| | | | Baghdadi Is Dead, but the Terrorist Threat Remains | | President Trump, the US military, and intelligence agencies deserve praise for the raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, analysts say, while noting there's more to do in the global fight against terrorism. Political and economic development may not be as sensational, but they're as important as killing terrorist leaders, Kathy Gilsinan writes for The Atlantic, while New York Times reporter David Sanger writes in an analysis piece that the raid highlights the danger of ungoverned spaces like the one in which Baghdadi was killed.
Times columnist Tom Friedman points to the risk of autocracy, warning that "the next al-Baghdadi is being incubated today in some prison in Egypt, where President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ... is not only rounding up violent jihadists but liberal nonviolent journalists, activists and politicians." | | In the End, the Arab Spring Could Win | | The Middle East has witnessed a series of "lost decades," Maha Yahya writes in Foreign Affairs: Economies have grown, but opportunity hasn't, and broad trends don't look good. Arab unemployment remains high, at 7.3%; a UN report noted in 2018 that in Arab states, one fifth of people live in extreme poverty; and the region ranks last in all measures of democracy tracked by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Against that backdrop, the failures of the Arab Spring seem all the more depressing, as autocratic regimes succeeded in repressing democratic protests. But there's a silver lining, Yahya writes, in that the Arab Spring awakened a sense of activism and taught important lessons to a new generation. Those have been employed successfully this year in Sudan and Algeria, where protesters remained peaceful and kept pressing demands after rulers were forced from power, Yahya writes. The long term is hopeful, in her view: "What today looks like a regional regression since 2011 may well, in the future, be regarded as the initial phase in a much longer process of Arab revival," Yahya concludes. | | Is China Repeating America's Mistake? | | | America's neocons erred in assuming democracy could be planted anywhere with ease, Elliott Zaagman writes for the Lowy Institute's Interpreter blog, but China seems to be making the same kind of mistake today—assuming, instead, that economics trumps all, and that China's governance model will always succeed. The attitude is seen most notably in China's insistence that Hong Kong's problems are economic, rather than political, Zaagman writes. "In addition to economic interests, humans throughout the world also have values, many of which are incompatible with those of Beijing. Cynically ignoring that those values exist, or dismissing them as illegitimate, is a surefire recipe for disaster," he advises. | | A Brexit Election Would Be Ugly | | UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces uncertainty as he pushes for a general election, Jörg Schindler writes for Der Spiegel: Johnson's fate is tied to Brexit, but he hasn't yet figured out how to deal with hardline Brexiteers who oppose his just-delivered deal.
Johnson failed today to force an election in December, and commentators agree that an ugly scene will ensue if Britain holds an election before Brexit is decided. "The course is set for an election campaign like the once-so-unideological Britons have never seen," Schindler writes, while The New York Times' Jenni Russell explains the difference between voting before or after Brexit is decided. "An election fought after a Brexit had been agreed to would be on orthodox territory; parties would offer competing visions of a better Britain," Russell writes. "One fought beforehand, with nothing settled, will be on the stark populist territory that Mr. Johnson's chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, one of the chief architects of the referendum campaign, has been urging and preparing for." | | Venezuela's Crisis Is Becoming Colombia's | | Venezuela's economic turmoil is a failure of leftist populism, Vali Nasr writes for Foreign Policy, but as refugees flee across the border into Colombia, Venezuela's crisis endangers a neighboring success story. Colombia has overcome domestic problems with narco-trafficking and conflict with FARC guerillas, Nasr writes, and its capitalist economy is in good health. (Colombia's 2.6% GDP growth in 2018 outpaced total growth for Latin America and the Caribbean by 1.2 percentage points, and its IMF-projected growth of 3.4% for 2019 is South America's third highest.) But an estimated 1.4 million Venezuelans have poured over the border, Nasr writes, straining Colombia's ability to absorb them, and millions more could follow.
"The refugee crisis is now threatening much of what Colombia has achieved," he writes. "The debacle in Venezuela is a testament to socialism's bankruptcy and a cautionary tale against the promises of populism. But in its failure, Venezuela could succeed in defeating the Colombian model." | | | | | | |
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