| | | | Pompeo Trumped the President's Dangerous Iran Tweet | | President Trump's tweet Sunday threatening Iran risks taking the confrontation to a new level, writes Simon Tisdall in The Guardian. But the President's comments might not even have been the most dangerous to come from his administration that day.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's "claim that mild-mannered [President Hassan] Rouhani and [Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad] Zarif are 'violent Islamic revolutionaries' starkly illustrates how deeply ignorant US officials are about Iran after nearly 40 years of estrangement. It's true there is much high-level corruption and human rights abuses; it's true the country is in dire economic straits. Iran's actions in Syria are anti-democratic and destructive," Tisdall says.
"But by undercutting moderate leaders who offer the best hope of reform and by threatening regime change, Trump and Pompeo risk entrenching the hard-line mullahs and Revolutionary Guards they most revile – and bringing closer the prospect of violent confrontation." - Limited strikes? Get real. Supporters of a military strike against Iran appear to believe that limited air strikes would be enough to end the country's nuclear program. The reality? That "even such 'limited' strikes would be a massive military operation," writes Zack Beauchamp for Vox.
"A panel at the nonpartisan Wilson Center reviewed the military studies on the issue and concluded that even if extended military strikes were carried out 'to near perfection,' the best-case scenario is still only a four-year delay in Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon," he writes.
"Ultimately, the only way military force could stop Iran from going nuclear is if the US committed to a more or less indefinite war."
| | Why China Supports Trump's North Korea Fantasy | | | President Trump isn't the only one determined to insist publicly there is progress on North Korean denuclearization, despite some ominous signs, Minxin Pei writes for the Nikkei Asian Review. China is happy to help maintain the pretense, too.
"For Beijing, a quick collapse of the 'denuclearization' talks between Trump and Kim would bring dangerous tensions back to the Korean Peninsula. A humiliated Trump would resume his 'maximum pressure' approach while Kim would respond by testing more nuclear warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles," Pei argues.
"Buying time is crucial for both Beijing and Pyongyang. From Beijing's perspective, as long as there is enough progress for Trump to tout on Twitter, the situation essentially resembles the Chinese proposal of 'dual freeze' -- suspension of North Korea's nuclear and missile tests in return of a temporary halt of US and South Korean joint military exercises." | | Democracy Has a New Enemy. And It's Winning | | | Israel's "nation-state" bill, which passed last week, looks like a victory for identity over democracy, writes Max Fisher in The New York Times. The country is far from alone in making that choice.
"Though Israel's circumstances may be unique, its sense of facing a looming decision about its national identity is not. There is a growing backlash to the idea that countries should privilege democracy over all else. That movement, driven by perceptions of physical and demographic insecurity, insists that, now, identity will come first," Fisher writes.
"In Europe, an influx of migrants and refugees, along with terrorist attacks, have transformed public attitudes. Europeans have grown more nationalistic, more politically extreme and less welcoming of outsiders. And much as in Israel, hard-line attitudes have continued to grow even as the threats have waned, with terrorism and migration both declining." | | The 3 Letters Key to America's Economic Health Aren't D-O-W | | The Dow may have soared during the Trump administration, but for a glimpse of America's economic future, it may be better to look at how businesses view its long-term economic appeal, writes Adam Posen in Foreign Affairs. Foreign direct investment (FDI) is tumbling, and that signals trouble ahead.
'[B]usiness decisions about large, long-term investments, such as the building of major production facilities; foreign takeovers of, and mergers with, US companies; and investment in research facilities and workers…are reliable indicators of how markets really see Trump's policies affecting the future," Posen writes.
For FDI in "the first quarter of 2016, the total net inflow was $146.5 billion. For the same quarter in 2017, it was $89.7 billion. In 2018, it was down to $51.3 billion…The falloff is a result of a general decline in the United States' attractiveness as a place to make long-term business commitments."
| | On Refugees, It's America the Middling | | President Trump has bemoaned US generosity in accepting refugees and asylum seekers, writes David Bier for Cato at Liberty. Forty-nine other countries might have something to say about US "benevolence."
"From 2012 to 2017, UNHCR finds that the United States accepted a net increase of 654,128 asylees, refugees, and people in similar circumstances. That amounted to 0.2 percent of the US population in 2017. [Forty-nine] other countries had higher rates of acceptance than the United States did. The average rate of acceptance for the top 50 countries was 1.2 percent of the population—six times higher than the US rate," Bier writes. | | European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will meet with President Trump on Wednesday for talks on trade tensions. "Appeals from European leaders have failed to dissuade Mr. Trump from imposing tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum and threatening new ones on cars, but officials say they believe Mr. Juncker's blunt-speaking and disdain for protocol has won some begrudging respect from the US leader," Valentina Pop writes for The Wall Street Journal.
Pakistan holds its general election Wednesday. Per Reuters: A "bumper crop of ultra-Islamist groups are…contesting the poll, with the potential to reshape the political landscape of the nuclear-armed Muslim country...with anti-Western rhetoric and calls for ever-stricter interpretation of sharia, or Islamic law." | | | | | | |
