| | | | Can Macron Make Trump Face an Inconvenient Truth? | | French President Emmanuel Macron floated the idea of talks on a "new deal" over Iran during his state visit to the White House on Tuesday, The Guardian notes.
"The offer seemed calculated to appease the US president's discontent with the current agreement, the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) by proposing a broader initiative to tackle other elements of Iran's challenge in the region, particularly its ballistic missile program, and its military role in Syria."
Patrick Cockburn argues in The Independent that Macron will have his work cut out persuading President Trump not to torpedo the existing deal. But the truth is that for all of Trump's bombast on the issue, Cockburn says, US options are limited.
"The White House is in a position to hurt Iran economically by re-imposing economic sanctions, not that these were ever really lifted after 2015, but US political options are more limited. It may talk about regime change in Tehran, but is not in a position to do much about it," Cockburn argues.
"There is a further US weakness: the US, often prompted by Israel, and Saudi Arabia, has a track record of underestimating the extent to which Iran, as the largest Shia Muslim power, plays a leading role in a coalition of states – Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – because of the predominant influence of the Shia in these countries. It is very difficult to defeat Iran there – the northern tier of the Middle East – but it is in this region that the US has chosen over the years to try to roll back Iranian influence."
| | The Reality of Terrorism in Canada | | | The apparent attack in Toronto on Monday is reminiscent of the kind of vehicle attacks that have been perpetrated in Europe. But while Canadian authorities search for answers in the wake of the tragedy – and appear to downplay terrorism as a likely motive – it's also important to keep something in perspective, writes Alex Nowrasteh for Cato at Liberty: The chances of being a victim of terrorism in Canada are remote, even by developed country standards.
Assuming Tuesday's incident is found not to have been an act of terrorism, "the annual chance of being murdered in a terrorist attack on Canadian soil over the last 25 years was about one in 60.4 million per year," Nowrasteh says.
"By comparison, the annual chance of being murdered in a terrorist attack in the United States over that time was about 25 times greater than in Canada. Similarly, the annual chance of being murdered in a terrorist attack in Canada also appears to be lower than in Europe. The chance of being murdered in a non-terrorist murder in Canada was over 1,000 times greater." | | The diverging demography and economic fortunes of India's north and south are putting the country to the test. India is more diverse than Europe and more populous than Africa, and the cracks are beginning to show, argues Mihir Sharma for Bloomberg View.
"The richer south resents having to subsidize the rest of the country," Sharma notes. "Meanwhile, India's interior has human development indicators equivalent to sub-Saharan Africa, while the southern states' human development indices resemble those of upper-middle-income countries. In particular, women are more empowered in many coastal states. Consequently, they have fewer children. Female fertility in many southern states is below the replacement rate; up north, women might have three or four children on average.
"Southerners have put these facts together and come to the uncomfortable conclusion that they could wind up becoming a permanent minority politically." "To many, when India comes to mind, it's for its tinsel, the colorful festivals, the vibrant film industry. Or you might think of the economy, among the world's fastest growing, taking 1.3 billion people on a path to modernity," Fareed says. "But over the past week, we have seen a different side of India -- darker in every sense."
Watch the full What in the World from Sunday's show here.
| | It Really Wasn't the Economy: Study | | President Trump's support in 2016 wasn't about voters having been left behind economically. And it wasn't really about education, a new study suggests. It was about status – and as the numbers and influence of minorities rise, America's divisions could get worse.
"Those who felt that the hierarchy was being upended—with whites discriminated against more than blacks, Christians discriminated against more than Muslims, and men discriminated against more than women—were most likely to support Trump," the study, published in the journal PNAS, concludes.
"The 2016 election was a result of anxiety about dominant groups' future status rather than a result of being overlooked in the past. In many ways, a sense of group threat is a much tougher opponent than an economic downturn, because it is a psychological mindset rather than an actual event or misfortune. Given current demographic trends within the United States, minority influence will only increase with time, thus heightening this source of perceived status threat."
| | Hungary's lurch toward authoritarianism has been grabbing the headlines recently. But don't forget neighboring Poland. Despite a growing economy, the populist Law and Justice (PiS) party took power in 2015, and has since "transformed Poland from a poster-boy of post-communist transition into the EU's problem child," The Economist argues. The damage it's causing won't be easy to undo.
"By 2015, Poles' sense of being shortchanged had grown, not because they were worse off, but because their aspirations outpaced reality. Many had experience of western Europe, where 2 million or so had sought work since Poland joined the EU in 2004. Interviews with denizens of Pultusk-like towns by Maciej Gdula, a sociologist at Warsaw University, reveal that PiS supporters are neither left behind nor frustrated with their lives. But they want more—and they want it now," The Economist says. "PiS promised them less condescension and more protection."
"At best, PiS's illiberal reforms might be reversed by the next party that wins an election. But they have set a precedent: future governments may repeat the cycle of court-packing and purges. In the worst case, Poland may have started down the authoritarian road already traveled by Turkey and Hungary." | | | | | | |
