| | | | Are Ukrainian Oligarchs Winning in Trump's World? | | An entire class of Ukrainian oligarchs stands to benefit from the Ukraine-2016-meddling conspiracy theory evidently supported by President Trump, writes Michael Carpenter, a former Joe Biden foreign-policy aide (and former White House National Security Council Russia director), in Foreign Affairs.
The theory—that Ukraine interfered in 2016 by smearing Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chair and former adviser to pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych—is a Russian narrative meant to undermine Ukraine's new political order and prop up the old one, Carpenter writes. Ukraine's oligarchs benefited from Russian-style kleptocracy, he writes, and they aligned with Yanukovych's party, for whom Manafort worked. (A Manafort associate, Carpenter writes, advanced the conspiracy theory in a 2017 US News & World Report op-ed.) They also enjoy a smorgasbord of ties with Trump associates, personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani in particular: The cases of Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman have been much discussed, but Giuliani's security-consulting firm inked deals with Kiev and the eastern city of Kharkiv, Carpener writes, bringing Giuliani into contact with Yanukovych allies.
Carpenter's argument: Ukraine's ousted political class has made inroads in Trump's world and could benefit from the notion that Ukrainian reformers, not Russia, are corrupt. | | Will Latin America's Upheaval Provide an Opening for the US? | | Before he was NATO supreme allied commander, retired Navy Admiral James Stavridis led the US Southern Command, which covers Latin America; in a Bloomberg column, Stavridis wonders if upheaval there might provide an opening for the US.
Amid Latin America's leftist "pink tide" that followed Hugo Chávez's election in Venezuela in 1998, Stavridis recounts that country's defense minister telling him, "You are finished here. Take your troops and your ships and your planes and go home." Despite a messy US history of southern interventions, Stavridis writes that if leftism recedes, the US can take a helpful, politically hands-off approach by helping to fight drug cartels, staying "in the background" on Venezuela's crisis, and engaging with governments that want assistance. | | Get Ready For Yet Another Crisis After Brexit | | UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson might just pull off a win in Britain's Dec. 12 election, Katy Balls writes in The New York Times, all but sealing the deal for his Brexit agreement: The Leave camp is firmly behind his Conservative Party, while Remainers appear split.
But that would only pave the way for another Brexit crisis, former British representative to the EU Ivan Rogers warned in a speech at the University of Glasgow this week. It's a misconception that the harder the Brexit, the cleaner the break: Formal, post-Brexit agreements with the EU on goods, services, and immigration "will have to be more complex, detailed and lengthy–and fuller of caveats–the further 'out' of the European Union we choose to go, and therefore the further we want to go, the longer it will take to negotiate the necessary agreements," Rogers advised. That could mean years of negotiation. Rogers' conclusion: "I fear it all points to a repetition next year of exactly the syndrome we have suffered for the last three." | | What an Assad Victory Looks Like | | Syria has little hope for the kind of post-conflict reconciliation process that has followed other civil wars, Frederick Deknatel suggested recently at the World Politics Review. Victory "on Assad's terms" looks triumphalist, he writes: When opposition areas surrender, people are moved out, and President Bashar al-Assad's government claims total victory.
One example: An underground hospital that is the focus of a new documentary called "The Cave" (described as the first Syrian hospital ever run by a woman) kept patients safe from chemical bombs above; after rebels surrendered, Assad's forces turned the tunnels into "set pieces for regime propaganda. Syrian soldiers and artists carved sculptures and painted murals in the tunnels of Assad and his late father, Hafez." As one observer told Deknatel, it was "total triumphalism"—not a good sign for peace. | | A 'Thankful' List in Global Affairs | | | The news of the world isn't all bad, Stephen Walt writes at Foreign Policy, offering a list of what he's thankful for in global affairs, ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. Making the cut are Greta Thunberg, the Trump whistleblower, US diplomats who testified on Capitol Hill, Sacha Baron Cohen (for his recent criticism of Facebook), Chinese officials who leaked documents on Xinjiang, "The Squad," Emmanuel Macron, and all the potential crises that weren't. | | | | | | |
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