| | | | Fareed: What's Behind Trump's Russia Love? | | One of the biggest mysteries of Donald Trump's presidency is his "rosy attitude toward Russia and President Vladimir Putin," Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column. "It is such an unusual position for Trump that it begs for some kind of explanation."
"'There's nothing I can think of that I'd rather do than have Russia friendly,' Trump declared at a news conference last July…During the Republican convention, there was a very unusual watering down of hawkish language on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And once elected, Trump chose as his secretary of state Rex Tillerson, who had been awarded one of Russia's highest honors for foreigners and had a 'very close relationship' with Putin. Finally, there are the repeated contacts between members of Trump's campaign and family with key Russian officials and nationals, which again appear to be unique to Russia.
"It is possible that there are benign explanations for all of this. Perhaps Trump just admires Putin as a leader. Perhaps he has bought in to the worldview of his senior adviser Stephen K. Bannon, in which Russia is not an ideological foe but a cultural friend, a white Christian country battling swarthy Muslims. But perhaps there is some other explanation for this decade-long fawning over Russia and its leader. This is the puzzle now at the heart of the Trump presidency that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III will undoubtedly try to solve."
| | On the surface, President Trump and Emmanuel Macron make an unlikely political couple. But the French president offers Trump a valuable opportunity to get ties with traditional European allies back on track, argues Nic Robertson for CNN Opinion.
"Trump knows that for all his talk of a fast trade deal with the UK, the European Union -- at least in the short term -- remains a juicer opportunity for the United States and might help Trump create some of those jobs he keeps talking about," Robertson says.
"At a stroke, he can acquire the new poster boy of Western liberalism as an ally, make progress on an important trade deal for the country and, most importantly, show European allies that though America may look different, it's still at the table." - Fareed says it would be a mistake to read too much into President Trump's suggestion during a news conference Thursday that "something could happen with respect to the Paris accord."
"It was almost certainly just about symbolism and Trump saying what he thought was right in the moment," Fareed says.
"After all, there was no reason for the United States to pull out of the Paris accord in the first place. It is a series of voluntary agreements, and the United States can either adhere to them or not adhere to them. There's no punishment mechanism. The United States could have stayed in the Paris accord and still done whatever Donald Trump wanted on energy. So, it seems clear that Trump did it for symbolic reasons -- it was about sending a signal to his base. And that means he is unlikely to undo the decision."
| | How America's Health Care Stacks Up Against the World | | | Poor access to primary care, delayed diagnoses, wasteful overuse of drugs and technologies and problems with coordination and safety leave the United States at the bottom of the global health care pile in a new report. "Despite spending nearly twice as much as several other countries, the country's performance is lackluster," the Commonwealth Fund think tank notes in its ranking of 11 rich nations' health care systems. "The top-ranked countries overall are the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Netherlands. In general, the U.K. achieves superior performance compared to other countries in all areas except Health Care Outcomes, where it ranks 10th despite experiencing the fastest reduction in deaths amenable to health care in the past decade." | | Why the Iran Deal Isn't the "Worst Ever" | | Two years after the inking of the Iran nuclear deal, and it's clear that what Trump dismissed as the "worst agreement ever negotiated" is nothing of the sort. In fact, it is doing exactly what it was meant to do, argue Philip Gordon and Richard Nephew in The Atlantic.
"Where would Iran be today without the agreement? It's hard to know for sure, but even if Tehran had continued only to steadily expand its nuclear program as it had for the previous two decades, it would today likely be operating the more than 20,000 centrifuges it had at the time of the agreement. Iran would have continued enriching uranium and building its stockpiles, and it would've been operating a fully functional heavy-water nuclear reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for one or two nuclear weapons per year, all without the additional verification provisions put in place to ensure this was all it was doing."
| | Christian Nationalism on the March in Eastern Europe: Stephens | | Christian nationalism is on the march in Eastern Europe, and the response of European leaders including Angela Merkel is simply not good enough suggests Philip Stephens in the Financial Times. That's no more clear than with the case of Hungary.
"[Prime Minister] Viktor Orban has stirred the fears of Hungary's Jewish community with a campaign of vilification directed at George Soros, the billionaire investor and philanthropist. The prime minister's billboard attack disinters anti-Semitic tropes from the dark side of Europe's history," Stephens writes.
"Careful though it has been publicly to condemn anti-Semitism, Mr Orban's government has been permissive of the xenophobia preached by the neo-Nazi Jobbik party. Jobbik leaders have suggested registration of the nation's Jews. Opinion polls suggest the party is backed by a fifth of voters. Mr Orban, facing an election next year, does not want to be outflanked on the right."
Stephens adds: "Other EU governments occasionally wag a finger of disapproval. The European Commission and Parliament have issued critical statements. But for the most part, the response is a frustrated shrug."
| | Is Turkey "Stumbling Toward Dictatorship"? | | Almost a year since a failed coup rocked Turkey, the country's direction is clear: Turkey is "now stumbling toward something approaching dictatorship," argues Howard Eissenstat for Reuters.
"The tapestry of stories that the government has spun after the coup and the lack of independent investigation mean that we will likely never know the whole truth of what transpired or why," Eissenstat writes.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's "reputation as a 'man of the people' and as a democrat are foundational not only to his legitimacy, but also, it would seem, to his own self-perception. The coup, for his supporters and for himself, represents the ultimate validation of that image. The downward trajectory of Turkey in this past year points in another direction, however."
| | How Finland Is Preparing for the Russia Threat: WSJ | | Increasingly troubled by Russia's military muscle flexing – including plans for the country's biggest military exercise since the Cold War in September – Finland is preparing for the worst. And that means going underground, reports Thomas Grove for the Wall Street Journal.
Much of the network of "124 miles of tunnels, passageways and shelters…has been adapted over recent decades with defense in mind," Grove writes. "Blast doors seal entrances. Passageways are adapted so the military -- with a regiment dedicated to controlling the tunnels -- can contain enemy infiltrators. Utility and subway tunnels provide arteries for communications, water supply and Wi-Fi. There is enough shelter space for all city's more than 600,000 residents in the event of an attack or disaster.
"The subterranean defenses have long been in place, but the Finns are now stepping up preparedness..." | | | | | | |
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