| | | | Why Opioid Crisis Is GOP's Crisis, Too | | President Trump's declaration that the opioid crisis is a national public health emergency is a good start. The trouble is, his own party's ideology might be one of the biggest barriers to winning the battle, suggests Eric Levitz in New York Magazine.
"The primary reason for the opioid epidemic's brutal acceleration may be this: In the United States, it's much easier for addicts to find heroin than to find help. A 2016 report from the surgeon general's office found that just 10 percent of Americans with a drug disorder secured specialty treatment. This result is largely explained by the fact that wide swaths of the country -- including many counties where opioid abuse is prevalent -- lack affordable treatment options," Levitz writes.
"To stem the tide of drug overdoses in the United States, the president will need to increase federal health-care spending, impose more stringent regulations on the pharmaceutical industry, and embrace a harm-reduction approach to drug abuse that insulates addicts from the worst consequences of their nonviolent crimes. In other words: He will have to break with governing preferences of the GOP donor class." | | The Real Cost of Beating Kim | | As the United States and North Korea appear to edge ever closer to war, much of the debate has focused on the devastating results of any conflict. But while assessing the costs of war itself is important, we risk overlooking something else, suggests Max Brooks for The Hill: The costs of winning.
"The reconstruction of East Germany, one of the smoothest, most peaceful unifications in history, still cost the West German people roughly $1.9 trillion. And East Germany was the picture of modernity compared to North Korea. South Korean estimates peg a seamless, German-style reunion somewhere between eight hundred billion and two trillion," Brooks writes.
"What would it cost after a devastating war? And who's going to pay for it?
"South Korea has budgeted for a reconstruction program that didn't include rebuilding its own nation (which would no doubt suffer greatly in the conflict). Even without nuclear weapons, the North has enough conventional forces to wreck the Mississippi-sized country. While other countries like China and Japan might send limited aid, the lion's share of the financial burden will undoubtedly fall on the U.S."
"And that's just money. What about people? How many refugees would another Korean War create? Some estimates predict as many as 5 million, if the crisis mirrors Syria." | | Why China Needs to be a Tortoise, Not a Hare | | | Xi Jinping used the Communist Party Congress this past week to consolidate his power at home. But if he wants to guarantee China's economic success in the future then he needs to recognize something important, writes Ruchir Sharma in the New York Times: China is growing too fast. "In its rush to catch the United States, China has been prioritizing growth that is wildly ambitious for a maturing, middle-income country. To hit its growth target, Beijing has been pumping record amounts of debt into the state-owned industries of Old China. Those debts now represent the biggest threat to the New China and Mr. Xi's superpower ambitions," Sharma argues. "Much has been said about all the money the United States, Europe and Japan have printed to stimulate the post-crisis recovery, but China has printed more than twice as much as those three combined, expanding its money supply by $16 trillion. A lot of this money has been diverted from industry into stock and real estate bubbles, rattling Chinese investors." "If China's economy is allowed to slow further -- as previous miracle economies did at a similar stage of development -- it will take longer for the economy to match the size of the United States economy, certainly much longer than China's leaders had hoped. Better, though, to be remembered for putting China on the long path to real superpower status than the shorter path to crisis." | | Tillerson's Rare Middle East Win | | Secretary of State Rex Tillerson secured a little-noticed but rare symbolic win in the Middle East, writes Rhys Dubin in Foreign Policy. Ties between Saudi Arabia and Iraq appear to be warming, in no small part thanks to some "aggressive diplomacy" by Tillerson and his team.
The meeting between Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi "and the broader thawing it seems to signal, was at heart about two things," Dubin writes. "First, Saudi Arabia wants to lead a strong group of Arab states to counter what it sees as Iran's malign influence; burying the hatchet with Baghdad is a way to create a bigger bloc. And second, Iraq, stung by nearly three years of cheap oil prices and warfare, is eager for help with oil and gas development and foreign assistance rebuilding after the defeat of the Islamic State."
"For the United States, bringing the two countries closer together is less about building coalitions and more about rebuilding. Iraq has been battling the Islamic State for years in its territory and needs plenty of help restoring its electrical grid, reconstructing destroyed neighborhoods, and improving its oil infrastructure."
| | Putin's Tsar-like Powers Raise Tsar-like Question: The Economist | | Seventeen years since first coming to power, and President Vladimir Putin's grip over Russia is stronger than ever, The Economist editorializes. But his Tsar-like powers raise a difficult question for Putin and the world: who will succeed him?
"Mr Putin cannot arrange his succession using his bloodline or the Communist Party apparatus. Perhaps he will anoint a successor. But he would need someone weak enough for him to control and strong enough to see off rivals -- an unlikely combination," The Economist says. "Perhaps he will try to cling to power, as Deng Xiaoping did behind the scenes as head of the China Bridge Association, and Mr Xi may intend to overtly, having conspicuously avoided naming a successor after this week's party congress. Yet, even if Mr Putin became the éminence grise of the Russian Judo Federation, it would only delay the fatal moment. Without the mechanism of a real democracy to legitimize someone new, the next ruler is likely to emerge from a power struggle that could start to tear Russia apart. In a state with nuclear weapons, that is alarming."
"The stronger Mr Putin is today, the harder he will find it to manage his succession. As the world tries to live with that paradox, it should remember that nothing is set in stone."
| | Africa's Extraordinary Youth Numbers | | Africa is projected to be home to almost half of the world's children by the end of this century, UNICEF suggests in a new report, while the continent's overall population is set to more than double by mid-century.
"In 1950, Africa's child population stood at 110 million and represented just above 10 percent of the world's child population," UNICEF says. "It has grown more than fivefold since, and currently stands at an estimated 580 million: four times larger than Europe's child population, and accounting for about 25 percent of the world's children. Between 2016 and 2030, Africa's child population is projected to expand by about 170 million, elevating the continent's total to 750 million. And by 2055 Africa will be home to 1 billion children, almost 40 percent of the global total." | | | | | | |
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