| | | | NYC Explosion Was Likely an Amateur's Work. Like the Others | | The alleged attempted terror attack in New York on Monday morning bears all the hallmarks of an amateur effort. But that's not as reassuring as it might sound, argues Peter Bergen for CNN Opinion.
"New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo observed at a news conference on Monday, 'Anyone can go on the Internet and download garbage and vileness on how to put together an amateur-level explosive device, and that is the reality we live with,'" Bergen notes.
"Indeed, it is. But we shouldn't take too much comfort from the fact that [Akayed] Ullah's alleged attack was the work of an amateur, because according to New America, every one of the 12 successful jihadist terrorist attacks since 9/11 in the United States has also been the work of amateurs who received no formal training from any foreign terrorist group."
| | Why the Middle East Flared, But Didn't Explode | | The protests and occasional violence over the weekend weren't quite the explosion that some feared in the wake of President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. But that doesn't change the fact that the peace process is on life support—at best, suggests Aaron David Miller for Politico Magazine.
"The Palestinian public is exhausted and fears the harm a massive uprising could cause. Israel has achieved a stunning level of control over the Palestinian population, aided by robust security cooperation from the Palestinians themselves. Fatah and Hamas, the two main wings of the Palestinian nationalist movement, have limited options for reprisal. And Arab governments, which in the past might have whipped up anti-Israeli fervor to distract from their own misrule, are now mindful that such protests can easily turn against them; they're also focused on confronting Iran as a threat to regional stability, are tired of the Palestinian issue and hope to maintain close ties with the Trump administration, which gives them no Obama-style lectures about democracy and human rights. Friday's much-dreaded protests were accordingly small, and the Arab League meeting in Cairo on Saturday was predictably long on words and short on action," Miller writes.
"Rather than any explosion of anger, what we're more likely to witness is the continuation of a long, grim and nasty grind. Their proximity guarantees that Palestinians and Israelis are inextricably bound up together; and even in a frozen conflict, they will continue both to confront and accommodate one another."
| | No, It's Not Time to Sound Death Knell for Democracy | | | On the surface, the past few years have been unkind to democracy—just look at developments in Turkey and Venezuela, as well as the failure of the Arab Spring, write Bruce Jones and Michael O'Hanlon in the Wall Street Journal. But don't be fooled—the "'third wave' of democratization—the proliferation of democratic states in the late 20th century—has largely ended. But it has not been reversed by any stretch of the imagination."
"[I]f one adjusts for population, there has been no setback at all. India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Brazil, with a combined population of two billion, have, for all their admitted troubles, been holding generally steady in recent years. The countries experiencing setbacks have generally been less populous. As a result, the fraction of people living in 'not free' countries has declined slightly over the past dozen years, from 37% to 36%, while the total living in 'free' countries rose gently, from 44% to 45%. The remainder were in countries deemed by Freedom House to be 'partly free,'" they argue.
"Much as we might regret partial setbacks to liberal democracy in Hungary, population 10 million, developments there pale in significance when compared with democratic progress in Indonesia, population 261 million. The big outlier here is Russia, with its 142 million people, where the early signs of liberalism in the mid-2000s have been decisively reversed." | | Two Cheers for Saudi Arabia's Movie Move? | | Saudi Arabia has taken another step along the path of easing social restrictions with its decision to allow cinemas to operate in the country for the first time in decades, writes Kareem Fahim in the Washington Post. But don't expect broad political freedoms to follow anytime soon.
"So far, the social shifts have not included any broadening of political freedoms in Saudi Arabia or the repeal of so-called 'guardianship' laws that require women to gain the consent of a male relative to travel abroad or work," Fahim writes.
"The emerging model in Saudi Arabia — of diversifying the economy and encouraging social reforms, rather than political liberalization — follows the example of the United Arab Emirates, a neighboring state that has emerged as the Saudi leadership's closest regional ally. Still, Saudi Arabia is very unlikely to follow the UAE's degree of relative openness, by allowing the consumption of alcohol and free mingling of genders, for instance."
Meanwhile, Fahim adds, even the cinema move itself raises some tricky questions, including: "how strictly men and women would be segregated in the new theaters, and what kind of films would be permitted. The Saudi authorities heavily censor film content on TV, including love scenes, women's bodies or scenes that depict alcohol or drug use." | | Venezuela's Very Short List of Friends | | The announcement by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro that some of the main opposition parties could be barred from next year's presidential election could leave the country even more isolated. But writing in the Moscow Times, Moises Naim and Francisco Toro suggest that the Maduro government's list of friends "willing to devote real resources to helping it" is already extremely short. In fact, it includes just two countries: Cuba and Russia.
"The Cubans are good for domestic intelligence, repression management and political advice — few other nations today know how to keep a crumbling communist dictatorship under lock and key like the Cubans do. But they have no money, and no expertise in how to run a large-scale oil production operation. For that, Venezuela is increasingly looking to Russia," they write.
"In November, Presidents Nicolás Maduro and Vladimir Putin agreed to a refinancing package of $3.15 billion in bilateral loans to Venezuela, putting off almost all payments until after 2023."
"What Moscow expects in return is clear: Preferential access to Venezuela's enormous oil reserves. At 300 billion barrels, Venezuela is virtually floating on top of a lake of oil."
| | Russian President Vladimir Putin holds his annual news conference on Thursday. Julia Ioffe writes in The Atlantic that the powerful, organized Russia of popular Western imagination is unrecognizable to many Russians. "In the same way that Russians overestimate America, seeing it as an all-powerful orchestrator of global political developments, Americans project their own fears onto Russia, a country that is a paradox of deftness, might, and profound weakness—unshakably steady, yet somehow always teetering on the verge of collapse," she writes.
South Africa's ruling African National Congress meets this week to elect its new leadership. Desmond Lachman writes in US News and World Report that "[w]hile the choice of [President Jacob] Zuma's replacement will be of the utmost importance for the ANC's political fortunes, it is unlikely to mark a positive turning point for the country's troubled economy. Sadly, the roots of the country's present economic and social malaise run very much deeper than the ANC's leadership problems." | | | | | | |
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