| | | | China Upgrades Membership of Authoritarian Club | | China's Communist Party announced Sunday that it plans to drop term limits for leaders, paving the way for President Xi Jinping to rule indefinitely. This should surprise exactly no one, Ely Ratner, Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for China Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, emails Global Briefing.
"It has been an open secret in Beijing for over a year that Xi had no intention of stepping down as required at the end of his second term. Now we know the means through which he's going to avert relinquishing authority," Ratner says.
"Moreover, this move isn't an isolated incident. Xi spent much of his first term consolidating political power and laying the groundwork to extend his rule: purging rivals, censoring the media, deepening oppression, currying favor with the People's Liberation Army, and personally heading up all of the most important policy committees, among other actions.
"Optimists may still argue that Xi is accruing power to enact much-needed market reforms. Time will tell, but right now it's hard to see how an increasingly authoritarian leader in Beijing is good for China, the United States, or the world." - Don't expect Western leaders to speak out about the rule change, writes Kerry Brown for CNN Opinion. They might pay lip service to human rights, but the desire for stability trumps any such concerns.
"For all the West's unease about a one-party state having such dominance at the moment, because of the stability it gives over such a crucial region, the Communist Party's total control of China is something Western leaders buy into and support," Brown says. "Their mouths might say one thing, to appease critical constituencies back home. But their heads know that a China following the path of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s would be a catastrophe."
| | Team Trump: Time to Dust Off This Clinton Playbook | | | The United States shouldn't be fooled by Russia's cynical announcement it wants to "enforce a humanitarian 'pause' in the fighting in the besieged Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta," writes Evelyn Farkas in The Atlantic. It's time for the Trump administration to dust off the Bosnia playbook if it wants to avoid becoming an "accessory to evil" in Syria.
"In 1995 that meant the United States had to bomb the Serb forces attacking innocent Muslim civilians. Today, it means guaranteeing immediate implementation of the new UN ceasefire in Ghouta by threatening—and if necessary using—force against those attacking the suburb. Humanitarian aid must be permitted into the area within hours, not days. It means ramping up sanctions, and increasing military and diplomatic pressure until the war can be brought to a negotiated end. And in the meantime, it means speaking the truth about Russian, Syrian, and Iranian atrocities, collecting information for the day when there is a war crimes accounting.
"The war in Syria will only end when the aggressors know America is serious—about diplomacy, about sanctioning the aggressors, and about using military force not just to fight ISIS, but to protect Syrians." | | The Depressing Lesson of the Dueling Memos | | | The belated release of a Democratic memo rebutting the claims of FBI surveillance abuses outlined in a Republican memo has done little to clear the fog surrounding the probes into Russian meddling. But that's hardly a surprise, The Economist writes. The dueling memos are more about rallying supporters than providing elucidation.
"These memos may be written in the sober, footnoted style of legal submissions. But it is more helpful to think of them as toots on a bugle in the midst of a cacophonous battle. They are calls to arms, designed to rally the troops on each side, reassure them that they are winning and keep them in line amid the clanging, banging and horse-whinnying of combat," The Economist says.
"The key to the mystery is to understand that these dueling memos are not about what was done by anyone. This is a political moment in which 'what' matters less than 'who'—who someone is for, and against."
"Not long ago, of course, lots of Americans believed that individuals could have personal political beliefs and still serve the rule of law. If the dueling memos clarify anything, it is that that moment is long past." | | NAFTA Talks Going Nowhere? That Suits Team Trump Just Fine | | NAFTA negotiations aren't going anywhere right now. That likely suits the Trump administration just fine, writes Edward Alden for Politico Magazine.
"It turns out the uncertainty over NAFTA's fate is Trump's friend. It is part of what appears to be a systematic — US trading partners might say predatory — strategy to shift investment dollars to the United States," Alden writes.
"I have had conversations with business leaders in recent weeks in which they all quietly acknowledge the same thing: Until they know what the new rules will be under NAFTA, they are likely to hedge their bets by locating new investments in the United States rather than in Canada or Mexico, just in case the rules change and they are frozen out of the largest North American market."
Still, Alden notes, this can't go on forever. "[A]t some point the president will either have to bite the bullet and pay the political and economic cost of withdrawal, or accept some compromise deal that will be all but impossible to sell on the campaign trail if he seeks re-election. Neither option will be appealing for Trump."
| | African Migrants' Long Road to Safety Is Getting (Much) Longer | | Europe's crackdown on migrants from Africa and the Middle East saw numbers trying to cross into the continent tumble by about 200,000 in 2017 compared with the year before. As Europe pulls in the welcome mat, asylum seekers from the region are increasingly finding a new migration route is more hospitable – and it's one that ultimately leads to the United States, writes Lauren Markham for the New Republic.
"Each year, thousands of migrants from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia make their way to South America and then move northward, bound for the United States—and their numbers have been increasing steadily. It's impossible to know how many migrants from outside the Americas begin the journey and do not make it to the United States, or how many make it to the country and slip through undetected. But the number of 'irregular migrants'…apprehended on the US side of the border with Mexico has tripled since 2010," Markham writes.
"They remain a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Central Americans crossing into the United States. But it is a hastening trickle that may well become a flood. 'These "extra-continental" migrants will probably increase,' said Roeland De Wilde, chief of mission for the International Organization for Migration in Costa Rica, 'given the increased difficulties in entering Europe, relative ease of entry in some South American countries, and smugglers' increased organization across continents.'"
| | Italy holds its general election on Sunday. Michael Birnbaum writes for the Washington Post that while EU leaders "once saw Berlusconi as a danger to the bloc and the euro zone, he now appears to be Brussels's best bet in comparison with his strongest rivals."
Vladimir Putin is scheduled to deliver his state of the union address to Russia's parliament on Thursday, Sputnik International notes. Miodrag Soric writes for Deutsche Welle that while Putin is talking a good game ahead of next month's presidential election, don't expect anything to change if he wins. "Economic reforms remain a dream. In reality, the re-Sovietization — in other words, the nationalization of the economy — continues. Three-quarters of Russia's gross domestic product is generated by state-controlled companies and that number is rising, fueling inefficiency, excessive bureaucracy and a lack of competition." | | | | | | |
