| | | | The Trouble with Team Trump's Blank Check Diplomacy | | The Trump administration has made clear it wants to extricate the United States from the Middle East. But in trying to hand over the reins to allies, it is jeopardizing any chance of pulling the region out of the morass it finds itself in, writes Thomas Friedman for The New York Times.
"America's real choices there are not stay or go, but be smart or dumb…Trump is getting a lesson, as we speak, in what happens when America writes blank checks to allies and pals—who share some of our interests but also have extreme impulses of their own—and abdicates real diplomatic leadership," Friedman writes.
"Trump and his team don't understand: The US can't just subcontract order-making in the Middle East to Israel, Russia and Saudi Arabia and write them blank checks. Their leaders actually need us to draw red lines for them, too, so they can tell their own hotheads and extremists, 'Hey, I am with you—but the Americans won't let me do that.'"
| | About Those Weimar Comparisons... | | | Far-right violence in the German city of Chemnitz last week has sparked inevitable comparisons with the Weimar Republic's slide toward Nazi control. That comparison is overblown, writes Leonid Bershidsky for Bloomberg. But that doesn't mean the silent majority shouldn't start making itself heard.
"In 1932, a third of the German workforce was estimated to be jobless…Today, unemployment is at record lows, and the economy is booming. Short of a crash, it's difficult to imagine the [far-right Alternative for Germany] could overtake CDU/CSU, no matter how worried Germans might be about immigration and related social problems," Bershidsky writes.
Still, "the majority of Germans [need] to take a more convincing stand against the far right. One reason that's necessary is that, when it comes to Germany, the outside world tends to lean toward the worst historical parallels. Years of repentance and rebuilding haven't erased the Nazi-era memories. Germany has to run just to stay in place, to maintain the reputation it has won; incidents like Chemnitz set it back."
| | Guess Who Would Take Trump's 36% Approval Rating? | | | President Trump's approval rating has dipped to 36%, according to two new polls. One leader that might take that number? The even less popular Emmanuel Macron, suggests Christophe Guilluy in The Guardian.
While "Trump appears to be delivering what his voters want, Macron is pushing through more and more measures that go against the wishes of his," Guilluy writes, following a new poll that showed the French President's approval rating falling to 31%.
"These developments are an illustration of the political difficulty that Europe's globalizing class now finds itself in. From Angela Merkel to Macron, the advocates of globalization are now relying on voters who cling to a social model that held sway during the three decades of postwar economic growth…Locked away in their metropolitan citadels, they fail to see that their electoral programs no longer meet the concerns of more than a tiny minority of the population—or worse, of their own voters." | | Why Brazil Could Get its Trump | | Brazilians head to the polls next month to choose a president. Brett J. Kyle and Andrew G. Reiter write in the Washington Post that with the country in turmoil, and its most popular politician in jail, voters appear increasingly drawn to candidates espousing some undemocratic-sounding views.
"Many Brazilians are ambivalent about democracy: Half are open to some form of authoritarian rule. Brazil's military regime (1964-1985) was comparatively less repressive than those of its neighbors. During that time, GDP averaged an annual growth rate of 6.2 percent. Many voters are now nostalgic for days when the streets were safer…[A]t least 90 candidates linked to the armed forces are running for public office in the upcoming elections," they write.
"Among those is presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro of the Social Liberal Party, a former army captain who has openly promised a return to military rule if elected. Likened to President Trump, Bolsonaro has been criticized for disparaging comments against women, the LGBT community, ethnic minorities and foreigners."
| | China Is Paying Too Much for its Friends | | If there's a new Cold War, this time between the United States and China, then China is making some of the same mistakes the Soviet Union did, writes Minxin Pei for Project Syndicate. Overpaying for friends is one of them.
One example of "imperial overreach is China's generous aid to countries—from Cambodia to Venezuela to Russia—that offer little in return. According to AidData at the College of William and Mary, from 2000 to 2014, Cambodia, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Cuba, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe together received $24.4 billion in Chinese grants or heavily subsidized loans," Pei writes.
"Like the Soviet Union, China is paying through the nose for a few friends, gaining only limited benefits while becoming increasingly entrenched in an unsustainable arms race. The Sino-American Cold War has barely started, yet China is already on track to lose."
| | Team Trump's China Bashing Own Goal | | President Trump appears determined to name and shame China over the lack of progress with North Korea. That's going to hurt, not help, US efforts, writes Christopher Hill for Foreign Affairs.
"Those who argue that working with China to resolve the North Korea nuclear issue would be difficult should consider the prospects of working against China. Beijing does not want a nuclear North Korea, but neither does it want to be marginalized by Washington in its own neighborhood," Hill writes.
"The Trump administration has got to do better if it is to succeed in the goal—shared by China—of denuclearizing North Korea. To castigate China in public for supposedly working against the United States is to set US interests back, rather than to devise a course forward."
"Presenting a united front would prevent North Korea from being able to go shopping for initiatives and to explore every crack in the US-Chinese relationship." | | | | | | |
