| | | | How to De-escalate With Iran | | | Writing for Newsweek, Daniel R. DePetris offers a three-step plan to defuse tensions with Iran: President Trump should appoint an envoy with real power (Sen. Rand Paul has offered to approach the Iranians, but he lacks authority to speak for the Trump administration), be clear about demands (Trump's top advisers have sent mixed messages, leaving Tehran in the dark as to what America wants), and start negotiating, DePetris writes. | | Boris Johnson and the Appeal of Make-Believe | | The UK's next prime minister is often lambasted for his tendency to fib, but Anne Applebaum writes in The Washington Post that it's precisely why Boris Johnson won the job. The "Tory party has chosen Johnson not despite the fact that he is an inventor of elaborate and untrue stories about the regulation of kippers, condoms, shrimp-cocktail-flavored potato chips and much else. They have chosen him because he is an inventor of elaborate and untrue stories," she argues.
It's not that Johnson has simply hypnotized his supporters: His ascendancy reflects a Conservative escapism, from the inconvenient fact that the party is unpopular, as are all proposed solutions for Brexit. Rather than facing those truths, Applebaum writes, Britain's Conservatives have chosen fantasy. | | Has Turkey Left the West for Good? | | | That's the topic of some debate, after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's decision to purchase a Russian missile-defense system has turned his country, a NATO member, away from its Western allies. A more permanent break from the West "would mean swimming against the historic tide and putting Turkey into a cycle of crisis," Bulent Aras writes at LobeLog, predicting European influence will bring Turkey back into the fold.
Turkey has achieved a longstanding goal of circumventing dependence on NATO allies for military wares, Gönül Tol writes for the Middle East Institute, while Doug Bandow predicts at The American Conservative (under a somewhat incendiary headline) that Turkey is gone from the Western alliance for good. "The only serious potential security threat to Europe today is from Russia. Yet Turkey cannot be trusted to take NATO's side in a conflict," he writes. | | Now that Ukraine's actor/comedian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has secured a parliamentary majority for his Servant of the People party, a wave of optimism and questions has followed. Zelensky has already proven willing to stand up to Russia, but now Ukrainians will find out whether his party will fall prey to corruption or live up to its billing as a breath of fresh air, Nikolas K. Gvosdev writes for The National Interest.
Zelensky entered office on promises to reform the country and bolster its ties to the West, Ian Bremmer writes at Time; now, he'll "have to do all this with a parliament in which more than 70 percent of members have never served in government." | | Does Chinese Governance Look More Appealing? | | | In a Washington Post op-ed, former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul suggests it does. China has modernized its economy without democratizing, McFaul writes, disproving beliefs about its trajectory and making one-party rule sound more appealing as a path to economic growth. As America strays from liberalism, its democracy is no longer a source of "inspiration" for Chinese intellectuals, McFaul writes, warning that China's government may be gaining an "upper hand" in a global war of ideologies. | | | | | | |
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