| | | | The "Emperor" Has Spoken (at Great Length) | | In a more than three-hour speech to open the Communist Party Congress, Chinese President Xi Jinping made clear that he sees himself as essential to his country's efforts to achieve the "China Dream," argues Jiayang Fan in the New Yorker. That suggests that Xi might not have learned some crucial lessons of the past.
"[Xi] seems to believe that the more power he amasses, the easier it will be for him to enact the kind of monumental changes necessary to transform China into the world's leading superpower. In this sense, he is positioning himself as a savior with a cause noble enough to justify his autocratic turn. The logic is akin to that which animated the ambition of many of the Middle Kingdom's five-hundred-odd emperors. Sure, Xi has rerouted all tributaries of power to run upstream to him, but isn't it in the service of rejuvenation?" Fan writes.
"Refining his personal control rather than reforming a sclerotic system may seem expedient for Xi, and, in the short term, he may be able to accomplish his immediate goals faster. But setting the precedent of a modern-day emperor ensnares Chinese politics in a cycle of volatility and unsustainability that renders an entire nation vulnerable, once again, to the whimsy of an individual…Xi's vision for China's future suggests a great leap backward, in which old lessons remain unlearned."
| | Someone Needs to Talk to Trump About Missile Defense: Kaplan | | President Trump's claim last week that U.S. missile defenses are 97% successful is not only wrong, but dangerous, suggests Fred Kaplan in Slate.
"One could argue that the missile-defense systems play some role in deterring North Korea (or some other hostile country) from launching an attack. Maybe. Kim Jong Un might think it's possible the U.S. would shoot down one of his missiles. But if we failed at shooting down even one of them, the program's deterrent value would shrink to nil; even if our systems were really good and the failure had been a fluke, this first impression would be the one that sticks. It might even embolden Kim in his nuclear ambitions," Kaplan says.
"There's a mystique surrounding missile defense. It succeeds in helping deter an enemy attack only to the extent that the mystique is preserved."
"It's possible Trump knew what he was doing by reciting these numbers on television. Maybe he meant to thicken the mystique. The danger, and the more likely scenario, is that he took the numbers seriously, that he thinks this stuff really works and that it gives him a magic bullet in a war with North Korea -- and that, therefore, he might be more willing to go to war."
| | America Isn't Ready for ISIS's Defeat | | The fall of Raqqa is a welcome blow against ISIS. But with no apparent U.S. plan for the territory that is seized from the so-called caliphate, new tensions will emerge – ones that Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian patrons will be happy to exploit, the Financial Times editorializes.
"This is a conundrum Washington is ill-prepared for, its capacity to interpret the complex chess play on the ground hampered by the recent emaciation of the state department," the FT argues.
"On paper, the U.S.'s main ally in this fight is NATO member Turkey. But Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been in Tehran not Washington this month. America's reserve allies, and the main force behind the capture of Raqqa, are the Syrian Kurds -- Turkey's antagonists. Caught between the two, the U.S. has made no political commitment to either's cause.
"It took just three years of muddle-headed policy on the part of Baghdad to alienate the Sunni population and set the scene for [al Qaeda in Iraq] to re-emerge in its far more dangerous ISIS guise. Unless there is a plan soon for how to administer recaptured Syrian territory in a way that is inclusive to the Sunni Arabs, the same will surely happen again. And unless the U.S. and its allies begin thinking more strategically, Isis losses will soon become the Damascus regime's and its Iranian patrons' gains." - No, Team Trump can't take credit for defeating ISIS. President Trump's decision to effectively take credit for ISIS's defeat following the fall of Raqqa is misleading, argues Peter Bergen for CNN Opinion. And it might be one he comes to regret.
"Under Obama, ISIS also lost significant Iraqi cities such as Falluja, Ramadi and Tikrit. To be sure, Trump loosened the 'rules of engagement' for the US military, enabling ground commanders to more easily carry out operations without having to seek permission up the chain of command, but these are tactical changes -- not strategic game changers," Bergen writes.
"Also, Trump needs to be careful about taking too much of a victory lap when it comes to ISIS. He could fall into the same trap that Obama did when he observed in early 2014 that ISIS was a 'JV team.'"
| | The Big Clue that NAFTA is Dying | | NAFTA negotiators for Canada, Mexico and the United States have postponed new talks until next month. But the truth is that the deal is "on life support, and it is unclear whether the patient will even survive into the coming year," writes Eric Farnsworth for Americas Quarterly. Just look at the way the three sides are talking to each other.
More consequential than the announcement that talks might have to continue into 2018 "was the strong language that negotiators have begun to use with reference to each other, essentially questioning the good faith of their counterparts" Farnsworth says. "Difficult and complex issues can be negotiated within a spirit of goodwill; a prevailing mood of suspicion and zero-sum positions will make conclusion of the agreement much more difficult if not impossible. The new demands that the U.S. has just brought to the negotiations, including dispute resolution procedures, sunset provisions, and local content requirements, among others, are not designed to forge consensus but rather to upend the entire agreement."
"The trust that had developed through hard work over more than two decades, from trade and investment issues to security to immigration, is rapidly dissipating. Without trust as the glue holding them together, North American economic and political relations will be much more difficult to pursue effectively."
| | The Toughest Places for Girls to Get an Education | | South Sudan is the most difficult place in the world for girls to receive an education, according to a new report from international advocacy group ONE, with African nations taking up nine spots in its list of the 10 toughest places. Afghanistan is the only non-African nation on the list.
"73% of girls in South Sudan don't go to primary school. And South Sudan's government spends just 2.6% of its total budget on education," according to the report, which looked at 11 factors including the rate of out-of-school girls; school completion rates; female literacy rate for population aged 15–24; and spending on education as a percentage of total government expenditure.
The report adds: "To improve girls' education globally, we need to pay special attention to Africa. No African countries are among the best performing 25% of all countries ranked, and only four African countries (7%) are in the best-performing 50% of ranked countries." | | | | | | |
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