| | | | Trump's "Palace Court" Foreign Policy | | President Trump's foreign policy team is operating like a palace court, sowing confusion among other nations over who really speaks for the administration. That is no clearer than with U.S. policy toward Qatar, writes Kimberly Dozier for the Daily Beast.
"[T]hose closest to President Donald Trump's ear have the power to sway him, overruling the advice he gets from the political outsiders-turned-Cabinet-members he hired for their expertise," Dozier writes.
"At stake: the Arab and Muslim coalition against the so-called Islamic State that Trump aimed to shore up with his May visit to Saudi Arabia, and with it, Trump's campaign promise to destroy ISIS.
"In a land where leaders cut their teeth on inter-family intrigue in the day-to-day running of their countries, the divided American front gives them plenty of opportunities to pit competing Trump factions against each other. Other Mideast nations are watching, learning that no matter what [Secretary of State Rex] Tillerson or [Defense Secretary James] Mattis might tell them, they'll only know where the president really stands when he tweets about it -- and sometimes, not even then."
| | A Warning from China: Don't Be America's Pawn | | India risks becoming a pawn in a U.S. effort to contain China, argues Yu Ning in China's semi-official Global Times.
"Washington's pursuit of closer ties with New Delhi is mainly driven by its strategic need to utilize India as a tool to counterbalance China. How many practical interests can India gain from it?" Yu wrote as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the White House for a meeting with President Trump.
"During Barack Obama's tenure, in order to woo India, he promised to support India's bid for a U.N. Security Council seat, but did not put it to any practical action. Will Trump take substantial steps to facilitate India's UNSC bid? It's hard to tell."
"In recent years, to ratchet up geopolitical pressure on China, the U.S. has cozied up to India. But India is not a U.S. ally like Japan or Australia. To assume a role as an outpost country in the U.S.' strategy to contain China is not in line with India's interests. It could even lead to catastrophic results. If India regresses from its non-alignment stance and becomes a pawn for the U.S. in countering China, it will be caught up in a strategic dilemma and new geopolitical frictions will be triggered in South Asia."
| | Give Trump's Middle East Policy a Chance: Hadar | | President Trump's approach to the Middle East offers a welcome break with his two predecessors, argues Leon Hadar in Foreign Policy. While Bush and Obama tried to remake the region, Trump's realpolitik approach gives America a chance to start cutting its losses.
"Clearly, the various steps that Trump has taken in the Middle East since entering office don't amount to a coherent grand strategy," Hadar says. "But his administration has abandoned the fantasies and wishful thinking masquerading as idealist principles that guided the policies of his two predecessors. So far, he is dealing with the Middle East as it is, and for that sin being bashed by neoconservative and liberal internationalists alike -- the very people who comprise the intellectual driving force behind the disastrous policies of the last 16 years."
| | Sweden's Radical Weapons Plan | | Sweden is poised to take a radical step: imposing a "legislative ban on selling weapons to undemocratic regimes," writes Leonid Bershidsky for Bloomberg View. Other countries wishing to score some soft power points should follow its lead.
"Big Western arms exporters…may feel it would be unwise to subscribe to the kind of self-restrictions that Sweden is imposing and leave a large chunk of the global arms market to competitors such as Russia and China, which have no qualms about supplying any buyers as long as they're not hostile to these countries," Bershidsky says. "One could argue that weapons from these competitors are just as deadly, so repressive regimes' military power would be undiminished and Western nations would merely lose revenue and jobs. Long-standing alliances would also be soured. Moral arguments are especially unpopular with the Trump administration."
"On the other hand, as the global center of soft power and moral leadership shifts to Europe, the leading European Union nations might like to make a point of only arming fellow democracies."
| | Putin Has a Young People Problem: Blank | | | Forget the opinion polls, Russian President Vladimir Putin's hold over Russia might be more tenuous than it looks thanks to waning support among the most volatile generation: young people, writes Stephen Blank for the Atlantic Council.
"The increasing intensity, pervasiveness, and coerciveness of repressive activity strongly suggests that he feels the ground shifting beneath his feet," Blank writes. "Perhaps the most telling example of the regime's fears can be found in recent decrees outlining the subordination of the Russian Army to the forces of the National Guard, as the latter organization attempts to fulfill its mission to forcefully suppress unrest." | | Why Trump's Syria Policy is Better than Obama's: Rothman | | President Trump's emerging policy on Syria is already an improvement on that of his predecessor. Not least because you can actually call it a policy, argues Noah Rothman in Commentary magazine. The administration's warning late Monday that Syria could be preparing for a chemical weapons attack is just the latest example.
"For all the frustration over the Trump administration's failure to craft a coherent strategy to guide American engagement in the Syrian theater, the White House has communicated to the Assad regime a set of clear parameters in which it is expected to operate," Rothman writes. "When American forces in Syria or those under the American defense umbrella are threatened by the Assad regime or its proxies, American forces will take action."
| | How the World Sees America | | America's image has taken a tumble since President Trump took office, a new Pew Research Center survey shows, with respondents from almost three dozen countries saying they have less confidence in Trump to do the right thing in world affairs compared with his predecessor.
The decline "is especially pronounced among some of America's closest allies in Europe and Asia, as well as neighboring Mexico and Canada. Across the 37 nations polled, Trump gets higher marks than Obama in only two countries: Russia and Israel."
But the news wasn't all bad: "The American people, for instance, continue to be well-regarded – across the 37 nations polled, a median of 58% say they have a favorable opinion of Americans. U.S. popular culture, likewise, has maintained appeal abroad, and many people overseas still believe Washington respects the personal freedoms of its people." | | | | | | |
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