| | | | The U.S. decision to abandon U.N. talks on improving the international flow and rights of migrants because the compact is "not compatible" with U.S. sovereignty is just the latest example of a paranoia over sovereignty within the administration that is "unbecoming of the world's most powerful nation," argues Stewart Patrick in The Hill. The decision could also come back to haunt America.
"President Trump has again shown his nationalist colors, as when he renounced the Paris Climate Agreement in June. The stated rationale is the same: protecting American 'sovereignty' from the alleged depredations of multilateral agreements. Once again, the argument is hogwash," Patrick writes. "To state what should be obvious, a U.S. decision to enter an international accord consistent with the U.S. Constitution is an expression of sovereignty, not its abdication. The United States is party to thousands of treaties, including several hundred multilateral conventions. It is no less 'sovereign' as a result. One can argue about a particular treaty's merits, but unless it is imposed on the United States, U.S. sovereign authority remains intact.
"Finally, by absenting itself from multilateral negotiations, the United States forfeits any influence over their ultimate direction, including the definition of appropriate principles of state conduct toward migrants." "In all, the Border Patrol made 310,531 arrests during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, a decline of 25 percent from a year earlier and the lowest level since 1971. But U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose officers pick up people for deportation, made 143,470 arrests, an increase of 25 percent. After Trump took office, ICE arrests surged 40 percent from the same period a year earlier."
| | Why May Was Angry With Trump | | | When President Trump retweeted three inflammatory anti-Muslim videos by a British far-right group he managed to do something rare in post-Brexit Britain – unite the country. But Prime Minister Theresa May had good reason to express her concern over the tweets, writes Therese Raphael for Bloomberg View. The extreme right threat is growing there – and the President's intervention only added fuel to the fire. "In the past, extreme-right groups in the U.K. and elsewhere in Europe have been fragmented, lacked leadership and generally were a low-level annoyance. These days they are highly networked, sophisticated and organized. They know how to tailor their rhetoric to attract particular audiences. They feature attractive people in their messaging and cooperate with groups in other countries to form online troll armies and fake social-media accounts to spread disinformation," Raphael writes. Meanwhile, "the U.K. has experienced a rise in hate crimes (which also spiked during the 2016 campaign that preceded the vote to leave the European Union) following terrorist attacks on Manchester and London Bridge in May and June this year. The U.K. government reports a 27 percent increase in hate crimes this year over last year." | | An Unconventional Way to Hit Back at Putin | | The unprecedented Winter Olympics ban for Russian athletes announced by the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday could offer a template for the United States if it wants to retaliate for Russian interference in the presidential election, suggests John Sipher, a former CIA officer, for Just Security.
"If we want to force action and change behavior, we should look for opportunities to hit where we can expect a visceral reaction – in the area of national emotions and feelings. Russia's use of racist and right-wing memes and exploitation of trolls to stoke inflammatory reaction suggests that they know how to hit where it hurts. Pictures of Hillary Clinton fighting Jesus are hardly the stuff of economic theory," Sipher wrote just ahead of the IOC announcement.
"[P]erhaps the recent Russian doping scandal might provide an opportunity to better influence Russian behavior than another round of economic sanctions that the Kremlin is already preparing to circumvent. Cutting Russia off from international sporting and cultural events might be a new way to get their attention. The average Russian citizen will probably not even be aware of new political or economic sanctions, but they will surely get the message if their beloved teams cannot participate in the Olympics, World Cup or European Hockey championships."
| | Team Trump "Tossing Grenades" at Global Economy: Pesek | | | The Trump administration's announcement last week that it is "self-initiating" the first U.S. trade case in decades – against Chinese aluminum imports -- is an aggressive step, one that could signal the U.S. is gearing up for a trade war with Asia, suggests William Pesek in the Nikkei Asian Review. It's the latest example of an outdated "America First" ideology that could ultimately hurt American consumers. "Trump's worldview is of the stopped-clock variety. In Tokyo last month, he spoke of U.S.-Japan automaker tensions as if it were 1987, not 2017. And his views on China 'cheating' America seem stuck in December 2001, when Beijing entered the WTO [World Trade Organization]," Pesek writes. "Few acts would thrill Trump supporters more than kneecapping an intergovernmental organization the president claims has 'taken advantage of this country like you would not believe.'" "With Trump blocking the appointment of new judges to the WTO body acting as the supreme court of trade, things may be about to get ugly. Does the global trade system have problems? Absolutely. Does Beijing, with its massive subsidies for state enterprises and forced joint-venture policy for foreigners, take liberties? Yes. But tossing grenades at a highly indebted and interconnected global economy is a grave threat to growth and stability."
| | The Biggest Threat to the Chinese Dream? | | The Chinese government's decision to evict tens of thousands of people in Beijing following a fire last month in a settlement for migrant workers has underscored the two Chinas challenge President Xi Jinping faces, suggests Andrew Browne in the Wall Street Journal. "Behind Mr. Xi's confident narrative about his country's emergence as a global superpower at the recent 19th Communist Party Congress is a more fragile reality."
"A popular revolt isn't in the cards. The migrants themselves, dazed and fearful, have mostly submitted to their fate. They have few means to organize. Many simply melted back to their villages.
"Still, the plight of tens of thousands of refugees, dragging their wheeled suitcases through rubble in subzero temperatures, struck a chord among Beijing's middle classes," Browne writes.
"A deep cleavage between privileged urban dwellers and the rural poor who serve them could limit the country's economic prospects for decades to come. Half the country pursues Mr. Xi's 'China Dream' of wealth and power; the other half—the ones still picking their way through Beijing's blitzed slums—could derail it.
| | Germans Worry About Refugees – and Trump's America: Survey | | Relations with the United States under President Trump are a bigger foreign policy challenge for Germans than relations with Russia or Turkey, a new survey finds, while 56 percent of respondents feel the U.S.-German relationship is very bad or somewhat bad.
According to the annual Berlin Pulse survey, produced by the Körber Foundation, the biggest foreign policy issue facing the country is refugees (26 percent) while potential conflict with North Korea (10 percent) appeared on the list for the first time. Asked whether they favored restricting the number of refugees who can stay in Germany, 56 percent supported a limit on refugees, compared with 41 percent who rejected a limit. | | | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment