| | | | China's New Military Muscle-Flex | | China launched its second aircraft carrier – the "first developed and built by China" – on Wednesday morning, the official Xinhua News Agency reports. "It is China's second aircraft carrier, coming after the Liaoning, a refitted Soviet Union-made carrier put into commission in the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy in 2012." - A big step for China. James Holmes, a professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, emails Global Briefing: "The Type 001A will now be outfitted for sea trials. Does this mean Chinese carrier groups will soon equal their U.S. Navy counterparts? No. That is a false comparison. China's flattops carry too few aircraft to match up in a one-on-one slugfest. Instead they will operate with support from shore-based missiles and combat aircraft, along with submarines and patrol craft. Firepower emanating from 'Fortress China' will supplement carrier fleets' defenses and striking power."
To what end? "The combined might of sea- and land-based weaponry may fend off U.S. Navy forces long enough for Beijing to accomplish its goals in the China seas and Western Pacific," Holmes writes. "And China's carrier-equipped navy will outmatch any individual Asian competitor. This is significant."
| | Don't Trust China With North Korea Crisis | | President Trump is making a mistake by relying so heavily on China to manage the North Korea crisis, argues Brahma Chellaney for Project Syndicate. Not only will it be ineffective, he says, but it "could actually prove even more destabilizing for Asia."
"Of all of Trump's reversals, this one has the greatest geostrategic significance, because China will undoubtedly take full advantage of it to advance its own objectives. From its growing repression of political dissidents and ethnic minorities to its efforts to upend the territorial status quo in Asia, China constantly tests how far it can go. Under Obama, it got away with a lot. Under Trump, it could get away with even more."
- North Korea: Entrepreneur nation? The virtual collapse of North Korea's state-controlled economy after the Cold War forced many North Koreans into "a hodgepodge" of black market networks just to survive, writes Justin Hastings in the Sydney Morning Herald. But this widespread entrepreneurship also explains why international sanctions over the country's nuclear program are unlikely to sway Pyongyang's behavior.
"Because more and more regular North Koreans have been going into business for themselves, they are no longer dependent on the government for survival," Hastings writes. "While the North Korean state continues to use the standard tools of totalitarian control…it no longer feels the need to provide food or many other supplies to the average person on the street to keep itself in power."
"…Sanctions -- the international community's main tool to deter and contain North Korea over the past decade -- neither contain nor deter Kim Jong Un's behavior because he does not feel the pain they are supposed to bring."
| | The Freest Media in the World is in… | | | Scandinavia has the world's freest media, according to Reporters Without Borders' latest World Press Freedom Index, with all three nations making the top five. The United States fell two places from last year's index, to 43rd.
The group had a bleak assessment of the overall trend: "[V]iolations of the freedom to inform are less and less the prerogative of authoritarian regimes and dictatorships. Once taken for granted, media freedom is proving to be increasingly fragile in democracies as well. In sickening statements, draconian laws, conflicts of interest, and even the use of physical violence, democratic governments are trampling on a freedom that should, in principle, be one of their leading performance indicators."
The least free country was North Korea. | | Africa's New Magnet for Jihadists?
| | Tiny, landlocked Burkina Faso has been largely overlooked by the international community in favor of "African 'lions' such as Nigeria and Ghana," write Roland Benedikter and Ismaila Ouedraogo in Foreign Affairs. But that's a mistake. Jihadist groups are tightening their grip on the country -- and could destabilize sub-Saharan Africa in the process.
"Over the last year, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansarul Islam (Defenders of Islam) have sought to turn the northern part of Burkina Faso into a stronghold through which they could potentially build a new alliance with the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) and turn parts of Burkina Faso into a sanctuary for jihadist recruitment and training following ISIS' losses in Iraq and Syria," they write.
"…The country's north is suffering from high levels of underemployment, low productivity, and poor health care. Jihadists hope to fill that gap by providing some social services and thus channel the disadvantaged rural populations' discontent into support for their agenda."
| | The Upside to Trump Getting Cozy with Sisi: WaPo | | | Some rationalize human rights abuses by Egypt's government "as necessary for the Sisi regime to defeat domestic Islamists, including a branch of the Islamic State operating in the Sinai Peninsula," the Washington Post editorializes. "In fact, the regime's harsh tactics have polarized the country and promoted terrorist recruiting. By every available measure, violent Islamists have grown stronger since Mr. Sisi seized power in a July 2013 military coup." "Mr. Trump's friendliness toward Mr. Sisi will pay off if he can persuade the general to adopt desperately needed reforms in Egypt, such as rational counterinsurgency tactics in the Sinai, rather than mass repression, and the release from prison of secular opponents and Islamists who renounce violence." | | | | | | |
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