| | | | Iran Loses What Momentum It Had | | Iranian politics have been swinging wildly for months, and the Financial Times writes in an editorial that the government has lost the "battle for public opinion." In November, massive anti-government protests drew comparisons to 1979, but the US killing of Qasem Soleimani had appeared to change the conversation. Now, after the government's admission to having downed Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, the FT writes that the "target of Iranians' anger has shifted overnight—from the US to the country's own leadership."
Iranians have protested the plane's downing and the government's initial denials, and CNN's Eliza Mackintosh asks if this will be a "Chernobyl moment" for Iran, as even conservatives have voiced displeasure. Unrelatedly, European powers have officially taken issue with Iran's nuclear activities, and the FT advises that popular discontent over Flight 752 should force Iran's leaders back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.
The situation may appear to turn 180 degrees at a time, but Reza Akbari writes in The Guardian that it's not so simple: Iranians can oppose both the US and their own regime, he argues, warning that outside observers are tempted to see what they want. "Treating Iran like an analytical buffet table, choosing to accept only those facts that fit your agenda, is a recipe for misunderstanding with potentially fatal consequences," Akbari cautions. | | What the Soleimani Strike Means for ISIS, China, and Everyone Else | | As a healthy debate continues over the Soleimani strike, analysts are making the case for ramifications beyond Iran and the US. In a New York Times op-ed, Ali Soufan warns ISIS could return in Iraq: US allies have pulled back, and the strike threatens to charge Iraq with sectarian division—the parliamentary vote against hosting foreign troops fell along sectarian lines, and citizens could be forced to take sides between the US and Iran—a polarized situation in which ISIS could thrive.
The strike is a gift to China, as it could suck the US into conflict and allow Beijing to continue its rise unchecked, Minxin Pei writes for Project Syndicate. And it may have set a new precedent of "preemptive assassinations," Harold Koh warns in a Foreign Policy essay, writing that President Trump had "no business" ordering the killing, legally, and that he's "resurrected" the doctrine that led President George W. Bush into war with Iraq in 2003. | | A Bad Time to Be a Dictator? | | | Despite warnings that liberal democracy is in a global recession, Walter Russell Mead writes in The Wall Street Journal that autocrats are on the ropes. China has failed to tighten its grip on Hong Kong, and pro-independence President Tsai Ing-wen won a convincing reelection in Taiwan, Mead points out; Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro has stayed in power, but the country's National Assembly recently defied him by voting to back Juan Guaidó's bid for reelection as its president, while Iran's hardline regime is struggling amid popular unrest.
"History tells us that most protest movements fail to take power and that even when despots fall, it's rarely a constitutional democracy that emerges," Mead writes. "Still, the fight for freedom is hardly doomed." | | No Such Thing as Secure 5G? | | As Western countries fret over potential security concerns with Huawei, Bruce Schneier writes for Foreign Policy that there's no such thing as an entirely secure 5G network. Because companies prize profit and governments the ability to spy, no one really wants to go about the arduous task of developing totally impenetrable networks, Schneier argues.
Which means China isn't really the problem. If countries block a Chinese provider from building 5G infrastructure, it's not as if the alternative is total protection from hacking and spying. It's best to assume all networks are penetrable, Schneier writes; if security is to improve, that'll need to happen when 6G comes around. | | The Death of Republican Foreign Policy | | Fareed has argued that President Trump has no real foreign policy—only impulses—but in a Politico essay, Rich Lowry seeks an ideology in Trump and finds one similar to Andrew Jackson's. Trump is neither an isolationist nor a neocon, Lowry writes, but he scorns involvement in world affairs unless the US is threatened, in which case he reacts harshly.
Either way, Trump seems to have destroyed the remnants of the Republican Party's clashing foreign-policy camps. In a New York Times op-ed, James Mann writes that for all the disagreements between the GOP's internationalist wing championed by Colin Powell and the interventionist one of Dick Cheney, Trump has superseded that longstanding debate within Republican Party ranks.
Trump's "personal diplomacy with Kim Jong-un of North Korea and President Vladimir Putin of Russia might appear to be in line with Mr. Powell's emphasis on diplomacy—but under Mr. Trump, what has counted so far is only the word 'personal,' not the diplomacy," Mann writes. "As a result, the Republicans are left with no past and no ideas, merely a single man and his vagaries." | | | | | | |
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