The West & South in a Dark Age of System Rivalry

 

Shortly after Putin´s Russia had invaded Ukraine, I observed that global governance was disintegrating into an American-dominated bloc and a Chinese-dominated bloc, with Russia and the EU countries as junior partners. The link between geopolitical and economic division would not only be calibrated by sanctions, to the extent they are effective. China containment, protectionism, and friend-shoring next to sanctions are offsetting development friendly Shifting  Wealth, as defined by the OECD Development Centre in 2010[1]. To be sure, the concept of Shifting Wealth has entirely ignored that the rise of the BRICS has been shaping the world to suit autocracy. True, the multipolar world has been leveraged by totalitarians, whence the notion of system rivalry. Yet, I will argue here that it is the West that will shoulder most of the economic cost of a dark age of “systemic rivalry”.

The BRICS and much of the “Global South”, a risk first overlooked (and denied) by Western observers, might opt for the China-dominated bloc. With a prolonged division between the west and a bloc centred on China and Russia, economic divisions will deepen. As lucidly summed up by Pascal Lamy (ex WTO): “Putin pushes us into the arms of the Americans and we push Putin into the arms of the Chinese. This world benefits Beijing, Moscow and even Washington, but can it satisfy us the EU?”[2]. Former UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband notes “Few governments endorse the brazen Russian invasion, yet many remain unpersuaded by the West’s insistence that the struggle for freedom and democracy in Ukraine is also theirs. …The concerted Western response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine has thrown into sharp relief the occasions when the West violated its own rules or when it was conspicuously missing in action in tackling global problems”[3].

UN General Assembly resolution that demands #Russia leave #Ukraine, 23.2.2023.

Source: UNGA. https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/02/1133847

 

The claim that much of the Global South is on Ukraine’s side became first questionable at the United Nations General Assembly in March 2022, with BRIC members abstaining a vote for Russia to leave Ukraine. A year later, the 136 countries of the Global South embraced a range of positions. By number of countries, almost 62% of Southern countries were classified by Nicolas Vernon at Bruegel as pro-Ukraine. However, with abstentions by both China and India, the pro-Ukraine share shrinks to a third by aggregate population[4]. Much will depend on Brazil´s and India´s soft power where the Global South will stand in international diplomacy.

The cost of rival blocks might now be higher for the West than for the South. The rise in South-South linkages has led to a new world less dependent on the West. From the perspective of poor countries, the most important consequence of China and India’s entry into the global economy operated through both global and direct linkages The second phase of shifting wealth from 2000 to the 2008 great financial crisis GFC (after the first of initial opening during the 1980-2000 period), saw pervasive convergence of poor countries largely due to increasingly China-centric growth[5]. Since the GFC, Chinese imports have been the driving force for South-South trade. The percentage share of China’s imports in world imports has surged since China’s WTO accession in 2001. A new geography of South-South development finance allowed governments to tap a bigger pool of transformative infrastructure finance and to choose from more financing options[6]. The China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) deepened South-South integration in the postGFC period.

 In 1979 already (after the 2^nd oil price shock), Arthus Lewis imagined the new world in his Nobel lecture. He hoped that sustained Southern growth would become fired by South-South trade and less constrained by balance of payment problems and by slower Western growth[7]: “If a sufficient number of LDCs has reached self-sustaining growth we are into a new world. For this means that instead of trade determining the rate of growth of LDC production, it will be the growth of LDC production thatdetermines LDC trade, and internal forces that will determine the rate of growth of production.”

 

FX Turnover by Major Currencies 

Source: John Authers, Bloomberg

 

In 2009, I had raised the question whether the US dollar empire was falling. I ventured the Chinese yuan would soon overtake the US dollar. If history of the last switch in reserve currency (from pound sterling to the US dollar) was any guide, the yuan could be expected to replace the US dollar as a reserve currency by around 2050. But I cautioned that the renminbi wasn´t ready for reserve currency status. China that does not respect property rights nor other democratic freedoms such as full currency convertibility. Thus, the yuan sits on shallow capital markets and frightens as a mousetrap currency (a term coined by Wilhelm Röpke). If anything, the perspectives for the yuan to serve as reserve currency have worsened under Xi´s increasingly dictatorial rule. So it was premature to talk about the greenback’s demise, as was rightly pointed out by  John Authers at Bloomberg. BIS triennial surveys of foreign-exchange markets show that the dollar is not yet losing market share, unlike the euro, until 2022.

In 2025 however, those numbers may reflect the fallout of Russia’s invasion, with the Yuan share rising. Economic sanctions imposed on Russia and other countries by the United States put the dollar’s dominance at risk as targeted nations seek out an alternative, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned. Already, China and Brazil are working on a deal to settle trades in their own currencies rather than dollars. Quite recently, as the US’ rivalry with China and Russia intensified in an increasingly polarized world, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations were choosing to diversify their global partnerships, removing important oil resources from Western control. Oil transactions between Saudi Arabia and China could be denominated in the Chinese yuan, a significant development in the evolving international economic and geopolitical landscape. If this move happens, it could have far-reaching implications for the US dollar’s status as the dominant global currency, as well as for US-Saudi relations and broader regional dynamics in the Middle East[8].

 

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[1] OECD, Perspectives on Global Development 2010: Shifting Wealth, OECD 2010.

[2] Pascal Lamy, “L’Union européenne est-elle toujours pertinente?, Le Grand Continent, 12. April 2023

[3] David Miliband, “The World Beyond Ukraine: The Survival of the West and the Demands of the Rest”, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2023.

[4] Nicolas Vernon, Much of the Global South is on Ukraine´s side, Bruegel, 13. March 2023.

[5] OECD, Perspectives on Global Development 2019: Rethinking Development Strategies, OECD 2019.

[6] A vivid account of China´s footprint in Africa has been given by Deborah Brautigam, The Dragon´s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, OUP 2009.

[7] Arthur Lewis, The Slowing Down of the Engine of Growth, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1979/lewis/lecture/, 1979.

[8] Habib al-Badawi, “Can Saudi Arabia switch from the US dollar to the Chinese yuan?”, SpecialEurasia, 13. April 2023.

Greed, Grievance & Putin´s War

 From Putin´s abstruse historical perspective, Russia´s military invasion of Ukraine is more akin to civil war than to a war between two sovereign nations. Putin´s war has been explained by either his greed or by Russia´s grievance as NATO has expanded East closer to Russia´s border over the past decades. “No grand theory can explain the Ukraine crisis”?[1] Take a little one then[2], the seminal Collier-Hoeffler Model, a model well known in conflict and development research[3]. It suggests to emphasize Putin´s greed and to act accordingly through aiming at his wealth via targeting his oligarch trustees.

Using a rich dataset of wars (mostly for Africa) during 1960–99, Paul Collier & Anke Hoeffler found political and social variables that are most obviously related to grievances had less explanatory power than economic variables. For the current Ukraine context, it means that we should give little credence to views that look at NATO´s enlargement as a root cause for Russia´s military invasion(s). Rather, we should emphasize economic motives for Putin´s war and identify targeted economic instruments to stop him, beyond and above rapid military equipment of Ukraine to withstand brutal Russian assault.

Putin has excelled at manipulating the psychology of grievance. For years, he cultivated a narrative of humiliation by the West. That narrative supported Russia´s occupation of Crimea in 2014, when Putin´s popularity levels shot up to their highest ever levels. Again, Putin's approval rating seems to have soared since he sent troops into Ukraine late February 2022. Economic sanctions by the West hit the population, not Putin, and are adding to Putin´s popularity.

Large-group psychology and social conflict have been investigated by psychiatrist Vamik Volkan who conducted fieldwork in regions of war and unrest. Volkan found that if societies don’t work through their sense of loss (of power, status, or prestige) through a process of mourning, it can become central to group identity – which in turn makes them vulnerable to manipulation by destructive leaders who play on old wounds. Apart from Putin, Serbia´s Milosevic and Trump (MAGA) are similar cases[4].

No doubt, Putin is greedy (and very wealthy).^[5] According to financier Bill Browder,  since “Khodorkovsky's conviction (in 2003), Russian oligarchs went to Putin and asked him what they needed to do to avoid sitting in the same cage as Khodorkovsky. From what followed, it appeared that Putin's answer was, "50%" He wasn't saying 50% for the Russian government or the presidential administration of Russia, but 50% for Vladimir Putin personally."

In Ukraine, Putin´s greed can be satisfied by the extortion of the victim´s natural resources (cereals, oilseeds, gas) because annexation would make Russia a world leading supplier of fossile energy and staple food. A recent Information Note published by FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) has highlighted the critical role that Russia and Ukraine play in global agriculture. In 2021, both countries combined held major percentage shares of global exports in wheat, barley and sunflowerseed oil (between 30 and 60%). The annexation of Ukraine would give Putin a huge extortion potential as a quasi monopolist over staple food items, most crucially important in poor Africa and Asia.

The annexation of Ukraine would also consolidate Russia´s de facto monopoly of gas exports to Europe as it would capture the all important pipeline North Stream 1 run by Ukraine´s Naftogaz. Russia has been also denying Central Asian countries access to its own gas transport network, and consequently depriving them of access to Ukrainian transport towards Europe.

Sanctions are unlikely to be the best way to stop Putin. Bill Browder (the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005, and now a leading campaigner to expose Russia's corruption and human rights abuses), likens broad economic sanctions to nearly killing the patient to target the cancer. Instead, he has suggested to sanction Putin´s oligarch trustees, probably along international adoption of the US Magnitzky Act ((named after his murdered Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky).

Since Russia's aggression against Ukraine, Europeans have already frozen billions in assets belonging to oligarchs. Recently, the EU Commission drew up an initial balance sheet: By April 8, assets of oligarchs and companies worth a total of 30 billion euros had been frozen in the member states. According to the Commission, these include ships, helicopters, real estate and works of art worth almost 6.7 billion euros. In addition, transactions worth around 200 billion euros had been blocked.

Some countries are obviously further along than Germany in tracking Putin´s Mafia. Italy has long recognized that fighting anti-money laundering is a prerequisite for successfully combating the Mafia. Germany, by contrast, is a notorious bad performer in reviews by the experts of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF)[6]. Experience in the fight against organized crime also helps Italy freeze the assets of Russian oligarchs, with the powerful Guardia di Finanza having far-reaching rights.

So apart from military resistance and secret service sabotage against Putin: Make Putin Poor Again!

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[1] Janan Ganesh (2022), “No grand theory can explain the Ukraine crisis”, Financial Times, 12. April.

[2] Paul Collier & Anke Hoeffler (2004), “Greed and grievance in civil war”, Oxford Economic Papers 56, 563–595.

[3] A seminal paper on violent civil wars, has been the focus of much of the greed-grievance debate. The model argues that certain natural resources such as oil are tied to increased likelihood of conflict onset. The links between natural resources and conflict were confirmed by the data, apart from the level of per capita income and the rate of economic growth. Primary commodity dependence raises the risk of civil war exponentially until it peaks with exports at around 30 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).

[4] Alex Evans (2022), “Putin and the psychology of grievance”, The Article, 1^st April.

[5] https://fortune.com/2022/03/02/vladimir-putin-net-worth-2022/

[6] The FATF is affiliated with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris and is considered an important international body for combating money laundering and terrorist financing.

After Putin´s War Crimes in Ukraine: Rupture and Sanctions after Shifting Wealth

 

Russia is now as totalitarian as is China. On 24th February, Putin´s Russia has invaded Ukraine, resorting to murderous shelling while Ukraine was fighting for its freedom. This followed upon Russia´s invasion of Crimea and the seizure of Ukrine´s Eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014.

For at least a decade, Putin has built his country´s food self-sufficiency by doubling its grain production since 2012. The two inputs you need to sustain a long war are grains and energy - of which Russia has plenty. The current account balance was switched from negative to positive during that period, resulting in a built-up of a war chest at Russia´s Central Bank, with foreign exchange held in China (12%) and gold reserves (22%) vaulted at home; just 6.5% of Russia´s FX reserves were recently held in the US.

Xi Jinping has been the paramount leader of China since 2012; he has hardened his grip ever since. He has suppressed democracy movements in Hong Kong, threatened Taiwan and other neighbours. Last not least, he forced internments, mass sterilisations, forced assimilation, "re-education", and coercion of detained Uyghurs to work in factories.

In 2022, geopolitical rupture looms. Global governance is disintegrating into an American-dominated bloc and a Chinese-dominated bloc, with Russia and the EU countries as junior partners. Such hypothesis was pronounced by Clemens Fuest (IFO Munich) and by Martin Wolf (FT)[1]. Will economic divisions follow? The link between geopolitical and economic division will be calibrated by sanctions, to the extent they are effective.

The BRICS and much of the “Global South”, a risk overlooked by Western observers, might opt for the China-dominated bloc. With a deep and prolonged division between the west and a bloc centred on China and Russia, economic divisions will follow. Lack of mutual trust and humanitarian concerns call for disintegration of the world economy after four decades of intense globalisation. Military buildup will shrink the peace dividend for the world; just as it did in Putin´s Russia except for the super rich oligarchs over the past two decades.

Both China and Russia are important drivers of the BRICS (official website)[2], joint with Brazil, India and South Africa. The BRICS, except South Africa, lead the list of countries with the highest foreign exchange (FX) reserves, ahead of Germany. Combined, they have built up official FX reserves worth round $ 6 trn, mostly over the last two decades. Approved at the 2014 BRIC summit in Brazil, the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) provides protection against global liquidity pressures. Since the 2015 BRICS summit in Russia, a BRICS payment system conceived as an alternative to the SWIFT system has been established and largely backed by China: Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS).

Despite a growing membership, the OECD share in world GDP expressed in Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs) stabilised around 50% between 2011 and 2017 (latest benchmark year), according to the International Comparison Program (ICP). Similarly, the share of large emerging economies (China, Brazil, India, Indonesia, the Russian Federation and South Africa) also stabilised at around 30% of world GDP[3].

Political scientist Rachel S. Salzman (SAIS, Johns Hopkins U) has documented in a fascinating study Russia´s leadership in establishing the BRICS group[4]. The desire to end US hegemony, rewrite rules and build new institutions is a shared commitment of the group. In a time of alienation from the Euro-Atlantic world, BRICS provides both China and Russia with international support.

Sanctions will drive geopolitical rupture and economic division on a global scale. To which extent is less certain than our own propaganda wants us to believe.  Notably the exclusion of Russian banks from SWIFT was hailed by banner-waving economists and politicians as the ´nuclear´ sanction to bring Putin quickly down. However, Alistair Milne, Professor of Financial Economics at Loughborough University (UK) has convincingly explained that throwing Russia out of SWIFT will be quite ineffective, unlike freezing the reserve ssets of the Central Bank of Russia that include gold reserves held at home[5].

The UN General Assembly Resolution against Russia on 2nd March was an eye opener for many. To be sure, the “world wants an end to the tremendous human suffering in Ukraine” (UN SG Antonio Guterres). Only 141 of the total 198 UN member states of the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution demanding that Russia immediately end its military operations in Ukraine. Five countries - Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea, Russia and Syria - voted against it, while 35 abstained. Africa´s voting behaviour must be a special downer for DAC donors. Half of the (too) many African countries did not condemm Russia´s attack on Ukraine. They rather preferred to abstain, go to be absent, and Eritra was one of the very few countries to vote against the UN resolution.

The West may have thought that the atrocities commited in Ukraine might entirely isolate Russia. However, it may have overlooked to what extent non-Western countries have intensified economic links aside from the West and how that may have created political ties, supported by new institutions not ruled by the US. In short, the West has ignored Shifting Wealth[6].

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[1] Clemens Fuest (2022), “Economic Consequences of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine”, ifo Viewpoint 234, 4^th March: Martin Wolf (2022), “Putin has reignited the conflict between tyranny and liberal democracy”, FT, 1^st March.

[2] The official website by mid March prominently displayed ´breaking news´ such as “Russian Banks Turn to Chinese Payment Solution in Wake of Sanctions”, or “Dr Reddy's (Indian pharmaceutical major) Plans 'Business Continuity' in Russia”.

[3] https://www.oecd.org/sdd/prices-ppp/oecd-share-in-world-gdp-stable-at-around-50-per-cent-in-ppp-terms-in-2017.htm

[4] Rachel S. Salzman (2019), Russia, BRICS, and the Disruption of Global Order, Georgetown University Press.

[5] https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/people-profit/20220303-fortress-russia-has-putin-built-a-sanctions-proof-economy

[6] OECD, Perspectives on Global Development 2010: Shifting Wealth, OECD Development Centre.

Germany´s Green NeoCons

 

On her way to becoming chancellor, Germany´s Green Party's Annalena Baerbock enjoys strong tailwinds. Election polls for the 2021 federal election remain positive for the Greens, and the public media are blowing the horns, too. The development of the Greens from original pacifism of the founding generation to bellicose neo-conservatism (along the lines of Albright, Bolton, Cheney or Wolfowitz) is cause for concern.

The Greens are mainly targeting the undisputedly blatant human rights violations in China and Russia. However, one hears little from the Greens about human rights violations in Egypt, India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or in the Western countries themselves[1].

The threat of sanctions is a popular reflex of moral indignation. If you search Google for "Baerbock Sanktionen" (Baerbock sanctions), about 76300 results are retrieved in 0.36 seconds. Key statements can be found in Baerbock's interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung:

- On Russia: "Moreover, there are sanctions as tough measures, but they are permanently thwarted because the German government is sticking to the Kremlin's most important prestige project, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. I would have withdrawn political support for Nord Stream 2 long ago."

- On China: "a different approach to authoritarian regimes is a key issue for me in a future German government - for our security and our values. We are currently in a contest of systems: authoritarian forces versus liberal democracies. This is also about China. The New Silk Road project, with its global direct investments in infrastructure or energy networks, is not just about niceties. This is hard-core power politics."

The candidate does not specify the threatened sanctions. But no one should say afterwards that they knew nothing about it. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) has already spoken of the "confrontation cries" of the Greens. The drumbeat of the candidate for chancellor suggests that the Green leadership is not sufficiently addressing the following questions:

1) Which sanctions against China or Russia are effective at all? Sanctions ease the pressure of conscience, but their effectiveness is doubted. An earlier study (GC Hufbauer, JJ Schott, KA Elliott, 1990) of sanctions in 115 countries since 1915 - by what is now the Peterson Institute for International Economics - found that economic sanctions were inadequate to implement foreign policy goals. Behavioural changes could only be observed in small target countries and with modest sanction targets. Meanwhile, in addition to trade and investment bans, 'modern' sanctions target financial transactions, business activities and individuals. Therefore, from an analytical perspective, an attribution problem arises in effectiveness studies (Marten Smeets, WTO, 2018)[2]. With regard to Iran and Russia, Smeets doubts that sanctions can bring about the change from an economic perspective that is often sought through the punitive measures taken. However, economic sanctions in general cause costs in all countries involved in the sanctions. The country facing the sanctions is likely to establish trade relations with third parties that are not part of the sanctions coalition.

2) How high is the damage of sanctions for Germany?  This question has been resolved by a study that has attempted to isolate the effects of the Russian sanctions since 2014[3]. Broken down to individual countries and product categories, it compares the hypothetical development without sanctions with the weaker actual development. The difference is the trade loss due to sanctions and counter-sanctions. The European Union (EU) in turn bears 92 per cent. Germany accounted for the lion's share of the sanctioning countries' damage, with 38 per cent or 667 million US dollars in trade loss per month.

3) Are there perverse effects whereby our sanctions strengthen those in power in China, Russia, etc.? Julia Grauvogel from the GIGA Institute analyses (IPG, 2020)[4] that sanctions against authoritarian regimes like Russia pose a particular challenge. Sanctions may even prove counterproductive there and strengthen authoritarian regimes. Rulers can instrumentalise sanctions for their own purposes if they succeed in presenting the measures as an attack on the entire country. In this way, a chariot mentality can be conjured up against the common external enemy.

"Made in Germany" effects[5], meanwhile, have already been observed in China and Russia. China is now pursuing chip autonomy as a result of US sanctions, which is hurting the still-leading American chip designers and hitting global supply chains through chip shortages, such as in the automotive industry. Russia has imposed a ban on food imports as a result of US sanctions, stimulating domestic production; at the same time, food security is again a hot topic in import-dependent states.

4) How can a sanctions merry-go-round be stopped before it mutates into a military conflict? Western decision-makers are regularly confronted with the question of whether to maintain previously unsuccessful sanctions (Julia Grauvogel, IPG 2020). Therefore, it is important to think about the possible end of the measures from the beginning. It is easier to impose sanctions than to lift them again. Ending unsuccessful sanctions poses a foreign policy dilemma; it can damage the reputation of the sanctioning states. Clear predefined sanction targets may prevent such a loss of reputation.

The Greens would make their confrontational rhetoric more credible if they first clearly pointed out the human rights violations in Germany and in the Western allies. As long as their attacks remain asymmetrically directed against authoritarian emerging countries, the Greens come across as bellicose neoconservatives in foreign policy terms. They are thus (in my view) a security risk for Germany and Europe.

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[1] Compare regular reports at Human Rights Watch.

[2] Marten Smeets (2018), “Can economic sanctions be effective?”, WTO Staff Working Paper, No. ERSD-2018-03.

[3] Matthieu Crozet, Julian Hinz (2020), “Friendly fire: the trade impact of the Russia sanctions and counter-sanctions”, Economic Policy, Volume 35, Issue 101, January 2020, Pages 97–146.

[4] Julia Grauvogel (2020), „Über den (Un-)Sinn von Sanktionen“, IPG Journal, 13. October.

[5] The designation of origin "Made in Germany" was introduced in Great Britain at the end of the 19th century as protection against supposedly cheap and inferior imported goods. As is well known, the stigma became a seal of quality.

Wenn etwas leicht

 GOTTFRIED BENN

Wenn etwas leicht

Wenn etwas leicht und rauschend um dich ist
wie die Glycinienpracht an dieser Mauer,
dann ist die Stunde jener Trauer,
daß du nicht reich und unerschöpflich bist.

Nicht wie die Blüte oder wie das Licht:
in Strahlen kommend, sich verwandelnd,
an ähnlichen Gebilden handelnd,
die alle nur der eine Rausch verflicht,

der eine Samt, auf dem die Dinge ruh’n
so strömend und so unzerspalten,
die Grenze zieh’n, die Stunden halten
und nichts in jener Trauer tun.

Democratic Recession in Major Emerging Countries

 “Democracy Under Siege” titled Freedom House – a US government-funded organisation (that survived the Trump reign) its latest annual “Freedom in the World” report. For the year 2020, it observed the 15th consecutive year of decline in ´global freedom´. The Freedom House annual global report is on ´political rights´ and ´civil liberties´, composed of numerical ratings and descriptive texts for 195 countries (and 15 territories). ´Political rights´ encompass three subcategories: Electoral Process; Political Pluralism and Participation; and Functioning of Government. ´Civil liberties´are defined by four subcategories: Freedom of Expression and Belief; Associational and Organizational Rights; Rule of Law; and Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights.

Table 1 provides information on how ´freedom´ has evolved during the recent period 2013-20 with overall scores for ´freedom´ and its constituents ´political freedom´and ´civil liberties´ in brackets. The period is dictated by ready (raw) data availability. And Xi Jinping became China´s President in 2013.

I have critically examined political rankings and indicators at several occasions; see here or here, notably. Nonetheless, the Freedom House indices provide some evidence on political governance, a theme that lends itself too easily to factless beliefs and insinuations. When in doubt, I prefer even political numbers over blindnesss.

Table 1: Political Freedom & Civil Liberties in Selected Emerging Countries, 2013-20

Country	2013	2020	Trend
Brazil*	81	74	↘
China*	17	09	↘
Egypt ^	41	18	↓
India*	76	67	↘
Indonesia	65	59	↘
Nigeria	46	45	→
Russia*	27	20	↘
Turkey	61	32	↓
South Africa	81	79	→
Memo: USA	93	83	↘

Notes: * BRICS member; ^ CwA partner.

Source: https://freedomhouse.org/reports/freedom-world/freedom-world-research-methodology. All Data, FIW 2013-2021 (Excel Download).

 Western media and politicians have focused on deteriorated political landscapes in China, Russia, Turkey – and the United States under the Trump Administration (2017-21). However, Egypt - a preferred destination of foreign capital and partner of the G20 ´Compact with Africa´ - has seen its freedom index tumble most steeply, in parallel with Turkey. Only the African giants Nigeria and South Africa have upheld freedom scores as measured by Freedom House.

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