| | | | How U.S., China Could Stumble Into War | | The Trump administration is growing increasingly frustrated with Beijing's failure to rein in North Korea's provocative behavior, writes Kevin Rudd in the Financial Times. And the inability of the two sides to fully comprehend the other's position means the U.S. and China are increasingly at risk of stumbling into conflict.
It would be "wrong to assume that China would simply stand idly by if the peninsula degenerated into conflict," Rudd says. "For deeply held strategic reasons, China chose not to sit out the Korean war in 1950, less than a year after the founding of Mao's People's Republic. Indeed it entered that war to prevent an American victory. Deep anxiety about the possibility of a U.S. military presence on its northeastern land border has been an abiding concern for Chinese security policy for over half a century. So we must also think about the risks of the North Korean crisis triggering a wider conflict between China and the U.S." - The other North Korean nuclear threat. While most of the recent attention has been on North Korea's efforts to develop an effective intercontinental ballistic missile, "North Korea has been steadily assembling all the technologies it needs to put a nuclear warhead on a submarine-launched missile," David Axe writes in the Daily Beast.
"If the Pyongyang regime deploys an effective undersea nuke -- and all signs point toward that eventuality -- it might be able to sail a sub behind U.S. defenses on the Korean Peninsula and launch a surprise strike on South Korean cities."
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd joins Fareed on GPS to discuss this week's developments. Watch the full discussion this Sunday at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN.
| | President Trump: Uber Air Power Hawk? | | Six months into Donald Trump's presidency and one thing is clear: President Trump is one of the most hawkish presidents in his use of air power in U.S. history, write Jennifer Wilson and Micah Zenko in Foreign Policy. The trouble is, the bombing appears to be taking place without a strategy for winding down the conflicts.
"Under Trump, the United States has dropped about 20,650 bombs through July 31, or 80 percent the number dropped under Obama for the entirety of 2016. At this rate, Trump will exceed Obama's last-year total by Labor Day," they write.
"Without the expertise and resources of a fully staffed diplomatic corps, it's implausible that there will ever be a U.S.-led or U.S.-supported negotiated political settlement between combatants. In the absence of any coordinated approach to ending these conflicts, Trump is resorting to the default tactic that policymakers have become addicted to over the past nine years: low-cost, low-risk (to U.S. service members) standoff strikes. Under Trump, that military addiction has deepened, demonstrably so."
| | Why Russia Won't Get (Too) Tough on North Korea | | | Russia might be concerned about North Korea's behavior. But a combination of opportunism and differing views with the West over the root of tensions means Moscow is unlikely to push for Pyongyang's complete isolation, argues James Brown for the Nikkei Asian Review.
"As relations between Pyongyang and Beijing have cooled of late, the Russian leadership has spied the chance to fill the gap by cultivating closer economic and political ties. Moscow also wishes to be sufficiently involved with North Korea to ensure that the crisis cannot be resolved without its involvement. This helps demonstrate Russia's continued standing as an indispensable global power," Brown writes.
Meanwhile, "Russia highlights what it regards as the destabilizing effect of the large-scale military exercises conducted by the U.S. and its regional allies. It has also criticized unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S., warning that North Korea must not be subjected to 'economic asphyxiation.' Since Russia is also subject to U.S. sanctions, it is not surprising if policymakers in Moscow feel a degree of solidarity with Pyongyang." | | China's Real-Life Truman Show | | Chinese citizens expecting a little privacy while they dine, swim or take a yoga class are increasingly likely to be disappointed, suggests Josh Chin in the Wall Street Journal. Live surveillance camera feeds are seemingly everywhere. Yet so far, the idea of being caught up in a real-life Truman Show has been met with a collective shrug of the shoulders.
"Relaxed popular attitudes toward privacy are one reason China's government has been able to push the boundaries of surveillance. Authorities are implementing a system that will assign each person a 'social credit' score based on data about their behavior and have rolled out facial-recognition technology more broadly than any other country, without widespread complaint," Chin writes.
"China is unique in offering up such a trove of surveillance video, privacy advocates said. While sites exist elsewhere that provide live access to surveillance video, none do it on the scale of Chinese sites, said Simon Davies, a senior fellow at Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based privacy advocacy group."
| | North Koreans More Wired Than You Think (And Kim Doesn't Care) | | North Koreans aren't quite as technologically isolated as many assume. Indeed, the government has to some extent encouraged greater connectivity, The Economist's Banyan columnist writes. But don't be fooled -- the Kim regime isn't loosening its grip. Quite the opposite.
"In 2008 it invited Orascom, an Egyptian telecoms firm, to develop a 3G network in a joint venture with a state-owned enterprise. There are now many more sanctioned North Korean mobile phones than illegal Chinese ones (which can pick up a signal near the border); many use them to conduct business on the black market, to which the state turns a blind eye, by checking prices elsewhere in the country. Notels, which can be bought for around $50 on the black market, are also sold in state-run shops and appear to have been legalized in 2014," The Economist says.
"The state's calculation is that technology will allow it to gain more control than it gives up. It can still dictate which kinds of handsets North Koreans use; it can terrorize its people with the threat of execution or the gulag; it can shut off the mobile network altogether. In 2004 it banned all mobiles after it concluded that one had been used to ignite a bomb at a railway station soon after a train carrying Kim Jong Il, Mr Kim's father, had left. But part of the appeal of this new network to the regime is that it knows it can no longer keep all the information out, or its people from exchanging ideas. Better to monitor them." | | | Tomorrow at 10 p.m. ET, Fareed will appear on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, along with Jon Meacham and actor Jim Parsons. Among the topics on the show will be Fareed's latest special, "Why Trump Won." If you missed it, you can still watch "Why Trump Won" on demand via cable/satellite systems, CNNgo platforms, and CNN mobile apps. | | | | | | |
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