| | | | How Kim Is Beating Team Trump in the Olympics PR Battle | | If this year's Winter Olympics are as much a PR competition as a sporting one, then North Korea may have taken an early lead over the United States, suggests Donald Kirk for the Daily Beast.
"Rather than attempt to undermine the Olympics by missile shots, much less threats of terrorism, [Kim Jong Un] has resorted to the ultimate weapon in his charm offensive in the form of [his sister] Kim Yo Jong, known in both North and South Korea for smiling prettily while saying very little on North Korean TV," Kirk writes.
"It's the first time ever that any member of North Korea's Kim dynasty, beginning with grandfather Kim Il Sung, who ruled for nearly 50 years, has been to South Korea, and she's sure to become a luminary in the South Korean media."
"While Koreans were salivating over the prospect of seeing Kim Yo Jong, [Vice President Mike] Pence in Tokyo was talking darkly of the need for North Korea to 'once and for all abandon its nuclear weapons program and ballistic missile ambitions.'
"His menacing words, along with the vow to work with America's allies to 'achieve the global objective of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,' definitely seemed out of sync with the mood engendered by the prospect of the opening of the Games and South Korean President Moon Jae-in's hope that they will be a watershed event on the way to North-South dialogue and reconciliation."
| | Why Trump Can't Have a Military Parade Like France's | | | President Trump might want to emulate France's annual Bastille Day festivities with his call for a military parade in the United States. But holding one in Washington would send a very different message from the event he attended in Paris last year, suggests Rick Noack in The Washington Post. "Whereas France's Bastille Day—founded to celebrate the turning point of the French Revolution—has been associated with an annual military parade for more than a century, efforts to combine a similarly patriotic holiday with a military parade in Washington might strike many foreign observers as odd timing. Why now?" Noack writes. "[A] military parade in Washington would likely be perceived as a more timely political message from a single individual to the nation and, indeed, to the world, along the lines of: Look at how strong we (and I) are. "France's Bastille Day parade, which has persisted through two world wars and a Nazi occupation, has also been used to emphasize a very different message, which could be summarized as: We are only strong together. What Trump may have missed while watching the Paris parade last July was that its organizers have frequently invited foreign troops—from Morocco and India to the United States, Britain and Germany—to march alongside French soldiers or to even lead the procession. Instead of the French flag, French soldiers sometimes wave the European Union flag, even though the political bloc does not have its own army." | | Why the Falcon Heavy Launch Is a Really Big Deal | | The immediate market for a rocket like SpaceX's just-launched Falcon Heavy might not be clear. But that misses the point anyway, Bloomberg editorializes. "Competition in the space business—worth some $323 billion annually—is driving down costs and stimulating both innovation and demand."
"At $90 million per launch, the Falcon Heavy will be able to carry twice the payload of its nearest competitor for about one-fifth the cost.
"In the near term, this should enable some cheaper military launches, and might also allow NASA to conduct more frequent research missions into deep space. Conceivably, the Falcon Heavy could even transport people to the moon, at a fraction of the expected cost of an SLS launch.
"But longer-term, and more intriguingly, the new rocket could open up novel commercial possibilities. Companies are already testing gear for asteroid mining, space tourism, moon expeditions and much else, spurred on in no small part by SpaceX's earlier achievements. Add cheap, reliable heavy-lift rockets to the equation and the opportunities only expand. A few decades from now, more far-out stuff—space-based energy production, say—may no longer be science fiction." "Want to get kids to study STEM fields? This is how you do it. The Falcon Heavy could have very well exploded, but instead we were treated to a launch that left some viewers in actual tears. A lot of people posted that it was the single most amazing thing they'd ever watched live. Almost everyone agreed that it made them feel like a little kid again…"
| | Iran Deal Critics Have a Point We Should Have Seen Coming | | Critics of the nuclear deal with Iran have a point. Yes, judged "only on its explicitly declared goals, the Iran deal is working," writes Joshua Keating for Slate. But in terms of regional stability, the deal might actually have made things worse.
"Obama always made clear that an agreement on nuclear weapons wouldn't necessarily change Iran's larger pattern of behavior or that of its rivals. 'If they don't change at all, we're still better off having the deal,' he argued. Still, he suggested that the diplomatic opening provided by the deal could change the dynamics of the region. 'It would be profoundly in the interest of citizens throughout the region if Sunnis and Shias weren't intent on killing each other,' he told the New Yorker's David Remnick in 2014. 'And although it would not solve the entire problem, if we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion—not funding terrorist organizations, not trying to stir up sectarian discontent in other countries, and not developing a nuclear weapon—you could see an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf states and Iran in which there's competition, perhaps suspicion, but not an active or proxy warfare,'" Keating writes.
"This is not what happened on either side of the Middle East's sectarian divide. Instead, the deal has more often contributed to escalating tensions. In retrospect, this was foreseeable: Iran was perfectly capable of projecting power across the region with or without a nuclear arsenal. As for its rivals, they never trusted Iran's assurances and saw warming relations between Tehran and Washington as a new and potentially even greater threat."
| | America's Africa Neglect Might Come Back to Haunt It | | America's declining interest in Africa didn't start under President Trump. But the "sense of US withdrawal has accelerated with this administration," David Pilling writes for the Financial Times. That's bad for the continent—and in the long term may come back to haunt the United States, too.
"By 2050, the number of Africans will have doubled to more than 2 billion and may double again by the end of the century. Within a generation or so, Nigeria is expected to surpass the US to become the world's third-most populous country," Pilling writes.
"The danger is that Africa will become home to a restless, jobless urban youth tempted to join the swelling flow of emigrants to Europe or prone to radicalization at home. The persistence of Africa-based militant Islamist groups, from Boko Haram in north-east Nigeria to al-Shabaab in Somalia, is a worrying omen.
"As the US presence fades, that of China—and, to a lesser extent, of India, Turkey and Morocco—has grown. China's influence is everywhere: in roads, rail, telecoms, infrastructure and in Djibouti, in a naval base. Of the UN Security Council's five [permanent] members, China has the most peacekeepers in Africa. When Zimbabwe's generals were preparing to ease Mr Mugabe from power, it was Beijing, not Washington, they tipped off first." | | | | | | |
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