| | | | Why Team Trump Won't Kick Saudi Arabia to the Curb | | After speaking with Saudi Arabia's King Salman, President Trump has floated the idea that "rogue killers" could be behind the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Don't be surprised at America's reluctance to break with the Kingdom, writes Gideon Rachman for The Financial Times. The two countries' fates are now likely too tightly bound for that.
"The US, which used to be the undisputed kingpin in the region, currently has a much more limited set of relations than Russia. America has cut all channels to Iran, and its relations with Turkey are likely to remain fraught — despite the Turks' release from prison of Andrew Brunson…If the US now carries through on the threat of 'severe' punishment for Saudi Arabia, it will also alienate the Gulf states, and could leave it without any close allies in the region — apart from Israel," Rachman writes.
"For that reason, it is likely that the Trump administration will do its best to limit the diplomatic fallout from the Khashoggi affair — and that even Congress will tread carefully. Given the grim realities of realpolitik, it is hard to blame them for that. But the idea that the US can build a grand strategy around the maniacal figure of MbS will have to be abandoned."
| | The Biggest Lesson from Bavaria | | | The sister party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrat Union lost its majority in state elections in Bavaria on Sunday. The result says much about the disintegration of traditional party allegiance in Germany and beyond, The Economist says.
"The [Christian Social Union] used to be the epitome of what Germans call 'Volksparteien,' or 'people's parties.' These giant, big-tent, center-right or center-left forces used to have something approaching a monopoly on the politics of most Western European countries. But in most, that monopoly is disintegrating," The Economist says.
"The Gaullists and Socialists are losing their relevance in France while the far right, far left and radical center surge. In the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Italy the old Christian democrats and socialists have been diminished by more vital forces on the right, left and center."
"At a national level, the old notion of big mainstream parties as clearing houses for differing outlooks and interests is giving way to something more tribal. Whatever you think of the CSU…recognize that their decline stands for something bigger: the end of an age of consensus..." | | Don't Be Fooled by Turkey's "Change of Heart" | | | Turkey's leaders are suddenly "sounding like spokesmen for Human Rights Watch," Eli Lake writes for Bloomberg. Don't be fooled. While shining a light on the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi and releasing a US pastor are welcome moves, there's still plenty to be concerned about.
"For the last two years, the Committee to Protect Journalists has ranked Turkey as the world's leading jailer of journalists. In October 2016, following a failed military coup that summer, Turkish authorities shut down 15 media organizations. The Turkish state has abused the Interpol system to issue a red notice for journalists who write critically about the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan." | | Xi's Dangerous One-Man Show | | For decades, China avoided the usual pitfalls of authoritarian governments in large part by distributing power among its leaders, suggests Jonathan Tepperman in Foreign Policy. But in accumulating ever greater control, Xi Jinping is throwing out the parts of the system that actually worked. That has dangerous implications for China – and the world.
"Of course, the old system remained highly repressive…and was far from perfect in many other ways. It did, however, allow the Chinese government to function in an unusually effective fashion and avoid many of the pathologies suffered by other authoritarian regimes. Censorship never disappeared, for example, but party members could disagree and debate ideas, and internal reports could be surprisingly blunt," Tepperman writes.
"No longer."
"Since personalized dictatorships are necessarily bad at admitting fault—for nothing can be permitted to damage the myth of the omnipotent leader—China will also likely become less adept at correcting mistakes once it makes them." - President Trump is right to push back against China, Fareed argued in his Take from Sunday's show. But the administration needs to be more strategic in how it does so.
"Tariffs and military maneuvers might be fine at a tactical level but they don't address the core challenge. The United States desperately needs to rebuild its infrastructure, fix its educational system, spend money on basic scientific research and solve the political dysfunctions that have made its model so much less appealing around the world these days. If China is a threat, that is the best response."
Watch the full Take here.
| | Defense Secretary James Mattis visits Vietnam on Tuesday. Per AP's Robert Burns: "By making a rare second trip this year to Vietnam…Mattis is signaling how intensively the Trump administration is trying to counter China's military assertiveness by cozying up to smaller nations in the region that share American wariness about Chinese intentions."
Canada on Wednesday will become the second country in the world to legalize recreational marijuana. Catherine Porter reports for The New York Times that Canadians already smoke plenty of pot. "Statistics collected by the national census bureau reveal that 42.5 percent of Canadians have tried marijuana and around 16 percent have used it over the past three months. A 2013 Unicef report found that among people ages 15 to 24, one-third had consumed cannabis in the previous three months — making Canadian youth the biggest partakers in the world," Porter writes.
Afghanistan holds parliamentary elections on Saturday. Sayed Salahuddin reports for The Washington Post: "More than 2,000 polling sites have already been shut because of violence. Advised and backed by US-led troops, tens of thousands of Afghan forces are set to be deployed on election day." | | | | | | |
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