NATO’s Zombie Policy

View this email in your browser Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Jason Miks. July 18, 2018 What Trump Got Right in Helsinki There was plenty to criticize about President Trump's meeting with Vladimir Putin this week, but that doesn't mean he didn't make any valid points, writes Katrina vanden Heuvel in The Washington Post. One of them? His call for better relations between the two countries.   "Trump should not be scorned for simply convening a summit. If the two powers continue to talk and, as Putin summarized, restart the arms-reduction talks, revive a working group on international terrorism, work together to forge peace and provide humanitarian relief in Syria, and seek to enforce the Minsk agreements in Ukraine, important progress might be possible. In any case, the meeting itself helps reduce tensions that have been building in recent years. Trump is not wrong to say that is a 'good thing.'" Don't panic. President Trump's meeting with Putin made the US President look amateurish, but a look back at history suggests there's no need to panic, writes Timothy Stanley for CNN Opinion. "[I]f Trump's meeting with Putin truly shocks you, I urge you to Google photos of Jimmy Carter meeting the Shah of Iran. Or Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein. Both these tyrants were once considered friends or partners with the United States, much as Reagan once described the Contras – who were accused of kidnap, rape and torture in the Nicaraguan civil war – as 'the moral equal of our founding fathers.'"   NATO's Zombie Policy President Trump's questioning of why the United States should defend NATO member Montenegro has left many wondering about America's commitment to defending all NATO allies. The bigger question, though, is why Montenegro was invited to join in the first place, writes Daniel Larison for The American Conservative. "Adding Montenegro is relatively harmless by itself, since Montenegro faces no military threats from any of its neighbors (two of which are already in NATO). That just underscores how unnecessary and useless bringing them into the alliance is," Larison writes. "Expanding the alliance into the Baltics was a serious mistake, and further expansion into the former USSR would be inviting disaster…NATO membership should be granted based on what the new members can offer the alliance, and not as a reward for its political reforms or because it resolved a dispute with a neighbor." India's Ticking Time Bomb A youthful population is supposed to offer a so-called demographic dividend as the share of working age citizens increases. In India, that dividend is starting to look more like a ticking time bomb, writes Aarti Betigeri for The Interpreter. "As India continues to transition from a largely agrarian-based economy into something more modern, its citizens want a slice of the pie. Young people, armed with smartphones, are not content scratching out a life of subsistence farming or working as laborers," Betigeri writes. "But India's transition has been an uneven one. Most developing nations follow the same trajectory, moving from agriculture to manufacturing to services. India has leapfrogged right over manufacturing and into services, such as the much-vaunted call centers. Without a solid manufacturing base that can provide mass employment, India was always going to hit potholes in its growth journey." Brexit Opponents Should Be Careful What They Wish For With Britain's Parliament seemingly deadlocked over Brexit, the idea of another referendum might be back in play, The Economist says. But those pushing for another vote should be careful what they wish for. One proposal is for "a vote with three options: stay in the EU; accept the deal that [Theresa] May agrees on with Brussels; or leave with no deal," The Economist says. "Trading with the EU on World Trade Organization terms is one thing. Leaving with no agreement on anything from aviation to citizens' rights and radioactive materials would be dramatically worse, and not a 'clean' break at all. "As the Brussels talks enter their closing phase, Remainers may be excited by the faint prospect of annulling Brexit. Yet the price of this is a corresponding rise in the probability of crashing out of the EU with no agreement. Mrs May has foolishly spent the past two years repeating the bluff, aimed at Brussels, that 'no deal is better than a bad deal.' There is a terrible risk that the British public take her at her word." Climate Change's Surprising Future Victim? There could be an unexpected victim of climate change in the next couple of decades, especially if you live in coastal areas of the United States, writes Greta Jochem on Wired, citing a new study. Your internet connection. "The internet seems magical and intangible sometimes. But the reality is, you rely on physical, concrete objects—like giant data centers and miles of underground cables—to stay connected," Jochem says. "All that infrastructure is at risk of being submerged. In just 15 years, roughly 4,000 miles of fiber-optic cables in US coastal cities could go underwater, potentially causing internet outages." "'All of this equipment is meant to be weather-resistant—but it's not waterproof,' says Paul Barford, UW-Madison professor of computer science and a coauthor of the paper. Much of the system was put into place in the '90s without much consideration of climate change, he says."   Share Share Tweet Forward Copyright © 2017 CNN What did you like about today's Global Briefing? 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