| | | | Obama's Russia Failure: Lake | | Anyone asking why President Obama didn't do more to stop Russian meddling in last year's presidential election is probably asking the wrong question, suggests Eli Lake for Bloomberg View. The more relevant question, he says, is why Putin thought he could get away with interference in the first place.
"In every respect, the U.S. is more powerful than Russia. It has a much larger economy. Its military is superior. Its cyber capabilities are greater. Its diplomatic position is stronger. So why did Putin believe he could treat America like it was Estonia?" Lake writes.
"The answer is that Obama spent the first six years of his presidency turning a blind eye to Russian aggression. In his first term, Obama pursued a policy of 'reset' with Moscow, even though he took office only five months after Russia had occupied two Georgian provinces in the summer of 2008…Throughout his presidency, Obama's administration failed to respond to Russian cheating on arms-control agreements. His diplomacy to reach an agreement to temporarily suspend progress on Iran's nuclear program made the U.S. reliant on Russian cooperation for Obama's signature foreign policy achievement."
| | Canada's "Ruthlessly Rational" Immigration Policy | | Canada has the most prosperous immigrant population in the world. Thank a "ruthlessly rational" immigration policy based on economics, writes Jonathan Tepperman in the New York Times.
"Ever since the mid-1960s, the majority of immigrants to the country (about 65 percent in 2015) have been admitted on purely economic grounds, having been evaluated under a nine-point rubric that ignores their race, religion and ethnicity and instead looks at their age, education, job skills, language ability and other attributes that define their potential contribution to the national work force," Tepperman writes.
"No wonder this approach appeals to President Trump. He's right to complain that America's system makes no sense. The majority (about two-thirds in 2015) of immigrants to the United States are admitted under a program known as family reunification — in other words, their fate depends on whether they already have relatives in the country. Family reunification sounds nice on an emotional level (who doesn't want to unite families?). But it's a lousy basis for government policy, since it lets dumb luck…shape the immigrant population."
| | Why Team Trump Must Step Up Over Qatar: Hannah | | The United States needs to step up and help find a solution to the Qatar crisis, writes John Hannah in Foreign Policy. Failing to do so would offer an open invitation to America's rivals to grab a genuine strategic advantage.
"The greatest risk that the Qatar crisis poses to the United States is that Iran, Russia, or both will exploit it to further strengthen their own positions in the Gulf at U.S. expense," Hannah writes. "At a minimum, the crisis is certainly a major distraction, diverting the focus of some of America's key regional partners from our most pressing common threats, in particular expanding Iranian hegemony."
| | China's Navy Unveils Shiny New Toy | | China launched the first of a new generation of destroyers on Wednesday, which Reuters reports is "the most advanced and largest warship in Asia, the latest addition to the country's rapidly expanding navy," according to China's military. - What China's navy could teach America's. James Holmes, a professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, emails Global Briefing with his own take on the launch. In short? "The U.S. Navy could learn something about warship development from China's navy."
"To wit: be humble! In recent decades, our navy has taken to dreaming up ship designs packed with untried technologies, and ordering them into mass production before a single copy of the ship is in the water that works as envisioned. The result has been schedule delays, cost overruns, and subpar performance for newfangled aircraft carriers, destroyers, and littoral combat ships. Not all technological revolutions pan out."
"By contrast, China's navy takes an evolutionary, experimental approach to shipbuilding. The Type 055 is a guided-missile destroyer (DDG) of about the same dimensions as American DDGs. To arrive at a winning DDG design, Chinese shipbuilders constructed a few apiece of several different medium-sized DDGs. The navy took them to sea and found out what worked. The end product was the Type 052D, now the fleet's workhorse DDG. The Type 055 appears to be a scaled-up Type 052D -- and thus another product of incremental experimentation.
"I have no sympathy for the purposes China has in mind for its navy, but I do admire China's methodical -- and humble -- approach to building it."
| | Why Fixing Syria Means Breaking It Up | | Neither the defeat of ISIS nor Bashar al-Assad's ouster will bring long term peace and stability to Syria. It's time to recognize reality – and break the country up, suggest Denis Dragovic and Richard Iron in the National Interest.
"The most sustainable and least costly in terms of human suffering is the redrawing of borders. This should not be undertaken as part of a grandiose scheme to build a new Middle East, but as a unique opportunity to reshape Syria and break the cycle of intense violence. Acknowledging the demographic changes on the ground, recognizing the will of the people to live separately from those they have fought against or suffered under, and understanding the geopolitical benefits of smaller states makes the choice clear…"
| | How India Can Push Back Against China | | Troubled by India's closer ties with the United States, China's forces have grown increasingly aggressive in nibbling away at India's territory, argues Brahma Chellaney in the Hindustan Times. It's time for India to push back, and the best way of doing that is through trade.
"By importing $5 worth of goods from China for every $1 worth of exports to it, India not only rewards Chinese belligerence but also foots the bill for Beijing's encirclement strategy," Chellaney writes. "India's most powerful weapon against China is trade. Given China's proclivity to deploy trade as a political weapon, as against South Korea in the latest case, why doesn't India take a page out of the Chinese playbook?"
| | NATO Getting Serious About Spending? | | NATO is poised to ramp up military spending among non-U.S. members. But despite the pressure he applied on allies to spend more, President Trump can't take all the credit, the Washington Post's Michael Birnbaum and Thomas Gibbons-Neff report.
"The increase — an estimate for 2017 — will boost military spending by non-U.S. NATO members to about $295 billion, which is still far less than the United States spends alone. Some of the spending increases were locked in before Trump's election in November," they write.
"Still, only five of NATO's 29 members meet the spending guidelines. Romania plans to get there this year, while Lithuania and Latvia expect to meet the bar in 2018."
| | It's time for the U.S. House of Representatives to consider a new round of base closures. The Pentagon wants to save the money – it's time for lawmakers to get on board, Bloomberg editorializes.
"Closing some bases entirely and shrinking others can save real money, even by Pentagon standards: While shutting bases costs money up front, the Defense Department says the five major rounds undertaken since 1988 have saved around $12 billion a year. It estimates that it could save $10 billion over five years with another round." | | | | | | |
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