| | | | "Axis of Adults" Taking Over Trump Foreign Policy? | | Some previously reluctant Republicans are beginning to throw themselves behind the Trump administration. The reason for the shift? The perceived growing influence of the "Axis of Adults," writes Kimberly Dozier in the Daily Beast.
"The chemistry that's developed amongst Trump's advisers is also key to their leveling influence on the president. [Defense Secretary James] Mattis and [Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson have a standing breakfast once a week, where they share views to be able to present a more united front on defense and foreign policy at key White House meetings, two of the senior administration officials said," Dozier writes.
"Their low-key approach is materializing in the form of a blunt bat to rhetorical and incendiary pitches from North Korea, such as the Mattis weekend comment on Pyongyang's failed medium-range missile launch: 'The president and his military team are aware of North Korea's most recent unsuccessful missile launch. The president has no further comment.'" - Fareed suggests that such a shift might reflect a broader realization by the Trump administration that government can't be run like a business.
"I've often argued that CEOs have no idea how complex government is," Fareed says. "A CEO has complete control of his or her organization. They have an incredible incentive structure where they can pay people bonuses, they can cut pay and fire people. Washington couldn't be more different. Nobody is completely in charge."
"For example, you're the secretary of defense and you think you are running the Defense Department. Well, welcome to the generals who think they are running it. Welcome to the House Appropriations Committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee. They think they are giving you the money and the oversight. Welcome to the 25-year-old kid in the White House who thinks he is going to tell you what the president's policy is. You have to navigate all of that."
| | Don't Buy China's North Korea Rhetoric: WSJ | | The Trump administration should be wary of buying into Chinese rhetoric suggesting Beijing is finally getting serious about reining in North Korea, the Wall Street Journal suggests in an editorial.
"China is expert at offering cosmetic concessions while adhering to what it considers its long-term national interests. China's goal now may be to coax Mr. Trump into the same multinational arms-control dialogue with North Korea that has failed three previous U.S. Presidents," the Wall Street Journal says.
"Mr. Trump's art of the deal includes keeping adversaries guessing, but eventually China may choose to test how far he is willing to go to stop a Korean nuclear missile. Mr. Trump needs to make clear what he will do if China won't make a Korean deal." - China's Koreas policy is in tatters, suggests Simon Denyer in a Washington Post analysis."China is not alone in struggling to construct a successful policy toward North Korea, as the United States can attest," Denyer writes.
"But the failure of its approach has seldom been more starkly outlined, as Pyongyang presses ahead with its nuclear program, the United States sends an aircraft-carrier strike group to the region and fears of military conflict mount, analysts say."
| | Erdogan's "New Authoritarian" Playbook: Feldman | | With Sunday's referendum, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan "has shown once again that he is the vanguard of a new breed of semi-authoritarians," writes Noah Feldman for Bloomberg View. "These aren't your grandfather's would-be fascists, who might have come to power by election but then planned to abolish them and assume total dictatorial power.
"Instead, the new authoritarians' playbook calls for maintaining regular elections and the outward forms of multiparty democracy, while in fact consolidating power and cooking the books just enough to keep winning the popular vote. Erdogan, like his emulators and colleagues, has weakened the free press and free speech without completely shutting down all alternative political voices."
| | South America's Surge of Anger | | | From Brazil to Venezuela to French Guiana, South America is facing a "continental surge of anti-government anger unlike anything in years," writes Nick Miroff in the Washington Post. "The global commodity boom that ushered millions of South Americans into the middle class has burned out, crimping government finances. And a more politically engaged and plugged-in citizenry has lost patience with rank corruption and the feints of authoritarian leaders who chip away at democratic checks on their power," Miroff writes. "In several countries, populist leaders who cast themselves as national saviors and demonized their opponents have turned electoral contests into supercharged life-or-death showdowns, making democratic transitions and ideological compromise all the more difficult." | | The Real Reason Governments Shun Chemical Weapons: Perry | | The ban on chemical weapons may have less to do with moral repulsion than it does with their ineffectiveness, writes Mark Perry for Politico magazine.
After the Second Battle of Ypres in World War I, during which German forces used chlorine gas, "the allies provided masks to their front-line troops, who stood in their trenches killing onrushing Germans as clouds of gas enveloped their legs," Perry writes. "[But] the weapon also proved difficult to control. In several well-documented instances, gasses deployed by front-line troops blew back onto their own trenches -- giving a literalist tinge to the term 'blowback,' now used to describe the unintended consequences of an intelligence operation.
"…Put another way, military leaders agreed to the banning of poison gas in 1925 not because it was horrifyingly effective, but because it wasn't."
| | Vice President Pence continues his ongoing Asia-Pacific trip with a stop in Tokyo on Tuesday. The Nikkei Asian Review reports that Pence is expected to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to discuss plans for further cooperation over the North Korea threat.
The International Monetary Fund and World Bank hold their spring meetings in Washington beginning on Friday. Both are "expected to stress the importance of combating protectionism and ensuring the benefits of growth are more evenly distributed," the Financial Times says.
The first round of France's presidential election takes place Sunday – and surging far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon is shaking up the race, the Financial Times' Michael Stothard reports.
"Mélenchon's strength has startled his rivals, who in an attempt to halt his upward momentum have, over the past week, launched repeated attacks, presenting the former Socialist minister as a veteran political insider and an unreconstructed communist," Stothard says. | | | | | | |
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