Mohammed bin Salman has begun his two-week visit to the United States. The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is looking for American investments to help diversify the Saudi economy, but the main goal of the visit is to apparently improve Saudi Arabia’s image in the West. Angela Merkerl’s fourth and last term as German Chancellor began last week, and the country needs to start preparing for a post-Merkel era. Meanwhile, Philippines’ President Duterte has suddenly denounced the International Criminal Court’s announcement to look into crimes committed in the country.
MBS in the US
Saudi Arabia is making lots of changes which should be noticed, writes the country’s ambassador to the United States, Khalid bin Salman, in the Washington Post. These new changes are because of the “young and dynamic” crown prince, the “chief reform architect.”
“We are expanding women’s rights, improving services for Muslim pilgrims and investing in megaprojects across various industries. We are opening our country to tourism, creating a domestic entertainment industry, and promoting Saudi heritage and culture. And we are also restructuring our health-care and education systems. These are but a few of the reforms that have already been launched,” bin Salman writes.
“The United States will have a chance to acquaint itself with these reforms during Mohammed’s first official visit here as the crown prince beginning Tuesday. His visit is intended to reinforce Saudi Arabia’s already strong partnership with the United States, building on the 2017 Riyadh summit, which elevated our countries’ relationship. But, the crown prince is not just here to talk politics; he is also here to talk business, specifically the bilateral investment opportunities made possible by his diversification strategy. The crown prince’s multi-city tour will lay the ground work for Salman’s visit to the United States later this year.”
“We now see new chances for revitalizing the long-standing Saudi-U.S. alliance. The crown prince will highlight this during his trip — especially in the area of business and investment opportunities — and expand the efforts that Salman and President Trump initiated last year in Riyadh. The relationship today is stronger, deeper, and more multidimensional than ever,” the Ambassador writes.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is reforming, and our dynamism will take the Saudi-U.S. relationship to new heights. Both sides should seize the moment. We must take the opportunity to recommit ourselves to a cemented alliance with a proud legacy, but one that also looks to the future, sparks prosperity, unlocks the full potential of all Saudis and helps to stabilize a crucial region and the world.”
Duterte’s change of heart
“When the International Criminal Court first said it was looking into widespread murders under President Rodrigo Duterte’s antidrug campaign in the Philippines, he said he welcomed a chance to take the stand. On Wednesday the swaggering president changed his tune, denouncing what he called “baseless, unprecedented and outrageous attacks on my person” and saying he will pull the Philippines out of the I.C.C.,” the New York Times editorialises.
However, it takes a year for the country to withdraw from the ICC, which allows for a preliminary investigation into the killings to begin. The report submitted by a Filipino lawyer contains evidence that Duterte is responsible for over 8,000 deaths, since he began his war on drugs in 1988.
“There is no question that drugs are a blight in the Philippines, and Mr. Duterte remains enormously popular. Among his fans is President Trump, who has praised Mr. Duterte for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem” and advocated the death penalty for drug dealers.”
“But suspending democratic protections leads to greater abuses. What began as a war on drugs has expanded to include Mr. Duterte’s critics, including the media and international human rights organizations.”
“The International Criminal Court is supposed to step in if national courts don’t bring to justice perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide,” the New York Times writes. “The Philippine president’s belated attempt to elude the court should only spur it to greater efforts.”
A post-Merkel Germany
“Even as a new four-year term gets underway, the outlines of the post-Merkel era have already come into view,” writes Paul Hockenos in Foreign Policy. “Germany’s cabinet has been stocked with new female faces, including atop both Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), which means women are likely to lead the country for years to come. And nobody is better situated to compete to replace Merkel as chancellor four years from now than the SPD’s freshly installed leader, Andrea Nahles, and the CDU’s new general secretary, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.”
“The two politicians — Nahles, 47, and Kramp-Karrenbauer, 55 — have been tasked by their respective parties to do what their male predecessors couldn’t: namely, stop the disintegration of Germany’s big-tent postwar establishment.”
“Both Nahles and Kramp-Karrenbauer clearly believe that they are equal to the generational task of pulling their parties out of their death spirals,” Hockenos writes. But that’s where their similarities stop.
The German media has dubbed Nahles “the boxer”, and Germans believe in her working-class authenticity. “Nahles is a social democrat through and through, a true believer in social justice and respect for the working classes,” writes Hockenos. “In return, the SPD elected Nahles to the highest post in the historic party of August Bebel and Willy Brandt: the first chairwoman ever in the party’s 154-year history.”
“Nothing could be further from Nahles’s combustible temperament than the composed equanimity of Kramp-Karrenbauer, known in the CDU simply by her initials, AKK.”
“While it had long been speculated that Merkel favored Kramp-Karrenbauer as her successor, her preference became public in February when the chancellor proposed her for CDU general secretary, a post second only to the party’s chairperson, currently Merkel herself.”
“In fact, both women — Kramp-Karrenbauer and Nahles — have gargantuan tasks in front of them. Neither in Germany nor elsewhere in Europe have men or women, leftists or conservatives, been able to halt the fragmentation of the headline postwar parties.”
“Their ability to do this without sabotaging the grand coalition will determine whether they go on to lead their parties in the 2021 vote. Should they fail, their parties won’t necessarily fall back into the hands of the alpha males. Feminist or not, Merkel’s precedent has paved the way for an entire generation of female politicians in Germany.”