| | | | Don't Be Fooled By Trump's "Boring" UN Speech: Beauchamp | | Donald Trump's first speech to the United Nations went better than many feared. But don't be fooled by his "boring" address, argues Zack Beauchamp for Vox. It's likely as much about indifference as enthusiasm.
"The truth is most likely that, as on many issues, Trump just doesn't have much in the way of a fixed opinion," Beauchamp writes. "He has vague feelings about the UN, some positive and some negative, which don't really translate into a consistent overarching policy. When it's something that's not super high-profile, like a boring UN address on boring UN reform, he's happy to parrot whatever obviously-prepared-by-aides speech text he's given."
"So I suppose it's good that Trump's UN speech was blandly positive. No news-generating international incident is good news. But since the president's tone could change radically tomorrow or even in the next few minutes, it's not especially encouraging."
| | | The United States is being diplomatically outmaneuvered in its own backyard as Moscow's influence grows in Latin America. And it's not just about Venezuela, writes Mac Margolis for Bloomberg View. From Mexico to Nicaragua to Bolivia, "a resurgent Russia wants to become Latin America's new best friend." "The new bonds between Russia and Latin America may be not so much a reprise of the Cold War as a glimpse at a complicated new world order, where many rival powers elbow for influence and international cachet. While Putin's western reach has extended far from Russia's comfort zone, Latin America has also enabled Moscow's ambitions to return to the global stage," Margolis writes. "Scorned and isolated for its annexation of Crimea, Russia played the developing world card – it's a charter member of the BRICS, after all -- to garner support. Tellingly, with a few notable exceptions, most Latin American governments avoided the pile-on against Moscow, and following Putin's charm offensive in 2014, several stepped up bilateral trade to help Russia blunt international sanctions." | | Why the Next Middle East War Will Be Even Uglier | | | Clashes between Hezbollah and Israel have grown progressively more violent over the past two and a half decades. With the group better armed than ever – and consistently ignoring Israel's red lines – expect the next war to be brutal, argues Andrew Exum in The Atlantic.
"1993's Operation 'Accountability' in southern Lebanon involved mostly air and artillery. 1996 brought Operation 'Grapes of Wrath,' and the destruction of Lebanese civilian infrastructure beyond southern Lebanon. The war in 2006 leveled entire neighborhoods in Beirut, and led to the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of civilians in both Lebanon and Israel," Exum writes.
"Now, especially since Hezbollah has dispersed its arsenal across Lebanon, the entire country will burn, and Israel will suffer mightily. Not one but two U.S. allies -- for the United States has invested heavily in the Lebanese army, which Israel will almost certainly treat as hostile, and which will almost certainly attempt to defend Lebanese territory -- will suffer." | | Gung-ho Europe Leaves U.S. Behind Over Your Privacy | | U.S. tech giants have been happy to profit from a borderless digital world. But they are now finding that this can cut both ways as European regulators push to impose stricter rules on privacy well beyond the continent's borders, suggests Mark Scott in Politico EU.
"American data protection laws are starting to look woefully out of date," Scott writes. True, "Europe's eagerness to set de facto worldwide standards does not come without its critics. Many inside the tech industry bemoan the continent's conservative approach to privacy. And the region's regulators -- unelected and mostly unknown bureaucrats -- have frequently been accused of overreach in slapping tech giants with fines."
"Yet those critics are likely to be increasingly disappointed, as the continent's gung-ho attitude to privacy becomes compounded as more and more countries, from Colombia to South Africa, fall in line with the region's tough rules that view privacy -- roughly -- on par with other fundamental rights like freedom of speech and expression."
| | Will U.K. Throw Out 188-Year-Old Police Policy? | | For almost two centuries, Britain has had a policy of "not routinely arming officers, except in Northern Ireland," writes Amanda Coletta for the Wall Street Journal, noting that only around 5% of officers in England and Wales carry firearms.
"In the past, opposition to arming police officers has come from the officers themselves, who have argued they don't need guns because tough restrictions limited the circulation of legal and illegal guns," Coletta notes.
"But that is changing. London's Metropolitan Police says the number of guns being smuggled into the U.K. is 'worrying,' and there are fears terrorists might use them to carry out marauding attacks. Only 6% of Metropolitan Police officers surveyed in January by their union said the number of armed officers was adequate."
| | Will Brazil Make an Alaska-Sized Mistake? | | | Millions of acres of rainforest in Brazil are under threat as the country looks to strike gold. That's bad news for Brazil, Latin America -- and the planet, argues Chris Feliciano Arnold in the New York Times. "Three current bills under consideration could open more than 12 million acres (five million hectares) of protected forest over the next eight years," Arnold writes. Interim Brazilian President Michel Temer's administration "has proposed a new mining code that shifts the responsibility for monitoring environmental standards away from the government and toward the companies themselves. Another catastrophic proposal would open all land within Brazil's protected border zone -- a territory the size of Alaska -- to foreign mining investment, bringing bulldozers and new waves of prospectors to the refuge of some of the world's last isolated tribes." | | Donald Trump will make his first address as U.S. president to the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. Julian Zelizer writes for CNN Opinion that "the words Trump chooses, his demeanor, his meaning and his message can be pivotal in determining whether he can maintain the international alliances that the U.S. desperately needs to achieve its objectives."
Germans head to the polls Sunday for parliamentary elections that are expected to return Angela Merkel as chancellor. One surprise? The conservative Merkel is seen as the "cool" choice among young voters, writes Chloe Faran for The Independent. "Her open-door refugee policy in 2015, which saw Germany welcome more than a million migrants, challenged the traditional political line of her conservative alliance but resonated positively among many younger voters."
British Prime Minister Theresa May is scheduled to make a major speech Friday on Brexit. The Financial Times' James Blitz writes: "May has established a reputation with the British public as someone who repeatedly flip-flops on policy…After a year in which she has repeatedly presented herself as the champion of a heroic and hard Brexit, she will now have to concede that Britain will stay in the single market and customs union in all but name for at least several more years. This will be her biggest flip-flop of all." | | | | | | |
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