| | | | Forty years ago today, America's ambassador to Afghanistan was killed in Kabul. Mystery still lingers over the case. Via eyewitness accounts, veteran foreign correspondent Arthur Kent details the kidnapping of Adolph "Spike" Dubs—one of the State Department's best and brightest—by armed men and the evident involvement of Russian operatives in a botched hostage rescue that left Dubs dead. Vanished evidence and the subsequent death of a kidnapping-gang member only clouded the case.
As the US plans its withdrawal from Afghanistan, it's worth remembering the first American to give his life there since the start of the Cold War. The murder produced "a feeling that America is a kind of helpless giant, kicked around and insulted at will," Walter Cronkite said at the time; it also cost the US a diplomat who stood against America's costly role in Afghanistan's conflict, at a point when the country's four-decade cycle of warfare was beginning. | | Middle East Politics Unlikely to Be Solved in Warsaw | | The US has convened a Middle East summit in Warsaw, and while it was reportedly touted as an effort to build consensus against Iran, that's not what's happening: European allies were reluctant to attend, and despite a broadened goal to discuss Middle East issues generally, Vice President Mike Pence still chided US allies for circumventing America's Iran sanctions—only highlighting divisions.
The wider focus only draws attention to the Trump administration's mishmash of policies in the region—from Syria to Yemen to Israel/Palestine—that are unlikely to garner widespread support, Adam Taylor writes in The Washington Post.
Point being: By early reviews, the summit looks like an odd gathering that highlights America's difficulty building consensus from traditional allies on Middle East issues, as Iran and Russia each gain influence there. | | Cheering Brexit's Currency Disaster | | Some like it when currency falls. Case in point: Presidential candidate Donald Trump, on arriving in Scotland after Britons voted to leave the EU, said, "Look, if the pound goes down, they're going to do more business. You know, when the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry, frankly."
The same logic prevails among some Brexiteers today, The Wall Street Journal writes, calling their optimism ill founded. The pound has already dropped nearly 20% since late 2015 as the Brexit vote approached, and British exports haven't increased. What have, however, are consumer prices; as imports get relatively more expensive, Britons are paying more of their weaker pounds for foreign goods.
If Brexit was a protectionist move, it's mostly reaping the downsides, so far—ones that figure to hurt low- and middle-income consumers. | | Yemen's War Will Scar Its Landscape | | If today's horrors were not enough, Yemen's civil war will leave longer-lasting scars, writes former UK chief of the general staff Gen. Sir Mike Jackson: 2 million landmines and pieces of unexploded ordnance now lace Yemen's territory and will leave an impact to be "felt for generations to come."
In the immediate term, Yemen's warring sides and international benefactors have struggled to implement an agreement reached in December in Sweden, leaving that momentum for peace with an uncertain future. | | Trump's Iraq Vision Is a Non-Starter | | President Trump's plan for Iraq—to keep US troops there to check Iran—is not going to work out, Michael Wahid Hanna and Thanassis Cambanis suggest in Foreign Affairs. The reasons are many and complicated, but the most important is that Iraq depends on a delicate hedge between Washington and Tehran—needing help from both countries on intelligence and security, from the US on governance and energy, and from Iran on investment—and it can't maintain the complicated politics and tacit agreements that support that balance, if Trump realigns US interests so brazenly. Iraq sits at the center of regional security issues involving the US, Iran, and the Arab world, and its health carries regional importance.
As the US pulls back elsewhere, Iraq provides a "test case for the value of continued engagement," the authors write—and it's one of the few productive relationships the US has left in the region. Trump's statement, alone, may have disrupted it.
Echoing that point, Anthony Cordesman of CSIS warns that the US can't achieve its objectives by treating Iraq as a client state or a base against Iran. | | | | | | |
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