| | | | The Danger of Trump's "Madman Theory": Naftali | | President Trump appears to have embraced the "madman theory" of leadership with his taunting of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. But the United States stands to lose far more than it gains if Trump continues to emulate Richard Nixon, suggests Tim Naftali in The Atlantic.
"There are very good reasons why, until Trump, Nixon was the only chief executive to have associated himself with such a strategy: It makes no sense for a confident, great power," Naftali writes.
"Since Pearl Harbor, the United States has acted as a leading partner in grand alliances designed to defeat vicious adversaries and then maintain some semblance of international peace. Such alliances—whether the Big Three of World War II or the postwar North Atlantic Treaty Organization—are founded on trust that, to put it bluntly, you would take a bullet for the other guy. These don't work as well if the states at the helm, as personified by their leaders, are erratic or irrational. You cannot be both a reckless madman and a reliable alliance partner.
"Throughout the Cold War, for example, the U.S. worked hard to encourage non-nuclear allies like West Germany to accept 'extended deterrence,' the idea that they did not need their own nukes because the United States could be relied upon to defend them. Nonproliferation, which is difficult in the best of times, becomes impossible if the foreign ally thinks the American president is erratic and untrustworthy. It is inconceivable that John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford, or George H. W. Bush, for example, would have believed it useful for any foreign leader to think him 'crazy.'" - An administration like no other. In any other administration, the "insubordination" demonstrated by some of President Trump's top officials would have seen them booted from office, suggests Gloria Borger for CNN Opinion. For now, though, Trump and his team feel they have no choice but to carry on.
"They are, for the moment, stuck in an awkward mutual embrace. It's a series of uneasy alliances held together with chicken wire -- for purposes of appearance, for promises of achievement and, above all else, perhaps out of a sense of patriotism."
| | Why We Should Keep Chicago Out of the Gun Control Debate | | Opponents of tighter gun controls often point to the soaring homicide rate in Chicago, a city with strict gun rules, to bolster their argument. Indeed, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders did so Monday. But doing so misses a fundamental point: Chicago isn't an island, argue Jens Ludwig and Michael A. Nutter in Fortune.
"America's decentralized, federalist approach to gun regulation sets a very low minimum level of gun regulation that each city and state must abide by, but then lets individual jurisdictions supplement federal law by imposing stricter local regulations if they want," they write. "The idea is to let local gun laws in, say, New Mexico be different from those in New York, since people in different places have different preferences and beliefs. This system would make perfect sense in a world in which each city or state were an island.
"But that is not the world we live in."
| | Please Don't Give Iran Deal a Nobel Prize: Keating | | | The Iran nuclear agreement offers the best chance for the United States to prevent Tehran acquiring a nuclear weapon. But recognizing the deal with a Nobel Peace Prize on Friday would be a terrible idea, argues Joshua Keating in Slate.
Doing so "would be an especially strong signal to Trump, with a crucial deadline on whether to certify Iran's compliance with the agreement approaching next week," Keating argues. "Recent reporting suggests that Trump's advisers are working to find a way to allow Trump to say he's fulfilled his campaign promise to end the 'worst deal ever' while technically keeping the U.S. in compliance with its terms, but there are a million things that could go wrong with this plan. One of those things would be for the committee to taunt a president who has a Kanye-level fixation on awards and accolades.
"This award, at such a sensitive time, would not help Trump (or Republicans in Congress who may have to make the final call on whether to reimpose sanctions) see reason." | | Why It's Time to Arm Ukraine | | Russia appears to have no intention of loosening its grip on Ukraine's east. If the U.S. wants to stop Moscow seizing even more territory, then it is time to turn up the heat – and arm Ukraine, argues former Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the New York Times.
"For three and a half years, Moscow has blown past every diplomatic off-ramp offered by the United States and Europe to end the crisis. Instead of implementing the Minsk Agreement — a road map it signed to restore Ukraine's sovereignty while protecting the rights of all of its citizens, including the Russian-speaking minority — the Kremlin has denied the agreement's plain meaning and dodged its obligations," Blinken writes. "The occupied east now harbors one of the largest tank forces in Europe. And tens of thousands of Russian troops are poised across a border that Moscow controls, a stark reminder to Kiev that a much larger swath of its territory remains in jeopardy."
"What might give Mr. Putin pause at turning up the temperature yet again within eastern Ukraine — or worse, taking another whole bite out of the country — is the knowledge his troops would be seriously bloodied in the doing. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, once the leading opponent of lethal aid, now is open to it. Listening to Mr. Putin's lies, year after year, has that effect. Defensive weapons for Ukraine is an idea whose time has come."
| | China's Next Clean Energy Conquest? | | China has already thrown down the clean energy gauntlet to other nations with its heavy investment in solar energy. But it's poised to leave the United States and other nations in the dust in a key area of the electric vehicle market, too, writes Justin Worland in TIME.
"Instead of manufacturing in America, entrepreneurs are increasingly looking to China to turn cutting-edge battery research into reality. The country is expected to capture 65% of the battery market by 2021, with much of what remains left for Europe, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance," Worland writes.
"The anticipated Chinese dominance of the industry comes as the government sees an opportunity to become a clean-energy leader providing solutions to the rest of the world–and reaping the profits. China already manufactures more than half of the world's solar panels, and doing the same with batteries would leave China controlling an industry worth $40 billion a year by 2025, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis."
"To capture that business, China has told battery manufacturers to double their capacity by 2020, created hurdles for foreign competitors and introduced subsides for both electric cars and batteries. The country's 13th five-year plan, which guides policy through 2020, guarantees a payout if manufacturers meet targets. Its battery industry also benefits from domestic lithium mining and mass electric-vehicle manufacturing." | | | | | | |
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