| | | | The Trouble with
Sessions' Role: Ioffe | | Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said he didn't disclose contacts with the Russian ambassador last year because he was acting in his capacity as a senator.
In The Atlantic, Julia Ioffe explains why this defense doesn't pass the smell test, pointing to "a significant spike in the frequency of his contacts with foreign officials after he joined the Trump campaign as a foreign-policy adviser in March.
"That was when the longtime member of the Armed Services Committee embarked on an intensive program of meetings and dinners with ambassadors and members of Washington's foreign-policy establishment," Ioffe writes.
"[W]hen I asked one senior Republican Senate staffer whether Sessions was known as a foreign-policy specialist who met regularly with ambassadors during his 20 years in the Senate, the response was incredulity. 'Is that a serious question?' the staffer said. 'He's clueless.'"
| | Pat Buchanan, Coming
to Trump's Defense | | Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan ("the first Trumpist") is once again rising to the President's defense amid criticism of his handling of former FBI Director James Comey.
"We are approaching something of a civil war where the capital city seeks the overthrow of the sovereign and its own restoration," writes Buchanan in the American Conservative.
"Not in memory have there been so many leaks to injure a president from within his own government, and not just political leaks, but leaks of confidential, classified and secret documents. The leaks are coming out of the supposedly secure investigative and intelligence agencies of the U.S. government."
"He should campaign against the real enemies of America First by promising to purge the deep state and flog its media collaborators."
| | Report Card: Trump's Foreign Policy (So Far) | | Trump's foreign policy through the first five months of his administration "has been remarkably unremarkable." This early assessment comes from Elliott Abrams, a foreign policy official in previous Republican administrations who Trump himself rejected for a post under Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
"Every administration's policies are a combination of the old and the new," Abrams writes in Foreign Affairs. "In Trump's case, the expectation was that the mix would change: a great deal more of the new and a broad rejection of the foreign policies of Trump's recent predecessors. That was certainly the impression left by Trump's rhetoric. But his foreign policy and his national security appointees have so far pointed in a mostly conventional direction."
| | Politicians Aren't The Answer
on Climate Change | | | Climate activists should "weep not" over Trump's decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris accord, writes Jon Evans in The Walrus. After all, politicians aren't the ones capable of solving climate change. That depends on "the ingenuity of our engineers."
"To stop global warming before it comes catastrophic, we need to take technology which is currently restricted to the very wealthy, and make it available to the poorest of the poor, in a matter of only a decade or two," Evans writes. "If only the global technology industry had essentially been training for this superhuman feat for its entire existence. If only this was arguably the one thing that it is incredibly, consistently good at. Oh, wait.
"There was a time when transatlantic flights were so expensive that they were often paid for in instalments. Last month I booked a flight from Oakland to Barcelona for $200. Remember when only rich people had cell phones? And then when only rich people had smartphones? How long do you think it will be before we'll be rhapsodizing nostalgically: 'Remember when only rich Californians drove electric cars?'"
| | Russia's Underreported Crisis | | While Vladimir Putin is busy handling low oil prices, protests at home, and conflict abroad, Russia's biggest crisis might be simpler: a declining population, Ilan Berman notes in the Moscow Times.
"The latest numbers are in, and the forecast for Russia's demographic health is bleak," Berman writes. "According to official figures released by the country's state statistics agency, Rosstat, in late May, Russia had 70,000 fewer births during the first four months of 2017 than it did a year earlier.
"These statistics run against the Kremlin's triumphalist narrative, in which strong leadership and shrewd investments allowed Russia to decisively turn a demographic corner.
"Instead, as one analysis of the Rosstat figures puts it, the 'extinction' of Russia's population is accelerating, as the adverse demographic trends that have long affected the country continue to rage unabated."
| | Can the Center Hold? (Cont'd) | | Jeremy Corbyn's surprisingly successful leadership of Labour in last week's U.K. election is yet another blow to "centrism" and the status quo, argues Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone.
"For decades pundits and pols have been telling progressive voters they don't have the juice to make real demands, and must make alliances with more 'moderate' and presumably more numerous 'centrists' in order to avoid becoming the subjects of right-wing monsters like Reagan/Bush/Bush/Trump," Taibbi notes.
"Voters for decades were conned into thinking they were noisome minorities whose best path to influence is to make peace with the mightier 'center,' which inevitably turns out to support military interventionism, fewer taxes for the rich, corporate deregulation and a ban on unrealistic 'giveaway' proposals like free higher education."
"But it's a Wizard of Oz trick, just like American politics in general," Taibbi writes. "There is no numerically massive center behind the curtain. What there is instead is a tiny island of wealthy donors, surrounded by a protective ring of for-sale major-party politicians (read: employees) whose job it is to castigate too-demanding voters and preach realism."
| | Another Perspective on Qatar | | Trump's support for Saudi Arabia over Qatar in the recent Middle Eastern diplomatic standoff "could begin an unraveling of yet more global alliances," writes Tyler Cowen in Bloomberg View.
"If Trump gets his way, the Qataris will probably have to accede to some of the demands, or seek Iranian or perhaps Turkish intervention on their behalf," writes Cowen. "Those scenarios are difficult to game out, but American security guarantees would fall precipitously in value, especially as they might apply to small, vulnerable countries. Typically, if you put a major military base in a country, there is a general expectation you will not actively work to subvert the sovereignty of the host government. But right now the U.S. is violating that understanding.
"Now imagine you are the leadership of Singapore, which faces political pressure from a much larger China and Indonesia. Singapore also hosts a significant American military base. You will think twice about the benefits you once expected from this arrangement. Kuwait and Bahrain, too, will be reconsidering their options. Other vulnerable countries with American military bases include South Korea, Kosovo, Greece and Djibouti."
"In sum, many more countries will feel less secure," Cowen writes, "and many of these countries will most likely court additional favor with their local or regional hegemons, which are typically less liberal influences than the U.S."
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