| | | | Fareed: Trump's Kim Gambit Turns Diplomacy On Its Head | | News that President Trump plans to meet with Kim Jong Un is being described as a diplomatic breakthrough. And it is – for North Korea, Fareed says.
"It has been the goal of North Korea for decades now to have a high-profile, one-on-one summit meeting with the President of the United States. Kim Jong Un's father, Kim Jong Il, wanted such a meeting with President Clinton. The Clinton administration agreed to send Madeleine Albright to North Korea to begin talks and see if enough progress was made to warrant a presidential summit. It concluded that there wasn't," Fareed says.
"Trump himself previously ridiculed the idea of talks, tweeting, 'The U.S. has been talking to North Korea... for 25 years. Talking is not the answer!' He humiliated Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for his diplomatic efforts, tweeting that he was 'wasting his time.'"
"So, what changed this week? It's not clear. The charitable interpretation would be that the South Korean government received assurances that the North was serious about talks to eliminate its arsenal. Let's be clear that North Korea has announced no concessions, no reversal of its arsenal, no denuclearization.
"What appears to have happened is the following: Trump was told that in the talks between North and South, Kim Jong Un expressed a wish to meet with him, and Trump jumped at the opportunity. Henry Kissinger has often said that presidential summits should be the climax of a long negotiating process, not the beginning. Trump's gambit turns that dictum on its head. Victor Cha, once slated to be Trump's ambassador to South Korea, warns that a presidential summit is dangerous because if it fails, it leaves little room for further diplomacy. The outcome, he says, could actually end up being war."
Watch Fareed's full Take on North Korea on GPS this Sunday at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN. - What about us? The Korea JoongAng Daily editorializes that the news marks an "extraordinary turnaround" from the provocative name-calling last year between the two leaders. But talks between the US president and Kim hold risks as well as opportunities.
"Guaranteeing the regime's security in return for denuclearization could be complicated. The United States may have to remove strategic assets, including the nuclear umbrella, and even pull out soldiers from South Korea. A peace treaty between Pyongyang and Washington is also an end to the security alliance between Seoul and Washington. If North Korea's nuclear capabilities are not completely and irreversibly dismantled, South Korea can come under a grave security danger."
| | Is China Itching for a Fight? | | Chinese President Xi Jinping isn't contenting himself with consolidating political power. He's getting serious about transforming the military, too. And that raises serious questions for the United States, the Wall Street Journal editorializes.
"Since 2015 the PLA [People's Liberation Army] has shed 300,000 troops. Instead of relying on human-wave attacks, it is racing the US to develop artificial intelligence for the battlefield.
"Under Mr. Xi the PLA is harassing US forces in the international waters and airspace off China's coast. Chinese vessels and aircraft are testing Japanese defenses around the disputed Senkaku Islands almost daily. Despite a promise by Mr. Xi that China would not militarize the seven artificial islands it reclaimed in the South China Sea, the PLA has built hangers for 72 fighter aircraft and 10 bombers.
"Beijing is also stoking nationalism at home to an extent not seen since the death of Mao Zedong. Feature films such as 'Wolf Warrior' show the PLA fighting abroad, while television documentaries extol the military's reforms and growing strength."
"All of this raises questions about Mr. Xi's intensions."
| | Fareed: GOP Makes Its Last Stand Against Trump | | | The debate over President Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum is about far more than the cost of two metals. It is a battle for the soul of the Republican Party, Fareed argues in his latest Washington Post column.
"The new Republican Party is coming into view. It is a party skeptical about free markets. It is important to remember that it is not really possible to be in favor of capitalism and against free trade. From Adam Smith to Milton Friedman, every great theorist of capitalism has recognized that free trade is at the heart of what makes capitalism work. And they have all pointed out that tariffs are precisely the kind of government intervention — with the state choosing which industries to favor, which companies to reward — that produces inefficiency and corruption. But Republicans are now comfortable with government intervention, as long as it's for the right people," Fareed says.
"Having transformed the party's views on issues as diverse as immigration, fiscal discipline, foreign policy and law enforcement, if Trump wins the battle over trade with his party, he will have won the war. The Republican Party will be history." | | What Does Trump Have Against Europe? | | | President Trump's announcement of tariffs on steel and aluminum is just the latest snub of America's European allies, write Julie Smith and Rachel Rizzo in Foreign Policy. The relationship might be imperfect, "but it's the best one we've got." "At first, it appeared that the Trump administration's policy toward the EU would simply be one of benign neglect. The president has yet to appoint an ambassador to the EU, and there are no signs that anyone at the White House is in a rush to change that. The EU also barely secured mentions in the various strategy documents the administration has been rolling out in recent months," they write. That was until the tariff announcement. "Given the magnitude and importance of the United States' trade relationship with Europe, one would assume that the president would create a special carve out for America's closest allies. Trump made no mention of such an arrangement for Europe although the White House will create exemptions for Canada and Mexico." "Unfortunately, trade isn't the only area where the Trump administration is directly challenging the EU. The president and his advisors have also decided to take a hostile stance toward recent EU efforts to strengthen defense cooperation and integration across the Continent. This is an odd reaction given that over that past year Trump's main criticism of Europe is that it shirks defense spending and burden-sharing." | | Too Much False News? Don't Blame the Bots | | How fast does the truth travel? About six times slower than falsehoods, at least according to a new study published in the journal Science. And we can't blame the bots.
"Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information," researchers found after analyzing around 126,000 stories shared on Twitter by around 3 million people.
"We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information. Whereas false stories inspired fear, disgust, and surprise in replies, true stories inspired anticipation, sadness, joy, and trust. Contrary to conventional wisdom, robots accelerated the spread of true and false news at the same rate, implying that false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it." | | | | | | |
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