| | | | A Perfect Storm for an ISIS Comeback? | | Since the demise of its self-proclaimed caliphate, observers have warned that ISIS might go underground, only to reconstitute itself as an insurgency embedded within Syrian and Iraqi populations. That's what seems to be happening, The Atlantic's Mike Giglio writes, as the group is estimated to have as many as 18,000 fighters across Syria and Iraq, organized in sleeper cells, conducting kidnappings and ambushes in both countries.
Trump's Syrian withdrawal plan creates a perfect storm for an ISIS comeback, Giglio argues. Preventing an ISIS reemergence was always going to be left to partners like the Kurds, who did most of the fighting to recapture ISIS territory, Giglio writes; Trump has just yanked support from them, and they now face the danger of a Turkish military operation. Kurdish-led forces also maintain custody of tens of thousands of suspected ISIS fighters and family members from ISIS territory, including some 70,000 women and children who remain in a camp, where pro-ISIS sentiments and violent incidents have been reported, and where the risk of ISIS recruitment stews. Thanks to Trump, Giglio writes, Turkey will now gain custody of those people, but it has a dubious record of dealing with suspected terrorists—and it's more interested in pushing back the Kurds than in preventing an ISIS comeback.
ISIS "couldn't have written the script for its second act any better itself," Giglio argues. With similar concerns emerging over Iraq—Seth J. Frantzman of The National Interest wrote last week that ISIS supporters never really disappeared there, and conditions for extremism are ripe, with Sunni populations still marginalized—some analysts have grown nervous. | | In Its Wave of Protests, Iraq Faces a New Challenge | | As recently as late September, analysts noted that things in Iraq were going reasonably well. In a Middle East Institute podcast, senior fellow Randa Slim pointed out that Baghdad was safe for visitors to move around with more freedom, political opposition was focused more on the government than on its existence, and Iraq could be seen as a glass half empty or full.
Amid a wave of protests, and a climbing death toll, the glass may look more empty. "[D]espite winning some social peace, a youth bulge, sagging growth rates and economic pressure could result in the country's next implosion," Ranj Alaaldin writes in a New York Times op-ed. As protesters demand an end to corruption, and better basic services, Iraq's political strife is no longer about sectarian animosity, but about economics and governance, Alaaldin argues, writing that Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi should be given a chance to address them.
Iraq faces a problem common in the region: A booming youth population (more than 60% of Iraqis are under 24, Alaaldin notes), and they need jobs. Unemployment remains high in the region—excluding high-income countries, Middle East and North African unemployment sits at 11.5%, according to the World Bank—and David Rosenberg writes in Haaretz that nine years after the Arab Spring, economic conditions could drive another groundswell of discontent. | | Democracy's Newest Competitor: Digital Authoritarianism | | As AI advances, so will governments' abilities to control populations, Nicholas Wright argues in Foreign Affairs. Facial recognition will improve, as will the possibility of using big data to predict behavior. (Imagine a future in which governments collate data from health records, consumer purchases, taxes, and networks of CCTV cameras equipped with facial recognition—all to score an individual as in or out of favor.)
With these new capabilities, the world will acquire a new governing model, which China is already pioneering, according to Wright: "Digital authoritarianism." AI will also allow countries to maintain state repression while developing their economies, he writes, upending the historical choice governments have had to make between autocratic control and economic growth. And that will make digital authoritarianism all the more popular, resulting in a global divide, Wright agues: "Just as competition between liberal democratic, fascist, and communist social systems defined much of the twentieth century, so the struggle between liberal democracy and digital authoritarianism is set to define the twenty-first." | | China Is Beating Trump at the Tariff Game | | In arguing that President Trump's trade war is unwinnable, Weijian Shan writes in Foreign Affairs that China has played the tit-for-tat game of tariffs more cunningly, placing tariffs only on US goods that can be easily substituted, while exempting or even lowering tariffs on US goods that can't be. "Beijing's nimble calculations are well illustrated by the example of lobsters," Shan writes. "China imposed a 25 percent tariff on US lobsters in July 2018, precipitating a 70 percent drop in US lobster exports. At the same time, Beijing cut tariffs on Canadian lobsters by three percent, and as a result, Canadian lobster exports to China doubled. Chinese consumers now pay less for lobsters imported from essentially the same waters."
Meanwhile, US consumers are simply paying more for hard-to-substitute, Chines-manufactured products like iPhones. China's strategy is one more reason—along with American manufacturers' plans to stay in China, or relocate elsewhere instead of going back to the US—why the trade war is proving difficult for America to win, Shan argues. | | | | | | |
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