| | | | Fareed: Trump Just Opened Pandora's Box | | The only real way to make sense of President Trump's decision to walk away from the Iran nuclear deal is to see it as part of a strategy of regime change, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column. But if that's the goal, then the President is likely to be disappointed – and has dramatically ratcheted up tensions in an already unstable part of the world.
"Iran is a repressive and anti-American regime that has spread its influence in the Middle East, often to America's detriment. But it is also an ancient civilization, with centuries of power and influence in the region. The notion that the United States could solve all of its problems with Tehran by toppling the regime is fanciful," Fareed writes.
"It has withstood US pressure and sanctions for nearly four decades. And even if it were somehow possible to topple it, look around. The lesson of the past two decades in the Middle East is surely that regime change leads to chaos, war, refugee flows, sectarian strife and more. It opens a Pandora's box in a land already rife with woes."
| | Europe, Stop Being America's Doormat | | | It's time for Europe to stop acting like a doormat and stand up to the United States over its decision to abandon the Iran nuclear deal, write Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson in The New York Times. It has plenty of tools at its disposal for doing so.
"[The] European Union in particular may feel compelled to acknowledge the harsh reality that it has yet to act like an organization with a G.D.P. roughly equal to that of the United States — and to change the situation by signaling to Washington that on certain matters it refuses to be ignored," they write.
"What can Europe do to get Mr. Trump's attention? President Hassan Rouhani of Iran has indicated that his country will continue to adhere to the terms of the deal for the time being and deal with other parties to it in hopes of securing its benefits. This confers on the European Union, Britain and France — all of which are parties — some leverage. Acknowledging Iran's compliance and continuing to do business with Iran without imposing sanctions would mitigate the effect of the White House's sanctions and make it easier for advocates of the deal in Tehran to make their case."
"If the administration's next move were to impose secondary sanctions on Europe, the Europeans could slap its own penalties on American multinational corporations, which in turn would place additional pressure on the White House." | | Team Trump Is Outsourcing US Foreign Policy | | | President Trump's unpredictability might seem to be the defining feature of US foreign policy right now. But there's something more important going on, suggests Daniel Levy for Foreign Policy. The Trump administration is effectively outsourcing policy to regional allies. In Asia that might work. In the Middle East, it could be a disaster.
"In Korea, the lucky outcome has been a fragile possibility of peace. But it will take responsible local leadership from US allies and others. South Korea, with assists from Japan and China, has provided that. In the Middle East, however, myopic warmongering has won the day as US allies led by Israel, with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates piling on, have pushed a pliant US president toward a confrontation that they perceive as beneficial to their own regional interests," Levy writes.
"For all his vitriol toward former President Barack Obama, Trump has been a case study in leading from behind. Key areas of national security policy are simply up for grabs in unprecedented ways." | | Iraqis head to the polls on Saturday. Peter Bergen suggests for CNN Opinion that while the devastation wrought by ISIS in some parts of the country will takes years to recover from, the extremist group may also have brought the country together – and created a halo effect for incumbent Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi.
"When Abadi became prime minister four years ago he was seen as a colorless technocrat with scant chance of successfully governing Iraq's fractious ethnic and sectarian groups – but there's nothing quite like being invaded by ISIS to bring a nation together," Bergen writes.
Meanwhile, what "is striking about these various parties [competing in the election] is that none of them are running on overtly sectarian lines as 'the Sunni party' or 'the Shia party.' This bodes well for the future of Iraq."
| | No, Your Populist Enemy's Enemy Isn't Your Friend | | Across the globe, "left-wing and right-wing populists are finding it surprisingly easy to make common cause," Yascha Mounk writes for Slate. Those who believe the far-left are merely creating a healthy counterweight to the rise of right-wing populism are making a terrible mistake.
In noting the differences in left- and right-wing populism, Mounk writes, some have suggested that left-wing populism is "focused on the conflict between ordinary people and political elites, it does not scapegoat outsiders. Therefore, it isn't likely to compound existing injustices."
"But this overlooks that ideology is not the most defining characteristic of the populists. As I argue in The People vs. Democracy, what truly defines them is a political style that combines a fixation on odious villains and simple solutions with a deep disdain for the existing institutions of representative democracy. That helps to explain why left-wing populists might sound very different from right-wing populists in the early stages, when they are far from power, but are likely to resemble them more and more as they mature."
| | Planes and automobiles might get headlines when it comes to trade, but America dominates in another export field, The Economist notes. In fact, global exports of this good were worth more than airplanes in 2016: human-blood plasma.
Most of the exported plasma comes from collection centers, and "is used to make drugs such as factor VIII, which helps haemophiliacs' blood to clot, and vaccines for rabies, tetanus and Rhesus disease," The Economist writes. "Almost 50 million liters of it were used in 2015, enough to fill 20 Olympic swimming pools. America, the OPEC of plasma, produces 15 of those swimming-pool equivalents. Forget steel and cars: plasma makes up 1.6% of America's total goods exports."
"The secret of this success is simple: America lets companies pay people for their plasma. So do the few other countries that are good at collecting the stuff, including Germany and Hungary. Others don't. Big importers such as Australia, France and Belgium have banned payment."
"The dependence on a single source leaves the rest of the world vulnerable to an interruption of supply. To protect their people, therefore, other governments need to diversify their supplies of plasma. Paying for it would make a big difference." | | | | | | |
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