| | | | Why Pakistan Isn't Sweating (Yet) About Team Trump Getting Tough | | | President Trump's decision to suspend security assistance to Pakistan was the right one, and the United States looks more credible than any time since 9/11 when it threatens to act against Islamabad, suggests C. Christine Fair in The Atlantic. Still, Pakistan probably still believes it has the upper hand. Pakistan "has cultivated a global fear that it is too dangerous to fail. This is why many Americans have been afraid to break ties with Pakistan and have never encouraged the International Monetary Fund and other multilateral organizations to cut off the country and let Pakistan wallow in its own mess," Fair argues. "Pakistan believes it has effectively bribed the international community with the specter that any instability could result in terrorists getting their hands on Pakistani nuclear technology, fissile materials, or a weapon. In fact, Pakistan has stoked these fears by having the world's fastest-growing nuclear program, including of battlefield nuclear weapons. It is conceivable that Pakistan could use funds from a future IMF bailout to service its burgeoning Chinese debt." "Will Pakistan do as it has done in the past: Close the ground resupply routes? Will it escalate and close down its air space to American resupply flights? If that happens, what will the Trump administration do? Will it consider this action to be an act of war?" | | How to Avoid Being Played by Kim | | With a military that rests on a tiny economic base, it's little surprise that Kim Jong Un has decided he wants to talk with South Korea. But as Seoul prepares for talks in the Demilitarized Zone with its neighbor tomorrow, it needs to be wary about being taken for a ride, suggests Nicholas Eberstadt in The New York Times.
First, South Korea must recognize the North's "ulterior goals in these talks, and the other traps it may be readying. Then, by insisting ruthlessly on a quid pro quo at every step — requiring, for example, that if Seoul postpones military exercises, then Pyongyang should too. And finally, by tucking a few tricks up its own sleeves," Eberstadt says.
"Mr. Kim says he wants more contact between the North and the South? Insist on it, including by requiring that news from South Korea be allowed to reach the North. Don't shy away from raising unpleasant topics, like North Korea's appalling human rights situation, and calling for it to cooperate with the existing United Nations commission of inquiry. And why not confidentially mention that a large majority of South Koreans now seem to favor hosting United States tactical nuclear weapons to counter the North's new threats?"
"South Korean negotiators are not used to turning the tables on their North Korean interlocutors, but they should start."
| | Why Trump's New Immigration Move Could Overwhelm a Neighbor | | The announcement by the Trump administration that it is ending "temporary protected status" for certain nationals of El Salvador leaves hundreds of thousands of migrants facing the potential prospect of deportation. It could also be a devastating blow to a country already wracked by instability, suggests Joshua Partlow in the Washington Post.
"If all TPS holders return or are deported, it will impose an enormous strain on a country of 6.2 million people where poverty is widespread and gang violence remains a serious problem. Although homicides have fallen over the past two years, El Salvador still had nearly 4,000 killings last year, giving it the highest murder rate in Central America, at more than 60 homicides per 100,000 people," Partlow writes.
"Another major impact of the Trump administration's decision could be a drop in the amount of money Salvadoran immigrants send to relatives back home. Salvadorans send more than $4.5 billion per year in remittances, which makes up some 17 percent of the country's GDP, according to the World Bank, the single greatest source of income for the country."
| | | The Trump administration's attacks on NAFTA and other trade deals signal "a strategy of economic defeatism," writes Robert Zoellick in the Wall Street Journal. America looks like a nation "in withdrawal, not one confidently pressing the world to adopt new rules of fair competition and technology security." "The president is trying to placate his political base, which will be enraged if he accepts a deal on 'Dreamer' immigrants and fails to build his promised border wall. He relies on the support of economic isolationists who find it easier to blame others than to make America more competitive. Killing NAFTA would fit the bill," Zoellick writes. "Mr. Trump does not know how to use bilateral trade negotiations to create pressure for stronger multilateral rules. The US has historically used bilateral deals not only to eliminate tariffs and trade barriers but also to set higher standards for services, agricultural products, intellectual-property protection and more. Such deals have added environmental and labor protections, while boosting anticorruption and transparency rules. "The US has used trade to expand the circle of like-minded nations. The Trans-Pacific Partnership included six countries with which the U.S. already had a free-trade agreement, and added five more. That offered leverage with China, but Mr. Trump abandoned the deal." "This will be the year that trade policy could define Trump's fearful America." | | No, America Isn't Exceptional: Zeitz | | For years, US politicians have been fond of discussing "American Exceptionalism," often to connote the "pure superiority" of the United States, suggests Joshua Zeitz in Politico Magazine. The problem? The past year has underscored that America isn't quite as different from other nations as some would like to believe.
"Exceptionalism was for many decades a hotly contested topic among historians and social scientists. Could arbitrary borders really render an entire country exempt from broader social, economic and political forces, particularly in an age when these borders became more porous to the movement of capital and labor? Or did patterns of political development in fact create unique forms of national 'character'? Zeitz writes.
"In more recent years, the debate cooled. While some political scientists continued to explore potential variants of American exceptionalism, most historians concluded that the idea was meaningless and the very conversation itself stale.
"Then came Trump.
"His election and the conditions that accompanied it—a growing rejection of science and evidentiary fact, extreme political tribalism, the rise of conservative nationalist movements around the world, a popular reaction to immigration and free trade—may offer final and conclusive proof that there is nothing at all exceptional about the United States. We are fully susceptible to the same forces, good and ill, that drive politics around the globe."
| | | President Trump has a Friday deadline for deciding whether to renew temporary waivers for US sanctions against Iran. Iran's nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, is quoted by Reuters as warning Monday: "If the United States does not meet its commitment in the JCPOA [nuclear deal], the Islamic Republic of Iran would take decisions that might affect its current cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency." | | | | | | |
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