By blocking some candidates, the European Parliament seeks the prominence denied by the failure of the proclamation of the Spitzenkandidat

▲ Ursula von der Leyen, at the plenary session of the European Parliament in which she defended her candidacy [European Commission]

ANALYSIS / Jokin de Carlos

In 1963, the Elysée Treaty was signed between President Charles de Gaulle and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, ending centuries of Franco-German rivalry and beginning the friendship between the two countries. Over the next few decades, France and Germany, as the leading economies of the Union, would largely mark the diary political and economic. Even in times of crisis, both leading countries avoided giving an image of confrontation.

However, after the European elections last May, there was a public tussle between Berlin and Paris over who should replace Jean-Claude Juncker as head of the European Commission. On the one hand, led by Angela Merkel, there were those leaders who defended the nomination of the Bavarian Manfred Weber, Spitzenkandidat of the European People's Party, made up of conservative formations; on the other hand, led by Emmanuel Macron, there were those who, of liberal or social democratic tendencies, opposed this nomination in preference to the Dutchman Frans Timmermans or the Danish Margrathe Vestager.

After weeks of negotiation and diplomatic tension, Weber's candidacy was withdrawn, in part because of Merkel's political weakness in Germany and the momentary defenestration of Sebastian Kurz in Austria due to Ibizagate. But the position it was not for Vestager or Timmermans but for Ursula von der Leyen, Germany's defense minister and Merkel's Christian Democrat colleague, originally from Hanover and from an aristocratic family. 

And so ends the summer of our discontent, with this Hanoverian sun.

Election

One of the main problems facing the new president of the Commission is going to be how to achieve consensus among the leaders in the committee and between parties in Parliament.

Von der Leyen was unanimously elected in the committee, however, his election to the European Parliament was the closest in history, with only nine votes above the required majority. This vote had several surprises, such as the favorable vote of the Italian 5-Star Movement or the Polish PiS and the rejection of the SPD or the totality of the Greens.

Composition of the Commission

On 9 September, von der Leyen announced her nominees for the new Commission, which is made up of 28 members in the 28 member countries, although the United Kingdom Withdrawal to have a site for its scheduled departure from the Union on October 31.

The von der Leyen Commission has been organised in the form of pillars, each led by a Vice-President and composed of one or more Commissioners with specific portfolios. There are five pillars: (a) agreement European Green, which will cover topics such as energy, transport and agriculture; (b) a Europe ready for the digital age, for issues such as innovation and skill; (c) protecting our European way of life, which will encompass the areas of immigration and security; (d) one Economics to work for the people, destined for commerce, work and finance, and (e) a strong Europe in the world, which will include issues such as international relations or crisis management.

For the composition of this Commission, von der Leyen has tried to integrate two of the Spitzenkandidat who were discarded for the presidency. Socialist Frans Timmermans, a former Dutch deputy prime minister, will remain as vice-president and lead the pillar of the agreement the European Greens, while the liberal Margrethe Vestager, former Danish Deputy Prime Minister, having been Commissioner for skill in the previous Commission, he will lead the pillar of A Europe Ready for the Digital Age. These are two of the most popular Commissioners in the Juncker Commission; in the case of Vestager for her fight against tax evasion by several large American technology companies, such as Google, Amazon or Apple.

Of the rest of the vice-presidents, three will head the other three pillars: the new High Representative of the Union Josep Borrell, former Spanish minister in several portfolios and former president of the European Parliament, will lead A Strong Europe in the World; Christian Democrat and former Latvian premier Valdis Dombrovskis will lead the economic pillar, and Greek conservative Margaritis Schinas will lead the pillar of protecting the European way of life.

Three other vice-presidencies, with smaller areas, will go to the Czech Republic's Verá Jorubá (Values and Transparency), Slovakia's Maroš Šefčovič (Interinstitutional Relations) and Croatia's Dubravka Šuica (Democracy and Demography).

Among the nominees for commissioners are prestigious people who have held important positions in their respective countries, as well as in previous European commissions: Paolo Gentiloni, former Italian premier, will be commissioner of Economics, and Didier Reynders, former Minister of Defence, Finance and Foreign Affairs in Belgium, will be in charge of Justice.

Analysis

There are two characteristics that can be highlighted about this Commission proposal: (1) The first is its more political character and (2) the second is a marked Francophilia. 

(1) On previous occasions the commissioners used to show a profile and in many cases a preference for staying in the shadows. In a way, they could have been considered the secretariat of the committee European. However, the selection made by Von der Leyen seems to want to put an end to this tradition, by opting for more well-known names. Thus, Gentiloni or Dombrovskis have previously governed their countries, while others such as Vestager, Timmermans or Reynders have had a certain previous prominence. It seems that the interest of EU politicians is no longer so much to create the European Federation as soon as possible as to bring Brussels closer to the people. Whether this strategy works or not, time will tell.

(2) The second characteristic of this new Commission is a clear pro-French direction, to the satisfaction of Emmanuel Macron. Many of the members of the Commission are political allies of the French President; the clearest is the case of Ursula von der Leyen herself, despite having been part of Merkel's cabinet and being a co-religionist of hers. It should be remembered that it was Macron who proposed it for the position after the veto of Weber, who was the candidate Merkel's initial. But that's not all. Both Timmermans and Vestager are political allies of Macron (Vestager had been his first choice to chair the Commission). Josep Borrell is also a well-known Francophile, and Didier Reynerds is a French-speaking Belgian whose party is allied with Macron's, as is the Italian commissioner Paolo Gentiloni. So this is a mostly Francophile Commission, which could increase Macron's weight on the Union and advance his vision of Europe.

Outside the Commission, the other officials nominated by the committee They were Christine Lagarde, a former French finance minister, who has stepped down from leading the IMF to head the European Central Bank, and Charles Michell, the French-speaking prime minister of Belgium and Macron's liberal colleague, the new president of the European Central Bank. committee European.

These nominations have also sought to meet a series of objectives:

i) The first and clearest is that the aim is to put an end to the possible alienation of the countries of Central and Southern Europe. Out of eight vice-presidents, four are from Central Europe, in charge of such important areas as the economic pillar or justice issues; two others are from the South, with responsibility for immigration and foreign policy issues.

ii) An attempt has also been made to reach out to groups that may have doubts about von der Leyen or directly voted against her in the parliamentary session. Looking at the greens, the portfolio agreement European Green aims to reduce carbon emissions by 55% from their 1990 levels by 2030 and make Europe the first zero-carbon continent by 2050. The pillar on immigration, called Protecting our European way of life, seems to want to augur a stricter immigration policy with the aim of promoting a more sustainable immigration policy. goal to maintain the support of Poland's PiS and Hungary's Fidesz.

iii) Briefly, it should also be mentioned that the nomination of Gentiloni to the economic portfolio seems to be a way of rewarding Italy for the training of a pro-Brussels government. While the nomination of a left-wing Italian to Economics It seems that the nomination of Austrian conservative Johannes Hahn to the Budget Committee has been made to balance that of Gentiloni.

Challenges and potential complications

The four main challenges facing this new Commission seem to be ecology, Economics, immigration and the construction of a common foreign policy.

As has been said before, the nomination of Borrell and other commissioners may lead to a foreign policy that follows French lines, which at times can lead to conflicts with Poland, the Baltic States or even Germany if tensions between France and the United States lead Washington to question its commitments to NATO and Russia.

Immigration looks set to remain a major issue for the Commission, although not as much as in recent years, largely because the issue The number of people arriving in Europe has dropped drastically. From more than one million in 2015 to less than 150,000 in 2018. Everything seems to indicate that the line on illegal immigration is going to be tougher than in previous years, although an attempt will be made to avoid populist rhetoric. However, the very name of the portfolio, Protecting our European Way of Life, has already come under fire from certain political sectors and civil society in Western Europe.

The Economics will be another element core topic. With a Brexit that could damage the Economics or cause a slowdown.

Another major problem is going to be related to Timmermans and his position. As the head of the pillar agreement The Dutch will be in charge of dealing with countries to reduce their carbon emissions. The countries of Central Europe, especially Poland, are still very dependent on the coal sector, which employs a significant portion of the workforce. Timmermans showed some clumsiness when it came to dealing with Poland and Hungary on justice issues as Juncker's vice-president, so it remains to be seen how he deals with the energy issue.

In relation to the nominations, there has been concern about Parliament's blocking of the commissioners from Romania, Hungary and France, who were rejected for various reasons. In the case of the Hungarian nominee, the veto was attributed to his relationship with a law firm, and in the case of the French nominee, to his relationship with an American think tank . However, the general analysis seems to indicate that these rejections, especially in the case of the French nominee, appear to be a reprisal by Parliament for having been section in the decision on the presidency of the Commission – since the proclamation of the Spitzenkandidat with the most votes was disregarded – by the committee European, especially Emmanuel Macron. The Fall of the Romanian Government and the Establishment of a Government provisional until the 2020 legislative elections may delay the training of the Commission. According to High Representative Josep Borrell, it is to be expected that the training of the von der Leyen Commission is delayed until 1 December.

Conclusion

To say that the von der Leyen Commission is going to be continuist, as many claim, would be partially incorrect. Although the ideology seems to be the same, the objectives set are very different and much more political. It seems that some of the mistakes made by the Juncker Commission want to be solved and it is trying to respond to some of the demands that citizens make to Brussels, on issues such as environmental care, economic improvement, the correct integration of Central Europe, border control, the development of the environment, and the development of the European Union. development of a common international policy and the rapprochement of Brussels with the Europeans.

Whether this will be a failure or a victory, on verra.

▲ View of Doha, the capital of Qatar, from its Islamic Museum [Pixabay].

essay / Sebastián Bruzzone Martínez

I. Introduction. Qatar, emirate of the Persian Gulf

In ancient times, the territory was inhabited by the Canaanites. From the 7th century AD onwards, Islam settled in the Qatari peninsula. As in the United Arab Emirates, piracy and attacks on the merchant ships of powers sailing along the Persian Gulf coast were frequent. Qatar was ruled by the Al Khalifa family from Kuwait until 1868, when at the request of the Qatari sheikhs and with financial aid from the British, the Al Thani dynasty was established. In 1871, the Ottoman Empire occupied the country and the Qatari dynasty recognised Turkish authority. In 1913, Qatar gained autonomy; three years later, Amir Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani signed a treaty with the UK to establish a British military protectorate in the region, while maintaining the amir's absolute monarchy.

In 1968, the UK withdrew its military force, and the Truce States (UAE, Qatar and Bahrain) organised the Federation of the Emirates of the Persian Gulf. Qatar, like Bahrain, gained independence from the Federation in 1971, proclaimed a constitution provisional, signed a treaty of friendship with the UK and joined the Arab League and the UN.

The Constitution provisional was replaced by the 2003 Constitution of 150 articles, submitted to a referendum and supported by 98% of the electorate. It entered into force as the fundamental rule on 9 April 2004. It recognises Islam as the official religion of the state and Sharia law as source of law (art. 1); the provision for adherence to and respect for international treaties, covenants and agreements signed by the Emirate of Qatar (art. 6); hereditary rule by the Al Thani family (art. 8); executive institutions such as the committee of Ministers and legislative-consultative institutions such as the committee Al Shoura or committee of the Ruling Family. Also included are the possibility of regency through the Trustee Council (arts. 13-16), the institution of the prime minister appointed by the emir (art. 72), the emir as head of state and representative of the state in Interior, Foreign Affairs and International Office (arts. 64-66), a sovereign wealth fund (Qatar Investment Company; art. 17), judicial institutions such as local courts and the Supreme Judicial committee , and its control over the unconstitutionality of laws (137-140)[1], among other aspects.

It also recognises rights such as private property (art. 27), equality of rights and duties (art. 34), equality of persons before the law without discrimination on grounds of sex, race, language or religion (art. 35), freedom of expression (art. 47), freedom of the press (art. 48), impartiality of justice and effective judicial protection (134-136), among others.

These rights recognised in the Qatari Constitution must be consistent with Islamic law, and thus their application is different from what is observed in Europe or the United States. For example, although article 1 recognises democracy as the state's political system, political parties do not exist, and trade unions are banned, although the right of association is recognised by the Constitution. Similarly, 80% of the country's population is foreign, with these constitutional rights applying to Qatari citizens, who make up the remaining 20%.

Like the other countries in the region, oil has been a transforming factor in Qatar's Economics . Today, Qatar has a high standard of living and one of the highest per capita GDPs in the world[2], and is an attractive destination for foreign investors and luxury tourism. However, in recent years Qatar has been experiencing a diplomatic crisis[3] with its Persian Gulf neighbours due to a number of factors that have condemned the Arab country to regional isolation.

II. The instability of the al thani family

The government of the Emirate of Qatar has suffered great instability due to internal disputes within the Al Thani family. Peter Salisbury, Middle East expert at Chatham House, the Royal high school of International Affairs in London, spoke of the Al Thanis in an interview for the BBC: "It's a family that initially (before finding oil) ruled a small, insignificant piece of land, often seen as a small province of Saudi Arabia. But it managed to carve out a position for itself in this region of giants". [4]

In 1972, in a coup d'état, Ahmed Al Thani was deposed by his cousin Khalifa Al Thani, with whom Qatar pursued an international policy of non-intervention and the search for internal peace, and maintained a good relationship with Saudi Arabia. He remained in power until 1995, when his son Hamad Al Thani dethroned him while he was away on a trip to Switzerland. The Saudi government saw this as a bad example for other countries in the region also ruled by family dynasties. Hamad boosted exports of liquefied natural gas and oil, and dismantled an alleged Saudi plan to reinstate his father Khalifa. The countries of the region began to see the 'little brother' grow economically and internationally very fast under the new emir and his foreign minister Hamam Al Thani.

The family is structured around Hamad and his wife Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missned, who has become an icon of fashion and female prestige among the international nobility, on a par with Rania of Jordan, Kate Middleton and Queen Letizia (the couple is close to the Spanish royal family).

Hamad abdicated to his son Tamim Al Thani in 2013. The latter's ascension was a short-lived breath of hope for the international Arab community. Tamim adopted a very similar international policy stance to his father, strengthening rapprochement and economic cooperation with Iran, and increasing tension with Saudi Arabia, which proceeded to close Qatar's only land border. Similarly, according to a WikiLeaks leak in 2009, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan accused Tamim of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood. On the other hand, the economic, political, social and even staff rivalry between Qatar's Al Thani and Saudi Arabia's Al Saud goes back decades.

In my view, stability and family hierarchy in dynastic nations is a crucial factor to avoid internal power struggles that consequently have great negative effects on the country's society. Each person has different political, economic and social ideas that take time to implement. Frequent changes without an objective culmination end up being a terribly destabilising factor. Internationally, the country's political credibility and rigidity can be undermined when the emir's son stages a coup while his father is on holiday. Qatar, aware of this, sought legislative security and rigidity in article 148 of its constitution by prohibiting the amendment of any article within ten years of its coming into force entrance .

In 1976, Qatar claimed sovereignty over the Hawar Islands, controlled by the Bahraini royal family, which became a focus of conflict between the two nations. The same happened with the artificial island of Fasht Ad Dibal, which prompted the Qatari military to raid the island in 1986. It was abandoned by Qatar in a peace deal with Bahrain agreement .

III. Alleged support to terrorist groups

This is the main reason why neighbouring states have isolated Qatar. Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Libya and the Maldives, among others, cut diplomatic and trade relations with Qatar in June 2017 over its alleged funding and support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which it considers a terrorist organisation. In 2010, WikiLeaks leaked a diplomatic grade in which the US called Qatar the "worst in the region in subject cooperation to eliminate funding for terrorist groups."

The Muslim Brotherhood, which originated in 1928 with Hassan Al Bana in Egypt, is a political activist and Islamic movement, with principles based on nationalism, social justice and anti-colonialism. However, within the movement there are various strands, some more rigorous than others. The founders of the Muslim Brotherhood see the Education of society as the tool most effective way to achieve state power. For this reason, the movement's indoctrinators or evangelists are the most persecuted by the authorities in countries that condemn membership of group. It has a well-defined internal structure, headed by the supreme guide Murchid, assisted by an executive body, a committee and an assembly.

From 1940 onwards, the paramilitary activity of group began clandestinely with Nizzam Al Khas, whose initial intention was to achieve Egyptian independence and expel the Zionists from Palestine. They carried out attacks such as the assassination of Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud An Nukrashi. The creation of this special section sentenced final the reputation and violent character of the Muslim Brotherhood, which continued its expansion around the world in the form of Tanzim Al Dawli, its international structure.[5]

Khaled Mashal,[6] a former leader of the militant organisation Hamas, is in exile in Qatar's capital, Doha, and the Taliban of Afghanistan has a political office. Importantly, most Qatari citizens are followers of Wahhabism, a puritanical version of Islam that seeks the literal interpretation of the Qur'an and Sunnah, founded by Mohammad ibn Abd Al Wahhab.

During the post-Arab Spring political crisis in 2011, Qatar supported the Muslim Brotherhood's electoral efforts in North African countries. The Islamist movement saw the revolution as a useful means to gain access to governments, taking advantage of the power vacuum. In Egypt, Mohamed Mursi, linked to the movement, became president in 2013, although he was overthrown by the military. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain negatively characterised the support and saw it as a destabilising Islamist element. In those countries where it was unsuccessful, its members were expelled and many took refuge in Qatar. Meanwhile, in neighbouring countries in the region, alarms were raised and every pro-Islamist move by the Qatari government was closely followed.

Similarly, Dutch sources and human rights lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld accused Qatar of financing the Al Nusra Front[7], the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda involved in the war against Al Assad, declared a terrorist organisation by the United States and the UN. The Dutch lawyer claimed in 2018 to have the necessary evidence to prove the flow of Qatari money to Al Nusra through companies based in the country and to hold Qatar judicially responsible before the court in The Hague for the victims of the war in Syria. It is important to know that, in 2015, Doha obtained the release of 15 Lebanese soldiers, but in exchange for the release of 13 detained terrorists. Other sources claim that Qatar paid 20 million euros for the release of 45 Fijian blue helmets kidnapped by Al-Nusra in the Golan Heights.

According to the BBC, in December 2015, Kataeb Hezbollah or the Islamic Resistance Movement of Iraq, recognised as a terrorist organisation by the United Arab Emirates and the United States, among others, kidnapped a group group of Qataris who went hunting in Iraq. [8] Among the hunters on the group were two members of the Qatari royal family, the cousin and uncle of Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatar's foreign minister since 2016. After 16 months of negotiations, the hijackers demanded a chilling $1 billion from the Qatari ambassador to Iraq to free the hostages. According to Qatar Airways officials, in April 2017 a Qatar Airways plane flew to Baghdad with the money to be delivered to the Iraqi government, which would act as an intermediary between Hezbollah and Qatar. However, business has never commented on the facts. The official version of the Qatari government is that the terrorists were never paid and the release of the hostages was achieved through a joint diplomatic negotiation between Qatar and Iraq.

Qatar's funding of the armed Hamas group in the Gaza Strip is a fact of life. In November 2018, according to Israeli sources, Qatar paid fifteen million dollars in cash as part of a agreement with Israel negotiated by Egypt and the UN, which would cover a total of ninety million dollars split into several payments[9], with the intention of seeking peace and reconciliation between the political parties Fatah and Hamas, considered group terrorist by the United States.

IV. Qatar's relationship with Iran

Qatar has good diplomatic and commercial relations with Iran, which is mainly Shiite, and this is not to the liking of the Quartet (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain), which is mainly Sunni, especially Saudi Arabia, with whom it has an obvious confrontation - subsidiary, not direct - over the predominant political and economic influence in the Persian region. In 2017, in his last visit to Riyadh ( visit ), Donald Trump called on the countries of the region to isolate Iran because of the military and nuclear tension it is experiencing with the United States. Qatar acts as an intermediary and turning point between the US and Iran, trying to open the way for dialogue in relation to the sanctions implemented by the American president.

Doha and Tehran have a strong economic relationship around the oil and gas industry, sharing the world's largest gas field, the South Pars-North Dame, while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have followed the US lead in their foreign policy agendas towards Iran. One of the Quartet's conditions for Qatar to lift the economic and diplomatic blockade is the cessation of bilateral relations with Iran, which were reinstated in 2016, and the establishment of trade conduct with Iran in accordance with US sanctions.

V. Al Jazeera television network

Founded in 1996 by Hamad Al Thani, Al Jazeera has become the most influential digital media in the Middle East. It positioned itself as a promoter of the Arab Spring and was present in the climates of violence in different countries. As a result, it has been criticised by Qatar's antagonists for its positions close to Islamist movements, for acting as a mouthpiece for the fundamentalist messages of the Muslim Brotherhood and for being a vehicle for Qatari diplomacy. Its closure was one of the requirements requests made by the Quartet to Qatar to lift the economic blockade, the transit of people and the opening of airspace.

The US accuses the network of being the mouthpiece of extremist Islamic groups since the former head of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, began to disseminate his communiqués through it; of being anti-Semitic in nature; and of adopting a position favourable to the armed Hamas group in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In 2003, Saudi Arabia, after several failed attempts to cause the closure of the Qatari television network, decided to create a competing television station, Al Arabiya TV, initiating a disinformation war and vying over which of the two has the most reliable information.

VI. Washington and London's position

On the one hand, the United States seeks to have a good relationship with Qatar, as it has the large military base of Al-Udeid, which has an excellent strategic position in the Persian Gulf and more than ten thousand troops. In April 2018, the Qatari emir visited Donald Trump at the White House, who said that the relationship between the two countries "works extremely well" and considers Tamim a "great friend" and "a great gentleman". Tamim Al Thani has stressed that Qatar will not tolerate people who finance terrorism and confirmed that Doha will cooperate with Washington to stop the financing of terrorist groups.

The contradiction is clear: Qatar confirms its commitment to fighting the financing of terrorist groups, but its track record does not back it up. So far, the small country has demonstrably helped these groups in one way or another, through political asylum and protection of its members, direct or indirect funding through controversial negotiation techniques, or by promoting political interests that have not been to the liking of its great geopolitical rival, Saudi Arabia.

The United States is the great mediator and impediment to direct confrontation in the tension between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Both countries are members of the United Nations and allies of the US. Europe and American presidents have been aware that a direct confrontation between the two countries could prove fatal for the region and their commercial interests related to oil and the Strait of Hormuz.

On the other hand, the UK government has remained aloof in taking a position on the Qatar diplomatic crisis. Emir Tamim Al Thani owns 95 per cent of The Shard building, eight per cent of the London Stock Exchange and Barclays bank, as well as flats, stocks and shares in companies in the UK capital. Qatari investments in the UK capital total around $60 billion.

In 2016, former British Prime Minister David Cameron showed his concern about the future when the London mayoralty was occupied by Sadiq Khan, a Muslim who has appeared on more than one occasion alongside Sulaiman Gani, an imam who supports the Islamic State and the Muslim Brotherhood.[10]

VII. Civil war in Yemen

Since foreign military intervention in Yemen's civil war began in 2015, at the request of Yemeni President Rabbu Mansur Al Hadi, Qatar has aligned itself with the states of the committee Cooperation for the Arab States of the Gulf (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), backed by the United States, the United Kingdom and France, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), backed by the US, the UK and France, to create an international coalition to help restore Al Hadi's legitimate power, which has been under siege since the coup d'état by Houthis and forces loyal to former president Ali Abdala Saleh. However, Qatar has been accused of clandestinely supporting the Houthi rebels[11], and the rest of the committee countries view its actions with great caution.

Today, the Yemeni civil war has become the largest humanitarian crisis since 1945.[12] On 11 August 2019, South Yemeni separatists, backed by the United Arab Emirates, which initially supports al-Hadi's government, seized the port city of Aden, storming the presidential palace and the military instructions . The president, in exile in Riyadh, has described the attack by his allies as a coup against the institutions of the legitimate state, and has received direct support from Saudi Arabia. After days of tension, the Southern Movement separatists left the city.

The Emirates and Saudi Arabia, along with other neighbouring states such as Bahrain and Kuwait, of Sunni belief, seek to halt the advance of the Houthis, who dominate the capital, Sana'a, and a possible expansion of Shi'ism promoted by Iran through the conflict in Yemen. Similarly, there is a strong geopolitical interest in the Strait of Bab el Mandeb, which connects the Red Sea with the Arabian Sea and is a major alternative to the flow of trade in the Strait of Hormuz, off the coast of Iran. This interest is shared by France and the US, which seeks to eliminate the presence of ISIS and Al Qaeda in the region.

The day after the capture of Aden, and in the midst of Eid Al-Adha celebrations, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed met in Mecca with Saudi King Salman bin Abdelaziz and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in an apparent effort to downplay the significance of the event, call on the warring parties in the city to safeguard Yemen's interests, and reaffirm regional cooperation and unity of interest between the UAE and Saudi Arabia. [13] The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi has posted on his official Twitter accounts comments and photographs from meeting in which a positive attitude can be seen on the faces of the leaders.

Conversely, if the partnership and understanding on the Yemen issue between the two countries were complete, as they claimed, there would be no need to create an apparently 'ideal' image through official communications from the Abu Dhabi government and the publication of images on social media.

Although the UAE supports the separatists, the latest developments have caused a sense of mistrust, raising the possibility that the southern militias are disregarding Emirati directives and starting to run a diary of their own to suit their own particular interests. Foreign sources are also beginning to speak of a civil war within a civil war. Meanwhile, Qatar remains close to Iran and cautious about status in the southwest of the Arabian Peninsula.

[John J. Mearsheimer, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities, Yale University Press, September 2018, 328 p.]

REVIEW / Albert Vidal

"For better or for worse, liberal hegemony is history". With such a statement, John J. Mearsheimer concluded his talk about his recently published book "The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities" at SOAS University of London.

In this book, Mearsheimer argues that the foreign policy of liberal hegemony, which was adopted by the US at the end of the Cold War, failed miserably. He explains that it happened because nationalism and realism always overrun liberalism.

In the first part of the book he defines liberalism, nationalism and liberal hegemony. He then explains why the US pursued liberal hegemony, and what is its track record. Finally, he reveals why liberal hegemony failed, and what can we expect in the future. Let's take a more detailed look into it.

Liberalism

Mearsheimer casts light on liberalism's two fundamental assumptions underpinning human nature: first, it assumes that the individual takes precedence over the group; second, liberalism assumes that individuals cannot reach universal agreement over first principles, and such differences often lead to violence.

In order to deal with this potential for violence, liberalism offers a solution that includes three parts: everybody has individual rights that are inalienable; tolerance receives a special emphasis, and a state becomes necessary to limit the threat of those who do not respect other people's rights. Such features make liberalism a universalistic theory, which is what turned the US into a crusader state.

Nationalism

According to the author, nationalism has its own core assumptions: first, humans are naturally social animals; second, group loyalty is more important than individualism, and third, aside from the family, the most important group is the nation. He then goes on to say that nations (bodies of individuals that have certain features that make them distinct from other groups) want their own states.

After that, Mearsheimer says that nationalism beats liberalism because human beings are primarily social animals. To show this, he recalls that the entire planet is covered with nation states, and liberal democracies do not even comprise a 50% of those nation-states.

Liberal hegemony

This is just an attempt to remake the world in America's image and has several components: to spread liberal democracy across the planet, to integrate more countries into the open international economy and into international institutions. In theory, this would be extremely beneficial, since it would eliminate significant human rights violations (here the author assumes that liberal democracies do not engage in great human rights violations), it would make for a peaceful world (following the democratic peace theory) and it would eliminate the threat of foreign support to those who want to overthrow liberal democracy at home.

Why did the US pursue liberal hegemony?

After the Cold War, a moment of unipolarity made it possible, says Mearsheimer, for the US to ignore balance of power politics and pursue a liberal foreign policy. To this we need to add that the US is a liberal country, which oftentimes thinks itself as exceptional. This clearly prompted the US to try to remake the world into its image.

In this part of the book, Mearsheimer shows different failures of the US foreign policy. The first one is the Bush Doctrine and the Greater Middle East, which was a plan to turn the Middle East into a sea of democracies. The result was a total disaster. The second example is the awful relations between the US and Russia and the Ukraine crisis, which were the result of NATO's expansion. Thirdly, Mearsheimer criticizes the way the US has engaged with China, helping it grow quicker while naively thinking that it would eventually become a liberal democracy.

Why did liberal hegemony fail?

The reason is that the power of nationalism and realism always overrun liberalism; in words of Mearsheimer: "the idea that the US can go around the world trying to establish democracies and doing social engineering is a prescription for trouble". Countries will resist to foreign interference. Also, in large parts of the world, people prefer security before liberal democracy, even if that security has to be provided by a soft authoritarianism. 

Liberal hegemony is finished, because the world is no longer a unipolar place. Now the US needs to worry about other powers.

A critique of his theory

Although Mearsheimer's thesis seems solid, several critiques have been formulated; most of these are directed toward issues that contradict some of Mearsheimer's arguments and assumptions and that have been left unaddressed.

1) In his introduction, Mearsheimer argues that individuals cannot reach an agreement over first principles. I believe that is an over-statement, since some values tend to be appreciated in most societies. Some examples would be the value of life, the importance of the family for the continuation of society and the education of the upcoming generations, the importance of truth and honesty, and many others.

2) When he describes the US foreign policy since the 1990s as liberal hegemony, Mearsheimer chooses to ignore some evident exceptions, such as the alliance with Saudi Arabia and other authoritarian regimes which do not respect the most basic human rights.  

3) Many of the failures of the US foreign policy since the 1990s do not actually seem to derive from the liberal policies themselves, but from the failure of properly implementing them. That is, those failures happened because the US deviated from its liberal foreign policy. A clear example is what happened in Iraq: although the intervention was publicly backed by a liberal rhetoric, many doubt that Washington was truly committed to bring stability and development to Iraq. A commonly pointed example is that the only Ministry effectively protected was the Oil Ministry. The rest were abandoned to the looters. A true liberal policy would have sought to restore the education and health systems, state institutions and infrastructure, which never really happened. So blaming the failure to the liberal policy might not be adequate.

4) Although Mearsheimer proves the urge to intervene that comes with liberal hegemony, he doesn't show how a hegemon following realist principles would restrain itself and intervene in fewer occasions and with moderation. The necessity to protect human rights would simply become a willingness to protect vital interests, which serves as an excuse for any type of intervention (unlike human rights, even if they have sometimes been the origin of a disastrous intervention). 

As a final thought, this book suggests a clear alternative to the mainstream views of most of today's foreign policy, especially in Western Europe and in the United States.  Even if we disagree with some (or most) of its tenets, it is nevertheless helpful in understanding many of the current dynamics, particularly in relation to the everlasting tension between nationalism and universalism. We might even need to rethink our foreign policies and instead of blindly praising liberalism, we should accept that sometimes, liberalism isn't able to solve every problem that we face.

▲ Almagro's remarks at the opening of the 49th OAS General Assembly, in Medellín, Colombia, in June 2019 [OAS]

COMMENTARY / Ignacio Yárnoz

At the General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) held in Medellín last June, the tensions and division that currently exist within this international organization were confirmed. In the first place, these discrepancies were evident in the question of the Venezuelan question, an issue that was the protagonist of the meeting with the presentation of migration reports, criticism of the Bolivarian regime and the presence of the Venezuelan delegation representing the Government of Guaidó led by Ambassador Gustavo Tarre.

These events were met with the rejection of a large part of the Caribbean countries, who abandoned the conference room In the presentation and declared their refusal to comply with any OAS resolution that the Venezuelan delegation voted in favor of. In the opinion of Caribbean countries, Venezuela formally left the organization in March and the presence of Guaidó's delegation as the legitimate representative of Venezuela contravenes international law and the principles of the OAS Charter, since it represents a government without effective control of the territory or legal legitimacy. But the Caricom countries were not the only ones to express their protest, the delegation of Uruguay also left the meeting. conference room and that of Mexico expressed its displeasure with the Venezuelan opposition presence as a delegation of plenary session of the Executive Council right.

The controversy, however, not only revealed the discrepancies on how to deal with the Venezuelan crisis, but also reflected another underlying reality, and that is that the candidacy of Luis Almagro to be re-elected as president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. University Secretary of the organization hangs in the balance.

In December of last year, Uruguay's Almagro formally announced that, at the request of Colombia and the United States, he had decided to run for re-election with the certainty of having the necessary votes. Since then, however, the landscape of re-election has darkened. Voting will take place on the first semester Almagro needs at least 18 votes from the 35 countries of the OAS (if we include Cuba, even if he does not actively participate).

Variables

The future of Almagro, who arrived at the position In May 2015, it depends on several factors that will be developed this year. Mainly, the general elections in Argentina, Canada, Uruguay and Bolivia, which will be held between October and November. However, there are other variables that can also affect your re-election, such as the support you get from the countries of the United States. group or the possible division among CARICOM members on the matter. Below, we will review these assumptions one by one.

In the case of the Bolivian elections, Almagro has already played his cards and has been accused of having used a double standard by harshly criticizing the Maduro regime, but then not being critical of the possibility of Evo Morales being re-elected for a third time. Such re-election is supposedly not legal according to the Bolivian Constitution and was vetoed by the population in a referendum, but President Evo Morales has ignored it under the pretext that it prevents him from being elected. candidate once again, it goes against human rights, an argument later endorsed by the Supreme Court of Bolivia. The administrative office General of the OAS, despite not being in the agreement with the "right to be re-elected", he did not raise any criticism or position himself against said election supposedly because of Bolivia's possible vote in favor of Almagro, something that could happen if Evo Morales is finally re-elected but that is not completely certain either. Otherwise, however, he has already earned the animosity of the candidates of the civil service examination such as Carlos Mesa or Óscar Ortiz and the opposition leader Samuel Doria Medina who, if elected, would not vote in favor of him.

Regarding Guatemala, the first round of the presidential elections gave victory to Sandra Torres (22.08% of the votes) and Alejandro Giammattei (12.06% of the votes), who will face each other in the second round on Sunday, August 11. In the event that Torres is elected, she may align her position with that of Mexico, adopting a less interventionist policy towards Venezuela and therefore against Almagro. In the event of the victory of Giammattei, a center-right politician, it is likely that he will align his positions with Almagro and vote in favor of him. Guatemala has always been aligned with U.S. positions, so it is doubtful that the country will vote against a U.S.-backed candidacy, though not impossible.

As for Argentina and Canada, the position will depend on whether the candidate The winner in their respective elections is either conservative or progressive. Even in the case of Canada, the possibility of a rejection of Almagro is open regardless of the political orientation of the new government, since while Canada has been critical of the Maduro regime, it has also criticized the internal organization of the OAS under the command of the current one University Secretary. As far as Argentina is concerned, there is a clear difference between the presidential candidates: while Mauricio Macri would represent continuity in support for Almagro, the Alberto Fernández-Cristina Kirchner ticket would clearly be a rejection.

Uruguay represents a curious case of how internal politics and political games affect even members of the same party. We must not forget that Luis Almagro was a minister in the government of Pepe Mujica and that his first candidacy for University Secretary was submitted by Uruguay. However, given the division in the training The policy to which he belonged, Frente Amplio, won some enemies such as those of the current government of Tabaré Vázquez. That is why Uruguay has been so critical of Luis Almagro despite being a compatriot and party colleague. However, we should not doubt that he will also have his friends in the party who will change Uruguay's stance. If so, it wouldn't matter what the candidate (Luis Lacalle Pou for the National Party or Daniel Martinez for the Broad Front) that Almagro would be assured of the vote: that of the right wing of the National Party by having some thesis more critical of Maduro (in fact, they recognized Guaidó's government as a party and criticized Uruguay's neutrality), or that of the left of the Frente Amplio because of the contacts that Almagro may have, although the latter is still a hypothesis given that the most extreme wing of the party is the one that still has the majority of votes within the Frente Amplio.

Another Challenger

However, Almagro's chances for re-election could be thwarted if another candidate who could win the sympathy of the government presents his candidacy. group of Lima, created in August 2017 and made up of a dozen countries in the Americas to coordinate their strategy in relation to Venezuela. Peru sounds like the one that is likely to present a candidate: Hugo de Zela, a 42-year-old Peruvian diplomat degree program who in April was appointed Peru's ambassador to Washington and who has played a very important role within the group of Lima as coordinator. In addition, De Zela knows the structure of the OAS since he has served as chief of staff of the administrative office General on two occasions: first, between 1989 and 1994, when the head of the agency was the Brazilian Joao Clemente Baena Soares; and then between 2011 and 2015, with the Chilean José Miguel Insulza. This candidate, apart from his extensive political experience, has as his trump card the fact that he has been a coordinator of the group of Lima, which could provide assurances about the partnership between that group and the OAS on the Venezuelan question.

If De Zela were to decide to run, the group Lima could split its votes, which could favor the interests of the 14 Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries, which usually vote as a bloc and have been unhappy with the management on the Venezuelan crisis. In fact, Caricom is already thinking about introducing a candidate that takes into account the interests of those countries, mainly climate change. The names that sound among the members of Caricom are the ambassador to the OAS of Antigua and Barbuda, Ronald Sanders, or the representative of Barbados to the UN, Liz Thompson.

However, there remains hope in the Caricom community for Almagro. Saint Lucia, Haiti, Jamaica and the Bahamas broke ranks at the time of voting on the admission of Ambassador Gustavo Tarre appointed by the Guaidó government to represent Venezuela at the OAS (although technically what they supported is that he be designated as "designated permanent representative of the National Assembly, pending new elections and the appointment of a democratically elected government"). These four countries, although with a more moderate position than that of the group of Lima, joined his position by accepting the appointment of such a representative with the aforementioned qualification. This is the third time so far this year that they have broken ranks in Caricom in the topic Venezuelan. This could give the University Secretary A trump card with which to be able to play in order to achieve the support of one of these four countries, although it will require skillful negotiation techniques and to give something in return to these countries, whether they are put in the position of the administrative office benefits in new programs and scholarships from development or climate change, for example.  

In conclusion, in the best possible scenario for Almagro and assuming that no country in the group of Lima will present a candidate alternatively, the candidacy for re-election of the current University Secretary it would have 12 votes secured, 4 negotiable from Saint Lucia, Jamaica, Haiti and the Bahamas and 5 pending elections (Guatemala, Canada, Uruguay, Argentina and Bolivia). It is clear that Mexico, a large part of Caricom (Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago) and Nicaragua will vote against. In addition, we must add the fact that any candidacy can be submitted up to 10 minutes before the extraordinary General Assembly, which gives rise even more to shadow political games and last-minute surprises. As we can see, it's a status very difficult for him University Secretary And it's surely going to be more than one headache in this arithmetic of votes to get the position. Without a doubt, a fight for the position that will give a lot to talk about between now and February 2020.

[I. H. Daalder & James M. Lindsay, The Empty Throne. America's Abdication of Global Leadership. Public Affairs. New York, 2018. 256 p.]

review / Salvador Sánchez Tapia

The arrival of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States in January 2017 has unleashed a significant flow of publishing house that continues to this day, and in which numerous pens question, in substance and form, the new occupant of the White House from different angles.

In this case, two authors from the field of American think tanks , close to Barack Obama – one of them served during his presidency as US ambassador to NATO – offer us a very critical view of President Trump and his management at the head of the U.S. executive branch. With the solid support of numerous quotes, statements and testimonies collected from the media, and in an agile and attractive language, they compose the portrait of an erratic, ignorant president – in one passage his "ignorance on many issues, his unwillingness to accept the advice of others, his impulsiveness, and his lack of critical thinking capacity" are unmitigated. arrogant and irresponsible.

The authors of The Empty Throne argue that President Trump's actions and words show how he has broken with the traditional line of U.S. foreign policy since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, based on the exercise of leadership oriented to collective security, the opening of global markets and the promotion of democracy. of human rights and the rule of law, and that it has result very beneficial for the United States. Trump, they argue, would have abdicated that leadership, embracing instead another purely transactional policy, made out of a simple calculation of self-interest.

This new way of conceiving international politics, based on the logic of competition and domination, would be justified by the Trump administration with the argument that the old one has been highly pernicious for the United States, since it has led to friends and allies obtaining significant profits at the expense of American prosperity.

Paraphrasing Trump's campaign slogan America First, the authors argue that this new policy will result in an America Alone, and that it will benefit China instead, assuming that it will be China that nations look to for a new leader.

To support your thesis , the authors take a look at the management of Donald Trump in the year and a half between his inauguration in early 2017 and the book's publication date in 2018. In their arguments, they review the management of the presidents the nation has had since the end of World War II, and compare it to the internship by the Trump administration.

An important part of the criticism is directed at the controversial presidential style deployed by Donald Trump, exhibited even before the elections, and which is evident in events such as the withdrawal of the label accustomed in the world of international relations, especially hurtful in its relations with friends and allies; the lack of interest shown in coordinating with the Obama administration an orderly transition, or the making of certain decisions against its national security team or even without consulting its members.

Not acknowledging these facts would be to deny the evidence and call into question the inescapable reality of the uneasiness that this new way of treating nations with which North America shares so many interests and values, such as those of the European Union, or others such as Japan, Canada or Australia, firm allies of the United States for decades, produces for many. There is, however, some criticism of the arguments.

First of all, and leaving aside the lack of time perspective to make a evaluation final of Trump's presidency, the authors make a comparison between the first year and a half of the current president's term and those of all his predecessors since the end of World War II to demonstrate Trump's return to the America First policy that prevailed until Roosevelt. This contrast requires certain nuances because, based on the common denominator of the international leadership strategy that all of Trump's predecessors practiced, the country experienced during this time moments of greater unilateralism such as that of George W. Bush's first term, along with others of less global presence of the country such as, perhaps, those of the Eisenhower presidencies. Ford, Carter, and even Obama.

In the case of Obama, moreover, the fundamental differences with Trump are not as many as they seem. Both presidents are trying to manage, in order to mitigate it, the loss of relative American power caused by the long years of military presence in the Middle East and the rise of China. It's not that Trump believes the U.S. should abandon ideas of global leadership and multinational interaction; in fact, while he is accused of leaving traditional allies to their fate, he is reproached for his rapprochement, almost complicity, with others such as Saudi Arabia and Israel. Rather, what he intends is to exercise leadership, but, yes, dictating his conditions so that they are favorable to the United States. From inspirational leadership to leadership by imposition.

The question would be: is it possible to maintain leadership under these conditions? According to the authors, no. In fact, as a consequence of this U.S. "abdication of leadership," they offer two scenarios: a return to a world in which no nation leads, or the irruption of another nation – China, of course – that will fill the vacuum created by that abdication.

The authors do not consider a third option: that of traditional allies adapting to the new style of leadership, even if it is reluctantly, out of necessity, and in the confidence that one day, Trump's presidency will be history. This idea would be consistent with the premise set forth in the book, and with which we agree, that American leadership continues to be essential, and with the very acknowledgment made at the end of it, that there is some basis in the grievances that Trump presents and that the president's attitude is leading many of America's friends and allies to reconsider their defense spending. to rethink the rules of international trade to make them more palatable to North America, and to take a more active role in solving the most important global challenges.

Time will tell which of the three options will prevail. Even considering the challenges involved in the attention With the current head of the White House, the United States continues to be united with its traditional partners and allies by a dense network of common interests and, above all, shared values that transcend people and that will endure beyond them.

[Amil Saikal, Iran Rising: The survival and Future of the Islamic Republic. Princeton University Press. Princeton, 2019. 344 p.]

review / Ignacio Urbasos Arbeloa

Since its establishment in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been a conflictive actor, isolated and misunderstood by the international community and, to a greater extent, by its regional neighbours. Its origin, revolutionary and antagonistic to the model The Shah's pro-Western pro-Western regime completely changed the geopolitics of the Middle East and the role of the United States in the region. Both the Hostage Crisis and Saddam Hussein's bloody war on Iraq left deep wounds in Iran's relations with the outside world. More than 40 years after the Revolution, the country continues in a dynamic that makes it impossible to normalize its international relations, always under the threat of armed conflict or economic sanctions. In this book, Amin Saikal describes in depth the ideological and political nature of the Ayatollahs' regime with the intention of generating a better understanding of the motivations and factors that explain their behavior.

In the first chapters, the concept of governance devised by Ayatollah Imam Khomeini, known as Velayat-E Faqih or Governance of the Guardian of Islam, is developed. One model defended by a non-majority faction of the revolution that managed to impose itself due to the charisma of its leader and the enormous repression on the rest of the political groups. The political system resulting from the 1978 Revolution seeks to bring together the Shiite teachings of Islam and a model It is representative with institutions such as the Majlis (parliament) or the President, which to some extent simulates Western liberal democracy. This model it is unique and has never been imitated despite the Islamic Republic's efforts to export it to the rest of the Muslim world.

In the internship, the system has proven to subject Iranian politics to schizophrenia, with a constant struggle between the power of the clerics – Supreme Leader and the Supreme Leader – the Supreme Leader and the Supreme Leader. committee of Guardians – vis-à-vis the executive and legislative branches elected through elections. This tension, referred to as Jihadi-Itjihadi (conservatism-flexibility ) by Khomeini himself, has led to a result be a resounding failure. The lack of clarity in the roles that religious groups play in the system results in unlimited power to repress and eliminate political opponents, such as the house arrest of Khatami or Moussaoui. This struggle generates duplicities at all levels with the omnipresence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the armed forces, intelligence, social services and public enterprises. The lack of political transparency generates corruption and inefficiencies that hinder the development of a Economics that it does not lack human capital and natural resources to thrive.

Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the evolution of the system after the death of leader Khomeini in 1988 and the end of the war against Iraq. This new context allowed the entrance of new ideas to the discussion Iranian politician. The controversial appointment of the ultra-conservative Ali Khamenei in 1989 as the new Supreme Leader reinforced the authoritarianism and rigidity of religious power, but now without the undisputed leadership that Khomeini exercised. The presidency of Rafsanjani, a pragmatic conservative, marked the beginning of a trend within Iran that advocated normalizing the country's international relations.

However, it was Khatami who, since 1997, has been committed to a reconversion of the system towards a real democracy that respects human rights. Your bet staff The attempt to improve relations with the U.S. failed to meet with inordinate distrust from the Bush administration. Not even Iran's exemplary response to the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York with an official condemnation of the attack and even a minute's silence respected by 60,000 people in Tehran on September 13, 2001 was enough for G.W. Bush to reconsider Iran as part of the famous Axis of Evil that it constituted together with Syria. North Korea and Sudan. Despite achieving an average economic growth of 5% of GDP under his presidency, the lack of reciprocity on the part of the international community generated a total rupture between the reformist president and the conservative faction led by the Supreme Leader.

The period between 2005 and 2013 was marked by the presidency of the ultra-conservative Ahmadinejad, who ended without Khamenei's confidence after failing to win the presidency. subject and bring Iran to the brink of armed conflict. During this period, the IRGC grew to dominate many ministries and 70% of Iran's GDP. His controversial re-election in 2009 with accusations of fraud by the civil service examination It spawned the Green Movement, the largest protests since 1979, which were harshly repressed.

Rouhani's arrival in 2013 could have been a historic occasion by aligning for the first time since 1988 the vision of a moderate president with that of the Supreme Leader. Rouhani, a moderate pragmatist, took office position with the goals of improving the living conditions of Iranians, reconciling relations with the West, increasing the rights of minorities and relaxing control over society. In subject of foreign policy, the Supreme Leader assumed the need to achieve a agreement on the nuclear program knowing that, in its absence, an economic improvement in Iran would be very complicated. The JCPOA, although imperfect, made it possible to bring positions between the West and Iran closer together. The arrival of Donald Trump blew up the agreement and with it the harmony between Supreme Leader Khamenei and Rouhani, who is now facing a growing civil service examination conservative in considering his foreign policy a failure.

For the author, it is essential to understand the battle between elected institutions and religious institutions. Iranian politics functions as a pendulum between the dominance of conservative factions protected by the religious and reformist factions boosted by elections. If you offer benefits to reformist moderates when they are in power, the chances of bringing about political change in Iran are greater than if you treat them with the same harshness as conservatives, Amin Saikal argues in the fourth and fifth chapters. In addition, there is a correlation between those who know the West and those who do not. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, the main representatives of the hardliners, have never visited Europe or the United States, while Rouhani, Khatami and Sharif are fluent in English and Western culture.

With a population under the age of 30 accounting for 50% of the total and a growing modernization of society in Tehran, demands for reform seem unstoppable. According to Amin Saikal, an intransigent policy towards Iran when there is a desire for openness only generates mistrust and reinforces the most conservative positions. Trump's policy with Iran, he concludes, demonstrates the lack of knowledge and understanding of their society and political system.

▲ Dubai Air Visa [Pixabay]

essay / Sebastián Bruzzone Martínez

I. ORIGIN AND FOUNDATION OF THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

In ancient times, the territory was inhabited by Arab tribes, nomadic farmers, artisans and traders, accustomed to plundering merchant ships of European powers that sailed along its coasts. Islam settled into the local culture in the 7th century AD, and Sunni Islam in the 11th century AD. From 1820, United Kingdom signature with the leaders or sheikhs of the area a peace treaty to put an end to piracy. In 1853, both parties signed another agreement whereby the United Kingdom established a military protectorate in the territory. And in 1892, on the pretensions of Russia, France, and Germany, they signed a third agreement which guaranteed a monopoly on trade and exploitation only for the British. The Emirati area was renamed the "Pirate Coast" to the "Trucial States" (the current seven United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain).

During World War I, the airfields and ports of the Gulf took on an important role in the development of the development of the conflict in favour of the United Kingdom. At the end of World War II in 1945, the League of Arab States (Arab League) was created, formed by those who enjoyed some colonial independence. The organization caught the attention of the Truce States.

In 1960, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was created, with Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Venezuela as its founders and headquartered in Vienna, Austria. The seven emirates, which would later form the United Arab Emirates, were united in 1967.

In 1968, the United Kingdom withdrew its military force from the region, and the Truce States organized the Federation of the Persian Gulf Emirates, but it failed when Qatar and Bahrain became independent. In the years that followed, the exploitation of the huge oil wells discovered years earlier began.

In 1971, six Emirates gained independence from the British Empire: Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, um al Qaywayn and Fujairah, forming the federation of the United Arab Emirates, with a legal system based on the 1971 constitution. Once consolidated, on June 12 they joined the Arab League. The seventh emirate, Ras Al-Khaimah joined the following year.

Beginning with the 1973 oil crisis, the Emirates began to accumulate enormous wealth, due to the fact that OPEC members decided not to export any more oil to the countries that supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Currently, 80-85% of the UAE's population is an immigrant. The United Arab Emirates became the third largest oil producer in the Middle East, after Saudi Arabia and Libya.

II. POLITICAL AND LEGAL SYSTEM

By the constitution of 1971, the United Arab Emirates is constituted as a federal monarchy. Each State is governed by its Emir (degree scroll nobility of the sheikhs, Sheikh). Each emirate has a great deal of political, legislative, economic and judicial autonomy, each having its own executive councils, always in correspondence with the federal government. There are no political parties. Federal authorities are made up of:

committee Supreme of the Federation or Emirs: is the supreme authority of the State. It is composed of the governors of the 7 Emirates, or those who replace them in their absence. Each Emirate has one vote in the deliberations. It lays down the general policy on matters entrusted to the Federation, and studies and establishes the aims and interests of the Federation.

President and Vice-President of the Federation: elected by thecommittee Supreme among its members. The President exercises, under the Constitution, important powers such as the presidency of the committee Supreme; signature of laws, decrees or resolutions ratified and issued by the committee; appointment of the President of the committee of Ministers and the Vice-President and Ministers; acceptance of their resignations or suspension from office proposal of the President of the committee of Ministers. The Vice-President exercises all presidential powers in his absence.

By tradition, not recognized in the Emirati Constitution, the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi is the President of the country, and the Sheikh of Dubai is the Vice President and Prime Minister.

Thus, currently, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Sheikh of Abu Dhabi, has been the President of the United Arab Emirates since 2004; and Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Sheikh of Dubai, has been the Prime Minister and Vice-President since 2006.

committee of ministers: composed of the President of the committee of Ministers, the Vice-President and the Ministers. It is the executive body of the Federation. Overseen by the President and committee Supreme, his mission statement is to manage internal and external affairs, which are of skill under the Constitution and federal laws. It has certain prerogatives such as monitoring the implementation of the general policy of the Federal State at home and abroad; propose draft federal laws and move them to the committee Supreme Court of the Federation; supervise the implementation of federal laws and resolutions, and the implementation of international treaties and conventions signed by the United Arab Emirates.

Federal National Assembly: what would resemble a congress, but it is a consultative body only. It is composed of 40 members: twenty elected by the voting citizens, by census suffrage, of the United Arab Emirates through general election, and the other half by the rulers of each Emirate. In December 2018, President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan issued a decree calling for fifty percent of the Federal National Assembly (FNC) to be occupied by women, with the intention of "further empower Emirati women and strengthen their contributions to the development of the country." It is distributed with seats: Abu Dhabi (8); Dubai (8); Sharjah (6); Ras Al Khaimah (6); Ajman (4); um Al Quwayn (4); and Fujairah (4). Federal and financial bills are submitted to it before they are submitted to the President of the Federation for submission to the committee Supreme Court for ratification. It is also the responsibility of the Government to notify the Assembly of international covenants and treaties. The Assembly studies and makes recommendations on matters of a public nature.

The Federal Administration of Justice: The judicial system of the United Arab Emirates is based on Sharia law or Islamic law. Thearticle Article 94 of the Constitution establishes that justice is the basis of the Government and reaffirms the independence of the judiciary, stipulating that there is no authority above the judges, except the law and their own conscience in the exercise of their functions. The federal justice system is made up of first-class courts written request and courts and appeals (civil, criminal, commercial, contentious-administrative, etc.)

There is also a Federal Supreme Court, made up of a president and vocal judges, with powers such as studying the constitutionality of federal laws and unconstitutional acts.

In addition, the local administration of justice will deal with all judicial cases that do not fall within the competence of the federal administration. It has three levels: first written request, appeal and cassation.

The Constitution provides for the existence of an Attorney General, who presides over the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office, which is responsible for submitting lists of documents position offences committed in accordance with the provisions of the Code, and procedure of the Federation.

For promote understanding between federal and local administrations, since 2007 a committee of Judicial Coordination, chaired by the Minister of Justice and composed of presidents and directors of the judicial organs of the State. [1]

It is important to know that the Constitution of the Federation provides guarantees for the reinforcement and protection of human rights in chapter III on public freedoms, rights and obligations, such as the principle of equality on the basis of extraction, place of birth, religious belief or social position, although it does not mention gender, and social justice (art. 25); freedom of citizens (art. 26); freedom of opinion and the right to express it (art. 30); freedom of movement and freedom of movement residency program (art. 29); freedom of religion (art. 32); right to privacy (arts. 31 and 36); rights of the family (art. 15); the right to social security and social security (art. 16); Right to Education (art. 17); the right to health care (art. 19); Right to work (art. 20); Right to association and the establishment of associations (art. 33); the right to property (art. 21); and the right to complain and the right to litigate before the courts (art. 41). [2]

At first glance, it seems that these rights and guarantees enshrined in the Emirati Constitution of 1971 are similar to those of a normal European and Western Constitution. However, they are nuanced and not as effective in the internship. On the one hand, because most of them include references to the specific and applicable law, saying "... within the limits set by law; in accordance with the provisions of the law; or in cases where the law so provides." In this way, the legislator will ensure that these rights are consistent and compatible with Sharia or Islamic law, or with political interests, as the case may be.

On the other hand, these rights and guarantees fully protect Emirati citizens, nationals. Taking into account that 80-85% of the population is foreign, 15% of the total population of the State would be protected in an entirely constitutional manner. By Federal Act No. 28/2005 on the Statute of Persons staff, the law applies to all citizens of the State of the United Arab Emirates provided that there are no special provisions specific to their confession or religion for non-Muslims among them. Its provisions also apply to non-nationals when they are not obliged to comply with the laws of their own country.

Legal safeguards include the Federal Penal Code (Act No. 3/1987); the Code ofprocedure Criminal Law (Act No. 35/1992); Federal Act on the Regulation of Penitentiary Reform Institutions (No. 43/1992); Federal Law on the Regulation of Labour Relations (No. 8/1980); Federal Act on Combating Trafficking in Persons (No. 51/2006); Federal Statute Act staff (No. 28/2005); Federal Act on Juvenile Offenders and Homeless Persons (No. 9/1976); Federal Law on Publications and Publishing (No. 15/1980); Federal Law on the Regulation of Human Organs (No. 15/1993); Federal Law on Associations Declared to be of Public Interest (No. 2/2008); Federal Law on Social Security (No. 2/2001); Federal Law on Pensions and Social Insurance (No. 7/1999); Federal Law on the Protection and development the environment (No. 24/1999); and Federal Law on the Rights of Persons with Special Needs (No. 29/2006).

Military service of 9 months is compulsory for university men between the ages of 18 and 30, and two years for those who do not haveprograms of study Upper. For women, it is optional and subject to the agreement of his tutor. Although the country is not a member of NATO, the Emirates has decided to join the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) coalition, and provide weapons assistance in the war against the Islamic State.

With regard to international treaty guarantees and international cooperation, the United Arab Emirates has made a great effort to include in its Constitution laws and principles protected by the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as a member of the UN and by acceding to its treaties: International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1974); Convention on the Rights of the Child (1997), United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (2007), Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (2004); United Nations Convention against Corruption (2006), among others.

They have also ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Arab Charter on Human Rights, and conventions on the organization of the International Criminal Court. work. It is a member of the WHO, ILO, FAO, UNESCO, UNICEF, WIPO, World Bank and IMF. They are also linked by cooperation agreements with more than 28 international organizations of the United Nations, carrying out advisory tasks of a technical and ministerial nature.

They are members of the Arab League and the Organization of the Arts. lecture By strengthening and promoting Arab work in its regional activities and programmes.

The Emirati police maintain public order and state security. The Ministry of the Interior puts human rights at the forefront of its priorities, focusing on justice, equality, impartiality and protection. Members of the police force must commit to 33 rules of conduct before taking office. The Ministry of the Interior provides administrative units to citizens to supervise police activity and take the necessary measures. However, there is a certain distrust of foreigners towards the police. Most of the complaints come from Emirati citizens.

The Ministry of the Interior must provide diplomatic and consular missions with lists that include data on their nationals interned in penitentiary institutions.

III. SOCIAL SYSTEM

The Emirati government has promoted civil societies and national institutions such as the association of the Emirates for Human Rights (under Federal Act No. 6/1974), the General Federation of Women, association of Jurists, association of Sociologists, association of Journalists, General Administration Human Rights Protection Authority attached to the Dubai Police Headquarters, Dubai Charitable Foundation for Women and Children's Care, National Commission to Combat Trafficking in Persons, Social Support Centre of the Dubai Police, General Administration Abu Dhabi Police, Zayed Charitable Institution, average Emirates Red Crescent, Institution of development Familia, and the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation for Charitable and Humanitarian Works, or the Marriage Fund, among many others.

Importantly, the development of political participation is following a progressive process. To date, there are full and general elections to appoint half of the members of the Federal National Assembly, with census suffrage, for Emirati citizens and through the publication of lists.

Also, the importance of women in Emirati society is growing thanks to the legislative and legal measures taken by the government to empower women, through membership of the committee of development Social of the committee Economic and Social Affairs, which provide opportunities for women who actively participate in the development and the integration of women in the government and private-business sectors (22.5% of the Assembly is women, 2006; it is expected that from 2019 it will be 50% by decree)[3], and promoting female literacy to the point of equalizing it with that of men. However, despite being signatories to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, in the internship They are discriminated against in marriage and divorce proceedings. Fortunately, Emirati legislation providing for the ill-treatment of women and minor children by the husband or father was abolished as long as the aggression did not exceed the limits allowed by Islamic law. Also, once married, women must render obedience to their husbands and be authorized by them to take up a job. It is also prohibited, under prison sentences, cohabitation between unmarried men and women, and sexual relations outside marriage. Polygamy is present even in the royal family.

As in the rest of the Arab countries, homosexuality is considered a serious crime and punishable by fines, imprisonment and deportation in the case of foreigners, although its application is very limited.

The media plays an important role in Emirati society. They are supervised by the committee National Media Agency, which acts largely as a censoring body. They have reached a high technical and professional level in the journalistic sector, hosting in the Dubai average City to more than a thousand specialized companies. However, journalism is controlled by the Federal Law on Press and Publications of 1980, and the Charter of Honor and the Morality of the Journalistic Profession, which have been signed by the heads of the essay. For example, some news that may be unfavorable to Islam or the government would never be published in domestic newspapers, but would be published in foreign newspapers (the case of Haya of Jordan). Since 2007, by means of a decree of the committee It was forbidden to imprison journalists if they made mistakes in the course of their professional duties. However, it ceased to apply with the entrance the Cybercrime Act adopted in 2012.

The government is striving to meet an improvement in the Terms and Conditions work, as the United Arab Emirates is convinced that human beings have the right to enjoy adequate living conditions (housing, working hours, means, labour courts, health insurance, protective guarantees in labour disputes at the international cooperative level, etc.). However, the "Sponsor" or " Kafala" system is still in force, whereby a employer exercises the sponsorship of your employees. Thus, there are cases in which the sponsor retains the passports of its employees during the term of the contract, which is illegal, but they have never been investigated and punished by the government (case of the project of Saadiyat Island), despite being a signatory to conventions on work of the UN.

The last report envelope development Human , corresponding to the year 2018, places the United Arab Emirates in 34th place out of a total of 189 countries. Spain is in 26th place. The State has ensured the Education free and quality up to the university stage for all Emirati citizens, and the integration of disabled people. University and Education Universities such as the University of the United Arab Emirates, Zayed University, or New York University in Abu Dhabi have been positively encouraged. Health care has improved considerably with the construction of hospitals and clinics, with lower fees and increasing life expectancy, standing at 77.6 years (2016). The State allocates money from the public treasury to the social care of the most disadvantaged sectors of the Emirati population and the elderly, widows, orphans or the disabled. It has also ensured that citizens have decent housing, through government agencies such as the Ministry of Public Works, the Zayed Housing Programme, which offers interest-free mortgage loans, the Ministry of Public Works, loan Abu Dhabi Mortgage, the Mohammed bin Rashid Housing Institution that provides loans, or the Sharjah Public Works Authority.

In terms of religion, approximately 75% of the population is Muslim. Islam is the official denomination of the United Arab Emirates. The government pursues a tolerant policy towards other religions, and prohibits non-Muslims from interfering in religion. Education islamic. The evangelization of other religions is prohibited, and the internship of the same must be carried out in the places authorized for this purpose.

On 3 February 2019, at the beginning of the Year of Tolerance, Pope Francis was received with the highest honours in Abu Dhabi by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Vice President and Emir of Dubai Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, and Ahmed al Tayyeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University and leading Islamic theological reference. It was the first time that the head of the Catholic Church set foot in the Arabian Peninsula. Similarly, the Pope celebrated a mass in Zayed Sport City before 150,000 people, saying in his homily: "Let us be an oasis of peace." The event was described by Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State, as "a historic moment for religious freedom."

Exist Projects for the development of remote regions, which seek to modernize the infrastructures and services of those areas of the State furthest from the population centers. Also, by virtue of Federal Act No. 47/1992, the Marriage Fund was established. goal is to encourage marriage between male and female citizens, and promote The family, which according to the Government is the basic unit and fundamental pillar of society, offering financial subsidies to those citizens with limited resources in order to help them meet wedding expenses and contribute to the family stability of society.

IV. ECONOMICS

Since 1973, the United Arab Emirates has undergone a huge transformation and modernization thanks to the exploitation of oil, which accounted for 80% of GDP at that time. In recent years, with the knowledge that in less than 40 years oil will run out, the government has diversified its Economics towards financial services, tourism, trade, transport and infrastructure, making oil and gas only 20% of the national GDP.

Abu Dhabi has 90% of the world's oil and gas reserves, followed by Dubai, and in small quantities in Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah. The country's petroleum policy is carried out through the committee Supreme Petroleum Corporation and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). The main foreign oil companies operating in the country are BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, Petrofac and Partex, and Spain's CEPSA, of which the Emirati sovereign wealth fund Mubadala owns 80% of the company. business.

The lending capacity of financial corporations was severely adversely affected during the 2008 economic crisis. The entrance The number of large foreign private capitals came to a standstill, at the same time as investment in the property and construction sectors. Falling property values forced liquidity restriction. In 2009, local companies were seeking moratorium agreements with their creditors on a $26 billion debt. The Abu Dhabi government provided a $5 trillion bailout to reassure international investors.

Tourism and infrastructure is a success for the country, especially in Dubai. [4] The construction of luxury tourist attractions such as the Palm Islands and the Burj al-Arab, and the good weather for most of the year, has attracted Westerners and people from all over the world. According to the Emirati government, the tourism industry generates more money than oil currently. Large investments are being made in renewable energy, most notably through Masdar, thebusiness government, which has the project Masdar City initiated, creating a city powered solely by renewable energy.

V. DYNASTIES AND ROYAL FAMILIES. THE AL NAHYAN DYNASTY

The United Arab Emirates is made up of seven Emirates and ruled by six families:

Abu Dhabi: by Al Nahyan Family (Al Falahi House)

Dubai: by the Al Maktoum Family (Al Falasi House)

Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah: by the Al Qassimi family

Ajman: by the Al Nuaimi family

um Al Quwain: by the Al Mualla family

Fujairah: by the Al Sharqi family

It is important to know the terminology used in the family tree of Emirati royal families: " Sheikh" means sheikh , and an emir is degree scroll nobility attributed to the sheikhs. In the composition of the names, in the first place, the proper name of the descendant is placed, followed by the infix " bin " which means "of", plus the proper name of his father, and the surname of the family. The infix is " bint" for women.

For example: Sheikh Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan is the father of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

It is common for marriages to take place between the ruling families of the various Emirates, intertwining dynasties, but the rule will always prevail. surname of the husband over that of the wife in the name of the children. Unlike the great European monarchies in which the kingdom is passed down from father to son, in Emirati families power is transmitted first between brothers, by appointment, and as second resource, to the children. These positions of power must be ratified by the committee Supreme.

The Al Nahyan family of Abu Dhabi is an offshoot of the Al Falahi House. This is a royal house that belongs to Bani Yas and is related to Al Falasi House to which the Al Maktoum family of Dubai belongs. Bani Yas is known to be a very ancient tribal confederation of the Liwa Oasis region. There are few data about its exact origin. The Al Nahyan royal family is incredibly large, as each of the brothers has had several children and with different women. The most important and recent governors of Abu Dhabi would be those who have been in power since 1971, when the United Arab Emirates was consolidated as a country, ceasing to be a Truce State and British protectorate. Are:

Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (1918-2004): was governor of Abu Dhabi from 1966 until his death. He collaborated closely with the British Empire to maintain the integrity of the territory in the face of Saudi Arabia's expansionist pretensions. He is considered the Father of the Nation and founder of the United Arab Emirates, along with his counterpart Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum of Dubai. Both pledged to form a Federation together with other rulers after the British military withdrawal. He was the first president of the United Arab Emirates, and was re-elected four times: 1976, 1981, 1986 and 1991. Zayed was characterized as sympathetic, peaceful and united with neighboring emirates, charitable in terms of donations, relatively liberal and permissive of private means. He was considered one of the richest men in the world by Forbes magazine, with a net worth of twenty billion dollars.

He died at the age of 86 and is buried in Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. He replaced him in the position his first-born son Khalifa as governor and ratified president of the United Arab Emirates by the committee Supreme.

He had six wives: Hassa bint Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, Sheikha bint Madhad Al Mashghouni, Fatima bint Mubarak Al Ketbi, Mouza bint Suhail bin Awaidah Al Khaili, Ayesha bint Ali Al Darmaki, Amna bint Salah bin Buduwa Al Darmaki, and Shamsa bint Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan; and thirty children, some of whom are as follows:

Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan (1948–present): Eldest son of the above, whose mother is Hassa bint Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, is the current governor of Abu Dhabi and president of the United Arab Emirates. His wife is Shamsa bint Suhail Al Mazrouei, with whom he has eight children. He also holds other positions: Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, President of the committee Petroleum Authority, and chairman of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. He was educated at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the United Kingdom. Previously, he was appointed crown prince of Abu Dhabi; Head of the department Abu Dhabi Defence Ministry, which would become the Emirates Armed Forces; Prime Minister, Chief of Staff of Abu Dhabi, Minister of Defence and Finance; Second Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and President of the committee Abu Dhabi Executive. Dubai's Burj Khalifa is named after him, as he brought in the money needed to complete its construction. He intervened militarily in Libya by sending the Air Force along with NATO, and pledged support for the democratic uprising in Bahrain in 2011.

According to a WikiLeaks leak, the U.S. ambassador describes him as a "distant and uncharismatic character." It has been criticised for its wasteful nature (purchase of the yacht Azzam, scandal of the construction of the palace and purchase of territories in the Seychelles, the Panama Papers and the revelation of properties in London and shell companies...)

In 2014, according to the official version, Khalifa suffered a stroke and underwent surgery. According to the government, he is in stable condition, but has virtually disappeared from the public eye.

Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (1961–present): Khalifa's brother, but whose mother is Fatima bint Mubarak Al Ketbi. He is the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and entrusted with the execution of presidential affairs, receptions of foreign dignitaries and political decisions due to the poor state of health of the President. Also, like Khalifa, he was educated at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He has been an officer in the Presidential Guard and a pilot in the Air Force. He is married to Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan, and has nine children.

It has been characterized by its activist foreign policy against Islamist extremism, and its charitable character (partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for vaccines in Afghanistan and Pakistan). International governments such as France, Singapore and the United States have invited Mohammed to various bilateral events and dialogues. He has even met with Pope Francis twice (Rome, 2016; Abu Dhabi, 2019), promoting the Year of Tolerance.

In subject He is the chairman of the Mubadala sovereign wealth fund and head of the committee Abu Dhabi for the development Economic. Has C billion-dollar economic stimulation projects for the modernization of the country in the energy sector and infrastructure.

It has also promoted women's empowerment, welcoming a delegation of female officers from the Military and Peacekeeping Programme for Arab Women, who are preparing for United Nations peace operations. It has encouraged the presence of women in public services, and has pledged to meet regularly with female representatives of the country's institutions.

Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan (1955–present): Zayed's second son. He has six children. He is the son of Shamsa bint Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan. He was educated at Millfield School and Sandhurst Military Academy like his two previous brothers. He is the third Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, a member of the committee He is a member of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Hamdan bin Zayed Al Nahyan (1963–present): Zayed's fifth son, whose mother is Fatima bint Mubarak Al Ketbi. He is married to Shamsa bint Hamdan bin Mohammed Al Nahyan. He was educated at the Sandhurst Military Academy. He occupied the position Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs until 2009. Currently, he is the emir's representative in the western region of Abu Dhabi. Is graduate in Political Science and Business Administration from the University of the United Arab Emirates.

Nahyan bin Mubarak al Nahyan (1951–present): son of Mubarak bin Mohammed Al Nahyan. He is the current head of the UAE's Ministry of Tolerance since 2017. From 2016 to 2017, he was Minister of Culture anddevelopment of the knowledge. He also dedicated years of his life to the creation of Education as the University of the United Arab Emirates (1983-2013), technical school of Technology (1988-2013), and Zayed University (1998-2013). He is also the president of Warid Telecom International, a business of Telecommunications, and the President of the group Abu Dhabi, Union National Bank and United Bank Limited, among other companies.

Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan (1972–present): Zayed's ninth son, whose mother is Fatima bint Mubarak Al Ketbi. He is married to Al Yazia bint Saif bin Mohammed Al Nahyan, with whom he has five children. Occupies the position Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the United Arab Emirates since 2006. Is graduate in Political Science from the University of the United Arab Emirates. During his tenure, the Emirates have seen a great expansion in its diplomatic relations with countries in South America, the South Pacific, Africa and Asia, and a consolidation with Western countries. He is a member of the committee of the country's National Security, Vice President of the committee Permanent Border Officer, President of the committee National Media Organization, President of the board of Directors of the Emirates Foundation for the development of Youth, Vice-President of the board of Directors of the Abu Dhabi Fund for the development and Member of the board of the high school of National Defense. He was Minister of Information and Culture from 1997 to 2006, and President of Emirates average Incorporated.

Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan (1970–present): Zayed's eighth son, whose mother is Fatima bint Mubarak Al Ketbi. He is married to two women, Alia bint Mohammed bin Butti Al Hamed, and Manal bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, with whom he has six children in total. He has held the positions of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs of the United Arab Emirates since 2009. He is president of the committee Ministerial of Services, the Emirates Investment Authority and the Emirates Racing Authority. He is a member of the committee Supreme Court of Petroleum and Petroleum committee Abu Dhabi Investments. He was educated at Santa Barbara Community College in the United States, and received a bachelor's degree in International Affairs from the University of the United Arab Emirates. He presides over the National Documentation and Documentation Centre research and the Abu Dhabi Fund for Humanitarian development. He was president of First Gulf Bank until 2006.

He has a developed business vision. He is the owner of the English soccer team Manchester City, and co-owner of New York City of the MLS, an American professional soccer league. He is a member of the board He is a board member of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, has a 32% stake in Virgin Galactic, a 9.1% stake in Daimler, and owns Abu Dhabi average Investment Corporation, by which he owns the English newspaper The National.

Saif binZayed Al Nahya (1968–present): Zayed's twelfth son, whose mother is Mouza bint Suhail Al Khaili. occupies the position Deputy Prime Minister since 2009, and Minister of the Interior since 2004. Its role is to ensure the internal protection and national security of the United Arab Emirates. Is graduate in Political Science from the University of the United Arab Emirates. Was Director General of the Abu Dhabi Police in 1995, and Undersecretary of the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1997, until his appointment as Minister.

Hazza bin Zayed Al Nahyan (1965–present): Zayed's fifth son, whose mother is Fatima bint Mubarak Al Ketbi. He is married to Mozah bint Mohammed bin Butti Al Hamed, with whom he has five children. He holds the post of Minister of National Security of the United Arab Emirates, Vice-President of thecommittee Executive of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Emirates Identity Authority.

Nasser bin Zayed Al Nahyan (1967-2008): Zayed's son, whose mother is Amna bint Salah Al Badi. He was president of the department Planning & Economics of Abu Dhabi, and was a royal security officer. According to the official version, he died at the age of 41 when the helicopter in which he was traveling with his friends crashed off the coast of Abu Dhabi. He was buried in the Sheikh Sultan bin Zayed Mosque, and three days of mourning were declared throughout the United Arab Emirates.

Issa bin Zayed Al Nahyan (1970–present): Zayed's son, whose mother is Amna bint Salah Al Badi. It is a prestigious real estate developer in the city of Dubai, but it does not occupy any position politician in the government of the Emirates. He was involved in a case in which, in a leaked video, he allegedly tortured two Palestinians who were his business associates. The Emirati court declared Issa innocent because he was the victim of a conspiracy and sentenced the Palestinians to five years in prison for drug use, recording, publication and blackmail. International observers harshly criticized the Emirati judicial system and called for an overhaul of the country's penal code.

From my point of view, and with the experience of having lived in the country, the United Arab Emirates is a very unknown country for Spanish youth and that has incredible professional opportunities due to the demand for work foreign, a very high quality of life at an affordable price, as salaries are quite high, and a strong and modernized administration and institutions. The culture shock is not very great, as the state makes sure to avoid situations of discrimination, unlike other Arab countries. I can say with complete conviction that cultural tolerance is real. However, foreigners should keep in mind that it is not a Western country, and that it is recommended to respect the nation's customs regarding dress, sacred places and public performances, and to know the Emirati Basic Law.

[Bruno Maçães, Belt and Road. A Chinese World Order. Penguin. Gurgaon, India, 2019. 227p.]

review / Emili J. Blasco

Covered the moment of literature devoted to presenting the novelty of the project A Chinese leader of the New Silk Road, Bruno Maçães leaves aside many of the specific specifics of the Chinese initiative to deal with its more geopolitical aspects. That is why throughout the book Maçães uses the name Belt and Road all the time, instead of its acronyms – OBOR (One Belt, One Road) or the lately more used BRI ( Belt and Road Initiative) – because he is not referring so much to the layout of transport connections themselves as to the new world order that Beijing wants to model.

Through this economic integration, according to Maçães, China could project power over two-thirds of the world, including Central and Eastern Europe, in a process of geographical cohesion of Eurasia to which this politician and the European Union has already been able to achieve this goal. researcher He dedicated his earlier work.

Compared to other essays on the New Silk Road, this one directs a lot of attention to India (this is true in its general content, but also in this one). review A special edition has been used for that country, with a particular introduction).

Maçães grants India the role of core topic vault in the project integrator of Eurasia. If India decides not to participate at all and instead gamble on the alternative promoted by the United States, along with Japan and Australia, then the design China will not reach the dimension desired by Beijing. "If India decides that life in the Western order will be better than under alternative arrangements, the Belt and Road will struggle to achieve its original ambition," says the author.

However, Maçães believes that the West is not entirely that attractive to the subcontinent. In that Western order, India can only aspire to a secondary role, while the rise of China "offers it the exciting possibility of a genuinely multipolar, rather than merely multilateral, world in which India can legitimately hope to become an autonomous center of geopolitical power," at least on the same level as a declining Russia.

Despite these apparent advantages, India will not go completely to either side, Maçães predicts. "It will never join the Belt and Road because it could only consent to join China in a project that it was new. And it will never join a U.S. effort to rival the Belt and Road unless the U.S. makes it less confrontational." So, "India will leave everyone waiting, but it will never make a decision on the Belt and Road."

Without the involvement of Delhi, or even more so, with resistance from the Indian leadership, neither the US nor China's vision can be fully brought to fruition. internshipMaçães continues. Without India, Washington may be able to preserve its current model of alliances in Asia, but their ability to compete on the scale of the Belt and Road would collapse; For its part, Beijing is realizing that it alone cannot provide the financial resources needed for the ambitious project.

Maçães warns that China has "ignored and disdained" India's positions and interests, which may end up being "a big miscalculation." He believes that China's impatience to start building infrastructure, due to the need to demonstrate that its initiative is a success, "can become the worst enemy."

An adventure that the Chinese can correct the shot. "It is likely – perhaps even inevitable – that the Belt and Road will grow more and more decentralized, less Chinese-centric," he says, commenting that in the end this new Chinese order would not be so different from the structure of the existing world order led by Washington, where "the United States insists on being recognized as the state at the apex of the international power hierarchy" and leaves some autonomy to each regional power.

If Maçães puts India in a status Non-alignment plenary session of the Executive Council, does provide for an unequivocal partnership of that country with Japan. In his view, it is a "symbiotic" relationship, in which India sees Japan as its first source of technology, while Japan sees the Indian navy as "a partner indispensable in its efforts to contain Chinese expansion and safeguard freedom of navigation" in the region's seas.

As for Europe, Maçães sees it in the difficult position "of not being able to oppose a project economic integration, while it is equally incapable of joining as a mere participant" in the Chinese initiative, in addition to the seed of division that the project in the European Union.

Bangladesh to Pakistan and Djibouti

Despite the above-mentioned differences, Maçães believes that the relationship between China and India can develop positively, even if there is some element of latent conflict, encouraged by a certain mutual distrust. The commercial linkage of two such immense markets and production centers will generate economic ties "called dominating" the economy. Economics towards the middle of this century.

This movement of goods between the two countries will make Bangladesh and Myanmar the centre of a major trade corridor.

For its part, Pakistan, in addition to being a corridor for the exit to the Indian Ocean from western China, will be increasingly integrated into the Chinese production chain. Specifically, it can feed raw materials and basic manufactures to the textile industry that China is developing in Xinjiang, its export gateway to Europe for goods that can optimize rail transport. The capital of that province, Urumqi, will become the fashion capital of Central Asia in the next decade. agreement with the forecast of Maçães.

Another interesting observation is that the shrinking of Eurasia and the development of internal transport routes between the two ends of the supercontinent, may cause the container ports of the North Sea (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Hamburg) to lose weight in trade between Europe and China at the expense of greater transit of those in the Mediterranean (Piraeus, especially).

The author also ventures that Chinese infrastructure works in Cameroon and Nigeria can help facilitate connections between these countries and Doralé, the port that China manages in Djibouti, which in this way, through these trans-African routes, could become "a serious rival" to the Suez Canal.

If China has its first, and so far only, military base outside its territory, it must be borne in mind that Beijing may give a possible military use to other ports whose territory is not the same. management has assumed. As Maçães recalls, in 2016 China approved a framework This is a legal law that obliges civilian companies to support military logistics operations requested by the Chinese Navy.

These are all aspects of a thought-provoking book that does not allow itself to be carried away by the determinism of China's rise, nor by an antagonistic vision that denies the possibility of a new world order. It is the work of a European who, although he served in the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a director for Europe, is realistic about the EU's weight in the design of the world.

The deterioration of recent years seems to have been corrected in several indicators on democratic health and economic environment.

Costa Rica has traditionally been a model of democratic functioning in a region with serious institutional deficits, which has earned it a mediating role in different conflicts. The increase of internal problems -strikes, citizen protests, bipartisan crisis...- have seemed to have diminished Costa Rica's international prestige in recent years. Is Costa Rica suffering from democratic and institutional deterioration?

▲ Facade of the National Theater of Costa Rica, in San José [Pixabay].

article / Ramón Barba

The political unrest of recent years in Costa Rica, in a regional context of the "angry vote" and the consequent "outsider phenomenon", has given the impression of a setback in the country's institutional virtues. The goal of this article is to determine, based on different indicators on democratic health and economic and political satisfaction, if there are objective data that ratify this perception.

For this purpose we will first analyze a set of indicators, elaborated by the World Bank, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and The Economist magazine, and then we will also take into account some results of the survey Latinobarómetro. We will compare the values recorded in 2010, 2013, 2016 and, when possible, 2018.

Indicators

Regarding the Democracy Index elaborated by The Economist, although Costa Rica maintains its second place among Latin American democracies, behind Uruguay and ahead of Chile (these are the three countries that usually obtain better grade in the different institutional parameters of the region), in the last decade a Costa Rican democratic decline is observed, apparently overcome in the most recent report. From a score of 8.04 achieved in the 2010 Democracy Index, Costa Rica dropped to 8.03 in 2013 and 7.88 in 2016, to regain ground in 2018 with an 8.07. The country remains the best democracy in Central America, followed at a distance by a stable Panama.

The deterioration of recent years has also been picked up by the Index of development of Democracies in Latin America (IDD-LAT), of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which has not yet published data referring to 2018, so this index cannot endorse whether there has been a recent recovery. In 2010, Costa Rica had a score average of 9.252; it barely varied in 2013, with a figure of 9.277, but dropped clearly in 2016, with 8.539 points. The components of the index that suffered the most were welfare policy creation and economic efficiency, where it dropped from 1st and 5th place, respectively, to 8th and 12th. The fact that Costa Rica remained between 1st and 3rd place in civil and political rights and in institutional and political efficiency in those years sample shows that the social concern of those years was more in the economic sphere than in the institutional sphere.

The World Bank's Good Governanceindicators also registera small regression in the case of Costa Rica between the years 2013 and 2016 (data more recent ones have not yet been published). Regarding the Rule of Law and Government Effectiveness scales the score dropped from 0.6 and 0.5, respectively, to 0.5 and 0.4. There has been little change in the Control of Corruption scale.

evaluation citizen

The above indicators are prepared by experts who, by applying standardized criteria, seek to offer an objective estimate. But we also wanted to take into account the opinion of the citizens themselves, as expressed in the survey Latinobarómetro. These can be useful to indicate the perception that exists among the population regarding the institutional health of the country: the satisfaction that exists regarding the government system and the economic system.

The value of democracy is maintained in high percentages in Costa Rica, despite a negative trend in the region as a whole. Attending to four values that Latinobarómetro has included in its surveys corresponding to the years here chosen for our comparison, we see that indeed in 2016 the citizen perception was that of a worsening of status, but in 2018 an improvement is observed, reaching even more positive levels than in 2013. As for the evaluation of democracy, its consideration as the best system of government dropped from 77% to 72% and then has risen again to 77%, while its cataloging as a preferable system has been increasing: 53%, 60% and 63%.

The perception of the economic environment, for its part, had a blip in 2013, but today it is in better condition. The statement "progress is being made" fell from 15% to 12%, but in 2018 it reached 22%, while satisfaction with future personal economic prospects fell from 45% to 20% to stand in 2018 at 52%.

Political unrest

Costa Rica is a country that retains strong institutions, although the political landscape is more divided. test of this is the end of the two-party system (1953-2014), brought about by less support for the National Liberation Party (PLN) and the Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC) and the emergence of the Citizen Action Party (PAC), to which the country's current president, Carlos Alvarado, belongs.

Corruption issues such as the "cimentazo case", the high public debt that has forced cutbacks in a country with certain well-established social benefits and a regional and international environment prone to populist solutions may be behind the political unrest observed in Costa Rica in recent years.

This occurs in a context of the "angry vote" in Latin America, which arises as a consequence of the political actions of the last twenty years in the region and a strengthening of the middle classes. Citizen dissatisfaction has led to the emergence of outsider politicians: people with relative popularity, short degree program political, without a determined strategy and with an "anti-political" speech . This is a patron saint that, although it is in the emergence of the PAC, in any case does not fully correspond to the personality of President Alvarado, who actually seems to have contributed to redirect the Costa Rican restlessness.

Conclusions

Thus, from the analysis of the data observed here, it can be concluded that there was indeed a slight deterioration in both institutional circumstances and especially in economic conditions or expectations between 2013 and 2016, but the different scales have returned in 2018 to previous values, even improving in some cases to levels of ten years ago. This is something that can be observed both in the indicators at position of experts that follow standardized objective procedures and in the surveys of subjective citizen perception.

The sample used and the temporal tastings carried out have not been exhaustive, so it is not possible to specify whether the variations noted here are circumstantial fluctuations or part of a trend pointing in a certain direction.

[Condoleezza Rice, Amy B. Zegart, Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations can Anticipate Global Insecurity. Hachette Book Group. New York, May 2019]

REVIEW / Rossina Funes Santimoni

Every year Stanford Graduate School of Business offers their students a seminar in Political Risk. The classes are taught by former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the renowned academic Amy B. Zegart. Motivated by their students, they decided to turn their classes into a book in order to allow more people and organizations to navigate the waters of political risk.

The work titled Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations can Anticipate Global Insecurity is divided into ten chapters. The authors start by explaining the contemporary concept of political risk. Consequently, theoretical framework is added as they advance in the explanation, in this way making it useful for the reader in order to understand, analyze, mitigate and answer efficiently to political risks. Their ultimate objective is to provide functional framework that can be utilized in any organization or by any person to improve political risk management. 

Rice and Zegart define the twenty-first-century political risk as the probability that a political action could significantly affect a company's business. Nowadays, the public and the private sphere are constantly changing and evolving. Everything is more complex and intertwined. Governments are no longer the only ones playing an important role in business decisions. The authors emphasize how companies need to efficiently deal with the political risks spawn by an increasing diversity of actors, among which is anyone with access to social average. In order to illustrate the latter, the authors make use of real-life examples, for instance the Blackfish Effect. It is named after a low-budget investigative documentary with the same title that depicted how SeaWorld Entertainment's treatment of orcas harmed both the animals and their human trainers. The film that started with one woman reading a story about orcas triggered political action at the grassroots, state and federal levels, ending up with devastating consequences from which the company has still have not recovered up to now. These cascading repercussions of the film have been denominated the Blackfish Effect. 

The work is well equipped with more examples about distinguished companies' experience. Among the organizations cited are Lego Company Group, FedEx, Royal Caribbean and Nike. Some have excelled in dealing with political risk and some have failed. However, both sides of the coin are useful to learn and to understand how the convoluted world of political risks management work.

Nowadays, risk generators perform at five intersecting levels including individuals, local organizations and governments, national governments, transnational organizations, and supranational and international institutions. Therefore, today's risks are different from the old ones, even if those still persist. With this in mind, Rice and Zegart shed a light on these days' top ten political risks: geopolitics, internal conflict, policy change, braches of contract, corruption, extraterritorial reach, natural resource manipulation, social activism, terrorism and cyber threats.

Nevertheless, even if the theory is laid out, the question still haunts us: Why is good political risk management so hard? The authors dedicate a whole chapter investigating it and conclude that there are "Five Hards". Political risk is hard to reward, hard to understand, hard to measure, hard to update, and hard to communicate. Therefore, in order to succeed at its management, one must get right the four basics: understanding, analyzing, mitigating and responding to risks. Rice and Zegart dedicate the remaining four chapters of the book expanding on each basic and, again, employing examples to better illustrate their knowledge.

The thing about political risks is that they are always there. They are imminent and we can do nothing more than try to prevent them and learn from them, to use the present in order to make the best of it for the future. It is not about predicting the future, which is impossible. "No one ever builds a disaster recovery plan that allows for the destruction of everybody in the office at 8:45 am. That is never the plan," assures Howard W. Lutnick, CEO at Cantor Fitzgerald on the how the company dealt with the 9/11 terrorist attack aftermath. Paradoxically, Rice and Zegart maintain that the best way to deal with crises is not having them. Henceforth, they dedicate a whole chapter to providing key takeaways in order to better respond to crises. Politics has always been an unpredictable business. There is no one that can discern accurately how human history is going to unfold. However, the authors are convinced that managing political risks does not have to be pure guesswork and that being prepare is essential and can improve companies performances in a great deal.

Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations can Anticipate Global Insecurity completely revamps the way we reflect on the topic. It is easy to notice both authors proficiency in the field. On one hand, the past experiences of former U.S Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice serve as anecdotes to elucidate the build-up of the theoretical framework. It is valuable to have such a persona to act as a primary source that has lived among other high-end characters and important people in history. On the other hand we have Professor Amy B. Zegart, who with her natural eloquence excels in conveying the importance of political risk management nowadays. Consequently, everyone can get a precious lesson from this book, ranging from students that are interested in navigating the sphere, to everyday workers, company owners and public servants.