| | | | About that New Kim Promise… | | North Korea has vowed to "close a key missile test facility in the presence of 'international experts' and potentially destroy its primary nuclear complex if the United States agrees to corresponding measures," CNN reports. But don't be fooled into thinking Kim Jong Un is planning on scrapping his existing nuclear arsenal, too, suggests The Atlantic Council's Robert Manning.
"Kim appears to be pursuing a strategy designed to do two things: first, give the Moon administration enough of an appearance of progress on nuclear issues to justify moving ahead on North-South cooperation and, by doing so, drive a wedge between the United States and South Korea. And, second, eventually get the United States, China, and South Korea to accept a nuclear freeze and accept North Korea as a de facto nuclear weapons state," Manning says.
"Judging by President Trump's enthusiastic tweets, Kim is also achieving a third goal: dividing Trump from his entire foreign policy team on North Korea.
"So far, it looks like the North Korean tactics and strategy are more consistent with efforts to create a situation where the world accepts a freeze, not dismantlement, with sanctions lifted and North Korea, like Pakistan, treated as a normal nation."
| | What "The Avengers" Tells Us About Going Green (Yes, Really) | | | The idea that economic growth has to come at the cost of protecting the environment is commonplace. It's also increasingly wrong, writes Noah Smith for Bloomberg Opinion.
"In rich countries, growth has shifted somewhat from physical things to digital services, which require much less energy consumption," Smith writes.
"This incredible technological progress means that rich countries could see a renewable-powered electrical grid and fully electrified transportation before the century is out. More importantly, cheap renewable energy means that poor countries in Africa and South Asia will be able to follow a different, cleaner path to industrialization without sacrificing living standards."
"In the movie 'Avengers: Infinity War,' the supervillain Thanos kills off half the universe in a misguided attempt to prevent resource overuse. The zero-growth environmentalists are embracing a solution only slightly less destructive. Thanos's better course would have been to use his vast powers to provide the universe with renewable energy technology that would let them get rich…without destroying the environment." | | Team Trump, Draw Back Your Bow | | | The relationship between Israel and Arab leaders is looking ever cozier, suggests Roula Khalaf in the Financial Times. But while the Trump administration has been happy to play cupid, this is no match made in heaven.
"The warming long sought by Israel is driven predominantly by shared enmity towards Iran. In the Gulf, Iran's extended reach in the Middle East is a greater and more immediate threat than Israel. Saudi Arabia and Israel also share the same view of US policy under Barack Obama, namely that the Iran nuclear agreement emboldened Tehran instead of curbing its regional ambitions," Khalaf writes.
"The easing of hostilities between Israel and Saudi Arabia has been encouraged by a Trump administration determined to undo the Obama legacy."
Still, "Israel's prime minister is getting ahead of himself. Israeli-Arab ties are still for the most part in an official state of war. Jordan and Egypt may have signed peace agreements with the Jewish state, but they are still stuck in a state of cold peace. Neither diplomatic relations nor an overt embrace by Arab states can be reasonably expected unless Israel signs up to a fair peace deal with Palestinians, which means not for a long time." | | Brazil Is Looking Like the Rest of the West. That's a Shame | | Brazil's presidential election next month is shaping up to look a lot like contests elsewhere in the West, Adam Mitchell argues in The Spectator. Not in a good way.
"As in many other Western democracies, the emotional extremes of Brazilian politics have been crowding out the center. A more traditional candidate like Geraldo Alckmin — a former doctor and four-time state governor of São Paulo — has so far struggled to impose himself, despite his plum allocation of public airtime and his center-right party's past tendency to get its candidates into the second round. And while the softly-spoken environmentalist Marina Silva, who grew up tapping rubber deep in the Amazon, has slipped in the polls, the professorial but hot-headed leftist Ciro Gomes looks like he's in with a shout," Mitchell writes.
"If [Jair] Bolsonaro and [Fernando] Haddad do end up going head to head in the second round, the clash will get even more polarizing and divisive. On one side will be a far-right candidate who has praised the dictatorship that ruled Brazil until 1985. On the other will be Lula's surrogate, whose new running mate is a communist."
| | The world has made remarkable progress in addressing poverty and disease. But rapid population growth in some of the poorest parts of the world means that that positive trend isn't set in stone, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation argues in its latest Goalkeepers report. The chances for future success will likely rise or fall in Africa.
"Africa as a whole is projected to nearly double in size by 2050, which means that even if the percentage of poor people on the continent is cut in half, the number of poor people stays the same. Even so, for most African countries, the outlook is positive. For example, Ethiopia, once the global poster child for famine, is projected to almost eliminate extreme poverty by 2050," the report notes.
"The challenge is that within Africa, poverty is concentrating in just a handful of very fast-growing countries. By 2050, for example, more than 40 percent of the extremely poor people in the world will live in just two countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria. Even within these countries, poverty is concentrating in certain areas." | | | | | | |
