| | | | Enough with the Hysteria Over Trump's Trip: Walt | | | Ignore the borderline hysterical reaction to Trump's trip to Europe, writes Stephen Walt in Foreign Policy. The president's behavior might not have been diplomatic, but the troubles in the Transatlantic alliance long predate his election victory. "NATO has persisted because Europeans liked having American protection and because U.S. leaders (and most of the foreign-policy establishment) liked running the show," Walt writes. "But the underlying glue holding the alliance together was growing steadily weaker and especially as the United States got further bogged down in the Middle East (thanks, neocons!) and began shifting attention to Asia to address the more serious challenge of a rising China. Because there was no longer any danger of a European hegemon -- the concern that inspired U.S. intervention in Europe in World War I, World War II, and throughout the Cold War -- the U.S. commitment was becoming more fragile long before Trump became president." | | The "Most Astonishing" Thing About a Paris Deal Exit | | Abandoning the Paris climate agreement would be a disaster for America. But perhaps "most astonishing" of all would be to see a businessman-turned president making a decision that "would fly in the face of nearly across-the-board support for Paris among top American companies," writes Todd Stern, a former U.S. special envoy for climate change.
"Business leaders know climate change is real," Stern says in The Atlantic. "They know Paris is an agreement they can work with. They know having U.S. negotiators at the table to protect their interests on matters like intellectual property and trade is crucial. They know that the transition to clean energy is one of the biggest economic plays of this century, that climate change is a major driver of this transition, that the United States is perfectly positioned to lead with our unmatched culture of innovation, but that opting out of Paris will undermine this opportunity to expand markets, create jobs and build wealth." - China and the European Union, meanwhile, are preparing to forge a "green alliance" to counteract any U.S. move, the Financial Times' Pilita Clark reports.
"In a stark realignment of forces, documents seen by the Financial Times show that Beijing and Brussels have agreed to measures to accelerate what they call the 'irreversible' shift away from fossil fuels and the 'historic achievement' of the Paris climate accord."
| | Don't Get Excited About that Missile Intercept: Barrett | | | Don't get too excited about the successful U.S. missile interceptor test conducted yesterday, writes Brian Barrett for Wired. It's still far from clear that the system could defend America against an attack by North Korea. "The U.S. has tested the interceptor system 19 times since 1999, succeeding about half the time. The most recent test, three years ago, marked another success, but three prior attempts fizzled. That kind of success rate is troubling, given the meticulously managed conditions," Barrett says. And even a more reliable system will come with its own consequences. Barrett quotes Laura Grego, a global security specialist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, as warning: "You get the feeling that this is meant to reassure the U.S. public and our allies that we're doing something...At the same time, if you're overconfident about your system because you're not clear-eyed about it, that can lead to riskier decision-making." | | Britain: Secure or Security State? | | | Liberal democracies "are inching toward security states," none more so than Britain, suggests Jon Lee Anderson in the New Yorker. The question after the Manchester attack is whether Britons will keep calm and carry on, or embrace a surveillance state more tightly. In recent years, "Britons have grown accustomed to being under video scrutiny to a degree unheard of in most other Western nations; there are CCTV cameras literally everywhere, with the average Londoner captured on video hundreds of times each day," Anderson writes.
"This was once a source of public controversy, but nowadays it has ceased to be a topic of conversation, much less debate. The issue is not really whether the latest security measures are excessive, because there is no way to know that yet. It is that, with every new attack, some of our essential freedoms are being chipped away in the name of security, and that trend will almost certainly continue." | | Beware Russia's Libyan Ambitions | | | Russia's role in Syria is what grabs the headlines, but Moscow is increasingly looking to extend its influence in another troubled country in the region -- Libya, writes Nikolay Kozhanov for Chatham House. "The real driving forces behind Russian involvement in Libya are a mixture of ambition, opportunism and anti-Western sentiment," Kozhanov writes. "Russia has considerable freedom of maneuver in Libya. The U.S. does not want to get deeply involved, whereas Moscow has both a stick and a carrot: it can offer its help as a mediator or it can provoke further conflict…Russian efforts to bridge relations between factions in Libya and its apparent openness to dialogue with the EU suggest that Moscow prefers the carrot option. However, the West should be prepared for the Kremlin asking a high price for its help." | | How America's Opioid Crisis Hurts Mexico | | | America's opioid epidemic is also having a troubling impact on law and order south of the border, reports Joshua Partlow for the Washington Post.
"Mexico provides more than 90 percent of America's heroin, up from less than 10 percent in 2003, when Colombia was the main supplier. Poppy production has expanded by about 800 percent in a decade as U.S. demand has soared," Partlow writes. "The booming heroin business has encouraged the rise of new gun-toting trafficking bands, which in turn has triggered the rise of citizen militias." | | What's Behind China's Antarctic Ambitions? | | | Driven by a combination of strategic expediency and a desire to secure access to much-needed resources, China has gone from small-time player to the big league in Antarctica, suggests Anne-Marie Brady in the Lowy Interpreter. "China doesn't have a formal claim over Antarctic territory (and the Antarctic Treaty forbids any new claims) but it has steadily extended its presence over a triangle-shaped area in East Antarctica. Three of China's Antarctic bases, three of its air fields, and its two field camps are in this sector; which is within the existing Antarctic territorial claim of Australia. Through its advanced logistics capabilities, China is able to project its power and continually maintain its presence in this zone, something Australia, with its much more limited Antarctic capacity cannot do," Brady argues. "China's focus on becoming a polar great power represents a fundamental re-orientation; a completely new way of imagining the world. The polar regions, the deep seabed, and outer space are the new strategic territories where China will draw the resources to become a global power." | | | | | | |
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