Wednesday, July 11, 2018

The Biggest Threat to NATO Isn't Trump

Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Jason Miks.

July 11, 2018

No, Trump Isn't the Biggest Threat to NATO

Some of President Trump's rhetoric about NATO is undoubtedly dangerous, writes Eli Lake for Bloomberg. But that shouldn't distract from the biggest danger to the organization.

"US policy – so far – has not reflected Trump's tantrums. US forces remain in Poland (and Germany, for that matter). The sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea, meddling in Eastern Ukraine and its interference in the 2016 US election remain. The US has supported the accession of Macedonia into NATO and sold Ukraine anti-tank missiles," Lake writes.

"The weak link in the alliance, in fact, is Turkey. Here is a country slipping into the sphere of influence of Russia – the very country that NATO was created to deter."

"In December Turkey finalized a deal to purchase the S-400 air defense system from Moscow, and in April the Turks broke ground on a Russian-made nuclear power plant. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan…has recently held talks with Putin to discuss the future of Syria."

Britain Needs to Face Reality About Donald Trump

President Trump's upcoming trip to Britain will be marked by protests. But Britons need to accept reality, writes Christopher Meyer for The Independent. He's the President of the United States, and Britain still needs America.

"Like it or not, we have vast interests invested in the US – economic, military, intelligence, to name but three. Our security and prosperity depend in large measure on keeping our close and long-standing partnership in good working order," writes Meyer, a former UK ambassador to the United States. "Forget the woolly, sentimentalized rhetoric of the 'special relationship,' we are talking hard national interests here. The plain truth is that the US is our single most important partner and ally and President Trump is its democratically elected leader."

We Have the NATO Spending Debate Upside Down

President Trump's suggestion that other NATO countries boost defense spending to 4% -- twice the currently agreed figure – misses the point, Peter Beinart argues in The Atlantic. It's not that allies should be spending more, it's that America needs to spend less.

"The threat of Russia actually invading the Baltic states is very small. And Russia poses basically zero military threat to larger NATO members like France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The far larger threat to Europe is ideological. It's rising authoritarianism," Beinart writes.

"What American liberals should be saying is not that Germany's defense spending is too low but that America's is too high. Plenty of Democratic voters, after all, desperately want the kind of welfare state that Germans already have. They want to check in to the hospital without risking bankruptcy and to attend college without going into debt. Higher defense spending means less money to achieve those goals."

China's Economic Juggernaut Has Already Sailed

Markets took a tumble Wednesday after the Trump administration said it was preparing a new round of tariffs on Chinese goods. But if the US is hoping to put the brakes on China's economic rise, then the truth is that that ship has already sailed, suggests Adair Turner for Project Syndicate.

"China's rise is now self-sustaining. A huge and increasingly affluent domestic market will make exports less vital to growth. Rapidly rising wages are creating strong incentives for best-practice application of robotics, and China's companies are becoming cutting-edge innovators in artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and renewable energy," Turner writes.

"And President Xi Jinping's 'Made in China 2025' program will help foster a shift to high-value manufacturing supported by Chinese domestic R&D. Even if the U.S. now slammed the trade and investment doors shut, it would make little difference to China's rising economic and political power."

The Hypocrisy of Trump's Trade Victim Card

There's a problem with President Trump's regular complaints that the United States is being taken advantage of by other countries, The New York Times editorializes: America is no trading angel, either. Look no further than the President's complaints about Canada.

"American dairy quotas and tariffs are so restrictive that the vast majority of the milk, cheese and butter families in the United States buy is made domestically. In fact, dairy producers in Wisconsin and other states sold $792 million in products to Canada in 2017, while Canadian producers sold just $149 million of dairy to the United States, according to the Brookings Institution," The New York Times notes.

"Trump thinks that it's in his interest to paint America as a victim of cunning foreigners. That much is clear. It's far less obvious why he believes that countries he has subjected to such baseless attacks will negotiate favorable trade agreements with a president who has shown he can't be trusted."

Why America Can't Walk Away from Syria

Bashar al-Assad's forces have made significant gains on the battlefield. But the conflict in Syria is far from over. If the United States walks away now, it risks leaving the door open to the return of an old nemesis, writes Jennifer Cafarella in Foreign Affairs.

"A future in which Assad reimposes control and prevents jihadist threats to the West is a fantasy. He deliberately fueled the rise of both ISIS and al Qaeda in order to use them to hold the West hostage while he destroyed what threatened him most: the moderate rebels that wished to negotiate a peace," she writes.

"His conquest of the areas of southern Syria held by formerly US-backed rebels would eliminate the last true bastion of moderate resistance to his rule, removing Western options and neutralizing the international diplomatic process by eliminating the rebels willing to negotiate. The defeat of moderates does not win Assad the war, however. It paves the way for groups such as al Qaeda to redefine the nature of the Syrian fight from a pro-democracy rebellion to a global jihad."

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