| | | | Fareed on the One That Got Away | | "The phrase 'quid pro quo' is usually translated as 'something for something,'" Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column. "In the case of President Trump's communications with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, it appears that the 'quo' was supposed to have been a declaration of Zelensky's commitment to undertake investigations into the 2016 election and Joe Biden."
As the New York Times reports that was to happen in an interview on GPS, Fareed writes, "I think I owe readers my best understanding of what actually happened."
Since Zelensky's election, the GPS team had been seeking an interview with him. A fascinating political character, Zelensky had met Fareed in Kiev and agreed in principle—as military aid was on hold, and pressure allegedly applied, behind the scenes. "A few days later, on Sept. 18 and 19, The Post broke the story wide open," Fareed writes. "The interview was called off. We are, of course, still trying to get it." | | | Impeachment hearings are vindicating "the Blob," a nickname the US foreign-policy establishment acquired under the Obama administration, Stephen M. Walt writes for Foreign Policy. Having criticized the foreign-policy elite in a book, Walt writes that the testimony of diplomats has caused him to rethink things, in particular his opinion of career officials. He writes: "One need not regard the Blob as infallible to recognize that some of its members are genuine patriots acting not from self-interest but from love of country. And that's who Congress is hearing from this week." | | What to Make of North Korea's Year-End Deadline | | North Korea has imposed a year-end deadline for the US to restart nuclear talks and offer new proposals, The Washington Post notes, writing that the "clock is ticking." So will the deadline lapse, and if it does, what will happen?
At The National Interest, Robert E. Kelly points out that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has tested shorter-range missiles that can threaten Japan (pressuring the US indirectly) but has held to "a shaky gentleman's agreement" with President Trump not to test long-range missiles while negotiating with the US. With Trump facing impeachment at home, Kelly writes, it's unlikely the US will turn its attention to North Korea and meet Kim's deadline, which "will pass with little fanfare and sometime in late January or February, after some more North Korean bluster, the North will stage a provocation." In Kelly's view, that could mean a long-range test. | | The Coming 5G Border Wars | | Huawei has dominated news about 5G, but Scott Malcomson writes for Foreign Affairs that a different 5G war lies ahead. At issue is how borders between 5G networks will be governed.
5G-connected devices like phones and self-driving cars will rely on cloud-computing servers, Malcomson writes, and they'll work faster if they're physically closer to those servers. Cloud services are provided by competitors including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and smaller companies, throwing into question whether 5G devices will be able to work with different clouds. "[A]t some point in their supposedly ethereal progress across the earth's surface, [5G devices will] cease to compute," Malcomson writes. "In effect, they will need corporate visas to cross corporate borders." That will give multinational companies a lot of control over a new map of tech boundaries, Malcomson writes, an idea Germany and France have already resisted, proposing a "European cloud." Malcomson predicts 5G will add to the existing conflict between countries and tech giants over data and privacy, with a long struggle (and more fines) in the offing. | | The Center Right: Democracy's Savior? | | Is American democracy facing its end? That's the question Yoni Appelbaum asks in an Atlantic essay. His answer is that citizens must keep choosing democracy over its alternatives—and a healthy center-right is uniquely suited to saving it.
"The United States is undergoing a transition perhaps no rich and stable democracy has ever experienced," Appelbaum writes. "Its historically dominant group is on its way to becoming a political minority—and its minority groups are asserting their co-equal rights and interests." American democracy depends on whether white, Christian conservatives accept election results as a demographic tide shifts against them—or whether, hoping to keep their identity group in power, they seek to restrict electorates and pursue counter-majoritarian aims.
A healthy center right can give those voters a democratic home and tamp down on the right's identitarian fringes, Appelbaum writes, providing a democratic avenue to power. Fairly or unfairly, Appelbaum singles out conservatives in this equation, referencing the views of political scientist Daniel Ziblatt. The right includes "disproportionate numbers of leaders—business magnates, military officers, judges, governors—upon whose loyalty and support the government depends," Appelbaum writes—implying the center-right is a potent key to democracy, not just in the US. | | | | | | |
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