Please send your tips and thoughts to rheath@politico.com COUP CONFIRMED IN MYANMAR Myanmar's military has seized power from the country's civilian leadership, kicking off the Biden Administration's first foreign crisis and setting the stage for an urgent United Nations Security Council debate, with the possibility of democratic allies imposing sanctions. America's new secretary of State Antony Blinken has been getting high marks for his initial performance, but now faces a tough choice: Will he back Sen. Bob Menendez (D - NJ), the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who supports "strict economic sanctions, as well as other measures," if the country's civilian leadership is not returned to power? So far Blinken has expressed "grave concern" adding that "the military must reverse these actions immediately." The United Kingdom, which took over as president of the U.N. Security Council today, is discussing whether to hold an urgent Security Council debate, a prospect complicated by the U.N.'s New York headquarters being closed due to a severe snowstorm. China — a long-time patron of Myanmar — is "dead against" holding the debate, a senior European diplomat told Global Translations. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said he "strongly condemned" the coup and promised the "unwavering support" of the United Nations to the "people of Myanmar." Heiko Mass, Germany's foreign minister, condemned the coup "in the strongest possible terms." CATCH-UP QUICK — WHAT HAPPENED: Army commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing seized power in a pre-dawn coup Monday local time, hours before lawmakers were due to meet for the first session of Parliament since Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won 396 out of 476 seats in a November election. The army announced a one-year state of emergency, installing 1st Vice President Myint Swe, a military appointee, to take over from ousted President Win Myint. That derails Myanmar's fragile democratic progress since the previous military junta dissolved in 2011. The coup came as little surprise to locals: the military's long reach over the levers of power never really went away, and it has operated with impunity, brutally at times. The military drafted the current constitution which reserves Cabinet positions and 25 percent of Parliament seats for its officers. In 2017, a vicious crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority killed thousands and pushed 700,000 into neighboring Bangladesh as refugees. State Department officials have refrained from labeling the crackdown as a genocide, partly out of fear of pushing Myanmar into the arms of China, while Western diplomats have a fraught relationship with Aung Sung Suu Kyi thanks to her refusal to condemn the Rohingya crackdown. The situation on the ground is volatile: Aung Sung Suu Kyi has urged supporters to protest the coup, while " Myanmar's a country awash in weapons, with deep divisions across ethnic & religious lines, where millions can barely feed themselves," tweeted Thant Myint-U, author of The Hidden History of Burma, and grandson of United Nations Secretary-General U Thant. A coup based on false claims of electoral fraud: Sound familiar, America? A presenter on military-owned Myawaddy TV said the reason for takeover "was in part due to the government's failure to act on the military's claims of voter fraud in last November's election," Associated Press reported. Does the military have the power to declare a state of emergency? Not on its own — Article 417 of the constitution, which Human Rights Watch has described as a "coup mechanism in waiting," requires the involvement of the president to transfer power to the military. Looks as though the new junta didn't even bother with that. Read for yourself here. COVID-19 — PUTTING THE U (TURN) INTO EU The European Union abruptly reversed an attempt to restrict vaccine exports into Britain via Northern Ireland over the weekend. The U-turn comes after five years of Brexit debates in which the EU insisted border checks must not be allowed at the Northern Ireland border. The flow of vaccines was thrown into doubt after the EU passed a regulation giving customs agents to block exports of COVID-19 vaccines. Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin told the BBC's Andrew Marr that EU officials did not call Dublin to seek approval for the new vaccine restrictions. The European Commissioner from Ireland, Mairead McGuinness, said the body made "a mistake with very serious consequences" with its initial diktat. McGuinness and her fellow commissioners were given just 30 minutes to approve the text, which had been drafted by the inner circle of European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, the Financial Times reported. The Commission now assures the U.K. that its pre-ordered doses of the Pfizer vaccine (manufactured in the EU) will not be disrupted. EU power play pays dividends: AstraZeneca, the main target of an EU plan to block vaccine exports, announced it would deliver 40 million doses (up from 31 million doses) to the bloc in the first quarter of the year, and start deliveries one week earlier than planned. It's a step in the right direction, but the EU had been expecting more than 100 million doses. GLOBAL RISKS AND TRENDS COVID UPSHOT: NO-ONE IS TRULY SAFE UNTIL EVERYONE IS SAFE Dangerous new coronavirus variants are demonstrating the cost of not having a global coordinating strategy for dealing with Covid-19. In addition to the equity issue of many residents of poorer countries likely waiting until 2022 for a vaccine — those countries risk becoming the source of more variants that render existing vaccines less effective in rich countries, stretching out the pandemic (possibly to four years, Singapore warns) or creating parallel pandemics, according to the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. Getting the vaccine to hotspots matters, because it slows the spread of the virus even when only a small proportion of the population is protected, an early British study demonstrates. The big discussion today on the new variants is with top CDC and WHO officials, hosted by CSIS at 2 p.m. ET. Register here. What's missing? — A credible plan for dealing with the variants. Where's WHO when we need it? As the world conducts a "race between vaccination and mutation," in the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nethanyahu , the key question is: where are vaccines, other therapeutic drugs, and quarantine systems most needed in the coming weeks to reduce the spread of the virus? Previous WHO efforts have flopped, including the Covid-19 technology access pool — a WHO program for sharing Covid-19 related treatments and technology has received no contributions since its May 2020 launch. While another UN-backed project, the medicines patent pool (MPP) has failed to negotiate any Covid-19 drug or technology deals. — Basic funds for widespread vaccination: The G-20 promised to "spare no effort" in ensuring equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines, but the COVAX global vaccine facility is still billions short of the paltry sum it needs to function. Total government investment in COVAX remains under $10 billion: less than 1/1000th of approximately $10 trillion allocated to economic stimulus in 2020. — Many middle income countries are disorganized: Relying solely on COVAX and waiting for special deals from Russia or China, or leftovers from rich countries, isn't a smart strategy. Mexico is an example of a middle income country that spread its vaccine bets effectively: striking deals with at least four vaccine makers spread across U.S., U.K., Russia and China. — Poorer countries have not used all the tools they have. The 54-member African Union finally kicked into gear in December, purchasing 300 million doses. REALITY CHECK — VACCINE HOARDING IS A DISTRACTION: The immediate problem is lack of COVAX funding, and lack of authorization for COVAX to distribute the vaccines it purchased. Rich countries have ordered more doses than they have people — an insurance policy against the high rate of failure that is common in vaccine development. But since there's no spare vaccine to hoard right now, there's no current hoarding problem. BIDEN MEETS WORLD TRUMP LEFT BEHIND A SANCTIONS MINEFIELD: Jake Sullivan, White House national security adviser, is warning of "an escalating nuclear crisis" and Joe Biden wants America back in the Iran nuclear deal. But to achieve that goal, is Biden willing to declare that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is not a terrorist organization? How about lifting U.S. sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran, which stands accused of funding proxy Middle East militias? Or will Biden do away with sanctions aimed at Iranians who tried to interfere in the U.S. election? Nahal Toosi explains all the legal and political obstacles left in Biden's way. NEIGHBORHOOD DEMOCRACY: Ecuador's President Lenín Moreno argues in the Miami Herald that "Biden's Democracy Agenda Should Start in Latin America." The region holds eight national elections in 2021 (Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru) but Moreno worries they won't be fair without U.S. leadership ahead of and at the U.S.-hosted summit of the Americas. Moreno is speaking as an outgoing leader: he's not seeking re-election Ecuador's Feb. 7 vote. GLOBAL GREEN RANKINGS: MIT scored 76 countries on their environmental performance . The overall list contains few surprises: Iceland is first, France is the highest-ranked major power in fourth (the U.S. is down in 40th), and Costa Rica is the high-ranked middle income country in seventh. But the rankings of specific criteria are more illuminating. Ukraine does best on carbon emissions (nuclear power), Singapore tops clean innovation, New Zealand has the greenest climate policy, and Ethiopia the best green transition, according to MIT. JOBS RECOVERY SPOTLIGHT A growing number of American training providers are seeking to reinvent how workers gain skills, and how they brand them: emphasizing specific outcomes and competences rather than the cache of a particular credential or university degree. Global Translations spoke to two frontline executives. Sean Segal is a teacher turned CEO of Generation USA , overseeing 3,500 workers in 14 countries training in technology, healthcare, skilled trades, and customer service. Segal's organization provides "a bootcamp that combines skills and mindset" so that workers are equipped to ready on Day 1 of any job. Increasingly that involves borrowing from foreign apprenticeship models, and Verizon hired roughly 100 non-traditional graduates in Dallas, as part of a $44 million workforce development partnership with Generation. Canada's Riipen program is another Segal favorite . " One of my biggest frustrations is a bias against non-traditional learners and against non-traditional education," Segal said, noting that as a history major and teacher he had little in the way of non-profit CEO training. "We're an on-ramp for people who haven't been successful in traditional education or employment. People in the U.K., including in industries like finance, are used to hiring non-traditional graduates without a four-year degree, but in the U.S. that is unheard of." Segal's biggest complaint: that everyone from university staff to parents are far more focused on getting people into college rather than completing their degrees: "only 54 percent finish college," he said, and even then they often have taken on deep debt. One consequence is that the country makes huge education investments, but they haven't "impacted the long-term, multi-generational wealth and well-being needed to have sustainable, stable lives," he said. Segal says efforts to broaden education should win bipartisan support: they increase equity, but "get people off government assistance and into a job. If that can't be bipartisan I am not sure what can be." Liz Simon , an Obama administration alum now co-chief operating officer at General Assembly, is now dedicated to "accelerated tech training" with "a real focus on outcomes." Simon also works to replicate benefits that come with a masters degree at an elite university, minus the $100k+ price tag. "There's 80,000-plus alumni of our courses, which is a larger network than the living alumni of Harvard Business School." General Assembly is "an aspirational top-tier brand" that doesn't rely on exclusivity, said Simon. Simon's students don't start at the same place — as college students would — and so they're able to enter at different levels matching their skills and needs. "Helping people get to the right entry point for where they are, is a really, really important thing from a policy perspective," saving time and money for everyone involved, she said. Top tip for diversifying your tech workforce: focus on data analytics, Simon said. "It's the most universally accessible entry point" to a tech career; "every company needs it, every team needs it. Data is part of everything today. The demand is huge." Her top legislative priority is "raising the cap on employer educational assistance," but she's also focused on getting big employers to work together to create a common language for micro-credentials in fast-moving fields, instead of "employers all having their own way of going about assessing whether someone is a skilled software engineer." WORTH THE READ Jobs come first as UK ministers plan for life after Covid-19 'Like Wartime': 350 Canadian Companies Unite to Start Mass Virus Testing GLOBETROTTERS FLYING PRIVATE EARNS PUBLIC SHAMING: John Kerry's family private jet was reported to have emitted an estimated 116 metric tons of carbon in 2020, Fox News calculated. GLOBAL BRITAIN KICKS INTO HIGH GEAR: Britain is today formally applying to join an 11-nation Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) anchored on the other end of the world. The U.K.'s best-laid plans to focus on climate security and Covid-19 during their month at the helm of the U.N. Security Council are, for now, overtaken by the Myanmar crisis. We'll learn more from Ambassador Barbara Woodward at a virtual press conference at 1 p.m. ET PANDAS ENJOYING THE US EAST COAST SNOWFALL: You know you want to watch. Thanks to editor Ben Pauker
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