| | | | Fareed: The Real Meaning of Paul Ryan's Departure | | | The announcement by House Speaker Paul Ryan that he won't seek reelection is about more than the Republican Party's prospects in November, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column. It also marks the end of the Reagan revolution. "The Reagan redefinition of the party, as a quasi-libertarian organization, persisted through the Clinton years, though the GOP continued to bring along its socially conservative base. The party leaders and its official ideology were Reaganite," Fareed writes. "Then came Donald Trump. Early on, Trump seemed to recognize that the Republican Party had changed and that the core ideological appeal was no longer about economics but nationalism, race and religion." "Ryan had his faults. He embodied the hypocrisy of Reaganism, advocating fiscal probity while exploding the deficit. He was a bad legislative strategist, unable to repeal Obamacare after years to prepare for it. But he was a genuine and ardent Reaganite. His successors will not be. The second transformation of the Republican Party is now complete." | | Why Trump and Putin are Stuck on a Collision Course | | Top Pentagon officials warned President Trump on Thursday "he risks escalating US involvement in Syria if he goes forward with the type of aggressive bombing campaign he has pressed for over the past week," CNN reports. The problem for both Trump and Vladimir Putin, though, is that they might both be locked on a path that leads to a showdown neither leader really wants, argues Yury Barmin for The Moscow Times.
Last year's US missile strike on Syria has left Trump facing a dilemma, "which is the ineffectiveness of strikes as a deterrent against further use of chemical weapons. If he really wants to bring the message home to Russia and Damascus, Trump would need to come up with measures that really hurt the Assad government. But those same measures are likely to risk an escalation with Russia.
"Moscow, on the other hand, needs to make up its mind how serious it takes Trump's threats and how far it should go to shield the Syrian military infrastructure. Allowing the United States even a few targeted strikes sends a wrong message to partners and opponents alike.
"April 2018 is no April 2017. Another American strike against Assad is no longer interpreted as blowing off steam. Against the backdrop of recent Israeli strikes and American strikes in Deir Ezzor that reportedly left dozens of Russians dead, a lack of retaliation from Russia and Syria this time will be condoning US behavior and inviting even more pressure." "Even the United Nations, which released regular reports on the death toll during the first years of the war, gave its last estimate in 2016—when it relied on 2014 data, in part—and said that it was virtually impossible to verify how many had died," Specia says.
"At that time, a United Nations official said 400,000 people had been killed. But so many of the biggest moments of the war have happened since then."
| | London to Paris: I Believe That's Our Chair You're Sitting In | | | British Prime Minister Theresa May seems ready to join the US in a military response to the alleged chemical weapons attack in Syria, even if that means doing so without Parliamentary backing. Con Coughlin writes for The National that one reason could be a growing fear that Paris is taking London's seat at the diplomatic table. "[W]ith Britain preparing to leave the EU, Washington can no longer count on London to persuade the Europeans to do the right thing, which has generally been the American approach since the end of the Cold War. So, talking to France instead, which, after Britain, has Europe's largest military capability, makes sense to the Americans," Coughlin writes. "Allowing France to replace Britain in Washington's affections, though, is not something any British prime minister wants, and the speed with which Mrs May has thrown away her customary caution and embraced American calls for action against Mr Al Assad therefore needs to be seen in the context of her desire to maintain Britain's traditional position at the top table of American policy-making." | | What Pompeo Critics Get Wrong | | | Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo was grilled Thursday by a key Senate committee. But critics should keep in mind something important, Bloomberg editorializes: Pompeo's job is not to constrain President Trump.
"Both Republican and Democratic senators have been right to ask whether Pompeo would be willing to 'stand up' to the president. They've also been right to raise questions about Pompeo's troubling past remarks attacking Muslims and the legalization of same-sex marriages. The job of representing American values to the world—not least human rights, which Pompeo promised to champion—leaves no room for intolerance, bigotry and discrimination. In that and other respects, character is as important as competence," Bloomberg says.
"That said, the greatest foreign policy challenges facing the US—in North Korea, Iran, Syria, Russia and China—will demand robust and sustained diplomacy as a first resort. That is all but impossible when a president feels he can't rely on his diplomats. For better and worse, Trump frequently changes his mind, most recently on whether the US should be in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Could more such positive shifts—say, on the Paris accord—be in the offing? The odds will be better if the president is working with a team he trusts." | | The Sky's the Limit for US-Russia Tensions? Maybe Not | | Russia's recent test of an anti-satellite weapon flew under the news radar. But the hardware poses a problem for the United States, even if these weapons aren't fired in anger, writes Ankit Panda for The Daily Beast.
"Russia's growing interest in the development of anti-satellite weapons raises an uneasy prospect: that Putin, in another act of norm defiance, may authorize the test of an interceptor against a live satellite in stable low-Earth orbit, repeating the disastrous step that China took in 2007 when it shot down a weather satellite," Panda writes.
"More than two-thousand distinct pieces of debris from that Chinese interception continue to orbit the Earth at high speeds, threatening other satellites. Hundreds of pieces will remain threatening for decades."
| | America, the Paid Leave Laggard | | The United States was once a rich world leader in the share of women in the workforce. But a new report from the International Monetary Fund underscores how an almost unique failure on family leave has left it looking increasingly like a laggard, The Economist writes.
"In 1985, 70% of American women aged between 25 and 54 were in the labor market (either in work or looking for it). That compared with 57% in Australia and 59% in Germany. But the IMF's latest World Economic Outlook, published this week, shows how these countries have caught up with America and overtaken it. While the proportion of 'prime age' women in the labor market in the United States is now 74%, in Australia it is 76% and in Germany it is 83%. In France, which was close behind America in the mid-eighties, the share is 84%," The Economist says.
"European countries have introduced and expanded laws that require companies to give parents paid time off after the birth or adoption of a child. Employers in the EU must offer a minimum paid maternity leave of 14 weeks; many countries mandate for more than that and also provide paternity leave, thus reducing companies' reluctance to employ women of childbearing age. America has remained almost the only developed country to have no national paid parental leave at all." | | | | | | |
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