| | | | Is Trump Desperate for a Deal? | | | China sees President Trump as unpredictable, but fundamentally a pragmatic businessman that it can win over. That has America's allies nervous as Trump gets ready to head to Beijing, writes Andrew Browne for the Wall Street Journal. The fear? That he'll strike a grand bargain that leaves them hanging. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "solicitous personal diplomacy, including golf and burgers over the weekend, reflects a long fear in Japan that Washington will do another deal with Beijing over its head to reshape the region, as well as suspicion of an 'America First' president hostile to multilateral trade arrangements and skeptical of alliances," Browne writes. China's President "has pushed for what he calls a 'new type of great power relations' with the U.S., an innocuous-sounding slogan but one freighted with deep implications, not least that Washington would start treating China as an equal and cede ground on its territorial demands in the South China Sea and East China Sea. The arrangement could put Taiwan in play as another of China's 'core interests' to be accommodated. "Such diplomacy would essentially create a G-2: the U.S. and China carving up the globe between them." - America holds the high cards. Xi's China may be rising, but the United States still has the best hand in the geopolitical game of cards, argues Joseph Nye in the Financial Times. America's high cards? Favorable geography, the U.S. shift from being an energy importer to exporter, China's greater exposure in any trade war, and the dollar's continued place as the world's reserve currency of choice.
"Of course, a reckless player can misplay a strong hand," Nye writes. "But these four cards are likely to survive the Trump administration. And those who proclaim Pax Sinica and the end of the American era should take such underlying power factors into account." The state-run Chinese Society of Education has recently launched two videos, Zhou writes, "one designed for primary pupils and one for secondary pupils, and the course also includes a quiz featuring questions like 'what number should you dial when you spot spying activities?'
"In the video for secondary school pupils, actors and actresses demonstrate three kinds of espionage: leaking government data, taking photos of a military base for foreign spies, and breaches of cybersecurity protocols.
"Children are told the law requires citizens to report such acts to intelligence and security officers."
| | Trump Changes North Korea Tune. Maybe. | | President Trump sounded considerably more measured in his latest comments on North Korea, appearing to suggest in Seoul that he is open to negotiations with Kim Jong Un's regime. But it's too soon to know whether the latest remarks reflect a real shift in thinking, writes Joshua Keating for Slate.
"It's possible Trump was simply telling his hosts what they wanted to hear as he visits Seoul, a city of millions of people within range of North Korean artillery," Keating writes. South Korean President Moon Jae-in "has been an advocate of finding a diplomatic solution to the crisis, and Trump's threats of war have prompted alarm in South Korea. Trump's more conciliatory tone also comes a few days after a Pentagon assessment that a full ground invasion would be the only way to secure all of North Korea's nuclear facilities 'with complete certainty.' Such a scenario would likely cause thousands, or even millions, of casualties.
"It's a lot harder to talk tough about fire and fury when you're looking right at the people who would be burned." "However tattered his image may be on the home front, Trump's performance in Seoul, on the first day of his two-day visit, was reassuring. In a joint press conference after a summit with President Moon Jae-in, he stated Korea was important and there has been no skipping it in important decision making. His assurances were strong enough to put Moon's detractors to shame," the paper argues. - Trump's big speech. President Trump will finish his visit to South Korea on Wednesday [Tuesday evening ET] with an address on North Korea at the Korean National Assembly, CNN reports.
"Trump's advisers scheduled the speech ahead of his talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin to lay down his views."
| | To Control Guns, Stop Talking About Gun Control | | | Mass shootings like the one in Sutherland Springs are a "peculiarly American" tragedy, writes Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times. It's time for a new approach to preventing them – a public health approach.
"The left sometimes focuses on 'gun control,' which scares off gun owners and leads to more gun sales. A better framing is 'gun safety' or 'reducing gun violence,' and using auto safety as a model -- constant efforts to make the products safer and to limit access by people who are most likely to misuse them," Kristof argues.
What would a public health approach look like? Kristof suggests a range of steps, including background checks, banning bump stocks, barring sales to those under domestic violence restraining orders, banning under-21s from buying firearms, and researching "smart guns."
"If someone steals my iPhone, it's useless, and the same should be true of guns. Gun manufacturers made child-proof guns back in the 19th century (before dropping them), and it's time to advance that technology today. Some combination of smart guns and safe storage would also reduce the number of firearms stolen in the U.S. each year, now about 200,000, and available to criminals." | | The dramatic anti-corruption sweep by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appears to have the backing of the Trump administration, the Washington Post editorializes. "If so, it's a risky bet."
"His Western supporters imagine that Prince Salman is concentrating power so as to lead his deeply conservative, oil-producing country on a forced march to modernity," the Post says.
"Yet Prince Salman's resort to heavy-handed tactics and ill-judged adventures could easily undermine hopes for progressive reform and destabilize the kingdom. He is arresting not just hidebound Islamic clerics but liberal journalists and human rights activists who ought to be his natural allies. His jailing of globally prominent businessmen such as Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a major investor in companies such as Apple, Twitter and Lyft, could spook the foreign investors he says he wants to attract."
| | Team Trump's Dangerous War on…Data? | | The lack of data on mass shootings in the wake of Sunday's attack in Texas is a reminder of a broader problem that is getting worse under the Trump administration, writes Adam Rogers for Wired. The government is turning its back on information -- and that's bad for all of us.
"Would you like detailed information about arrests, homicides, and gang murders in 2016? Well, the FBI isn't giving it to you anymore. How about melting Arctic ice? Nope, Congress is dismantling a satellite that was supposed to update the aging monitor network. Climate change? Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, doesn't think human beings cause it and, more importantly, doesn't really think you can measure anything to find out. The weather? Forget it; the National Weather Service is coming apart at the seams. How many people live in the United States, data critical to determining political representation and funding priorities? Yeah, no -- the 2020 Census is shaping up to be an epic disaster," Rogers says.
"It's hard to imagine a good argument for knowing less -- about anything, really, but especially about difficult problems with profound policy implications. The government is supposed to base policy on the best data possible, along with political concerns, budget concerns, social priorities...the usual warp and weft of running a country." | | | | | | |
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