| | | | Brexit Means Something Different in 2019 | | As Brexit watchers eye the UK's looming Dec. 12 election, wondering how it will proceed and whether it can break the stalemate, Mark Leonard makes a broader point in a New Statesman essay: that the world has changed quite a bit since Britons initially chose Brexit in 2016.
"When Britain went to the polls to vote on the Europe question in 2016, Barack Obama was US President and there was debate about a so-called G2 world, where China and the US, the two biggest economies, would find ways of managing their differences to the benefit of the world," Leonard writes. "David Cameron and [Chancellor of the Exchequer] George Osborne hoped to maintain the 'special relationship' with the US while also declaring a new golden age with China." Brexiteers' claims were far-fetched, but the UK becoming a "Singapore on steroids" seemed plausible, at least, in 2016's world order.
Fast forward to today, and one finds the US and China furiously decoupling their economies. Historical powers Russia, Turkey, and Iran have all grown more assertive. The open trading economy is reorganizing itself into protectionist blocs—and the EU, which Britain is leaving, is the only one that stands a chance to balance the US and China. As a result, Brexit means something different in 2019, Leonard writes: "Rather than taking back control, in a world of great power blocs Britain may find itself at the mercy of other powers. In the place of European sovereignty we may have DIY servitude." | | Internet Freedom Is in Decline | | A new Freedom House study on Internet freedom contains some grim findings: Of 65 countries examined, 33 have declined on that front since June 2018, with Internet freedom receding most precipitously in Sudan, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Bangladesh, and Zimbabwe. Digital authoritarianism and surveillance are on the rise, as 47 of the 65 countries had arrested users "for political, social, or religious speech" online.
So, too, is disinformation: "Political leaders employed individuals to surreptitiously shape online opinions in 38 of the 65 countries covered in this report," the group finds. "In many countries, the rise of populism and far-right extremism has coincided with the growth of hyperpartisan online mobs that include both authentic users and fraudulent or automated accounts." It's a crisis of social media, the group concludes, as platforms that promise speech and openness are being used to survey, repress, and confuse. | | Will Afghanistan Be ISIS's Next Foothold? | | | ISIS's Afghan affiliate, the Islamic State Khorasan (ISK), faces disadvantages compared with the much larger Taliban, which aligns against it. But at Foreign Policy, Michael Kugelman warns that the group could get stronger: Relative autonomy means the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi will have little effect, and a Taliban-government peace process could inject new support for ISK, from those who oppose it. "For Washington, the stakes are high," Kugelman writes. "According to an assessment provided by an Afghanistan-based U.S. intelligence official in June, ISK represents 'the most near-term threat' to the U.S. and European homelands. Attacks in those areas, he warned, are 'just a matter of time.'" | | 30 Years After the Berlin Wall Fell, Germany Is Still Divided | | As Germany approaches this month's 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, The Economist writes that old divisions between east and west have been slow to heal, and some are reopening. West Germans went back to their daily lives after the wall came down, but Easterners suffered economic collapse and struggled to adjust to capitalism: "Those that survived struggled with the western rules they had to import wholesale," the magazine writes. "By one estimate, 80% of east Germans at some point found themselves out of work." More than 1 million left for the former West, many of them young women, and thrived.
New grievances are arising among young people. When a writer gave a talk at a school in Leipzig, the magazine writes, students peppered her with questions about a proposal for preferential hiring of easterners into government jobs. "One idea, floated by Angela Merkel, who as chancellor is east Germany's best-known export, is that the east is undergoing something comparable to the experience of West Germany in 1968, when children forced their parents to account for their activities in the Nazi period," the magazine writes. "Now, the argument runs, young east Germans seek explanations for what happened to their parents in the early years of reunification." The east is aging and in demographic decline, and while east-west migration flows and discrepancies in living standards have faded, the east has become a bastion of far-right support, particularly among young people: In two states, the far-right AfD was the most popular party for voters under 30. | | | | | | |
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