| | | | Fareed: What effect does the Trump circus have on the world? | | "It's easy to get distracted by the circus of the Trump presidency. But what is its larger effect?" asks Fareed in his Washington Post column this week.
From Russian President Vladimir Putin to Chinese President Xi Jinping, major world leaders have gathered at this week's Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and East Asia summits as well as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference. "But the president of the United States is MIA."
Why are ASEAN and APEC so important? "[C]ountries in the region are trying to navigate the once-in-a-lifetime power shift taking place: the rise of China."
The US has declined to "shape the agenda, shore up its alliances or deepen its ties in the region" even as Asian countries complain that the US "is abandoning the field to Beijing." And "Trump's continued lack of interest will only feed this fear," Fareed writes.
This, Fareed argues, is "the Trump effect in the retreat on trade in Asia."
Although "the Trump administration has a valid point about China's abuse of the trading system," Trump's notion that "'if we didn't trade, we'd save a hell of a lot of money,'" Fareed argues, "is simply false."
"Few ideas have been as thoroughly tested through history as the notion that trade raises a country's income and living standards"—not to mention international cooperation and peace. "American leaders understood that for decades, until now." - For more, tune into GPS this Sunday at 10a.m. and 1p.m. EST on CNN.
| | Brexit's other casualty is US interests | | The Brexit draft agreement has been reviled by Remainers and Leavers alike. Even European Council President Donald Tusk characterized it as a "lose-lose" deal.
But there is "another loser" in the Brexit debacle, argues David Frum for The Atlantic: the US and its economic interests.
Why? "Brexit, along with Trump's trade war, is… frightening financial markets, and edging us all closer to the next global recession," all the while tax cuts in the US are pushing the country deep into deficits.
"The most powerful anti-recession stimulus available is freer trade," Frum argues. Until Brexit, the UK could be counted on "to expedite trade and commerce across the Channel" and "veto anti-American actions by other European countries, especially France."
"American pressure might possibly construct such an off-ramp just in time," allowing both the UK and EU to save both face and trade. "Instead, Trump hit Britain as well as other trade partners with steel and aluminum tariffs," setting off a trade war and ramping up the risk to free trade at the very moment when the US and trans-Atlantic economies need it most.
| | Aftershocks of America's Iran policy felt in Afghanistan | | | This month's sanctions and "Washington's ever-hardening line on Iran" could have an unexpected consequence, argues Michael Kugelman for Foreign Policy. "Scuttling the nuclear deal and sanctioning Tehran could also cause America's unending war in Afghanistan, Iran's eastern neighbor, to escalate violently."
"[W]ith no prospect of improving relations with the United States, at least as long as Trump remains president, Iran has a strong incentive to increase military support to the Taliban," Kugelman writes. "[T]his surge in support could come at the very moment when Washington is making a full-bore effort to bring the insurgents to the peace table."
"Iran has long feared the United States will use Afghanistan as a staging ground for a strike on its nuclear facilities." A hardening US stance "only deepens Tehran's anxieties about the US presence on its eastern flank."
There are signs that this anxiety caused is already having effects on the ground, Kugelman argues. "The Taliban itself has acknowledged Iranian assistance" and has "reached a deal with Tehran to send fighters to Iranian military academies for six months of 'advanced training.'"
| | Be the Global Briefing Editor! | | Hello loyal newsletter readers, Fareed here. Are you (or is somebody you know) eager? Ambitious? Do you have a passion for foreign policy? Are you a great reader of all things international? Can you write and edit well? If you answered "yes" to all of the above, please apply to be the next editor of this newsletter.
| | How surveillance is affecting progress, worldwide | | "People change their behavior when they live their lives under surveillance," whether government or corporate, writes Bruce Schneier today in Wired. "They self-censor. They become conformist."
"In the months and years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, many of us censored what we spoke about on social media or what we searched on the internet... And this isn't exclusively an American event; internet self-censorship is prevalent across the globe, China being a prime example."
From the abolition of slavery to women's and gay rights, political movements around the world have started off in relative privacy, Schneier argues, "as ideas that were, quite literally, dangerous to assert." "Privacy encourages social progress by giving the few room to experiment free from the watchful eye of the many."
With too much surveillance, "we'll have a much harder time breaking down our inherited moral assumptions."
"China serves as a cautionary tale," Schneier writes. The Chinese government is "about to further enhance their system, giving every citizen a 'social credit' rating... Those who are conforming, obedient, and apolitical will be given high scores. People without those scores will be denied privileges like access to certain schools and foreign travel."
| | China to monitor an e-Yuan? | | IMF Chair Christine Lagarde said central banks should consider issuing their own digital currencies at ASEAN this week.
The state-owned People's Bank of China (PBOC) is already planning "to create a digital version of the yuan that could win back a significant share of the payments now being made through" privately owned online services, writes Luke Deer for the Nikkei Asian Review.
But creating an e-yuan "isn't about seizing a business opportunity," Deer writes. "Rather, the PBOC sees digital currency as giving it a technological tool that will dramatically improve its capacity to monitor what Chinese people and companies are doing with their money."
The Bank "should not go too far," argues Deer. Any "government move to replace physical cash with an official digital currency must preserve a degree of individual privacy in payments." | | | | | | |
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