically at the US – and outlines the risk of those ratios exploding upward.
List of the Week
Number of China’s Wealthy Falls Amid Property Crisis
The number of Chinese individuals worth more than 5 billion yuan ($690 million) has fallen 15% from its peak in 2021, reflecting the property crisis-plagued economic slowdown and competitive e-commerce landscape. The Shanghai-based Hurun Research Institute recently released a list of China's wealthiest individuals. All told the total wealth of the 1,241 individuals on the list dropped by 4% to $3.2 trillion compared to last year, with some 898 individuals seeing their worth decline or remain unchanged. Who are China’s wealthiest? Here is the top ten:
