| | | | Trump Sounded a Lot Like Putin at UN: Ackerman | | In placing sovereignty front and center of his first speech to the U.N. General Assembly, President Trump struck a note unlike that of his predecessors. But the theme of Trump's address was eerily familiar to that of another speech, from 2015 -- one delivered by Vladimir Putin, argues Spencer Ackerman for the Daily Beast.
"Sovereignty is not a point prior American presidents have pressed. When global leaders invoke sovereignty, they usually mean that no one possesses the right to oppose what they unleash within their borders," Ackerman says. "American presidents typically tailor their speeches at the UN to counterbalance a due respect for national sovereignty with calls for collective action against genocide, terrorism, disease, poverty, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
"But now, Putin finally has an American president who considers national sovereignty as the end of the discussion, or at least in the cases where it serves their purposes. Trump's call for a 'respect for law, a respect for borders, a respect for culture' sounds unobjectionable – until it becomes clear that Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and North Korea will enjoy no such respect from Washington for their own sovereignty. Much as Putin said in 2015 that Russia recognizes 'the fact that we can no longer tolerate the current state of affairs in the world,' Trump's conception of sovereignty inevitably reserves the U.S. the right to impose its will." - Trump's North Korea rhetoric sets trap -- for America. By threatening to "totally destroy" North Korea, President Trump's speech will merely have reinforced the view of Kim Jong Un's regime that it has no choice but to pursue nuclear weapons, argues Daniel Larison in the American Conservative.
"The danger here is that Trump has defined everything except North Korean denuclearization as unacceptable, and that implies that the U.S. won't tolerate North Korea's continued possession of nuclear weapons." - No room for America First? Trump's speech was an awkward attempt to reconcile his "America First" approach "with a global outreach and planetary humanism," argue Aaron Miller and Jason Brodsky for CNN Opinion. Yet "almost without exception, the key threats he identified -- North Korea and Iran -- will require, whether he likes it or not, the abandonment of America First in favor of cooperation with others."
| | Aung San Suu Kyi Failed Her Big Test: FT | | Democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi had "a last chance" in a televised address to halt Myanmar's military offensive against its Muslim majority Rohingya population. But she failed miserably, the Financial Times editorializes.
"In a speech that lacked humanity or compassion, she refused to mention the word 'Rohingya'…except in the context of a militant group involved in the violence. Her attempts to draw equivalence between sporadic militant attacks and what she euphemistically referred to as the military's 'clearance operations' echoed the controversial 'both sides' comments Donald Trump made in the wake of white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia."
| | Looser Rules = More U.S. Bombs? | | | The U.S. has dramatically ramped up the number of bombs being dropped in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria this year on the back of the "administration's looser guidelines for authorizing strikes on Islamic State fighters in all three countries," Paul McLeary writes in Foreign Policy.
"New airstrike totals issued by the Pentagon show that American aircraft have dropped over 2,400 bombs in Afghanistan this year, far above the 1,337 dropped in 2016, as U.S. warplanes seek to roll back gains by the Taliban and incursions by the Islamic State in the country's East," McLeary writes.
"In Iraq and Syria, U.S. planes dropped a total of 5,075 bombs in August, more ordnance than had been dropped in any month prior since the campaign against the Islamic State kicked off in August 2014."
"In Iraq and Syria, the air campaign seems to be paying dividends...It's less clear that the Afghan campaign has proven as effective; the Taliban continue to take district centers and ISIS has established a stronghold in Nangarhar province in the country's mountainous East." | | ISIS's Surprisingly Big American Audience | | | ISIS is losing ground on the battlefield, but it is finding a large audience for its ideas online – particularly in the United States, writes Jack Moore in Newsweek, citing a new report. "Between February and May, the location with the second-most clicks on radical Islamist content online was the U.S. That means Americans or non-American citizens based in the U.S. are consuming jihadist content more than Saudis, Iraqis, Yemenis, Syrians and Moroccans, among others," Moore writes. Data collected by the Policy Exchange think tank in the United Kingdom found that between February 19 and May 3, "pro-ISIS and Al-Qaeda content was viewed more in the U.S. than in every other country bar Turkey, which had 16,810 clicks. In comparison, the U.S. had 10,388, followed by Saudi Arabia (10,239), Iraq (8,138) and Britain (6,107). "The most popular links were from the encrypted messaging app Telegram, which took the users to content from ISIS's self-styled news agency, Amaq, known for its claims of responsibility after ISIS-directed or -inspired attacks." | | For Health Care Tips, America Should Look Here | | Bernie Sanders' single-payer health care proposal isn't likely to go anywhere. Instead, the U.S. should look closely at a country that manages to provide good access and high-quality treatment despite spending far less per head than many other nations: Japan, argues Noah Smith for Bloomberg View.
"Japan has a hybrid system. The government pays 70 percent of the cost of all health procedures, unless you're a low-income elderly resident, in which case it pays as much as 90 percent. The remaining 30 percent is covered by private health insurance -- either employer-sponsored or privately purchased -- which citizens are required by law to have," Smith writes. "Spending on private health insurance to cover the 30 percent co-pay is partially tax-deductible. Benefits are the same for everyone, and -- unlike many U.S. health plans -- include dental and mental-health care. For catastrophic care, poor people, and people with disabilities or certain chronic conditions, the government pays more."
The results? Despite having one of the oldest populations in the world, "[t]he country's health care system is one of the cheapest on the planet. It costs less as a percentage of the economy than almost any of its rich-world peers." - Getting grayer. The Japan Times reports: "The number of Japanese 90 or older stood at 2.06 million as of last week, topping 2 million for the first time, according to the latest government estimate."
"According to the annual survey, the total number of elderly hit a record 35.14 million this year, accounting for 27.7 percent of the population. 'Elderly people' are officially defined by the government as those 65 and above."
"That percentage is the highest among the Group of Seven developed countries, followed by Italy at 23 percent, Germany at 21.5 percent and France at 19.7 percent." | | | | | | |
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