| | | | The Truth About Trump's Button Boast | | One problem with President Trump's boast that America's nuclear button is "much bigger" and "more powerful" than North Korea's? The button doesn't exist, notes Russell Goldman in the New York Times.
A "45-pound briefcase, known as the nuclear football, accompanies the president wherever he goes. It is carried at all times by one of five military aides, representing each branch of the United States armed forces," Goldman notes.
"Inside the case is an instructional guide to carrying out a strike, including a list of locations that can be targeted by the 900 nuclear weapons that make up the American arsenal. The case also includes a radio transceiver and code authenticators.
"To authorize the attack, the president must first verify his identity by providing a code he is supposed to carry on him at all times. The code, often described as a card, is nicknamed 'the biscuit.'" - Team Trump needs to take "yes" for an answer. Kim Jong Un's New Year's Day address highlighted two important potential shifts in North Korea's diplomacy: "an openness to talks and the possible use of the Seoul Winter Olympics for a diplomatic opening," writes Mary Dejevsky in The Guardian. The Trump administration needs to stop conflating Kim's domestic messaging with the regime's real intentions, and learn to take "yes" for an answer.
"Bombast intended to reassure domestic opinion in a weak and fearful country is heard rather as a new threat of aggression towards the outside world. Defense is being picked up as offense," Dejevsky argues.
"International sporting events have a record of facilitating unlikely diplomacy, with a theoretically politics-free zone providing the ground for discreet approaches. Until this week, however, the Winter Olympics had looked set to continue, even exacerbate, the tensions between North and South Korea, with the North operating a unilateral boycott and the South feeling slighted.
"Kim's suddenly softer tone and the prospect of a North Korean Olympic team offer a shred of hope. We may be a way off the Sunshine diplomacy of the late 1990s, but if Pyongyang's signals are not recognized for what they are, there will be no chance of even starting, let alone fostering, a new detente. And the converse is true."
| | Why Protests in Iran are Good – and Bad – for the Region | | The Islamic Republic as we know it is doomed, suggests Ray Takeyh in Politico EU, following protests that began in Iran last week. But expect things to get worse for Iranians – and the region – before they get better.
"Even though Iran's relentless imperialism is denounced by the protesters who do not want to see their nation's assets wasted in Arab civil wars, the hard-liners aren't likely to change course. This was always a revolution without a border, and given the collapse of the regional state system, the Islamic Republic sees unique opportunities to project its power. Tehran is too proud of its Hezbollah protégé in Lebanon, too invested in the Syrian civil war and too involved in the murky politics of Iraq to dispense with foreign adventurism just because it is becoming a financial burden," Takeyh writes. "Imperialism has always been tempting to revolutionaries despite the fact that its costs usually outweigh its benefits. The revamped conservative regime in Iran is likely to be even more aggressive in enabling its allies." "Would anyone in good conscience or with any strategic insight have recommended that the correct approach for Washington toward Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski [in Poland] or Prime Minister P.W. Botha [in South Africa] was to remain quiet and do nothing?" Gerecht writes.
The "reflexive belief that the United States is more apt to do wrong than right in Iran is today reinforced by a palpable anxiety on the American left that any serious support for the pro-democracy demonstrators could slide into new sanctions that could threaten Mr. Obama's nuclear deal. To put it another way, a (temporary) suspension of the clerical regime's nuclear ambitions is seen as more important than the possibility that democratic dissidents might win their struggle against Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his religious dictatorship."
| | Three Signs Israel Is Undermining Chances for Peace: Gorenberg | | | Israel's government would have been well-advised to lay low after President Trump announced the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Instead, three recent moves suggest that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies "feel liberated from the need even to pay lip-service to peace with the Palestinians," writes Gershom Gorenberg for The American Prospect.
"Exhibit A: The Knesset. Before dawn on Tuesday, the parliament passed an amendment to the quasi-constitutional law on Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Under the amendment, any change in the territory under Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem requires approval by 80 out [of] 120 members of parliament. This applies to all the land that Israel unilaterally annexed in June 1967 after conquering East Jerusalem," Gorenberg writes.
"Exhibit B: The Likud central committee passed a resolution Sunday night requiring its elected officials to work for annexation of the West Bank—or, in a narrower reading of the resolution, all Israeli settlements in the West Bank."
"Exhibit C: Last week Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz of the Likud declared that a train station for the new high-speed Tel Aviv-Jerusalem line would be built in the Old City of Jerusalem—and would be named for Donald Trump." | | How Xi Is Holding China Back | | With each new year since the financial crash seem to have come dire warnings about another impending crisis facing the Chinese economy. But while 2018 will likely see the country once again overcome short-term challenges, the increasingly authoritarian bent of President Xi Jinping could mean trouble ahead, writes Jonathan Fenby for the Nikkei Asian Review.
"China needs to move up the value chain, boost productivity, develop its own technological drivers and create world brands. That requires innovation and free-ranging, globalized thinking. The creation of heavyweight 'national champions' as promoted by the leadership will not be the answer," Fenby says.
"The benefits of materialism may continue to buy off social discontent. But the long-term contradiction between the urge for control rooted deep in the Communist Party's DNA and the loosening of politically driven authority that would free the country's potential will be the greatest brake on its evolution."
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