| | | | Fareed: Bannon Could Be Right About November | | Steve Bannon appears to have zeroed-in on immigration as the key to electoral success in November, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column, following his interview this week with the former White House chief strategist. And he could be right.
"The idea of greater immigration controls has an undeniable mainstream appeal. The Democratic Party is too far to the left on many of these issues, embracing concepts such as sanctuary cities, which only reinforces its image as a party that is more concerned with race, identity and multiculturalism than the rule of law," Fareed writes.
Fareed sits down with Bannon to discuss populism, midterms, and more. Tune in to "A Fareed Zakaria Special: The Steve Bannon Interview" tonight 9 pm ET or Sunday 10 am ET on CNN.
| | The Unexciting Truth About Handling Kim | | | President Trump's announcement Friday that the June 12 meeting with Kim Jong Un is back on was just the latest in a series of head-spinning moves surrounding talks between the two nations. But the reality is that if North Korean denuclearization is going to happen, it will be a long and drawn out process, writes Philip Yun for Reuters. And this month's summit will be the beginning, not the end. "True denuclearization means creating a very different political and security environment so that the regime no longer views its long-standing, adversarial policies or weapons as necessary. No piece of paper, no promise, no assurance from the United States will suffice. This is a daunting task—and will take years. Think about how the Vietnam-US relationship has changed since the end of that war." | | Team Trump Has Opened Pandora's Box on Trade | | | The Trump administration has invoked national security concerns to justify the tariffs it has slapped on steel and aluminum imports from Canada, the European Union and Mexico. That not only violates the spirit of the rules, but could come back to bite the United States, argues Jennifer A. Hillman in The New York Times.
This approach "provides all countries with a 'get out of jail free' card that can be played just by saying the magic words 'national security,'" writes Hillman, who served in the Clinton administration.
"Those who crafted the 'national security' exception to the international trading rules tried to balance every country's need to judge their own national security risks with the concern that an open-ended exception would be misused. Hence, 'national security' is limited to cases involving emergencies, war and weapons. The Trump administration has upset that balance. If the United States can justify tariffs on cars as a threat to national security, then every country in the world can most likely justify restrictions on almost any product under a similar claim." | | The Unthinkable Becomes Less Unthinkable in Brazil | | Brazil is looking increasingly "frightened, leaderless [and] shockingly pessimistic," writes Brian Winter for Americas Quarterly. That is raising the specter of something that for a long time seemed unthinkable: Intervention by the military.
"[F]our years of scandal, violence and economic destruction have obliterated faith in not just President Michel Temer, not just the political class, but in democracy itself. It is a country where there will be elections in October, but most voters profess little faith in any of the candidates. Given that vacuum, many Brazilians…believe the military should somehow act to restore order. Amid this week's strike, the clamor became so loud that both Temer and a senior military official had to publicly deny the possibility of an imminent coup," Winter writes.
"This was all unquestionably good news for the presidential candidate most identified with the armed forces, retired Army captain Jair Bolsonaro, who was already running first in polls. Many analysts expect him to rise further after this week's events. It's a red alert for anyone else…with the old-fashioned belief that healthy civilian institutions are the key to long-term prosperity, or who still hold out hope that Brazil's economy and political outlook might finally stabilize this year."
| | What Happens in China Won't Stay in China | | China's growing prowess in artificial intelligence and mass surveillance is turning the region of Xinjiang into a police state. The bigger problem? The tools being deployed in China won't stay there forever, The Economist argues in its lead article.
"In parts of the province streets have poles bristling with CCTV cameras every 100-200 meters. They record each passing driver's face and the car's numberplate. Uighurs' mobile phones must run government-issued spyware. The data associated with their ID cards include not just name, sex and occupation, but can contain relatives' details, fingerprints, blood type, DNA information, detention record and 'reliability status,'" The Economist writes.
"Totalitarianism on Xinjiang's scale may be hard to replicate, even across most of China. Repressing an easily identified minority is easier than ensuring absolute control over entire populations. But elements of China's model of surveillance will surely inspire other autocracies—from Russia to Rwanda to Turkey—to which the necessary hardware will happily be sold."
| | The Trump administration's approach of separating children from undocumented migrants entering the United States appears aimed at deterring other migrants from entering. One problem? There's little evidence such tactics work, writes Anna Oltman for the Washington Post's Monkey Cage.
"[D]eterrence does not seem to stop migration so much as redirect it. After an unprecedented number of migrants died while crossing the Mediterranean to Europe in 2014, the European Union tried to discourage such migration by sending out fewer humanitarian sea patrols—which meant that attempting to cross was even riskier—and more stringently policing movement and immigration for those on the continent. The result was that Mediterranean crossings dropped slightly. However, crossings via the alternative 'Balkan Route' through Greece ticked up sharply," Oltman writes.
"Indeed, research on border control has shown that efforts to obstruct or deter border crossings by constructing physical barriers or intercepting migrants at sea have primarily redirected migration flows toward increasingly dangerous alternative routes. And such policies actually appear to encourage migrants to hire human traffickers to guide them through." | | | | | | |
