COVER: Fall of the Petrostates (All overseas editions). Senior Editor Rana Foroohar reports that with the world economy collapsing in recession, and falling demand driving the price of oil down to $37 per barrel, the trio of Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are losing their strength. The empires that they built on oil are proving rickety, vulnerable to inflation and joblessness, and now mounting political unrest is jeopardizing their personal power. "High oil prices and oil wealth reshaped geopolitics in recent years," says energy expert Daniel Yergin. "Now we're seeing the reversal of all that." The decline of the petro-czars is an unexpected bright spot in a grim global recession. Barack Obama has invited America's enemies to talk, and Putin, Chavez and Ahmadinejad are responding with surprising alacrity because the price of oil no longer supports their geopolitical ambitions.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/184766
COVER: Flight From South Africa (Africa only). Africa Bureau Chief Scott Johnson reports that a number of recent independent studies show that mass departures from South Africa are ongoing and are sapping the nation of its skilled and best-educated young citizens. The most dramatic figures can be found among South African whites, who are leaving at a pace consistent with the advent of "widespread disease, mass natural disasters or large-scale civil conflict," according to a report by the South African Institute on Race Relations. Some 800,000 out of a total white population of 4 million have left since 1995, by one count. But they're hardly alone. Blacks, coloreds (as people of mixed race are known in South Africa) and Indians are also expressing the desire to leave. The new South Africa has been relatively stable since apartheid was swept away in 1994. But that stability could be jeopardized if its human capital keeps leaving at the current rate.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/184783
Fear Comes to the Russian Heartland. Moscow Bureau Chief Owen Matthews and Special Correspondent Anna Nemtsova report on how the failing global economy is affecting Russian towns like Magnitogorsk, a steel town of nearly 500,000 straddling the Ural River, about 900 miles east of Moscow. Prosperity and stability are vanishing fast in Magnitogorsk, where four of the city's eight giant steel smelters have been shut down, their workers placed on indefinite leave. While the global economy was pushing oil prices to new highs, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin could do no wrong. Now serious unrest seems imminent. The biggest threat lies in cities like Magnitogorsk -- company towns that are dominated by a single industry.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/184763
The Kremlin Vigilantes. Matthews and Nemtsova examine the growth of anti-immigrant groups in Russia, which are becoming more violent and getting more explicit support from authorities. One group -- the Young Guard, the youth group of the ruling United Russia party -- says its mission is to help fulfill Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's plan to rein in the number of migrant laborers coming into the country. Such a policy represents a big turnaround for Russia, which until very recently has officially welcomed immigrants if not with open arms than at least with grudging acceptance. But as the Russian economy craters, its immigrant community looks set to suffer most as a backlash against foreigners -- Russia's time-honored scapegoats from tsarist times -- gathers pace.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/184777
No Rest for the Weary. Special Correspondent Tracy McNicoll reports that French President Nicholas Sarkozy has committed himself to changing the law that makes it illegal to work on Sunday. The idea of keeping shops open on Sundays is, symbolically, at the core of Sarkozy's economic ideology: ennobling the idea of work while giving people more choices about how to make and spend their money. He has pushed to give the French more freedom to earn overtime, to retire later if they please, to work as many years, days and hours as they want to -- including Sundays. But as logical as that may sound, in France it's widely viewed by the political elite as unseemly.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/184782
An Island, Lost at Sea. Contributing Editor Stryker McGuire reports on the changing "special relationship" between the U.S. and Great Britain. The first world figure to actually shake President Barack Obama's hand was Tony Blair, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's predecessor and longtime rival in British politics. What Brown and much of the commentariat are willfully ignoring is that the importance of the Anglo-American special relationship depends upon which end of the telescope you view it through. It's a big deal in Britain. But the term "special relationship" is almost entirely foreign to American ears. After all, the United States is increasingly Hispanic and increasingly wedded economically to Asia, and is bound to shift or at least broaden its longtime alliances.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/184780
WORLD VIEW: Israel's Biggest Danger. Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria writes that while most commentators focus on the future of the peace process and the two-state solution in Israel, handling the relationship with its Arab minority is more crucial even than dealing with Hizbullah or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Israel's Arabs constitute a demographic time bomb. Benny Morris, the once dovish historian who chronicled the forced expulsion of most Palestinians from the Jewish state in 1948, has turned to arguing that Israel needs to protect itself from the Arabs now living within its borders. "It's a dangerous spiral: the worse the distrust gets, the less loyalty Israel's Arabs feel toward their country--and vice versa," Zakaria writes.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/184765
THE LAST WORD: Mustafa Barghouthi, Palestinian reformist legislator. Barghouthi says that the most pressing issue for him and the Palestinian government is to end the conflict between Palestine and Israel. "I don't think this conflict should last longer, and it's awful for both people. And the result of the elections in Israel, in my opinion, reflects how dangerous this conflict is for Israel, too. I look at it as a cancer that is eating our lives," he says.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/184788
/PRNewswire - Feb. 15/
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