| | | | Fareed: Trump's Tough Middle East Lesson | | President Trump appears to be realizing the hard way just how complicated diplomacy is in the Middle East, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column.
"If the Trump administration wants stability in the Middle East, it should help broker a new balance of power. This cannot happen purely on Saudi terms," Fareed argues.
"Iran is a major player in the region, with real influence, and its role will have to be recognized. The longer Washington waits to do this, the more the instability will grow. This would not cede anything to Tehran. Iran's influence would be countered by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others. The goal would be a Middle East in which all of the regional powers felt invested enough that they would work to end the proxy wars, insurgencies and terrorism that continue to create so much death, destruction and human misery.
"Trump recently learned that health care is complicated. Welcome to the Middle East."
| | Britain's Election: Clinton vs Trump Redux? | | Britain's election bears some striking similarities to the 2016 presidential election, writes Andrew Sullivan in New York Magazine. That raises an obvious question: Could Bernie Sanders have won after all?
British Prime Minister Theresa May "ran an Establishment campaign shockingly like Hillary Clinton's in an era when populism can swing in all sorts of unlikely directions," Sullivan says.
"She began with the presumption that she would coast to victory because her opponent was simply unelectable, extremist, and obviously deplorable in every way. She decided to run a campaign about her, rather than about the country. She kept her public appearances to small, controlled settings, while [Jeremy] Corbyn drew increasingly large crowds at outdoor rallies. She robotically repeated her core argument that she represented 'strong, stable leadership,' with little else to motivate or inspire voters…It was Clinton 2016 all over again -- with the same dismal result." - Britain's politics have taken a step closer to U.S.-style, values-based elections, The Economist's Bagehot column says. And it's a dangerous path – just look at America's culture wars.
Try to understand Britain's electoral map based on class, and the picture is confusing, the column says. But "look at it through the prism of values and the election makes sense. The Tories have been the party of old-fashioned British values: patriotism, self-determination and suspicion of foreigners -- especially when they are trying to tell them what to do. These values have united middle-class people in the shires with older working-class people in the post-industrial north. Labour, meanwhile, has been the party of cosmopolitan values: multiculturalism, compassion, dislike of Brexit. These values have united people who might otherwise have little in common."
"The politics of values can be exciting. Values stir up emotions in ways that technocratic issues never do. But it can also be dangerous. The example of American politics over the past few decades is depressing." - Time for another election? The biggest takeaway from Britain's general election could be…that the country needs another one, suggests Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times. "Deadlock is Britain's new normal."
"May can govern with help from Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist party but her personal clout is unrecoverable. The outcome could be purgatory: a weak government living hand to mouth as the clock runs down on the most important diplomatic work in the nation's postwar history. She will start negotiations knowing that it might be another prime minister who concludes them. The EU could not design more advantageous circumstances for itself."
| | World to Trump: Get on With It! | | President Trump's administration needs to accept there is an investigation, assist it – and get on with its job, The Telegraph editorializes. The free world needs America to reassert its leadership.
"Perhaps all Mr Trump is guilty of is naivite and ignorance about the FBI's independence. These are not qualities one would desire in a U.S. president, but nothing is going to change his job title for the moment. Indeed, it would be better if he could just get on with it. Mr Trump's agenda contains some things that would be good for everyone: cut taxes, deregulate the economy, fight terrorism. He has, however, become bogged down in the very Washington swamp that he promised to drain."
| | America Needs Russia on Venezuela | | | If the United States wants to see a "soft landing" in Venezuela – and the peaceful transfer of power from Nicolás Maduro's government to the opposition – it should "incentivize" Russia to secure its help, argues Nikolas K. Gvosdev in the National Interest.
"The Washington consensus might preach that Russia's help in this matter is not needed, and that Moscow must pay the price for its decision to invest in the Chávez and Maduro regimes by facing dispossession should the opposition come to power," Gvosdev says.
"But that was the thinking for Syria as well, when it seemed that Bashar al-Assad was on the verge of deposition—and look how things have turned out there. U.S. interests aren't served by having prolonged instability in Venezuela. Thinking about how to incentivize Russia to navigate this crisis needs to be on the agenda." | | Maybe Kim Just Wants to Talk | | North Korea has ramped up its missile tests this year. But while the country is undoubtedly making technological headway, the endgame might not be conflict, writes Anna Fifield in the Washington Post. In fact, Pyongyang might be laying the groundwork for talks.
"[A] growing number of analysts with backgrounds in talking to North Korean officials wonder whether the relentless pace of the North's missile testing is designed to get Kim Jong Un's regime into its strongest bargaining position before economic sanctions force it to return to the negotiating table," Fifield says.
"'The further they advance towards having an operational arsenal, the more they can get from outside powers just for a freeze when they return to the negotiating table,' said Chun Yung-woo, a former South Korean nuclear negotiator with the North and former national security adviser in Seoul.
"With more and more sanctions being piled on North Korea, it is just a matter of time until the pressure becomes unbearable, he said. 'So before they're drawn back to the negotiating table, they have every reason to speed up their technical development.'"
| | Is America Stumbling into Syria War? | | The United States could be stumbling into war in Syria, and no one seems to be paying much attention, write Ilan Goldenberg and Nicholas Heras in The Atlantic. "This is no way to handle what could potentially mutate into a vastly expanded American military intervention in the Middle East."
"Three times in the last month, the U.S. military has come into direct conflict with the combined forces of the Assad regime, Iran-supported Shiite militias, Hezbollah, and possibly even Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The clashes have reportedly resulted in the deaths of a small number of pro-regime forces, and are much more strategically important than the much-ballyhooed U.S. air strike on the al-Shayrat airfield back in April in response to the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons." | | | | | | |
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