| | | | Fareed: The Danger of the White House's Circus Chaos | | Fareed says that the current turmoil in the White House is almost unprecedented -- and is taking a severe toll on U.S. foreign policy. Indeed, Fareed suggests, it isn't at all clear that the United States even has a foreign policy right now.
"The only comparison one could really imagine is some periods during President Nixon's Watergate years, where things were really tumbling down around the administration. And even then, I would argue that there's more of a kind of circus chaos to what we are seeing right now. So I hope that incoming Chief of Staff John Kelly – who is a smart guy -- can help bring some focus to this White House," Fareed says.
"The problem is, of course, that you can have as many serious grownups in the White House as you want, but they are still going to be led by a president who is proving to be highly undisciplined, highly erratic, highly personal, and not very strategic. That's no more clear than it is in America's foreign policy.
"Right now, the White House doesn't have a policy toward Russia. Instead, policy is being dictated by some Congressional hawks -- joined by gleeful Democrats -- trapping a president who is paralyzed because he can't move one way or the other without seeming to be a pawn of the Kremlin.
"America also doesn't have a China policy. The President seemed to fall in love with the country's leadership when President Xi Jinping visited Mar-a-Lago, but the apparent lack of progress on North Korea has left President Trump appearing like a jilted suitor.
"And we also don't have a policy on North Korea. Instead, what we have is President Trump issuing what appear to be bogus threats. After all, we all know the military options are very, very poor.
"These are the major foreign policy areas the United States should be focusing on that it really needs to be thinking about strategically. So the fact that we have a chaotic White House that seems paralyzed on some key issues is very worrying."
| | Why Putin Won't Go Tit-for-Tat with America | | Don't expect Russia to respond in kind to new U.S. sanctions, suggests Alexander Winning for Reuters. With a presidential election next year, Vladimir Putin can't afford to take steps that could undermine his country's economy.
"Though an eye-catching gesture, Russia's response does not pack the same punch as the U.S. penalties, which target Russian energy projects, make it harder for U.S. President Donald Trump to ease earlier sanctions, and could further restrict lending to Russia.
"That partly reflects the fact that Russia has relatively few ways of hurting the United States, whose economy is around 14 times larger than Russia's," Winning writes.
"Whereas Putin oversaw several years of growth above 5 percent in his early presidential terms, the Russian economy contracted in 2015 and 2016 and is seen growing only 1.4 percent this year.
"Putin needs a strong economy if he is to win a convincing mandate, and the Kremlin has tried to show that Russia is open for foreign business despite tensions with the West." | | Is America Giving Up on Democracy? | | | The U.S. State Department is rethinking its priorities. And that could include scrapping America's commitment to promoting democracy around the world, Josh Rogin writes in the Washington Post, citing an internal memo.
"Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has ordered his department to redefine its mission and issue a new statement of purpose to the world. The draft statements under review right now are similar to the old mission statement, except for one thing -- any mention of promoting democracy is being eliminated," Rogin says.
"The changes in the State Department mission statement may not seem very significant viewed in isolation. But Tillerson has made several statements and decisions that indicate he plans to lower the priority of democracy and human rights in U.S. foreign policy." | | Meet the Latest Fake News Victim | | Add Kenya to the growing list of victims of election cycle fake news, writes Nanjala Nyabola for Foreign Policy. And, as the country gears up for next week's presidential election, "[f]ake news not only threatens the integrity of the election; it risks sparking violence in the event of a contested outcome."
"On paper, a developing country might seem an unlikely place for fake news -- which is mostly disseminated online -- to impact an election. But, in many ways, Kenya is among the ripest countries in Africa for a successful misinformation campaign," Nyabola writes.
"Distrust runs deep in a society scarred by successive bouts of post-election violence, the worst being in late 2007 and early 2008, when more than 1,000 people were killed in interethnic clashes. Rumor, meanwhile, has long been an important conduit for information here. During the authoritarian era of Daniel arap Moi, who was president from 1978 to 2002, the press was beholden to the state, and so people learned to take media claims with a grain of salt. The press is less fearful of antagonizing the government today, but it still self-censors on occasion and relies heavily on official accounts. It is not unusual in Kenya for a massive corruption scandal to be covered entirely through blind items, leaving audiences to guess the identities of the perpetrators.
"Add to this the fact that Kenya has one of the highest rates of internet penetration in Africa -- with 4.5 million active Kenyan Facebook accounts and 2 million Twitter accounts (as of 2015) -- and the potential for fake news to sway the electorate is clear."
| | How Maduro Could Shred Venezuela's Constitution | | For years, some critics of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro have referred to him as a dictator. Now, following Sunday's vote to replace the opposition-controlled National Assembly with a new Constituent Assembly, he might officially earn the moniker, write Michael Shifter and Ben Raderstorf for Foreign Affairs.
"In practice, the constituent assembly is akin to a new super-congress, a body capable of reshaping the government as it wishes and delegitimizing the other institutions of the state without replacing them," they write. "Even if it never produces a new constitution, the assembly's existence could thus provide the means to shutter the legislature, fire the attorney general (who has recently emerged as a nuisance to the government), and postpone future elections indefinitely. In other words, the assembly could effectively shred Venezuela's constitution without replacing it."
| | ISIS, Climate Change (and U.S.) Trouble the World: Poll | | ISIS and climate change are seen as the two biggest threats to national security across the globe, according to the results of a new Pew Research poll. And American power and influence is seen as more troubling than that of China or Russia.
Sixty-two percent of respondents from a total of 38 countries listed ISIS as a major threat to their country, followed by 61% for climate change. Cyber attacks (51%) and the state of the global economy (51%) were the only other threats cited by at least half of respondents.
Meanwhile, 35% of respondents said they saw U.S. power as a major threat, compared with 31% for both Russia and China. | | | | | | |
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