| | | | John Bolton's legacy at the White House will be one of chaos, The Washington Post writes in an editorial. During his tenure, Bolton sank discussions with North Korea and the Taliban and abandoned the policymaking process overseen by national security advisors past—one that involves convening senior leaders to build consensus and offer well-vetted options to the president.
Joe Cirincione points out at LobeLog that Bolton leaves the world at greater risk from nuclear weapons, having sandbagged both the Iran deal and the INF Treaty with Russia. | | US Intelligence Needs Another Reinvention | | | On the 18th anniversary of 9/11, Amy Zegart writes for The Atlantic, new warning signs are flashing much as they were in the decade that preceded those attacks—and, once again, the intelligence community is failing to adapt. Just as US intelligence and law enforcement agencies failed to prioritize the threat of terrorism in the 1990s, they are now failing to heed the looming threats of foreign political interference, deepfakes, and AI—to name a few emerging threats that will make America's current intelligence advantages obsolete. Now that those agencies have figured out how to deal with terrorism, Zegart suggests, they face an entirely new set of problems. | | Darkness and Despair Hang Over Hong Kong's Protests | | Hong Kong's last wave of demonstrations—the 2014 Umbrella Movement—was a relatively hopeful affair, Antony Dapiran writes for The Atlantic, but the current protests carry a tinge of darkness. "Indeed, the specter of death seems to have been hanging over this protest movement … almost from the moment it began," he writes, noting references to death laced in the protesters' slogans and a view, held by demonstrators, that Hong Kong is "sliding into a nightmare of police brutality, arbitrary detention, and extrajudicial punishment."
In slightly more uplifting analysis, Benjamin Haas writes for the MIT Technology Review that Hong Kong's protests are evolving through apps, as demonstrations are livestreamed and as maps are distributed to coordinate activity on the street. Tech and activism converged in novel ways during the Arab Spring, Haas writes, and Hong Kong may be seeing the next iteration. | | Will Afghanistan Spill Over? | | | That's the topic of a recent essay in The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, as Bruce Pannier chronicles the concerns of Afghanistan's neighbors, which could see the return of security problems they endured during the Taliban's reign. "Nearby states such as Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Iran, as well as those farther afield in the West, see the potential threat Afghanistan represents," he writes. If Afghanistan again becomes a haven for terrorism, ISIS's regional affiliate could surge, and it has already forged alliances with like-minded groups in the region. | | Cross-Border Campaigning: The 'New Normal' | | It used to be rare for leaders to openly support political allies in other countries, but that's becoming the "new normal," Ojars Eriks Kalnins writes at The American Interest. When President Trump touts Brexit and plays favorites in the UK's prime-minister race, and when Nigel Farage openly backs Trump for president, the old practices have clearly broken down. And it didn't start with populist leaders; President Obama, Kalnins points out, opposed Brexit in a UK visit before the vote.
"In the future, voters in Europe could choose among parties openly sponsored by the governments of China, the United States, Saudi Arabia, or Russia," Kalnins suggests. Then again, as far as populists go, the Financial Times' Janan Ganesh disputes the notion that they can achieve a unified movement: "Examples of intra-populist schism are multiplying," he observes, as leaders disagree on specific policies. (President Trump, for instance, clashes with the Philippines' Duterte and India's Modi over China relations and trade, respectively.) | | | | | | |
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