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The Red Folder

Archived from October 28, 2024.

Key stories for the week, brought to you by Lindsey Zhao and the Red Folder team.

Reading for the sake of reading sucks. Telling yourself to read to win a round is nice but ineffective. This condensed news brief helps you understand current domestic and international issues, analyze the news, and gives you opportunities to read more.

Publishing since January 2024.

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International Stories

4 key international stories for the week:

1) Latin America’s Drug Crisis Anthony Babu

Latin America has fought through crime for decades upon decades. Most recently, the rise of cartel and gang operations in the continent has spewed migration, violence, and trafficking across the continent.

Latin America’s drug cartel expansion has created a crisis at the US Southern Border, straining American relations with the remainder of the American continent. This migration surge has also increased humanitarian suffering across the region, most notably in the Darien Gap, where migrants endure through violence committed by gangs, police, and other migrants themselves. In a Latin American hunger games, many rulers have had different approaches in how to address the crisis.

El Salvadorian ruler Nayib Bukele has taken an innovative approach: declaring a state of emergency, expanding the power of the state, and sacrificing democratic rights to address gang violence.

When it comes to addressing gang violence, Bukele’s approach has been highly successful. It has reduced homicides by 56.8% and won the support of his people, with Bukele’s approval rating sitting at a healthy 91.3%.

However, Bukele’s approach has not meant sunshine and roses for El Salvador. Indeed, it has come with numerous consequences. First, Bukele has severely limited the democratic rights of El Salvador’s people. Freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to organize and protest, and freedom to simply live has been severely curtailed, limiting the integrity of a fledgling democracy in the continent.

Indeed, it has not just been stereotypical rights resembling the US’s First Amendment that have been curtailed: individuals' right to a fair trial has been restricted as well. Bukele’s sweeping incarceration practices have resulted in mass incarceration, with El Salvador now topping the United States with the highest incarceration rate in the world. He has also arrested a significant number of innocent individuals, as his imposal of arrest minimums on local police departments has inflated the number of innocent people arrested as El Salvadorian police have been forced to arrest innocents to meet their quotas.

Worryingly, many Latin American nations have adopted a Bukele model of addressing crime.

These dramatic drawbacks of Bukele’s presidency have forced many to wonder if there is a better option. Indeed, many cities, municipalities, and countries in Latin America have answered that question with a variety of reforms themselves.

Guatemala has increased its incarceration rate moderately and focused its prosecution less on a case-by-case basis and more on institutions that keep cartels intact. Sao Paulo implemented policies that investigated more thoroughly into crimes in which the killer was unknown and implemented youth prevention systems to prevent youth from falling into crime to survive. Both of these examples provide proof that Latin America does not have to fall into democratic backsliding to backslide cartels.

2)The British PM’s “Keir”less Mistakes Max Guo

On July 4th, the same day we Americans celebrated their independence from Britain, across the Atlantic, our former colonizers were in quite an uproar as well. The unpopular Conservative government, headed by the beleaguered Rishi Sunak, was trounced in an election by the Labour Party, led by Sir Keir Starmer. Ever since the resignation of Boris Johnson in September 2022, British voters of many hues urged a snap election, but the government refused to oblige until it was forced by law to do so. And when it did, it lost 251 seats in the House of Commons, rendering its position to just 121 seats compared to the Labour Party’s dominant majority of 421. Thus, Keir Starmer has been given unprecedented rein to alter British policy, and change the course of British history.

Let’s begin by discussing the unique powers bestowed to British Prime Ministers, or PMs. The British Parliament has two main chambers, yet it is the 650-seat House of Commons which wields nearly full control over policy. Unlike in the United States, the British Prime Minister is chosen from among the ranks of the majority party, and due to the high discipline of the British party system, any policy which the Prime Minister wants, his or her party will pass in the legislature. Though the nation has multiple parties, the Conservative and Labour parties usually win a majority in the Parliament, and do not have to make coalitions like in other Parliamentary democracies. This fusion of powers gives Keir Starmer significant power to reverse the decisions made in fourteen years of Conservative rule.

So how is Keir Starmer doing with his newfound power? Well, as his popularity rating indicates, not well. When he was elected, his net approval rating was hovering around -17%, which was significantly better than his rival was doing. But now, that has slumped to -36%. If an election were held today, the Labour Party would receive only 1% more votes than the Conservatives, down from 10% on election night. Sir Keir is not obligated to call an election until 2029, but if the situation continues deteriorating like this, the Labour Party’s majority would be as hollow as a jack-o-lantern on Halloween.

What explains this precipitous decline a mere three months since Starmer first took office? The answer lies in three main issues: welfare programs, the National Health Service, and immigration. Let’s begin with the first. Like most other European nations, Great Britain is a welfare state, which has proven beneficial for the lowest bracket of earners, but has also meant that British people now see this government assistance as a basic human right. In fact, a stunning 54.2% of British people pay less in taxes than they get from welfare. Clearly, the government has a budget problem here. Last year, it ran a budget deficit of 4.4% of GDP. At this rate, welfare spending will soon become unsustainable. That is why earlier in early September, the government cut the $300 winter fuel allowance to assist pensioners in heating their homes during the notorious British winter, instead giving a pay raise to train drivers across the country. Already, this cut in welfare has angered the British population. To many, they elected Labour to bring back welfare after over a decade of austerity, not to continue those austerity drives.

The second issue is the National Health Service, better known as the NHS. Since its founding in 1948, the NHS has “provide[d] everyone in the UK with healthcare based on their needs, and not on their ability to pay.” This is a noble goal, but again, it costs the government a lot of money it doesn’t have. Close to 10% of Britain’s annual GDP is spent on the NHS, and that number will keep rising as the population ages and output remains stagnant. But beyond that, the NHS also doesn’t have enough staff or even hospital beds to take care of everyone who needs it, explaining why nearly 7.7 million cases are currently still pending at hospitals’ doorsteps. The problem, which has been building up for over a decade, can’t be solved in a few months. But for all those who were sick and voted for Starmer in July, and still can’t get treatment even today, those technicalities don’t matter very much.

Illegal immigration has been the driving force behind many of the British government’s decisions, most notable of which was the Brexit referendum in 2016. But the issue has flared up once again, forcing the Labour Party and Sir Keir to promise that they have a proposal to tackle it. But what the British have is more of “a concept of a plan” than an actual plan. As soon as he took office, Starmer promised to discontinue his predecessor’s scheme to fly migrants to Rwanda. This won cries of approval from the left, and in fairness, even many independent analysts didn’t think the plan was feasible. But Sir Keir hasn’t come up with an alternative yet. He has said that he wants to “smash” gangs that smuggle people, and that he was “very interested” in imitating Italy’s recent deal with Albania to process asylum requests there. However, nothing substantial has come out of his government. As this problem festers, it will only allow rivals to capitalize. And just remember, that the same people who formed the Brexit Party, now reconstituted as Reform UK, won over 14% of the vote in the last general election, a mere 9% less than the Conservatives.

Will Keir Starmer survive? In the short term, probably. But he can only hope that he can turn the situation around soon, or else the entire nation will turn against him.

Read More Here:

Reemul Balla, Sky News

3) Egypt’s Intelligent Intelligence Moves Sahana Srikanth

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi removed long-time ally Abbas Kamel from his position as Director of General Intelligence Directorate, a powerful institution responsible for the surveillance of opposition and suspected criminals in Egypt. His position was taken by Hassan Mahmoud Rashad, a graduate of Cairo's Military Technical College, a training ground for leaders of Egyptian intelligence services. Meanwhile, Abbas Kamel has been appointed as adviser to the presidency. While the reasons for this abrupt power switch remain unclear, the power switch will undoubtedly have lasting effects on Egypt and surrounding nations.

Rashad served previously as Kamel’s deputy. Security sources say Rashad has now taken over managing important files like directing warming relations between Egypt and Iran. Egypt’s intelligence agency is crucial to its foreign policy, specifically in addressing the conflict in Gaza, fighting in Sudan, and war in Libya. The direction of Egypt in terms of foreign policy is not crystal clear, but we can infer that given Rashad’s experience, Egypt may work on normalization with its volatile partner Iran. Iran’s foreign minister has announced that Iran has a strategy for cooperating with Egypt, and is looking to expand with nations like Saudi Arabia. During the Organization for Islamic Cooperation meeting, both foreign ministers arrived at the consensus of strengthening bilateral relations, signaling that Tehran is keen on rapprochement. If Egypt’s leadership change means a softer view on Iran, both nations could see pacts to prosperity – holistically. For example, as Iran’s economy suffers from internal pressures, Egypt may expand its export of goods to the Iranian market across sectors.

Abbas Kamel may have been removed from his position due to health issues that prompted a reduced workload. As of now, it’s unclear whether his role is a promotion or demotion, but he was considered a key player in hostage negotiations. This could signal that the position switch was instead connected to a lack of progress in negotiations specific to the conflict in Gaza. Kamel had built strong relations with US and Israeli officials, along with establishing connections to the Hamas terror group. Rashad’s views on hostage negotiations are not widely available, but recently he has made progress towards filling in Kamel’s crucial role.

Specifically, Rashad and Israel's Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar held a meeting last week to suggest the prospect of a small hostage and ceasefire deal that could start a broader negotiation agreement. In the future, we could expect further discussions that build off of this idea, essentially making more progress on hostage discussions specific to the Gaza war. For instance, expanding the outline for a small number of hostages held by Hamas in return for 2 weeks of ceasefire to correlate with longer periods without warfare, or issuing a larger proportion of humanitarian aid. These positive discussions can successfully offset the loss of Kamel’s role in negotiations for diplomacy, putting all of Egypt, Israel, and the Gaza region on a path toward better relations. However, Rashad may face difficulty in terms of credibility, given that Kamel was well-known and trusted on the global stage. Kamel was once considered the second most influential person in Middle Eastern diplomacy, and those expectations will be difficult to outdo.

Hassan Rashad has big shoes to fill, but Egypt is geared on the right path to success. Given the volatility of Middle Eastern relations, each decision Rashad takes will not only affect Egypt, but it will resonate across the entire region. Hopefully, as Egypt seeks a more united future, they will prove that the decision to replace their chief of intelligence was truly intelligent after all.