| | | | How Americans Should Respond to Iran Protests | | Whatever their political persuasion, and however they view the nuclear deal with Iran, Americans "should be supporting the aspirations of Iranians to be free from their brutal and corrupt rulers," write Mark Dubowitz and Daniel B. Shapiro for Politico Magazine, as widespread demonstrations continue across the country. The only question should be how the Trump administration can best help make that a reality.
"Nuclear deal supporters and opponents should resist the urge to make this a 'gotcha moment' for people with whom they have tussled on Iran policy. This undermines the cause of ensuring broad, bipartisan support for peaceful protests, and hopefully real political change. Let's focus on the Iranian people and what the United States and our European allies can do to advance their aspirations, not our own political squabbles," they write.
In practical terms, "officials both current and former should be flooding the airwaves on Persian-language television and radio to express their support for the Iranian people's human rights and aspirations."
Meanwhile, "the Trump administration, with bipartisan backing, should use sections 402 and 403 of the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act, passed with overwhelming support in 2012, to threaten sanctions against global entities that supply the Iranian regime with tools of repression and censorship." "[I]n summer 2009, at the peak of the Green Movement, I frequently heard from Iranians who'd decided to stay at home—despite opposing Ahmadinejad and viewing his reelection as fraudulent—that they didn't want to provide the Americans with ammunition to attack their country," Tabatabai says. "Today, hardliners are already trying to label protesters as foreign agents, as they did in 2009. And if Washington is viewed as actively interfering in Iranian affairs, it'll at best deter Iranians from joining the movement and making their voices heard, and will at worst help the hardliners, undermine the protesters, and facilitate the crackdown against them."
| | Fareed: The Big Global Narrative in 2018 | | The great overarching global narrative as we enter 2018? The decline of American influence, Fareed argues in his latest Washington Post column.
"Not the decline of American power — the country remains economically and militarily in a league of its own — but a decline of its desire and capacity to use that power to shape the world. The current administration seems intent on dismantling the United States' great achievements — as it is doing with the World Trade Organization — or to simply be uninterested in setting the global agenda," Fareed writes.
"The creator, upholder and enforcer of the existing international system is withdrawing into self-centered isolation. The other great supporter and advocate of the open, rule-based world, Europe, has not been able to act assertively on the world stage with any clear vision or purpose and remains obsessed with the fate of its own continental project. Filling the power vacuum, a host of smaller, illiberal powers — Turkey, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia — are surging forward in their respective regions. But only China truly has the wherewithal and strategic prowess to potentially shape the next chapter of the story of our age."
| | Kim's Master Plan for Stopping a US Military Strike? | | | As speculation continues to grow over whether the Trump administration will launch some kind of military action against North Korea, Kim Jong Un's regime might have found a way to lower the drumbeat of war, suggest Choe Sang-Hun and David E. Sanger in The New York Times: Drive a wedge between America and one of its closest allies. "Until now Mr. Kim has largely ignored [South Korea President Moon Jae-in], whom the North Korean media has portrayed as a spineless lackey of the United States. But the dramatic shift in tone and policy, toward bilateral talks between the two Koreas, suggests that Mr. Kim sees an opportunity to develop and accentuate the split between Mr. Moon and Mr. Trump, betting that the United States will be unable to mount greater pressure on the North if it does not have South Korean acquiescence," they write. "The gambit may work. Hours after Mr. Kim's speech, Mr. Moon's office welcomed the North's proposal, in a way that could further aggravate tensions with the United States." | | Team Trump Has a Message for Pakistan. It's the Right One. | | The Trump administration's vow to continue to withhold $255 million in military aid to Pakistan over its perceived failure to crack down on extremism could be just the message Islamabad needs to hear, writes Samantha Vinograd for CNN Opinion. "Enough is Enough."
"Strategically, as a virtue of the $33 billion in foreign aid we have provided to Pakistan since 2002 and its status as a major non-NATO ally, Pakistan benefits from extensive funding and access to advanced military equipment," Vinograd writes.
"The US has treated Pakistan as an ally. The truth is, allies protect each other and each other's interests, and Pakistan has done little on either. Its government has cooperated occasionally -- including freeing hostages earlier this year -- but the stronger trend has been a continued, purposeful blind eye to terrorist activities within its borders.
"If this administration is serious about effecting strategic change in Afghanistan and precluding the ability of groups like al Qaeda to strike our homeland, then withholding US dollars and military equipment to Pakistan is potentially both necessary and expedient."
| | A Radical Solution for the Venezuela Crisis | | | Critics of President Trump were quick to dismiss his suggestion last year that military action might be an option for resolving the crisis in Venezuela. But with the prospects of the Maduro government relinquishing power in free elections looking slim, international military intervention might actually make sense, writes Ricardo Hausmann, a former minister of planning of Venezuela, in Project Syndicate. "The [National] Assembly could constitutionally appoint a new government, which in turn could request military assistance from a coalition of the willing, including Latin American, North American, and European countries. This force would free Venezuela, in the same way Canadians, Australians, Brits, and Americans liberated Europe in 1944-1945. Closer to home, it would be akin to the US liberating Panama from the oppression of Manuel Noriega, ushering in democracy and the fastest economic growth in Latin America," Hausmann writes. "According to international law, none of this would require approval by the United Nations Security Council (which Russia and China might veto), because the military force would be invited by a legitimate government seeking support to uphold the country's constitution." | | We're Running Out of a Crucial Natural Resource. (Clue: Not Oil) | | The world is running short of a key natural resource, a development that could have a dramatic impact on infrastructure projects across Asia, suggests Laura Villadiego for the South China Morning Post. That resource? Not oil, but sand.
With countries including Indonesia and Vietnam banning or restricting exports of sand – a key ingredient for making cement – because of the "enormous environmental damage" caused by extraction, shortages are poised to worsen in 2018, Villadiego notes.
"According to a 2014 UN report…sand and gravel, which have surpassed fossil fuels and biomass to become the world's most extracted materials, 'are now being extracted at a rate far greater than their renewal.'"
The country likely to be worst hit? China, which the director of the UN Global Resource Information Database says has used as much concrete in the past four years as the United States has in the past 100. | | | | | | |
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