| | | | Saudi Arabia, Alone in Yemen | | Saudi Arabia remains mired in Yemen's war, Thomas Lippman writes at LobeLog, and now that the United Arab Emirates has pulled back from that conflict, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is effectively going it alone. The UAE is a close regional partner of the Saudis, and there is now some daylight between the two allies, Lippman writes. A break on other issues could slow down Saudi Arabia's aggressive regional posture; if MBS can't count on the UAE "to stand with him, who else is there?" Lippman asks.
Taking a broader view of Yemen's war, a recent International Crisis Group report warned it could spark a wider regional conflagration. The US and Saudi Arabia have taken a "black-and-white" view that Houthi rebels are a "remote-control" proxy of Iran—and may be tempted to strike Iran directly, raising the risk of a larger war. | | After offering a compelling reminder that war could arrive accidentally (as demonstrated by the case of a suspected drone attack on an Iran-backed militia in Iraq), The Atlantic's Mike Giglio argues that Iran has lost some international leverage in its standoff with the US. Given Iran's escalations in the Strait of Hormuz, "Washington's campaign of maximum pressure appears to be succeeding in driving Iran's leadership to act like the international deviants the Trump administration has long made them out to be," he writes.
In an editorial The New York Times argues things have gone far enough and that Washington and Tehran should start talking—better to communicate that way, the paper writes, than by seizing tankers and shooting down each other's drones. | | The Coming Race to Set Global Tech Rules | | | That's the topic of a Financial Times essay by Alan Beattie, who forecasts a three-way race between the US, China, and EU to set regulatory standards for emerging technologies like 5G, artificial intelligence, and facial recognition. China is participating more actively in international rulemaking bodies, the EU hopes its data regulation can serve as a worldwide blueprint, and US President Donald Trump's war on Huawei is a "massive escalation" in the competition to set standards, Beattie writes.
At stake are issues like the privacy of individual data and how potentially dystopian technologies like AI and facial recognition should be restricted. The battle will extend into developing countries that don't yet have their own standards, Beattie writes, as major tech producers sell their wares and seek to influence the global landscape of rules and practices. It's a competition that has "assumed systemic global importance," thanks largely to Trump's attempted decoupling of America's tech world from China's, in Beattie's view. | | What Has Boris Johnson Got? | | Debate continues in the UK over the character and substance of Britain's next prime minister. Writing in the Evening Standard, Economist Senior Editor Anne McElvoy offers an uncertain picture: Like Tony Blair (who called again this week for a second referendum, warning that Boris Johnson has "boxed himself into a no-deal Brexit"), Johnson possesses "extraordinary self-belief" and has "added stardust to dry politics," McElvoy writes.
Johnson has been auditioning for this job for 30 years, in McElvoy's view, and the British people are about to find out whether he can transition from campaigning to governing. Less optimistically, James Meek writes in a London Review of Books essay (which is largely an extended takedown of Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg) that no matter what Johnson wants for his tenure at Downing Street, he "will live in a nice house in the middle of London, but it won't be his house"; it was the UK's hard-right Brexit backers who put him there. Meek also points to a trend that extends beyond Johnson: that a strain of social conservatism now runs through British politics—and that the UK's future, even after Brexit is dealt with, may well be "Faragist." | | | | | | |
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