| | | | Racism is a National Security Issue | | | With the new Senate reports on Russian interference in the 2016 election, we have "unassailable confirmation that a foreign power sought to exploit racial tensions in the United States for its own gain," writes Sherrilyn Ifill in The Washington Post. "Russia's campaign included a massive effort to deceive and co-opt African Americans."
Racism "is, and always has been, a national security vulnerability — a fundamental and easily exploitable reality of American life." The US has "to accept that foreign powers seize upon these divisions because they are real — because racism remains America's Achilles' heel… [O]ur failure to acknowledge hard truths, especially when it comes to race, makes it easier for foreign powers to turn us against one another."
"Russia did not conjure out of thin air the black community's legitimate grievances about racist policing. Nor did it invent racist and hateful conspiracy theories. Rather, Russian trolls seized upon these real problems as ready-made sources of discord."
"[W]e have to make it easier, not harder, for Americans to vote," writes Ifill. "The revelations of Russia's racial targeting should serve as a wake-up call that domestic voter suppression… effectively aids foreign attacks on our democracy." | | Is the US unintentionally fostering a Russia-China alliance? | | | "Washington's conventional wisdom views a Chinese-Russian alliance as a remote prospect," writes Dimitri K. Simes in The National Interest, but the US should get wise, since "global geopolitics and economics would change profoundly to America's and the West's disadvantage," were such an alliance to arise.
China and Russia "have a long history of mutual animosity," but "most alliances throughout history have been based on mutual needs, not mutual love." The two countries "share authoritarian rule… and resentment of what they see as US efforts at military containment, if not encirclement, and overt and covert political attacks on their systems of government."
"[T]he very possibility of a Sino-Russian alliance of convenience emboldens Moscow in facing American pressure and makes Russia more willing to target US interests worldwide if the relationship further deteriorates."
America has a blindspot. "[U]nderstanding and accounting for the unintended consequences of confronting two great powers simultaneously" also requires acknowledging that there are limits to the US's "military and economic capabilities." | | Who's Winning the Trade War? | | | President Trump once tweeted that "Tariffs will make our country much richer than it is today," but "[s]o far, there's not much evidence of that," write Benn Steil and Benjamin Della Rocca in the Council on Foreign Relations' geoeconomics blog today. In the ongoing tariff war, "US exports to China have plummeted since June—while US imports from China have continued to rise."
But that doesn't mean the war has no winners. One of them, Steil and Della Rocca write, is Russia.
"Whereas China had accounted for about 22 percent of U.S. oil exports in the two years to July 2018, it fell to zero thereafter. This has proven a boon to alternative suppliers like Russia, as shown in the right-hand figure. And so, in the ultimate irony, Americans are paying tariffs that boost the profits of Russian firms subject to U.S. sanctions." | | "Merry Xmas, Prime Minister" | | | "For eight years, Viktor Orban has seemed unassailable," writes the editorial board of The Financial Times, with his "softer version of Russian President Vladimir Putin's 'managed democracy.'" This week's growing opposition protests may indicate a shift in Hungarian politics in "the level of anger, and of unity among usually disparate groups."
"The protests follow an unusually rapid and provocative series of steps by Mr Orban's government in recent weeks to strengthen its grip, even as the EU has stepped up pressure on Budapest." Protestors' demands include "not just revoking the 'slavery law'" (as a new labor law is dubbed), but also more liberal and EU-oriented policies, such as "ensuring independent courts and media [and] allowing the EU prosecutor's office to oversee the government."
"Mr Orban may be finding his populist promises are running into reality," writes the FT. "He may also find any concessions may not be enough to prevent today's protests coalescing into a more durable campaign to restore the legal, media and democratic safeguards he has so energetically eroded." | | 2018 a Dangerous Year for Journalists Worldwide—and in the US | | | The gruesome slaying of Jamal Khashoggi is not the only death causing concern to the international journalism community. Today, Reporters without Borders released its annual "round-up" on journalists detained, killed, and missing in 2018. A "shocking total of 80 journalists" were killed worldwide this year. And over 60% of those "were deliberately targeted because their reporting threatened the interests of certain people in positions of political, economic, or religious power or organized crime."
Afghanistan and Syria were cited among the most deadly countries for journalists, while Yemen has seen thirty held hostage by Houthi rebels. And "China continues to be the world's biggest jailer of journalists with 60 held," many in "inhuman conditions."
Surprise? "The United States joined the ranks of the world's deadliest countries for the media this year," with the slaying of four journalists during the mass shooting at Maryland's Capital Gazette in June. - "Female black journalists and politicians get sent an abusive tweet every 30 seconds" (Wired)
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