| | | | Why Trump's New National Security Strategy Is Surprising | | President Trump unveiled his administration's National Security Strategy in a speech on Monday. Peter Feaver writes in Foreign Policy that putting together the document in an inaugural year is an achievement in itself – especially for a team that has had a rough 12 months. Just as surprising? It's the kind of document that Trump's predecessors might have unveiled.
Until recently, it wasn't clear whether Trump's national security strategy would "pretend that institutional alliances were a rip-off for America and that adequate international cooperation could be elicited with short-term transactions, or…recognize that our institutional alliances are an important part of America's advantage in geopolitical affairs," Feaver writes.
"Gradually, over a half-dozen big foreign policy speeches this past year, these debates got resolved in a more hopeful direction…The four pillars – protecting the American people/homeland, promoting prosperity, peace through strength, and advancing interests/values – could have been used by any president since Reagan. This is not a criticism. On the contrary, doing the opposite would be more susceptible to criticism; one of the major concerns about President Trump is that he has at times seemed so bent on breaking with establishment precedent that he has failed to appreciate just how much of what has made American great has been the produce of these core establishment ideas and institutions." - Mixed messages. One thing that was different from his predecessor's strategy? Trump's decision not to emphasize climate change as a top national security challenge. But Travis J. Tritten writes for the Washington Examiner that that while the "strategy's exchange of climate concern for dominance in fossil fuels, nuclear and renewable energy is in line with the president's focus on revving up the American economy…It also highlights what appears to be a growing rift between the White House and a Republican-led Congress and Pentagon that are increasingly open to recognizing climate change as a security risk."
"[T]he strategy comes less than a week after Trump signed an annual defense policy bill that identifies climate change as a 'direct threat' to national security and orders a Pentagon report on the 10 military bases considered the most vulnerable."
| | What Pence Should Say in Egypt | | When Vice President Mike Pence visits Egypt this week he should be willing to issue a stark message to his hosts, suggest Andrew Miller and Richard Sokolsky. "America is getting a bad deal in Egypt."
"There was a time when both countries derived important mutual benefits, including reliable Egyptian support for the United States' interests in the Middle East. But over the past decade, the United States has poured more than $13 billion in security assistance into Egypt with little to show for it except more jobs for a defense industry exporting materiél that is ill-suited to Egypt's defense needs and that allow the Egyptian military to sustain a patronage system that distorts the economy and fuels corruption," they write in the New York Times.
"For too long, the United States has allowed the Egyptian government to treat security assistance as an entitlement owed for making peace with Israel. The United States has not held Egypt accountable for how this money is spent and whether it serves broader American objectives in the region, giving Egypt a free ride on American generosity. The Obama administration took initial steps to make military assistance less generous and limit the weapons systems Egypt could buy with American funds. The Trump administration has withheld or reprogrammed more than $200 million in military assistance."
"This is a start. More needs to be done."
| | The World Should Watch the Austrian Experiment | | | Austria's new coalition government, which includes a far-right party, has just taken office. Keep an eye on its immigration policy, writes Leonid Bershidsky – its anti-immigration proposals could end up being a template for center-right parties around the world hoping to counter the threat from populist rivals.
"In the US, its proposals would be described as extreme vetting. Asylum seekers should be prepared to give up their mobile phones for analysis to determine their travel routes and, where necessary, their identity. If a positive identification can't be made, as was the case with many new arrivals during the 2015-2016 refugee crisis, the new government intends to refuse asylum," Bershidsky writes for Bloomberg View.
"It also plans to confiscate any cash asylum-seekers might be carrying and put it toward the cost of their settlement. Any help they receive, the program goes on, should only be in kind. Individual accommodation should be ruled out, and medical confidentiality should be waived for diseases deemed important for the settlement process. Any asylum seekers convicted of crimes are to be deported. Deportation appeals procedures are generally to be curtailed." | | 2017: The Year the Internet (As We Know It) Died | | From Europe's enforcement of privacy rights to the Federal Communications Commission decision to roll back net neutrality rules, 2017 might have been the nail in the coffin of the Internet, at least as we know it, writes Mark Scott for Politico EU. "In its place is something altogether different: a Balkanized 'splinternet,' where your experience online is determined by local regulation."
"Gone is the internet where people from Philadelphia to Paris pretty much had access to the same digital services. That basic tenet (the 'world' in the 'world wide web') is what made the internet the lifeblood coursing through our daily lives. It's what was making countries' borders increasingly meaningless and connecting people (for good and bad) in ways that seemed like science fiction just a few years ago," Scott writes.
"In part, governments' efforts to reclaim control over the internet is only natural. But without better cross-border coordination between policymakers from across the globe — including China, where draconian internet laws still limit free speech and other fundamental rights — this mad dash to regulate could have the opposite effect than what's intended."
| | Inequality Is Soaring. Here's How to Slow It: Report | | Income inequality around the world has worsened over the past several decades, "with the wealthiest 1% of the world's population capturing twice as much income growth as the bottom half," the Associated Press notes, citing a new report.
"The World Inequality Report shows that income gaps soared after 1980, though they leveled off after the 2008 financial crisis. The richest 1% of the world's population saw its share of global income slip from about 22% in 2008 to just above 20% in 2016. The share of global income going to the bottom 50% rose slightly in the same period, to just under 10%, propelled by gains in populous and fast-growing China and India," AP says.
"The new report argues that countries can reduce inequality through more progressive taxation and by subsidizing education. It points out that the United States and Western Europe had similar levels of inequality in 1980, with the top 1% holding about 10% of income. But by 2016, the top 1% in Europe held 12% of income, compared with a 20% cut in the US" - Inequality may have been rising in the United States. But Americans, at least compared with their rich country peers, don't appear too troubled by that, The Economist notes.
Why? "One reason may be that Americans don't realize how unequal incomes are. In common with the inhabitants of other wealthy countries, most Americans believe there is too much inequality. But they underestimate just how much of it there is. The average American puts the current ratio of CEO to unskilled worker pay at thirty-to-one; their preference is for about seven-to-one. But the actual CEO-unskilled wage ratio in America is 354 to one."
| | Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to travel to Egypt and Israel. The Australian newspaper editorializes that the decision by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas not to meet with Pence during the trip is a mistake. "It would be hard to conceive of a more futile gesture by Mr Abbas as the principal Palestinian interlocutor in peace talks. Mr Trump's Jerusalem announcement has provoked neither the mass display of Palestinian anger nor the hostility of Arab states that was widely forecast," the paper says.
Final passage of the sweeping Republican tax bill is expected this week. Fareed argued in his Take in Sunday's show that "the medium- and long-term effects of the plan are clear: a massive drop in public investment, which will come on the heels of decades of declining spending, as a percentage of GDP, on infrastructure, scientific research, skills training, and core government agencies." | | | | | | |
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