Foreign Digest: Brazil, South Korea, South Africa, Hungary and Syria

Brazil, South Korea and South Africa

            There have recently been several investigations and convictions of former elected Presidents around the world for financial corruption. 

            The former liberal President of Brazil was convicted of corruption and last week began serving his prison sentence.  His successor from the same liberal party had been impeached and removed from office last year for corruption.

The former President of South Korea was convicted of corruption earlier this month.  She had been impeached and removed for corruption.

The former President of South Africa, the leftist who was removed from office last month for corruption, was last week placed under investigation for the same charges.

Hungary

            The far-right anti-immigrant, authoritarian President of Hungary was reelected last week to his third consecutive term and fourth overall. The elections were not completely free and fair, as he has admitted to being “illiberal.” Thousands of protestors took to the streets this weekend to protest the electoral law.  Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic have become less free and, except for Poland, pro-Russian, despite being members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Syria

            After international observers again reported recently that the Baathist Syrian tyrannical regime of Bashar Assad used chemical weapons, including the banned sarin gas, in addition to chlorine, against civilians in Syria’s civil war, the Russian Federation again blocked any action last week by the United Nations Security Council and tried to cast doubt on the obvious facts.  In response, the United States, France and the United Kingdom launched military strikes this weekend against Syrian chemical weapons of mass destruction program (WMD) targets.  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization expressed support for the raid.  The strikes were more robust than those by the U.S. last year that were in response to the Syrian use of chemical WMDs.  However, Donald Trump, the pretender to the American presidency whose election the Russians had supported, telegraphed the strikes to the Syrians and signaled to Syria’s Russian backers ahead of time that they would be limited in scope, focused on chemical WMDs and not regime change.

Russia and Iran are allies of the Assad regime in the war, along with Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist organization sponsored by Iran and Syria.  Russia claims its intervention was intended to fight “terrorists” but it backs the terrorist-sponsoring Assad and focuses primarily on targeting non-Islamist rebels.  Syria and Russia commit war crimes by targeting innocent civilians with conventional weapons like barrel bombs in heavily populated areas and by deliberately targeting hospitals.  Russia has long maintained a base on Syria’s Mediterranean coast.  Despite a deconfliction protocol with the U.S., Russian forces have occasionally attacked American positions.  

The Syrian civil war started in 2011 as Syrians rose up against tyranny.  The war has claimed half a million lives and made ten million people refugees, thus creating the largest refugee crisis for Europe since the Second World War.  In addition to non-Islamist and Kurdish rebels, some of which are American-backed, Islamist terrorists like al-Qaeda and its offshoot, the Islamic State, also participate in the multi-sided war.  An international coalition of mostly Western and Arab states led by the U.S. has been targeting the Islamists in Syria and Iraq.  Turkey opposes the Syrian regime but focuses its efforts against the Kurds.  Israel occasionally strikes Hezbollah or Syrian WMD targets.  There has been no international threat to remove the Syrian regime or even to punish it for its non-WMD atrocities.