The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Judicial reforms in Mexico and Putin changes his nuclear doctrine

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. The following is a sample of the Munk Debates’ weekly current affairs podcast, Friday Focus. Rudyard and Janice start off the show talking about the significant judicial reforms underway in Mexico, and why they will affect Canada and our important trade agreements. On the second half of the show they turn to Canadian politics where the NDP, under the leadership of Jagmeet Singh, have ended their supply agreement with the Liberal government which had been keeping Justin Trudeau's party in power. Is this move setting us up for a federal election? In Ukraine a reorganization of Zelensky's cabinet has caught westerners off guard and is raising eyebrows about the timing of this shuffle. Rudyard and Janice round out the show by discussing Putin's decision to change his nuclear doctrine. Will this increase the scope of the country's nuclear deterrence, thereby increasing the risk that these dangerous weapons will be used?  To access full-length editions of the Friday Focus podcast consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Make your donation, and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast. Reddier Griffiths here, the executive director of the Monk Debates. I'm joined by Janis Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. Janice, great to be in conversation with you today. Just a caveat that we are recording this show late Thursday night.

I've got some travel that's going to have me up at the crack of dawn tomorrow and on the road all day. So I appreciate among listeners understanding that if there is some big breaking news and hey, Janice, it seems to happen all the time on Fridays. The reason we're not talking about it is because you're listening to us talking to you late Thursday evening. Janice, let's start. We're going to go around the horn, try to get four. topics into the show today, just things that kind of caught our eye in the last week. And you've been watching these judicial reforms in Mexico significant, criticized by the United States. You could say

matters for Canada. Mexico, a keen kind of North American trade partner. What's up and why do you think we should be paying attention to this? You know, this is a big story, Richard. And the reason is exactly as you suggested. We are all three, Canada, Mexico, the United States, part of, and depending where you live, COSMA, USMCA, it doesn't matter,

where you're going to have a different name. And why would we care about judicial reform? Because what drives foreign investments? A strong judicial system, a sense that the rule of law is in place, And so the trade agreements that exist between Canada, the United States, and Mexico are partly a function that we all have confidence that the rule of law will be enforced in the other country. If their trade disputes, it's pretty fundamental. What's happening in Mexico?

Wow. This is the biggest judicial reform, and that's what one side of this argument calls it. anywhere, frankly, that I can remember. Seven thousand judges will be elected now. And you don't need a law degree, right there. You just need an undergraduate degree of some kind. The Supreme Court justices in Mexico are appalled, infuriated. And many see this as an intent by Amlo in his final moments, literally,

to wipe out the opposition that he has faced among the judiciary and to give much more power to Mexican voters who have strongly aligned behind his populist agenda. It's an earthquake inside Mexico. The new Mexican president, Claudia Scheimbaum, has said she will enforce this. So if you were making, if you're a Canadian company with offices in the United States and in Mexico, are you going to invest in Mexico when you have a popularly elected judiciary that is whole scale opposed by the Mexican Supreme Court? Got through Parliament, just the Senate now, and they are unlikely to stop this.

Well, and, you know, Mexico is not exactly a poster child for, you know, a stable state, large sections, huge swaths of its geography, controlled by cartels, you know, right down to, you know, corner store extortion regimes, right up to, you know, the international drugs trade. how could you possibly have elected judges in that system? Surely this is just opening the doors to the cartels to then effectively control broad swaths of Mexico's legal system. Because come on, who's going to get elected into these positions in the, I don't know, half or more of the country that's dominated by these violent gangs that basically run most of the civilian and civil infrastructure? in large sections of the country? You know, that I think is the critical point here that the cartels will be very happy with this because already the drug cartels are moving in a way

that's predictable, Roger. They are moving into the official economy. In other words, they are taking some of the huge profits they're making from the drug trade and they're starting to control critical sectors of the Mexican economy, which is what mafioso types have always done, whether, you know, the Al Capone's in Chicago or the mafia in Italy, that's the way they worked.

So if you are part of that group of very, very powerful crime lords, you want this judicial reform because you will be able to control, you'll be able to elect judges, and you do it by buying votes. So that's a really worrying aspect of judicial reform in Mexico that was not there in Poland, no matter how controversial that was, and that was not there in Israel, even though that was the early canary in the coal mine, telling us how deeply driven with conflict Israeli society was.

This is, I think, been more consequential for, Mexico. Absolutely. And again, just a final observation here. Mexico has seen a boom since COVID, largely brought about by companies reshoring, by basically relocating manufacturing that had been in China into Mexico. Their economy has a remarkable run as a result of it. In some ways, Mexico is looking good, why would Almo, as he's known by his initials, the now outgoing president, do something like this? Is there, Janice, some play here for him to have kind of power from beyond the grave, for his party to further kind of institutionalize? Maybe people would help our

listeners understand a little bit that in Mexico, you know, there has been a ruling party, for the better part of the last century, with a couple of few exceptions. In other words, politics happens a little bit differently there. The separation of the party from the state is less than it might be in a more healthy democracy. For sure, this is an attempt to break the only constraints. I'mlo is the head of a party called Marina,

which Claudia Scheinbaum represents. It's a populist party on the left. Those lines, you know, are funny now left and right often, but it's clearly populist, Rudyard, and it's moved forward, it's consolidated its power. This is his attempt to break the only constraint against the exercise of power that he faced and that his party faced when he was president.

And that's why she's going along with it. But it's got this huge downside in terms of the opportunities that it is opening up for the criminalization of the Mexican economy. And it's going to be an issue for Canadian and American investors. You talked about the boom in the Mexican economy. Part of that, interestingly enough, is Chinese investment, right? where Chinese who are not exporting directly to Mexico now, to the United States now, rather, are exporting to Mexico and creating a backdoor

for their technology products to go into the United States. The United States are very well aware of this. And this move, I think, is just going to heighten concern in the United States a lot of stress coming for the North American regional economy. Terrific. Let's pause here and say goodbye to our complimentary listeners rejoin on the other side with our monk donors. If you're not already a monk donor, you'd like full-length editions of the Friday Focus podcast. You can get those for as little as 50 cents a week. Make a yearly $25 donation. If you're in Canada, you get a charitable tax receipt even for that. What a deal. And you get to hear, Janice, 50 plus, we do 50 plus weeks. a year, don't we? Rain, sleep, snow.

Friday Focus is here for you, and we'd really appreciate your support. Quick break, back on the other side. Thanks for listening to this excerpt of the Friday Focus podcast. To get full-length editions of each and every episode of this program, simply go to our website, triple-w-the-munk debates.com. Click on the Friday Focus tab in our navigation on the top.

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