| | | | North Korea Has Miniaturized Nuclear Warhead: Report | | North Korea has "produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit inside its missiles," the Washington Post reports, citing a new analysis from the Defense Intelligence Agency.
"The findings are likely to deepen concerns about an evolving North Korean military threat that appears to be advancing far more rapidly than many experts had predicted. U.S. officials last month concluded that Pyongyang is also outpacing expectations in its effort to build an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking cities on the American mainland," the Post says.
"While more than a decade has passed since North Korea's first nuclear detonation, many analysts believed it would be years before the country's weapons scientists could design a compact warhead that could be delivered by missile to distant targets. But the new assessment, a summary document dated July 28, concludes that this critical milestone has already been reached." "There's almost no chance these sanctions will work," Fareed says. "The key issue has always been China. After all, North Korea is an isolated economy that really only does significant business with one country in the world – Beijing provides most of the country's food and energy and accounts for about 90 percent of its trade. So the only way sanctions would work is if the Chinese started to implement them in a truly sustained, almost draconian fashion, something which they have never previously been willing to do.
"But the reason the Chinese haven't been willing to get really tough on Pyongyang isn't because they are somehow unaware of the problems that North Korea is causing. It's that they worry what the total collapse of North Korea would result in -- millions of refugees, a unified Korea presumably on South Korean terms with American troops on China's border. These are fundamental strategic concerns for China, and until you find a realistic way to address this conundrum, Beijing is not going to suddenly start jumping just because one more round of U.N. sanctions has been passed."
| | Why China Could Take Team Trump to Cleaners: Mann | | Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump appear poised to lay the groundwork in China for a future visit by President Trump himself, writes James Mann for the Daily Beast. But with the job of assistant secretary of state for East Asia still vacant, there's a real danger Beijing will run rings around an inexperienced Trump administration – and hurt America's interests in the process.
"China's goal with any new administration is to find one or two top officials, just below the president, to whom it can go with pleas to override whatever the U.S. government is planning to do that Beijing won't like -- be it responses to human-rights abuses, penalties on trade, or countering military actions in the South China Sea," Mann writes.
"This is where Kushner and Ivanka come in. Often, the person China chooses as its principal interlocutor is the national security adviser. (See: Henry Kissinger). But it appears that with the Trump administration, it may be the first son-in-law and first daughter."
| | How the West Falls for Putin's Trolling | | | The fascination with Vladimir Putin's latest shirtless vacation pictures is another victory for the Kremlin's international propaganda machine. It's time for Western media to stop falling into the trap, suggests Leonid Bershidsky for Bloomberg View.
"Putin isn't impressing too many Russians with these exploits, not with his hockey goal-scoring prowess nor with his carefully staged judo displays. Russians are used to leaders presenting themselves as superhuman in various ways; I was raised on stories about how Vladimir Lenin's brain had a different physical structure that made his extraordinary level of genius possible," Bershidsky writes.
"Russia's communication with the Western world is not about creating an attractive image. It's about mockery and trolling. A shirtless Putin in dark glasses, floating in the middle of a remote Siberian lake, is not a guy who cares much about U.S. Congress' latest sanctions. While U.S. intelligence services worry about Russian spear-phishing as a way of getting into American networks, Putin spear-fishes for pike." | | Russia: Maduro's New BFF? | | China has been one of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's few reliable international allies. But as the security situation deteriorates, the Maduro administration looks increasingly likely to turn away from Beijing – and into the arms of Russia, suggests Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez in the Financial Times.
"In the past China was often criticized for sustaining Venezuela's increasingly authoritarian government through emergency cash and by providing Mr Maduro with the armored personnel carriers and tear gas that he deploys against his increasingly desperate population," Lansberg-Rodriguez writes. "Yet China's interests are best served through a stable Venezuela, one capable of protecting investments and the estimated 200,000 Chinese nationals on the ground. Beijing may rightly see this prospect as unlikely under Mr Maduro."
"The Kremlin, by contrast, provides Mr Maduro with Kalashnikovs, not tear gas. It potentially stands to gain more from increased Venezuelan isolation, more sanctions, and the regional spillover effects of implosion -- a South American Syria, rather than its Zimbabwe -- providing both catalyst and justification for a more visible Russian presence in the Caribbean, to protect its growing interests."
| | Why Everyone Is So Anxious About Kenya's Election | | Kenyans aren't going to be the only ones waiting nervously for the results of today's presidential election. The aftermath of the 2007 contest, which saw 1,400 killed in post-election violence and some half a million displaced, has Kenya and its neighbors alike worried about the possibility of a repeat, suggests Joshua Keating in Slate.
"In that election, Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner over Raila Odinga after initially trailing, prompting allegations of fraud. The violence broke down along ethnic lines, with Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe and Odinga's Luo fighting each other in riots and brutal street battles," Keating says. "There were widespread reports of sexual violence and torture. Finally, a deal brokered by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan made Kibaki president and gave Odinga the newly created position of prime minister."
| | The World (and Atheists) Don't Trust Atheists: Study | | The world just doesn't seem to trust atheists – and that includes fellow atheists, The Guardian reports, citing a new study of 3,000 people in 13 countries.
"Participants were given a description of a fictional evildoer who tortured animals as a child, then grows up to become a teacher who murders and mutilates five homeless people. Half of the group were asked how likely it was that the perpetrator was a religious believer, and the other half how likely he was an atheist. The team found that people were about twice as likely to assume that the serial killer was an atheist," The Guardian says.
"The results of the study 'show that across the world, religious belief is intuitively viewed as a necessary safeguard against the temptations of grossly immoral conduct,' an international team wrote in the journal Nature Human Behaviour. It revealed that 'atheists are broadly perceived as potentially morally depraved and dangerous.'" | | | | | | |
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