| | | | Don't Panic About North Korean Nukes: Boot | | The United States shouldn't panic about North Korea acquiring nuclear weapons any more than it did China and Russia doing so, suggests Max Boot in Commentary. After all, unlike some other regimes, Kim Jong Un "does not aim to dominate his neighbors. All he wants to do is to survive."
"By all means, the U.S. should step up sanctions, including secondary sanctions on Chinese companies doing business with the criminal regime in Pyongyang. But there is no overwhelming imperative to go beyond that and risk war, even if North Korea finally fields an ICBM with a nuclear warhead capable of reaching Washington," Boot says.
| | Trump's "Militarization of U.S. Foreign Policy" | | President Trump's recent foreign policy reversals "don't address one of his administration's most misguided impulses: The militarization of U.S. foreign policy," writes James Gibney for Bloomberg View.
"It's well and good to send a carrier task force…But without U.S. ambassadors in South Korea and Japan, not to mention an assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, the U.S. can't do the kind of daily consultations and hand-holding needed to reassure allies whose civilian populations would bear the brunt of any North Korean retaliation," Gibney says.
"…The influence of senior advisers steeped in the region might also have prevented diplomatic gaffes, such as Trump's parroting of Xi's line that Korea was once part of China."
| | Admit it, Turkey Isn't Getting in the EU: Becker | | Turkey's referendum should be the final nail in the coffin of the accession process for EU membership, writes Markus Becker for Spiegel Online.
"One popular counter argument is that the EU will lose any of the influence it has in Ankara by breaking off negotiations," Becker writes. "But where was that influence in 2013 when Erdogan beat down the protests in Gezi Park? Where was it when Erdogan deliberately escalated the conflict with the Kurds as part of a domestic power play? And where was that EU influence when, right after last summer's military coup attempt, Erdogan had tens of thousands of people rounded up and thrown into jail, including numerous journalists?"
- Trump's troubling call. Fareed says President Trump's decision to call Erdogan to congratulate him on his referendum victory is a troubling sign at a time when Turkey is facing a "serious descent into authoritarianism."
"Since the 1930s, Turkey was the one Muslim Middle Eastern country that had established a kind of secular liberal democracy. Now that seems to be unraveling, and yet President Trump's response was to congratulate the strongman," Fareed says.
"Contrast that with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who with her foreign minister issued a joint statement basically suggesting to Erdogan that 'You won very narrowly. You really need to pay attention to the opposition. You need to pay heed to minority rights.'
"So what we have now is a situation where Germany's chancellor has become the leading proponent of human rights and democracy and liberal constitutionalism, while the President of the United States is just saying 'way to go.' This is true for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. It's true for Erdogan. For Rodrigo Duterte and his drug war in the Philippines.
"It's disturbing because the great victory of the United States in foreign policy, in a broad sense, over the last six or seven decades has been to spread stability, along with a certain set of values. But here you have those unraveling and the President of the United States is cheering him on."
| | Le Pen's Key to Victory Could be Young Voters | | Older voters might still be wary of France's National Front, but young voters who believe the party's extremist reputation is overblown could yet tip the balance in Marine Le Pen's favor, the Washington Post's Griff Witte and James McAuley report.
Millennials may have lined up against Brexit and Donald Trump, they write. "But France is a land of youthful revolts…And with youth unemployment stuck at 25%, Le Pen's reactionary call to return the country to an era of lost glory by closing borders, exiting the European Union and restoring the national currency has fired the passions of young voters craving radical change." - Could poor suburbs swing it? "Amid widespread disillusionment, France's anti-immigration and anti-globalization National Front party has spied an opportunity, making a push to increase its support in poor urban suburbs, known as the banlieue," writes Michael Sothard in the Financial Times.
| | The Trouble with Pakistan's Spy Games: Ex-Envoy | | Pakistan's "spy games" and the country's decision to sentence a suspected Indian spy to death have further dimmed the prospect of peace between the two countries, argues former Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani.
"Pakistan's hypernationalist narrative already positions the country as the target of a global conspiracy and portrays its nuclear-armed military and intelligence agency as the only bulwarks against annihilation," Haqqani writes in the Wall Street Journal. "Extremists in India, meanwhile, increasingly mirror Pakistan in advancing the idea of perennial conflict, with Subramanian Swamy of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, among others, calling for Pakistan's disintegration." | | | | | | |
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