Hi there,

With Willis out on vacation, the rest of the Signal squad has formed like a Sparks-less Voltron to lead this Friday's edition, in which we wonder if the Venezuelan election matters at all, look at how Trump is pushing Merkel back towards Putin, and mull a Malaysian (political!) minefield.

Also, guess what country saw the largest number of people displaced from their homes last year? (Hint: not Syria – answer below.)

As ever, send us your love/hate, and tune in to CBSN this morning at 9:30EST, where I'll be dishing on any/all of this.

- Alex Kliment (saosasha)

Does Venezuela’s Election Matter?

I’m just going to say it: This Sunday’s presidential election in Venezuela doesn’t matter.

That’s not because President Nicolas Maduro is almost sure to win, despite trailing his main opponent in many polls. Nor is it because street protests have fizzled or because far fewer Venezuelans will vote than in the past. It’s not even because casting a ballot may seem like an afterthought in a place where inflation surpasses 13,000 percent and a gruesome humanitarian crisis has caused 2 million people to flee the country over the past two years.

The election doesn’t matter because elections aren’t really what keeps a fellow like Nicolas Maduro in power. What keeps him in power – as in other places where leaders rule over failing, deeply corrupted, or profoundly undemocratic systems – is the loyalty of economic and military elites.

As the world collapses around them, these powerful men and women must constantly calculate whether it's safer to stick with a regime that is their main source of money, privilege, and protection, or to break with that regime and brave it on their own. In most cases, it’s more dangerous to leave than to stay. (Ask a Russian oligarch, for example, whether US sanctions make him any more likely to cross Vladimir Putin.)

But if the Venezuelan elections don’t matter, what happens afterwards most certainly does. The critical question is: Can Maduro hold together a collapsing country while keeping the carousel of money and privilege turning for the shrinking elite core of the Chavista regime? Is there a point at which the men with money or the men with guns turn against him? That, more than what happens in the streets or the urns, is what will determine Venezuela’s future.

Crazy counterintuitive consideration: Nicolas Maduro’s main opponent, a former governor named Henri Falcon, is a one-time Chavista loyalist who is currently leading Maduro in many polls. Maduro’s firm control over the electoral authorities enables him to skew things in his favor, but here’s an idea: What if Maduro lets Falcon win? Hear me out! If Maduro thinks Falcon’s wings can be clipped – and bear in mind that Chavista control over most key governing institutions would survive an opposition presidential victory – then it might be a winning strategy for Maduro to lose.

Falcon’s victory would make it almost impossible for the US, EU, or other Latin American countries to claim fraud and ratchet up sanctions; it would thoroughly discredit the main opposition, which boycotted the vote; and it would open the way for Maduro to negotiate a smooth, gradual, and safe exit from power. Crazy? Maybe. But I like to go into the weekend with a little crazy.

So you’re having trouble with the Americans? Merkel and Putin Meet

Just last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that with American protection of Europe no longer assured, it was time for Europe to craft its own foreign policy. Today, she will get her first shot at showing what that might look like when she meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi.

Merkel’s relationship with Putin has been a mercurial one over the past 15 years. Their shared upbringing behind the Iron Curtain and fluency in each other’s languages gave them a special bond early on, but they broke over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014, and things haven’t been the same since.

Now Trump’s loveless treatment of Europe has pushed Merkel to seek out renewed possibilities with Russia. Their meeting will likely focus on...

salvaging the Iran deal without the US, because neither Merkel nor Putin wants Iran to bolt from the deal now and foment a regional nuclear arms race, but she is particularly concerned about the fate of German companies now potentially exposed to renewed US sanctions on Iran.
exploring peace options for Syria – Merkel has drawn closer to Moscow on this recently, calling for European-Russian cooperation to broker a solution to the civil war and pointedly sitting out the US-led airstrikes on Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons facilities last month. This gives Merkel more credibility as an interlocutor with Moscow on this issue than any other European leader.
energy ties – the $10 billion Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project would increase flows of Russian gas to Germany, already one of the largest energy relationships in the world. The US government, which opposes the project, said this week that scrapping the pipeline was one way for Germany to win permanent exemptions from the Trump administration’s steel and aluminum tariffs.

Puppet Regime: the Hot Zommer of 1987

With Merkel on her way to meet Putin, Puppet Regime ponders what might have blossomed between a young scientist and a dashing foreign agent in the waning days of Soviet power…

Mahathir’s Minefield?

Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Najib Razak had good reason to pull out all the stops in his bid to skew last weekend’s election in his favor. While in power, he was able to squelch efforts to probe his alleged involvement with a multi-billion dollar corruption scheme. But now that he’s out of power, he’s in big trouble.

Malaysia’s old-but-new-but-pretty-old Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who led the opposition to victory last Sunday, has banned Najib and his wife from leaving the country, fired the country’s attorney general, and accepted the resignation of the chairman of its anti-corruption commission. Mahathir, who ran Malaysia with a notoriously strong hand from 1981 to 2003, has pledged to hold Najib to account.

But if Najib’s plight mirrors those of other democratic leaders whose fall from power has meant a reckoning with justice – South Africa’s Jacob Zuma comes to mind – Mahathir’s pledge to clean things up raises a question common to all new leaders who plan anti-corruption drives: Corruption on this scale isn’t possible without the cooperation, active or passive, of other powerful officials and legions of bureaucrats – but how do you root out graft without crippling or alienating precisely the officials and institutions whose support you need in order to govern effectively?

To Watch and Ignore, Diet Edition – just one and one.

Something to Watch:

Micro-chipped Swedes – Over the past three years, about 3,000 Swedes have decided to implant special microchips in their bodies that can hold information like train tickets, or entry access codes. This trend isn’t entirely new. Last summer, a Wisconsin vending machine company offered employees a microchip implanted in their hands, which they could use to buy snacks and log on to computers. Now, using a chip to buy a bag of chips is one thing, but the implications of making the leap from our smartphones transmitting data about ourselves to our actual bodies doing the same are worthy of serious consideration/concern.

Something to Ignore:

Chinese and Russian ballot boxes in Cambodia – Hun Sen, a former officer of the Khmer Rouge, has been Cambodia’s prime minister for 33 years. Despite early hopes that he might cement a democratic transition, it hasn’t happened. On July 29, he’s up for “re-election.” To boost his popular appeal, Sen has been railing against the US, which he says is helping the opposition plot a coup. Now, to ensure that the Americans can’t mess with the vote, China and Russia have offered to send election monitors, ballot boxes and voting booths. China and Russia are many things – some of them very, very good things – but guarantors of a free and fair elections is, er, not one of them.

Hard Numbers

70:A recent poll showed that 70 percent of Venezuelans say they’re not planning to vote in Sunday’s presidential election. Voter suppression and an opposition boycott mean President Maduro will likely cruise to victory in an election whose results Washington has said it will not recognize.

46:

In 2017, 46 percent of high net worth Chinese ($1.3 – $26.3 million) were considering emigrating, according to a recent survey. Around three in four listed their children’s education as the motivating factor. One in six pointed to the country’s political environment.

30.6:

Last year, 30.6 million people globally were newly displaced by conflict or natural disasters, according to a new report. The country with the largest number of displaced people might surprise you: China – where nearly 4.5 million people were driven from their homes by natural disasters. Among conflict-related displacements, Syria had the highest number, with 2.9 million, followed by Democratic Republic of Congo, with 2.1 million.

10:

This week, Burundi could became the 10th African nation to scrap previously implemented term limits for the head of state. In contrast, 15 countries on the continent have had leaders leave office once they reached the end of their legally mandated term limit.

After a poor election performance this week in the state of Karnataka (home to India’s tech hub of Bangalore), India’s Congress party, which dominated politics for decades, has been relegated to governing in only one key state, Punjab, out of India’s 29. That bodes well for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP, as it bids to secure him a second term in national elections next year.

Words of Wisdom

"One election does not a democracy make."

— Malaysian opposition figure Anwar Ibrahim, who walked free from prison this week, acknowledges the tough road ahead for his country after the first democratic transition in its 61-year history.

This edition of Signal was prepared with editorial support from Kevin Allison (@KevinAllison), Gabe Lipton (@gflipton), and Leon Levy (@leonmlevy). Spiritual counsel from Willis Sparks.

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