| | | | Will Britain Rue This Day? | | British Prime Minister Theresa May "has turned democracy against itself" with her call for a snap election, writes Anne Perkins for The Guardian.
"She has been seduced by the siren evidence of the 20-point lead in the polls, and she will have a general election, the one she said again and again that she would not call," Perkins writes.
"And it will almost certainly return her with a thumping majority that will allow her to run the Brexit negotiations just as she wants. There will be no obligation on her to reflect the views of the minority position. She will leave the remainers of England disempowered. She has made a Scottish referendum inevitable, and a border poll in Northern Ireland infinitely more likely. She is resetting politics in a way that will entrench division. We will all rue this day."
| | Big Threat to Trump's North Korea Policy? A U.S. Ally: Rogin | | The political turmoil in U.S. ally South Korea could complicate -- or completely undermine -- the Trump administration's strategy toward North Korea, Josh Rogin writes for the Washington Post.
The two leading candidates to replace ousted President Park Geun-hye in next month's election "are Moon Jae-in from the left-leaning Democratic Party of Korea, and Ahn Cheol-soo, a software tycoon who helped found the somewhat more centrist People's Party. Moon's proposed policies clash more directly with Trump's than Ahn's, but neither is likely to be as close to the Trump administration on key issues as the Conservative Party leaders who will soon leave power." - Fareed says that the new U.S. strategy over North Korea looks remarkably like the old one, complete with threats to push North Korea harder by cranking up sanctions a little and trying to get the Chinese "to do more."
"The only really significant shift would be an American military strike, which is highly implausible," Fareed says. "The South Koreans would not agree with it. The Japanese would be horrified by the prospect. And the Chinese, of course, would be apoplectic. Add to that the fact that North Korean sites are well hidden, and you're left with a complicated military strike with many, many political complications.
"So, the Trump administration needs to remember with all the tough rhetoric that at some point words lose credibility. You can keep making the threat, you can keep saying I'm huffing and puffing and I'm going to blow your house down. But if the house doesn't blow down, what happens?
"And don't forget, this is all happening with an administration that isn't properly staffed. There is no deputy secretary of state yet. The current assistant secretary for East Asia is there in an acting role, and there doesn't seem to be a broader strategy for the region, aside from saying that the Obama administration's pivot to Asia is now dead. So, this is all happening with a skeleton crew."
| | Trump's Syria Policy: Obama Redux? | | | The Trump administration's still-evolving plan to resolve Syria's civil war appears to involve three stages – defeating ISIS, restoring stability region-by-region "and securing a political transition in which Assad ultimately steps down," write Josh Lederman and Matthew Lee for AP. But this appears little different than the approach "that failed under the Obama administration, and arguably faces greater challenges."
"Assad has violently resisted all attempts to end his rule, fueling a conflict that has killed as many as a half-million people. The opposition fighting Assad is far weaker after a series of battlefield defeats. And any U.S. plan for Assad will need the cooperation of key Syria ally Russia." | | Hollywood's Indispensable Co-Star | | As movie ticket sales in China have soared, the balance of power between Hollywood and China has shifted. In fact, the former can no longer survive without the latter, suggests Erich Schwartzel in the Wall Street Journal.
"Like a movie plot, China's rise was driven by conflict -- in this instance, the financial crisis. Hollywood's Wall Street financing dried up in 2008; U.S. movie-theater attendance stagnated; DVD sales, once a studio cash cow, slumped with the growth of streaming services, including Netflix Inc.
"Around this time, China began an effort to introduce itself to the world as a cultural force with the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing as its opening act. Chinese officials announced investments of hundreds of billions of dollars to urbanize the country, transforming farmland into urban grids that included new, high-tech movie theaters. The seats began filling with members of China's new middle class, a generation born under the one-child policy who had disposable income and an appetite for Western entertainment."
| | The Trump administration may have abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but an unexpected reversal by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe suggests that the deal might not be dead, writes Angus Grigg in the Australian Financial Review.
"Under its current framework the agreement must be ratified by countries accounting for 85% of the combined GDP of the 12 member countries. Given the U.S. accounts for 65% of the bloc's GDP, it can't be implemented in its current form.
"One scenario being pushed by Japan is for this so-called 'activation threshold' to be lowered," although Australia's trade minister "said it was too early to consider any such scenarios." - Japan doesn't just need a trade pact – it desperately needs more workers, Bloomberg editorializes. And that means changing attitudes toward immigration."A properly supervised guest-worker program is the least that's needed, and it ought to include a pathway to permanent residency," Bloomberg says.
The country should also "welcome foreign university students who want to stay and work after graduation, and encourage skilled migrants. In some cases, lowering artificially high barriers to entry will be crucial: Relieving the acute shortage of workers to care for the elderly, for instance, means redesigning the unreasonably difficult tests for foreign nurses."
| | No Alcohol Thanks, We're Bihari | | Murders and gang robberies in the Indian state of Bihar have plunged about 20% from a year earlier, riots by 13% and fatal traffic accidents 10%, the New York Times' Geeta Anand reports. Household spending, meanwhile, has jumped around 10%. The reason? Most appear to agree it's the state's ban on alcohol – and its enthusiastic enforcement by women in the state.
The initiative, introduced in the country's third most-populous state last April, "is so popular among the public that leaders of other states are taking notice. Delegations of state legislators have visited in recent months to study the reasons for Bihar's success," Anand writes. | | | | | | |
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