To start your week, we elect the world's youngest president, wonder if Biden's agenda is doomed, and issue Russian demands to NATO.

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— The Signalistas

SIGNAL - The GZero NewsletterPresented by mastercard.com

To start your week, we elect the world's youngest president, wonder if Biden's agenda is doomed, and issue Russian demands to NATO.

Thank you for reading — please tell your friends to sign up here.

— The Signalistas

   

Boric wins in Chile. In the end, it wasn’t even close. Faced with two diametrically opposed choices for president in Sunday’s presidential runoff, more than 55 percent of Chilean voters went with leftwinger Gabriel Boric instead of his far-right opponent José Antonio Kast. The ten-point gap was so wide that Kast conceded before the count was even done. Boric, 35, now becomes the youngest president of any major nation in the world. Elected just two years after mass protests over inequality shook what was one of Latin America’s most reliably boring and prosperous countries, Boric has promised to raise taxes in order to boost social spending, nationalize the pension system, and expand the rights of indigenous Chileans. But with the country’s legislature evenly split between parties of the left and the center-right, the new president will likely have to compromise on his sweeping pledge to make Chile the land where neoliberalism “goes to its grave.”


Joe sinks Joe. It looks like US President Joe Biden has come to the end of the road with his $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Plan, now that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has announced flatly he’ll vote “no.” With the Senate split 50-50, Biden needs every Democrat vote in the chamber. The White House haggled with Manchin for months — “dancin’ for Manchin”, you might say. Biden even cut the proposed spending in half. But the moderate Manchin said he still “couldn’t get there” because of concerns about the deficit, and further stoking already high inflation. Republicans, of course, are ecstatic, because passing BBB is Biden's key pitch for Americans to vote for Democrats in next year's midterms and re-elect him (or another Democrat in his place) in 2024. It's not too late to reach a fresh compromise on the bill, but the longer the Dems keep squabbling, the longer their odds of retaining control of Congress next November.

Russia makes its demands. With 100,000 Russian troops at the Ukrainian border, Moscow released a bombshell list of demands for the “West” on Friday. Among other things, NATO must relinquish any right ever to expand further eastward, and must stop sending its troops or ships anywhere that could conceivably threaten Russia. What’s more, the Russians are impatient: they want the US to discuss these proposals right now. The US is happy to talk, but won’t give the Kremlin a veto over the choices that sovereign nations want to make about their own security alliances. The Ukrainians, naturally, agree, and on Monday President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will meet with his counterparts from Poland and Lithuania to emphasize the point. We’re watching to see what the US comes back with — one version of a maximalist response would look like this — and what, precisely, Russia is prepared to do if it doesn't like what it sees.

For Beijing, there is thunder Down Under. Tensions between Australia and China just keep rising. After China responded to Aussie requests for a COVID investigation by imposing devastating tariffs and unofficial bans on Australian exports in 2020, Oz is pushing back hard now. Canberra on Friday accused China of “economic coercion,” while cybersecurity officials publicly confirmed malicious attacks against Australia by Chinese spy services working with Chinese telecom giant Huawei. The Aussies also say Chinese intelligence vessels are snooping around in Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone. These accompany several clearly pro-American moves this year: the Aussies have signed on to AUKUS, an exclusive military club with Washington and London that gives them access to unprecedented weapons tech, are allowing the buildup of US military infrastructure (read, bases) on its soil, and joined America in a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. But the Australians are taking the tensions directly to China’s neighborhood, too. Canberra just signed a $770 million weapons deal with South Korea, including tech to build Howitzers — really, really big artillery guns. And even though the spat between the two continues, there is evidence that Australia, while heavily dependent on trade with China, is successfully pushing for diversity in trade partnerships.

An Islamic trust fund for Afghanistan. They didn’t officially recognize the Taliban government. They didn’t even allow the Taliban’s foreign minister to appear in the official group photograph. But foreign ministers from the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the second-largest intergovernmental organization after the UN, met in Islamabad on Sunday and pledged to set up a trust fund to address the worsening humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Neither the exact amount of the fund nor the contributions by member countries was released, but may not match the $4.5 billion that the UN has appealed for aid to Afghanistan amid warnings that the Afghan economy is in a free-fall, with 23 million facing starvation. The lead organization of the fund will be the Islamic Development Bank, the OIC’s in-house global lender.

 
 

 
 
   

In Yemen, the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis you’ve probably never heard of, 80 percent of people need international aid just to survive. Two-thirds are hungry, and half don’t know where their next meal will come from.

Life is very hard in Yemen, UN Resident Coordinator David Gressly tells Ian Bremmer. Most infrastructure is destroyed, few can access clean water or health care, and many Yemenis are afraid to go outside because of landmines.

Meanwhile, 1.2 civil servants continue to show up to work, with little or no pay. If they stayed home, the state would cease to exist.

The UN is asking for $3.6 billion simply to feed Yemenis and keep the lights on through 2022, but is now short $1.6 billion. Gressly says that means many Yemenis will go hungry next year.

Regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia have turned Yemen into a seven-year proxy war, with civilians paying the price. The country is divided between the Houthis, an Iran-backed Shia militant group, and the internationally recognized government with Saudi Arabia on its side.

It’s unlikely the conflict will end anytime soon. The Biden administration has delisted the Houthis as a terrorist organization and stopped selling weapons to the Saudis. Gressly thinks that’s a step in the right direction, but not enough.

Meanwhile, in New York City: Yemeni coffee! Did you know that war-torn Yemen still produces one of the tastiest coffees in the world? It’s hard to get the beans now, but Diwan Café in Brooklyn has found a way.

Watch this week's episode of GZERO World here.


 
 

 
 
   

Mastercard Economics Institute’s “Economy 2022” is a global outlook for the coming year based on critical trends as seen through the lens of the consumer. With a team of data scientists and economists we found that the pandemic has obscured the global view of what’s to come. One thing’s for certain: Going digital paid off in spades for businesses around the world during the pandemic and will remain a key theme in 2022.


 
 

 
 
   

Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai’s disappearance after accusing a former high-ranking official of sexual assault has prompted global public outcry — and a WTA boycott. But in China, her allegations were scrubbed from the internet. What does that tell us about Beijing's attitudes towards the #MeToo movement, and threats to the ruling Communist Party? We asked Eurasia Group analyst Allison Sherlock. (Peng on Sunday denied the accusation, but that's another story.)


 
 

 
 
   

16: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hosted over the weekend a summit in Istanbul attended by 16 African heads of state. Turkey has been upping its Africa game for years, and lately Erdogan has been lobbying for the continent to have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.


30.2: Only 30.2 percent of Hong Kong voters went to the polls on Sunday for the territory's legislative elections, in which only China-vetted candidates were allowed to run. It's the lowest turnout since the city was returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

253 million: It wasn’t expected, but despite COVID-battered movie theaters reeling from a year of flops, at least one part of the entertainment universe — the MCU, that is — has been saved by a friendly neighborhood appearance. The new Marvel movie “Spider-Man: No Way Home” took in a staggering $253 million in its opening weekend at the North American box office, more than any other film during the pandemic, and was the third-highest US debut of all time. Spidey has already thwipped his way to the number three spot of all-time global sales as well, behind “Avengers: Endgame” and “Avengers: Infinity War.”

21,900: On Friday and Saturday, New York state set a pandemic record, with more than 21,900 COVID cases reported two days in a row. While nationwide cases are up the last week, New York’s tally has surged over six times the US average.

 
 

 
 

This edition of Signal was written by Waj S. Khan, Alex Kliment, and Carlos Santamaria. Art by Gabriella Turrisi. Spiritual counsel from Gabrielle Debinski.