| | | | Fareed: Brexit Would Be Britain's Downfall | | Brexit "might prove to be the most profound legacy of this decade," Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column, as it could mark a decline for both Britain and Europe at a time when other powers are rising. That could throw the Western-built world order into question.
There's a risk of Britain becoming a dis-United Kingdom—with looser ties with Scotland and Northern Ireland—and being reduced "to just England and tiny Wales, not really fitting into any of the three economic blocs of the 21st century—North America, Europe and China." With that would come significantly weakened British influence and a major event in world politics.
"The world order as we know it was built over two centuries, during the reigns of two liberal, Anglo superpowers—Britain and then the United States," Fareed writes. "Brexit would mark the end of Britain's role as a great power, and I wonder whether it would also mark the day that the West, as a political and strategic entity, begins to crumble." | | How White Supremacy Mirrors Jihad | | After the horrific mass shootings at two New Zealand mosques, The Atlantic's Kathy Gilsinan outlines the similarities between white supremacists and jihadists: They crave attention, use violence as propaganda, and while the "global white supremacist movement looks more atomized and diffuse than the jihadist movement," they're both stateless movements that cross borders and spread their messages online.
Ideologically, they look the same. While jihadists thrive on the notion that Westerners want to invade the Muslim world, white supremacy's foundational "conspiracy theory is the exact mirror image: The campaign is one of so-called 'white genocide,' a purported campaign to eliminate the white race through immigration," Gilsinan writes.
Daniel Byman of Brookings, meanwhile, calls for a shift in focus: Governments and security services need to prioritize white-nationalist terrorism, and social-media companies "need to treat right-wing terrorism with the same seriousness they treat jihadi violence," he writes. | | The Beginning of the End for Fossil Fuels? | | That's what climate activist Bill McKibben predicts in The New York Review of Books. It's not environmental politics that will sink the fossil-fuel industry, according to McKibben, but price: Renewables have become cheaper, and new carbon-fueled power plants risk becoming "stranded assets" before the end of their life cycles, McKibben writes, hinting at a looming tipping point against investment in fossil fuels.
McKibben points to the economic misfortune of energy giants Peabody and General Electric, the advantages of solar investment for countries like India, and one prediction that "in the 2020s—probably the early 2020s—the demand for fossil fuels will stop growing."
That will upset not the global economy but the geopolitical order, as oil companies and energy-producing states like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the US seek to prop up carbon reliance, but McKibben writes that despite the pain of disruption, the question is whether we can get there in time. | | Russia's Next Adventure: Scandinavia? | | Mikhail Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia, has firsthand experience with Russian President Vladimir Putin's extraterritorial aims, after Putin invaded his country in 2008. His prediction for Putin's next land grab is perhaps an unexpected one.
If Putin is seeking to bolster his domestic standing, another incursion into former Soviet territory won't achieve that, Saakashvili writes, while picking a fight with a NATO member entails too much risk. But appealing options might include Sweden and Finland, members of the EU but not NATO.
"I do not expect Russian tanks to roll into Helsinki or Stockholm unopposed. But it would be relatively simple for Moscow to execute a land grab in a remote Arctic enclave or on a small island," Saakashvili writes in Foreign Policy. "After all, who would go to war over a frozen Baltic island or piece of Finland's tundra? NATO wouldn't, but Putin would—because the stakes are higher for him." | | A Call to Counter Putin's Information War | | Information warfare can be difficult to deter, and while Washington has responded to Russian political meddling with sanctions and indictments, former NSA deputy director Rick Ledgett floats another option.
"[T]here are literally dozens of ways to get truthful information in front of the Russian people, things that Putin doesn't want them to see (like videos of the funerals for Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine)," he writes in Lawfare. "Getting such information to the Russian people and letting Putin know it will continue until Russian behavior changes is another potential measure that could change the cost-benefit calculation."
Ledgett suggests a different response to Chinese hacking of American trade secrets, which wouldn't require any meddling back—banning US companies from working "with any Chinese companies in the affected sector"—but his overriding conclusion, when it comes to online aggression, is that deterrence "needs to move out of the theoretical plane and into the real world." | | | | | | |
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