| | | | Why Saudi Arabia Is Letting Women Drive | | Saudi Arabia's announcement that it plans to loosen the restrictions on women driving is welcome. Thank a combination of economics and politics for the decision, suggests Roula Khalaf in the Financial Times.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has launched "an economic restructuring so ambitious that he has recently had to pare it back. The transformation he envisions requires a greater role for women in the economy and a smaller one for foreign workers. And this makes the granting of certain freedoms, including the ability to drive oneself to work, more pressing," Khalaf writes.
"As important, MbS's social reforms are designed to appeal to Saudi youth, the constituency that he hopes will cheer his eventual elevation to power. Lifting the ban on driving ticks many boxes, including winning the prince new fans among young Saudi women." - "You cannot leave the house without the man's permission." What is it like for women living in Saudi Arabia? Why do strict rules on women's freedom still exist? What is it like to rebel against the status quo? Fareed recently spoke with Manal al-Sharif, author of "Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman's Awakening," about all this and more. Watch the full interview here.
| | Why China Thinks It's Winning | | China's seeming indifference to Western complaints about unfair economic competition reflects a growing sense in Beijing that it has the upper hand. A growing middle class that will soon have more consumers than the entire U.S. population is only likely to fuel that confidence, suggests Andrew Browne in the Wall Street Journal.
"U.S. and European firms report they've rarely felt less welcome. Internet blocks make it increasingly hard for their executives to access business information in the cloud. Even email is difficult. Foreign investment is slowing this year," Browne writes.
"What emboldens China? Its sharpest trading practices fall outside the scope of World Trade Organization rules. The system wasn't set up with a secretive and centrally directed colossus like China Inc. in mind. Western economies, once optimistic that WTO membership would induce transparency and free-market reforms in China, now have no good defense. Put crudely, China knows it can get away with it."
| | Is South Asia the Next Middle East? | | The refugee crisis unfolding in Myanmar is increasingly looking like an international crisis, writes Dominique Moisi for Project Syndicate. Without UN-led intervention, the religious overtones to the Rohingya issue could mean South Asia starts to look like the next Middle East.
"[R]adicalization within Myanmar's Muslim community has proceeded alongside the growth of religious extremism among the Buddhist majority. Buddha preached peace and tolerance. Yet some Buddhist priests today are inciting hatred and violence," Moisi writes.
"In fact, even before the latest eruption, a succession of massacres garnered only indifference from the international community. Like the horrors inflicted on Bosnia's Muslims during the Balkan wars in the 1990s, the assault on the Rohingya seems to reveal the Western world's selective empathy.
"The result is a vicious circle of radicalization and violence. Terrorist organizations like the Islamic State, now defeated on the ground in Syria and Iraq, undoubtedly hope to use the Rohingya's plight to mobilize Muslims, particularly in Asia, for their own ends."
| | Why We Have to Live with Iran's Ballistic Missiles | | | Critics of the nuclear agreement argue that Iran's development of ballistic missiles is one more example of the deal's failure – and underscores why President Trump should refuse to recertify Tehran's compliance. But they are missing the point, suggests Jarrett Blanc for The Hill. Ballistic missiles weren't meant to be part of the deal, and shouldn't be now.
"The [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] did not address ballistic missile for a simple reason. The U.S. and its allies were not positioned to get a good deal on missiles and wisely chose not to forfeit the achievable nuclear solution," writes Blanc, the U.S. State Department coordinator for Iran nuclear implementation under President Obama.
"To get cooperation…U.S. partners also needed to believe that there was a real threat to international peace and security and that sanctions were part of a plausible negotiating strategy.
"There is no such consensus about ballistic missiles. Most world powers do not see missiles as radically changing Iran's ability to project force or the balance of power in the region. This attitude extends past Iran -- the broad scope and nearly universal membership of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty reflects a strong international norm opposed to nuclear weapons." | | The Next Spanish Civil War? | | Catalonia's government looks poised to proceed with a referendum Sunday on independence from Spain, despite the central government's best efforts to stop it. If the region votes decisively for independence, the country could see a showdown that looks uncomfortably like civil war, suggests James Badcock in Foreign Policy.
"The most likely outcome of the coming referendum is a worrying one: an extension of the current state of dual reality, in which pro-independence forces continue their quixotic quest by renaming existing institutions, while the Spain's judicial juggernaut rolls slowly along behind, restoring things on paper, if not in the hearts and minds of Catalans," Badcock writes. "The Catalan government has drawn a road map to independence that allows for the region's residents to maintain their Spanish status while seeking Catalan nationality if they so wish. It is a tacit recognition that even in victory, independence would remain at best a gray area for the foreseeable future.
"At some point, these divergent realities will have to be brought face to face. Spain can only hope it is around a political negotiating table, and not on either side of barricades."
| | China: A Great Firewall for You, And You, And You… | | China's so-called Great Firewall has long tried to keep unwanted online content out of the country. But in recent months the Chinese Communist Party has taken things a step further, suggests Simon Denyer for the Washington Post. Think individual firewalls around every citizen.
"Last month, the Cyberspace Administration of China effectively ended online anonymity here by making Internet companies responsible for ensuring that anyone who posts anything is registered with their real name," Denyer writes.
"This month, authorities dramatically expanded their controls over what people say in private online chat groups, making anyone who sets up a chat group legally responsible for its content and requiring Internet companies to establish systems to rate and score the online conduct of users -- to ensure they follow the Communist Party line and promote 'socialist core values.'
"Those scores would ultimately be integrated into a still-developing system of 'social credit' -- a sort of credit rating for individuals that could determine access to anything from financial services to transport and foreign travel." | | | | | | |
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