| | | | How Russia Scandal is Hurting America: The Economist | | The revelations over Donald Trump Jr's meeting with a Russian lawyer should be damning, The Economist editorializes. The fact that the response to this "bombshell" might be in doubt underscores the damage being wrought on the United States.
"As the president's support holds up among ordinary Republicans, most Republican congressmen have dismissed the Russian affair as chatter or partisanship. Maintaining that blithe posture now will imply -- or confirm -- that they have entirely ditched principle for short-term self-interest. Another big risk is that misleading accounts of Russian meetings, which continue to multiply, may even now give the Kremlin leverage over the White House," The Economist says.
"The scandal is becoming a clash between the worst aspects of American democracy and the best. The worst is its bilious, myopic hyper-partisanship; the best the unrivaled ability of American institutions, including journalists whom [Donald] Trump reviles, to hold the powerful to account. Legally and politically, the ending is unclear. Morally, the verdict is already in."
| | What Liu's Death Says About the West | | The muted response to the imprisonment in China of Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo, who died in state custody on Thursday, is a reminder of how human rights have been downgraded by the West in its diplomacy with Beijing, suggests the New York Times' Chris Buckley. "And it shows how Chinese Communist Party leaders, running a strong state bristling with security powers, can disdain foreign pleas, even for a man near death."
"Lobbying China over its harsh prison sentences for dissent and its other shackles on citizens' rights has never been an amicable conversation; progress has long been spotty. But Mr. Liu's case reflects how Western pressure on China's human rights problems has decreased, while Chinese leaders have become adept at using economic and diplomatic lures and threats to thwart it."
| | China's Big Foreign Policy Shift | | | Slowly but surely, China is abandoning the policy of non-interference that it has followed for more than five decades. That is no more clear than its dealings in Africa, suggest David Pilling and Charles Clover in the Financial Times.
"China has 750 peacekeepers in South Sudan and more than 2,000 in Africa as a whole, including in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Liberia -- a bigger deployment than any other permanent member of the UN Security Council. That Beijing has been willing to put lives at risk so far afield shows how its economic ambitions have morphed into political involvement, straining a decades-old strategy of non-interference in foreign affairs," they write.
"Beijing has under [President Xi Jinping] established a naval base on the Horn of Africa in Djibouti, passed a law allowing stationing of soldiers abroad and strengthened its influence in the East China and South China Seas." | | President Trump may have come into office pledging to put Iran "on notice." But the crisis over Qatar is just one example of why Tehran is looking increasingly comfortable, writes Yaroslav Trofimov for the Wall Street Journal.
"The conflict has already turned what used to be a two-way confrontation between the Saudi-led Sunni axis and the Iran-led Shiite camp into a three-way regional fracture that offers fresh strategic opportunities for Tehran," Trofimov writes.
Meanwhile, "[w]ith regional heavyweight Turkey taking Qatar's side, the collapse of the Sunni alliance isn't the only good news for Tehran. The growing alienation between the Trump administration and European nations, particularly Germany and France, is also making any new concerted international effort to pressure Iran increasingly unlikely."
| | The Danger of Watching Britain Squirm | | Newly invigorated European officials may be reveling in watching Britain "squirm, pontificate, and gradually capitulate on issue after issue" over Brexit, writes John Micklethwait for Bloomberg. Yet Europe may be learning the wrong lessons. Think heart transplant who assumes a new lease of life is an endorsement of his earlier lifestyle.
"Across Europe more voters would rather Brussels return power to the member states than increase its own. The EU hasn't solved the problem of refugees: Its southern borders are still far too porous, with Italy desperately seeking support from its partners. The economy is still reliant on the European Central Bank printing money. The single market remains pathetically unfinished. The continent has nothing close to a Pan-European bank. Europe measures the pace of reform against its own sluggish historic standards," Micklethwait argues.
"Looked at globally, it not only appears to be far behind America, but it's also in danger of being caught by emerging economies. And the main proponent of structural reform, the British, are leaving."
| | Don't Believe Russia's Syria Spin: Mabley | | Russia may have tried to spin the Syrian ceasefire as a diplomatic win, but the fact that it was negotiated by the United States and Russia suggests the reality is different, writes Bruce Mabley for Macleans. "It is a blow to the Iranian presence in Syria, a blow to Russia, and a warning to Bashar al-Assad's regime that the American card is now fully in play."
"The ceasefire agreement also represents a check on the Russian presence in Syria despite brave assertions to the contrary by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since 2015, Russia has virtually occupied the Syrian stage, both militarily and diplomatically. Now they are being outflanked by the Turks, who were given a free hand in northern Syria by the Russians, and the Americans, who have quietly built up their material presence. Their renewed diplomatic presence cannot be viewed lightly by either Tehran or Moscow."
| | It's Not Just ISIS that Has Foreign Fighters in Syria | | ISIS doesn't have a lock on foreign fighters coming to Syria. Anti-ISIS forces also got a boost from overseas – including from the United States, reports the Los Angeles Times' Molly Hennessy-Fiske.
"Americans have a history of volunteering to fight overseas. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade fought fascists in the Spanish Civil War; U.S. pilots flew for Britain and China before World War II; and U.S. citizens have served in the Israeli Defense Forces," Hennessy-Fiske writes.
"The war in Syria and Iraq has been more problematic. Americans who try to travel there to fight alongside Islamic State face immediate arrest, and many have been detained at U.S. airports as they prepared to respond to the militant group's global call to arms. Those who volunteer to fight the jihadis with U.S.-allied Kurdish and Syrian militias, though the State Department advises against it, face no such legal consequences.
"Several hundred such volunteers have arrived since the Syrian civil war began six years ago, according to local estimates, and several dozen remain." | | | | | | |
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