| | | | Doctor: What I Saw Should Change the Gun Control Debate | | | Some bullet wounds are far more deadly than others. Understand that, and you can understand why there's no place for high-velocity weapons in civilian hands, writes Heather Sher, a radiologist who helped treat victims of last week's Florida school shooting. "The injury along the path of the bullet from an AR-15 is vastly different from a low-velocity handgun injury. The bullet from an AR-15 passes through the body like a cigarette boat traveling at maximum speed through a tiny canal. The tissue next to the bullet is elastic—moving away from the bullet like waves of water displaced by the boat—and then returns and settles back. This process is called cavitation; it leaves the displaced tissue damaged or killed. The high-velocity bullet causes a swath of tissue damage that extends several inches from its path. It does not have to actually hit an artery to damage it and cause catastrophic bleeding. Exit wounds can be the size of an orange," Sher writes in The Atlantic. "With an AR-15, the shooter does not have to be particularly accurate. The victim does not have to be unlucky. If a victim takes a direct hit to the liver from an AR-15, the damage is far graver than that of a simple handgun shot injury. Handgun injuries to the liver are generally survivable unless the bullet hits the main blood supply to the liver. An AR-15 bullet wound to the middle of the liver would cause so much bleeding that the patient would likely never make it to a trauma center to receive our care." | | There's Only One Way to Stop Assad | | Shortly after taking office, President Trump showed he was willing to stand up militarily to Bashar al-Assad. But the truth is that that isn't the key to ending the bloodshed still unfolding in Syria, writes Samantha Vinograd for Just Security. Changing the country's path begins and ends with getting tough on Vladimir Putin.
"As long as Putin supports Assad, the killing, maiming, and all of the other horrors associated with this war will continue. The answer to ending the conflict lies with Putin; in convincing him that his support for Assad will wreak consequences so unpalatable that his cost-benefit analysis shifts," Vinograd writes.
"This would be a Herculean task even if the Trump administration was amenable to taking it on. Putin is not easily swayed, particularly when it comes to the Russian balance of power abroad, and while there is no guarantee that he will pull back all support for Assad if the US takes a tougher stance against him, it could be a start. After President Trump bombed the Syrian airbase in April 2017, a new ceasefire was announced (we can't prove direct causation but Trump's willingness to take direct action was likely a contributing factor). Absent the US standing up to Russia, Putin has no reason not to continue his support for Assad — he can digest any costs (human or otherwise) associated with the conflict."
| | Working in a Protectionist World CONTENT BY  The wave of protectionism is now being embraced by executives around the world. 55% of global business leaders believe protectionist policies benefit business. But only 31% believe their government system can keep up with the pace of innovation. Learn more in GE's newly released 2018 Global Innovation Barometer. | | |
Memo to US: Libya's Problems Didn't Disappear with Gadhafi
| | | Seven years after Libya erupted into civil war, and the still-failing state appears to have been largely forgotten by the United States. That could be a strategic disaster, suggests Emily Estelle for The Hill.
"As long as conditions of conflict, social grievance, and absent governance create fertile ground for them, ISIS, al Qaeda and like-minded groups will return time and again. No military defeat the United States could inflict on them would be enough to prevent them from reemerging in this environment," Estelle writes.
"Libya is not just a counterterrorism problem, it is also a geopolitical one. Russia is taking advantage of the American retreat from Libya to expand its military and economic influence and undercut American interests in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Russia's plan in Libya is similar to its policy in Syria, where it has supplanted U.S. influence and established military bases on the Mediterranean." | | How (and Where) Jihadists Have Been Saving for a Rainy Day | | At its peak, ISIS was the richest terrorist organization in history, thanks largely to the oil-rich territory it seized. Don't think that its battlefield losses have left it cashless, though, The Economist says. Jihadists have been saving for a rainy day – and parking money in one country in particular.
"[M]oney flows through the hawala system, an informal web of money-transfer offices that is cheap, fast and almost impossible to regulate," The Economist says. "The money is difficult to trace. Hawala dealers use the encrypted mobile-chat application WhatsApp to communicate with each other. They rarely keep detailed records of transactions or the names of customers."
"Much of the cash has ended up in Turkey, where intelligence officials believe it is being stored by individuals for future operations, invested in gold and used to keep IS sleeper-cells active. 'You only need $500 a month to feed and house a cell of two or three people,' says Ahmet Yayla, the former head of counter-terrorism for the Turkish police. Investigations into the deadly attack on a nightclub in Istanbul on January 1st 2017 revealed that IS had established about 100 safe-houses in the city, where police found more than $500,000."
| | Just Give Kushner Clearance: Feldman | | It doesn't really matter whether you think President Trump should turn to Jared Kushner for foreign policy advice, writes Noah Feldman for Bloomberg View. The fact is he does – and it's in America's interests that his advisers get the security clearance they need to do their jobs properly.
"If Trump wants Kushner's advice on national security and foreign relations matters, it is much better for Kushner to have access to the information and documents that the intelligence community thinks are relevant and that are included in the daily brief," Feldman writes.
"The alternatives would be for Trump to pass on classified information to Kushner, thereby arguably declassifying it, or for Kushner to have to fly blind, giving advice without access to the relevant intelligence.
"Each of these alternatives is far worse than simply allowing Kushner the clearance he needs so long as Trump is relying on him for advice."
| | Global Briefing Extra: Does Trump's Infrastructure Plan Make the Grade? | | Earlier this month, President Trump laid out his long-awaited plan for fixing America's critical infrastructure -- bridges and tunnels, power grids and aqueducts, airports and rail lines. The plan calls for $200 billion in federal money. But will that be enough to fix a problem that saw America recently receive a D+ grade?
Fareed speaks with Kristina Swallow, president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, which gave that grade, and Tracy Gordon, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, for a Global Briefing Extra exploring the infrastructure issue.
Watch the full panel here. | | | | | | |
