| | | | Team Trump's Double Nuclear Folly… | | The Trump administration said Saturday it is withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a deal signed back in 1987 that forced the US and Russia "to eliminate ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between approximately 300 and 3,400 miles." It's a terrible mistake, argues Daniel Larison for The American Conservative.
"Casting aside a landmark arms control agreement risks starting a new destabilizing arms race with Russia at a time when relations with Moscow are already extremely poor. Withdrawing from the treaty amounts to letting Russia off the hook for its recent violations, and it gains the US nothing except the ability to waste more resources on nuclear weapons," Larison writes. "If European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are asked to deploy US weapons aimed at Russia, this may cause new ruptures within the alliance, pushing Europeans to work toward a security system that's less dependent on the US," Bershidsky writes. - John Bolton is scheduled to meet Vladimir Putin on Tuesday for talks poised to include the INF Treaty decision. The US national security adviser won't be the only visiting foreign official, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency reports.
A group of North Korean officials are heading to Russia "amid media reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is planning to visit Russia later this month or early next month."
| | | Most of the discussion of the Trump administration's decision to withdraw from the INF Treaty has focused on a potential arms race with Russia. But the move could actually have bigger repercussions for Asia, writes John Lee for CNN Opinion. That's a good thing.
"[T]here is almost no chance that Beijing would agree to any INF-like terms. Given relative weaknesses in sea- and air-based platforms, its land-based intermediate missiles (capable of carrying conventional and nuclear payloads) have become the central pillar of its approach to defend the Chinese mainland and deter the US and other Asian countries from intervening and prevailing in possible local conflicts," Lee writes.
"China has said it is 'wrong' for the US to cite competition with China as one reason to pull out of the treaty and warns that doing so may well adversely affect the global strategic balance and stability. Closer to the truth is that Trump's announcement will send a shiver down its spine. It is further indication that America will no longer compete with one hand tied behind its back." | | What China's Leaders Get Wrong About Populism | | | China's leaders appear to be learning the wrong lessons from the populist wave that has swept the West, The Economist's Chaguan columnist argues. Yes, democracy can be messy, but the leadership's apparent disdain for the voice of the people is storing up trouble.
"Elites—at least those capable of introspection—learned how little they are trusted by voters who did not prosper amid rapid globalization. Thoughtful elites further learned that aggregate economic gains do not replace the human need to feel useful, respected and heeded, as individuals. In a lesson of especial relevance to China, big Western parties have learned that, during economic booms, it is easy to overestimate mass support for elite policies," the column argues.
"Chinese leaders inhabit a universe that revolves around output legitimacy. They justify one-party rule by pointing to such achievements as economic growth and social stability. Though concerned with public opinion and eager for discreetly gathered feedback, they are appalled by chaotic, fact-free elections in the democratic world. Yet Western elites were taught the opposite lesson by their defeats by populists—namely, if voters do not feel listened to, displays of technocratic expertise are not enough." | | Europe's Dangerous Game of Chicken | | Italy has long been Europe's hidden crisis, writes Matt O'Brien for The Washington Post. Not for much longer.
Why is this a crisis? "The answer is that Europe isn't treating this like a relatively small-bore disagreement—Italy's populist government, after all, is only proposing to increase its deficit from 0.8 to 2.4 percent of GDP—but rather as a direct challenge to the 'ever closer union' they're trying to create," O'Brien writes.
"It's one thing, you see, to run a bigger deficit, like France will next year, when you're apologetic about it and are ruled by the very avatar of Europhilism that is French President Emmanuel Macron. But it's quite another when you seem to be making a point of flouting the rules, and don't seem all that committed to the idea of the European project. And so the European Commission, the supranational body that has the authority to reject any country's budget, has signaled that it might take the unprecedented step of doing so if Rome doesn't show more obeisance for the deficit rules they all agreed as part of Europe's Fiscal Compact."
| | Brazil's (Likely) Sad Sunday | | Brazilians head to the polls Sunday for the second round of their country's presidential election, which pits the right-wing Jair Bolsonaro against left-wing ex-Sao Paulo mayor Fernando Haddad. The New York Times editorializes that the country appears poised to make a sad choice.
"Brazil is emerging from its worst-ever recession; a broad investigation called Operation Car Wash has revealed wanton corruption in government; a popular former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is in prison for corruption; his successor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached; her successor, Michel Temer, is under investigation; violent crime is rampant. Brazilians are desperate for change," the paper says.
"Bolsonaro's gross views are construed as candor, his obscure career as a congressman as the promise of an outsider who will clean the stables and his pledge of an iron fist as hope of a reprieve from a record average of 175 homicides a day last year. An evangelical Christian, he preaches a blend of social conservatism and economic liberalism, though he confesses to only a superficial understanding of economics." | | | | | | |
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