| | | | The Remarkable Thing About Kim's Missile Test Wasn't the Test | | The most remarkable thing about North Korea's ballistic missile test yesterday wasn't the test itself, suggests Uri Friedman in The Atlantic. It was the Trump administration's diplomatic initial response.
The President's rhetoric was muted in a press conference that followed the launch, with Trump "noting only that the development hadn't changed his policy toward North Korea. Initial tweets from the president in the hours after the missile test focused on the U.S. economy, specifically the stock market," Friedman writes.
Meanwhile, "Defense Secretary James Mattis observed matter-of-factly that the missile had flown higher 'than any previous shot they've taken,' indicating once again that North Korea now possesses missiles 'that can threaten everywhere in the world, basically.' The 'bottom line,' Mattis said, 'is it's a continued effort to build a ballistic-missile threat that endangers world peace, regional peace, and certainly the United States.'"
"At a moment of intense speculation about whether war could break out between the U.S. and North Korea, the Trump administration has signaled that it is sufficiently encouraged by its progress in isolating North Korea economically and diplomatically to not let a missile test, however menacing or record breaking, sway it off course. For now." - The other option for handling North Korea. War isn't a real option for handling the North Korea crisis. But that doesn't mean the United States should just accept the status quo, argues Doug Bandow in the Japan Times. It's time to consider letting U.S. allies have their own equivalent deterrent, too.
"Pyongyang's acquisition of a nuclear arsenal is an appropriate time to consider encouraging nations threatened by the North, most obviously South Korea and Japan, to develop countervailing deterrents. Seoul started down the nuclear path a half century ago before being forced to halt by U.S. pressure. Today the South Korean public wants to finish that journey," Bandow says.
"That would force Japanese policymakers and people to consider doing the same to confront growing challenges from the North and China. Beijing then might feel forced to do more to constrain the North's nuclear ambitions to forestall America's friends going nuclear."
"Stepping back militarily and allowing prosperous and populous states to take over their own defense surely is better than starting the very war Washington has spent 64 years attempting to prevent."
| | No, Trump's Retweeting of Videos Won't Hurt the Travel Ban | | The three videos President Trump retweeted Wednesday morning that were originally posted by a British far-right group were Islamophobic. But don't expect this to undermine the administration's travel ban case, argues Mark Joseph Stern for Slate.
"In concluding that the second ban was unconstitutionally tainted by animus, courts did not look to general statements of Islamophobia from Trump. Rather, they evaluated specific declarations about the ban which indicated that it had grown out of anti-Muslim bigotry," Stern writes.
"Trump's Britain First retweets, then, should not have much bearing on the legality of his travel ban. Yes, the president is antagonizing an entire religion through odious propaganda, but his generalized expression of hate would seem to fall outside the inquiry in this litigation. If Trump explicitly connects the videos to the ban, then his tweets might be useful in court. As they stand now, however, they are just another reminder of the chief executive's irrational fear of Islam."
| | The Robots Could Be Coming for 800 Million Jobs | | | As many as 800 million people around the world could find themselves out of a job by 2030 thanks to automation, according to a new study from the McKinsey Global Institute.
"In absolute terms, China faces the largest number of workers needing to switch occupations -- up to 100 million if automation is adopted rapidly, or 12 percent of the 2030 workforce -- although this figure is relatively small compared with the huge shift in China out of agriculture in the past 25 years," the report says. "For advanced economies, the share of the workforce that may need to learn new skills and find work in new occupations is much higher: up to one-third of the 2030 workforce in the United States and Germany, and nearly half in Japan."
But the outlook is by no means all gloomy: "If history is any guide, we could also expect that 8 to 9 percent of 2030 labor demand will be in new types of occupations that have not existed before.
"…[W]ith sufficient economic growth, innovation, and investment, there can be enough new job creation to offset the impact of automation, although in some advanced economies additional investments will be needed…" | | Why Now's a Good Time for a Cyber Accord…With Russia | | U.S. sanctions don't show any sign of altering Russian behavior – and they could even be counterproductive. It might be time to take a leaf out of America's Cold War playbook and find ways of cooperating with Russia to de-escalate tensions, suggests Kimberly Marten in the New Republic.
"For example, many senior U.S. military officers favor restoring regular interactions with their Russian counterparts on security issues. Congress banned most 'military to military' activities -- such as seminars and joint training exercises -- in 2015. But curtailing these interactions does not harm Russia. Instead, it makes potential confrontations more dangerous, by depriving military leaders of insight into their adversaries' strategic thinking. The resumption of communication might even lead to new agreements: Compacts reached by military officers in 1972 and 1989 helped prevent escalation when U.S. and Soviet military ships and aircraft encountered each other in international waters and airspace."
Marten suggests that the best place to start could be a cyber accord. Why now?
"Because Putin fears, at a level approaching paranoia, U.S. efforts at 'regime change,' and Russia has its own presidential election coming up in March. Putin, or his chosen successor if he decides not to run, will almost certainly win another six-year term -- unless the United States disrupts things by, say, releasing a cache of compromising material that turns the Russian population against him. To avoid that possibility, Putin might just find an anti-doxing agreement to be useful. And if Putin either didn't agree to, or didn't comply with, a limited cyber accord, it would undercut Russia's already controversial efforts in the U.N. to be seen as a world leader on cyber policy."
| | The Most Expensive City in the World for Office Space Is… | | Hong Kong has the most expensive office space in the world, overtaking London's West End thanks to a fall in the value of the pound, according to a new report from real estate services firm Cushman and Wakefield. Rounding out the top five most expensive places to accommodate staff are Tokyo, Fairfield County in Connecticut, and San Francisco.
The report notes that at $27,431 per workstation per annum, the "cost of locating 100 workers in Hong Kong is equivalent to 300 in Toronto, 500 in Madrid or 900 in Mumbai." | | | | | | |
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