Emmanuel transmission: outcomes of the G7

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Hello, and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. In one of the remotest parts of Uzbekistan is Jaslec, a prison notorious for its treatment of inmates. In 2002, a pair of them were boiled alive. We look at why the government at last wants to shut the Gulag down. And until 1992, no one was certain that there were any planets orbiting distant stars. Since then, astronomers have catalogued thousands of them. Now that earthlings know they're out there, a huge effort is underway to find.

Out what they're like.

But first, Yesterday, the G7 meeting of World leaders wrapped up after a long weekend of delights on the French coast, including dinner in a lighthouse and meetings in a venerable hotel with enchanting views of cliffs. It was enough to soothe the most troubled spirit. Which is fortunate because ahead of the conference, there was plenty of global acrimony. From trade wars to escalating tensions with Iran to fires raging in the Amazon, there were many problems and little consensus. Last year, the meeting ended in disaster. President Donald Trump left early, refused to endorse the summit's final statement, and tweeted insults at the host, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. This year, Mr. Trump's tone, at least, was different.

This is a truly successful G7. There was tremendous unity. There was great unity. Sometimes I'd read a little bit of false reporting. I will tell you there was. In fact, we would have stayed for another hour. Nobody wanted to leave. We were accomplishing a lot.

I'd say that measured by expectations, this meeting went reasonably well.

Edward Carr is the Economist's deputy editor.

It produced some outcomes. There were no blow ups. So, you know, compared with the last G7 in Canada, which really wasn't very good, I think this came off pretty well.

So what came out of it?

Well, a very wishy washy statement, but some practical things, and the top of those is a big surprise on Iran. It wasn't scheduled, apparently, but Javad Zarif, Iran's Foreign Minister, turned up at Biarritz and he spoke to various people, including Macron. And Macron proposed there might be a meeting between President Trump and his counterpart, President Rouhani of Iran. And that really would be a change because America's been applying a policy of maximum pressure on Iran, using sanctions, using politics in order to try and force Iran back to the table to renegotiate the nuclear deal.

And that must have been, even if a surprise, a very welcome development on behalf of the rest of the G7 leaders.

Well, the Europeans are desperate to try and salvage the nuclear deal and that's not going well. You've had the United States withdrawing, signal they're going to withdraw. It doesn't actually come into effect until November. And you've had the Iranians beginning to break the terms of the deal. So this deal is in real trouble at the moment and the Europeans are working very, very hard to salvage it. And this was something of a coup by Macron in doing that, in trying to bring the two parties together, the United States and Iran. The question really in my mind is we've seen this. It's a big sort of grand announcement. It's surprising everybody this morning. But when Trump gets home and John Bolton, the national security adviser, and Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, both get to work on him, whether the chances of a meeting, say at the UN General assembly next month with Rouhani, whether that really happens, I mean, if you think about it, this policy of maximum pressure, why would you back away from it now when it seems to be bearing fruit as far as the Americans are concerned, why would, as Trump suggested, that you might possibly give Iran some relief by issuing bonds backed on its oil? That strikes me as something that wouldn't be popular among various parts of the.

Administration and with all that in mind.

Do you think this possible shift on.

Iran is the most important thing that.

Came out of the meeting?

The thing I take away from the summit was actually trade, where there were a couple of agreements, or almost agreements, to disagree in the case of France and the US Over a digital tax. So that was a kind of parking of an issue, and that's good. I think the other was an agreement between the US And Japan, and we don't really know many details of that. But then all the way along, in the background was this row that started on Friday before Trump left Washington, which was an escalation in the trade war between China and the United States. And what was so interesting was to see how that seesawed as the G7 summit went on. When Trump left the United States, it was escalating. Then he appeared to back down a bit and saying he regretted it. And then his aides were sent onto television to say, actually, no, he regretted not being tougher. And then it came back that having called Xi Jinping an enemy, he was then, by the end of the summit, calling him a brilliant man and saying he thought there was going to be a deal, and claims that there were phone calls by the Chinese who wanted to get back to the table, which may or may not have happened. So there's all this sort of uncertainty. You could see the markets sort of following the ebb and flow of aggression and sort of deal making. I mean, I draw two conclusions from that. The first is that a deal will be really quite hard to get, and that we may be stuck in this pattern for a long time. But the other, which is, I think, just as important, is that all of this uncertainty actually adds to the cost of the trade war. The more uncertainty there is, the less clear it is that you've got a stable tariff regime, that it could go wildly in one direction, or rather that Trump might start using emergency powers to try and prevent American companies in China from operating there. All of these things add to the uncertainty. And if there's uncertainty, companies don't invest. This exacerbates and potentiates the damage done by just the imposition of tariffs.

So which half of that story do you believe more? There's been much talk of Mr. Trump being comparatively agreeable at the G70. Do you think that his efforts to sort of tamp down any trade war jitters is an effort on his part to actually tamp down the trade war?

Usually Trump's style of diplomacy is to be reasonably pleasant in person and quite rude and aggressive when he's away. And I think he wanted to be part of the group. It seems to me he didn't want a repeat of what happened in Canada when he looked petulant. And so I think he worked reasonably hard to be part of the group. And Macron, President Macron of France, made that easier by things, for instance, not having a big communique that they all had to sit in and negotiate on by not making a fuss at all when President Trump decided not to turn up to the session, that was on the environment and you saw a number of leaders engaging with him quite carefully. So on every side, I think everyone was on their best behaviour. A bit like a family gathering where you know, that people might argue and people sort of stand politely and make sure that there aren't really any big arguments in the room and there hasn't.

Been a complete absence of progress.

Right.

There wasn't the standard communique, the one that's hard fought, but there is some agreement to what sort of concrete things did come out in the end.

Well, the irony was there was actually something totally concrete, which was the agreement to give $20 million to Brazil to help fight the fires raging in the Amazon. And President Bolsonaro of Brazil said he didn't want the money because it was colonialist and condescending and all that kind of thing. So perhaps the one really concrete thing was then immediately rejected. So I think the lesson is that these summits might not always be incredibly productive and they might not always be very smooth, but they really are worth having.

Edward, thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks, Jason.

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In the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan, an era of harsh repression is easing. In 2016, the 25 year rule of the tyrannical Islam Karamov came to an end after his death. His successor, Shavkat Mirzigoev, has since surprised the world by liberalizing the former Soviet republic. In one of his most recent reforms, Mr. Mirza Yoyev announced the closure of the infamous Jaslik prison.

Jaslik is located in one of the most inhospitable places in Uzbekistan, and perhaps in the world, too. It's in the middle of the desert in a region of Uzbekistan called Calakal, Pakistan. It's 180 km from the nearest town and 1400 km by road from the capital to, I think the name of the local railway station says it all. It's called Barsakhelmes, which loosely translates as place of no return.

Joanna Lillis covers Central Asia for the Economist.

Once, in the early 2000s, a few journalists gained some access when Uzbekistan was trying to appear Western friendly. And they reported some very frightened people in that prison camp who were being subjected to various abuses. Now, the people were not able to speak freely at that time. Of course, they were accompanied by prison guards. But later people came out of the prison, and we've heard of the most egregious cases of torture and abuse. Beatings with iron rods, the pulling out of fingernails. And in the most notorious and distressing case, two inmates were found to have been killed by submersion in boiling water. So, in effect, they were boiled alive.

So how long has Jaslic been running?

Well, jaslic was opened 20 years ago, in 1999 in response to bombings in the capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent. The government blamed those bombings on political and religious extremists. And they opened Jastic in response to that to find a place to house the people that they considered a threat. Now it became a crime to practice any form of Islam that was not strictly controlled by the state under Islam Karimov, the late president. And so people were rounded up, but it's believed that many of them were innocent. You know, many people could be sent simply for being rather pious Muslims.

So why does the government want to close the prison down now under the.

Current president, Shavkat Mizhiv, who came to power in 2016 following the death of Islam Karimov, who had the prison opened, Uzbekistan has embarked on a very surprising path of reform and liberalization. This closure of a very headline grabbing move that's been very welcomed in Uzbekistan and abroad is part of that broader reform package. So Shavkat Mizyov is trying to say Uzbekistan has changed. We are no longer a pariah state. And you don't have to be afraid of investing in Uzbekistan anymore because we are changing. He's also freed around 50 political prisoners. He has removed 20,000 people on what used to be called religious blacklists. They were suspected of having some kind of extremist tendencies, although clearly they had committed no crime because they were at liberty. So these are some of the measures that have been taken, and the closure of Jaslic is part of that liberalizing agenda.

And how did this reformist government even come to be?

I mean, there was an autocrat in power for a quarter of a century, and then suddenly quite a strong package of reforms. How did that happen?

Well, I mean, there are certainly limitations on the reforms, particularly the political reforms. I mean, the economic reforms are very fast mo ambitious. And to some degree, the political liberalization in terms of freeing political prisoners, closing Shastak, etc. Is also very ambitious. But there are limitations. We haven't seen free and fair elections, for one thing. I mean, the last nationwide election was the one that brought Mr. Mirziyev to power, in which he faced no real opposition and won with 88%. But this year, there'll be a bit of a litmus test because Uzbekistan has parliamentary elections coming up in December. But we have no opposition parties in existence in Uzbekistan that are going to be able to stand. Not so far, anyway. So, you know, that's a major limitation on dis reform agenda if you don't have pluralistic politics. And also, the closure of Jaslich has been welcomed with amazement even in Uzbekistan. But there are signs that the government is still somewhat shy about facing up to its history. As they were announcing the closure, officials were denying that torture had ever taken place there and presenting it as more a question of Jaslick's bad reputation in the west and a way of improving its image. Another aspect that is rather alarming are some cases of shadowy espionage trials that are taking place in closed courts. One man, Andre Kobatin, has been sentenced to a jail term for allegedly passing secrets that he insists were always in the public domain. The man was an academic, so it's not clear why he would have had access to any state secrets. And then there is one of the country's most notorious cases, and that is the case of Gunnara Karimova.

And who's she?

Gunnara Karimova is the daughter of the late President Islam Karimov. She's been confined in various ways since 2014, before her father died, when she fell into disgrace as corruption allegations swirled around her. She was held under house arrest, but without any official announcement. For some years and later, after her father's death, was reportedly sentenced. According to the few details that have been made available on corruption charges, there have been many investigations that have shown that Gunnara Karimova was implicated in bribery in order to facilitate access to ud, Uzbekistan's very lucrative telecoms market. And so if Uzbekistan wants to be seen as a place where the rule of law is upheld, which is so important to foreign investors, for example, then it needs to be seen to be delivering justice for all. And that includes Gulnara Karimova.

And how has she responded to the charges?

Gulnara Karimova has always denied the charges and insisted that she's the victim of a witch hunt. If you like, she claimed that the charges against her are fabricated.

Joanna, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you very much.

Is there life in the universe beyond Earth? It's a question that astronomers are getting closer to answering. The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or tess, is an American space probe that recently discovered a new system of exoplanets, I.e. planets orbiting stars beyond our own solar system.

So using the data from TESS, astronomers have already confirmed 24 exoplanets, new exoplanets. TOI 270 is a three planet system 73 light years from Earth.

Alok Jha is the Economist's science correspondent.

Until now. Some of the planets we found are so far away that, that we can't do anything apart from just know they're there. These ones, you can now start to do real science with them.

So this, this TESS satellite and, and its objects of interest are revolutionizing the.

Hunt for, for exoplanets.

I would say they're continuing the revolution. Actually, the space probe that really did it was Kepler. And Kepler is a NASA probe that went up about 10 years ago. And a couple of years ago it finished its mission. It found something like two and a half thousand exoplanets, confirmed exoplanets. And there were several, several thousand candidates that are still out there to be discovered. Bear in mind that the very first exoplanet was discovered in 1995. And then it was very difficult to find anymore for ages. It just, the technology just wasn't there. And Kepler found thousands over its ten years. So it really got going. TESS is a sort of successor to that. It's a much smaller mission than Kepler and it uses similar technologies. And the idea is it's going to look at a much larger section of the sky than Kepler. TESS will look for specifically closer planets over a larger part of the sky and orbiting Bright stars with this express intention of producing a catalog of these things. Thousands and thousands, they're thinking potentially tens of thousands of planets that are amenable to further exploration. So not just they're there, but we can look at them with other telescopes. We can measure their spectra, look at what molecules might be in the atmospheres as our technology improves.

So the game is no longer about.

Just finding planets, but about finding exactly what's there.

I mean, part of this must be a little bit about looking for little green men.

Maybe not little green men. It could be a little blue man, it could be little pink men, who knows? But the thing is that, yes, we want to look for life elsewhere, but to do that, you need to understand the kinds of planets that are out there and the kinds of planets that might be conducive towards life. And to do that, you just need to know what kinds of geologies exist. So we have one example of life in the universe, Earth. And we know that Earth like conditions are conducive to forming life. We don't really even know how life started on this planet. But if we can find something similar, you can start to pin down some of the probabilities of whether, you know, lifelike conditions might exist elsewhere.

So I guess a catalog of thousands of planets and planet candidates suggests that there are millions and billions in untold numbers that haven't been spotted yet.

I mean, what fraction of them look.

Like they might be life friendly? Do we have a sense for how.

Likely earthy type things are?

It's hard to answer that question because I said we confirmed 4,000 exoplanets. The estimates are that there are probably planets around almost every star in the galaxy. So there could be trillions of exoplanets out there. If there's liquid water, that's the first step. Plus other things, like if you find oxygen in the atmosphere of those planets, then that oxygen is something that's produced by photosynthesis, generally speaking, and large concentrations of it imply some sort of process of producing oxygen that might be biological. And so the number of Earth like planets is actually very low. To be habitable, you need to be not too far from your star, but you also need to be not too close to your star.

Hard to take a measure of these.

Planets once we've found them.

Surely it's even harder to know if there's life on them.

But actually what's exciting is in the next 20 or 30 years, we will know. We have telescopes that have been being built right now on Earth that will be able to take pictures of the atmospheres of these closest exoplanets. So we'll work out if there's water vapor, we'll know if there's oxygen. These are gonna be real bits of scientific information. Right now, we can't do that. And so we'll be able to answer these large questions about whether there's some sort of microbial life or whatever else. I would say within about 50 or so years, or maybe even less.

So is the point of all of.

This then satisfying that the planetary scientists end their, their, their curiosity about how planets are made, or is it about that fundamental question that all humans have? Is there anybody out there?

Well, for astronomers and planetary scientists, it's the former, and I think for the rest of us it's definitely the latter. But, but to be honest, the, the planetary scientists and so on, they're all the reasons they do this, is to answer that fundamental final question. Whether you're someone working on the geology of the Earth and comparing it to the geology of other planets, or you're looking for signs of life or how life started on this planet, what you're looking for is signs of life elsewhere. Because to get to a sign of life anywhere else, you need to understand all the different types of planet that exist, all the different types of environment, why some places are conducive to life, and all of these sorts of questions are interrelated. So answering the question of whether there's life somewhere else requires all the other stuff first. And what's good about this kind of current fate phase of exoplanet research? Is that what used to be essentially a stamp collecting exercise, you know, looking for a planet? There's one, there's one. Great. That's it. Can't do anything more than that. Has now become a proper science. And chemists and biologists and geologists and all sorts of people who have expertise in other fields are coming and converging onto something which is suddenly getting all this data from all these other planets elsewhere. And you can actually start to look at different theories of planetary formation. And that gives you detail on the history of our own solar system. Where did our planet come from? Was it, was it dust that accumulated around the solar system, or did it come in from another part of the solar system? Who knows? All these things might then be important in answering the other final questions of, you know, did life start on this planet, did it come from somewhere else, and then. And then flower on this planet? If you've got lots and lots and lots of examples of different planets, architectures and different environments, you can start to winnow down some of those sorts of questions. And that's exactly what this whole field is going to become.

Alec, thank you very much for your time.

You're very welcome.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple podcasts and you can subscribe to the economist@exterator.com radio. Offer 12 issues for $12 or 12 pounds. See you back here tomorrow.