| | | | Trump Plays the Victim Card at the International Table | | The message of President Trump's speech at the UN General Assembly today was clear, writes Spencer Ackerman for The Daily Beast: America is a victim in an ungrateful world.
"In Trump's telling, all America wants from the world is to live and let live—but without consideration of the fundamental power imbalances favoring America that Trump seeks to entrench. Challenges to this arrangement come merely from 'experts who [have been] proven wrong time and time again,' he asserted in a line aimed at critics of his widely condemned decision to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, another sign that Palestinians will not enjoy the sovereignty Trump considers so vital," Ackerman says.
"Trump's bet at the United Nations is that he rides a tide of nationalisms in the world's developed countries strong enough to withstand the moderating forces posed by international institutions…Thus far, Trump has seen electoral evidence, from Brexit to Poland to Hungary, of nationalism's new appeal—even as the 'hopeful futures' Trump sees in nationalist countries victimize the weakest within them. No one in the General Assembly laughed at that."
| | There's a Fundamental Problem with Team Trump's Iran Policy | | | US efforts to encourage other nations to join in the pressure on Iran have a fundamental problem, suggests Heather Hurlburt in New York Magazine: They're rooted in hypocrisy.
"The core demand of [the] US's Iran policy is that major allies and partners sacrifice some of their own sovereignty…while insisting that American sovereignty is inviolable," Hurlburt writes.
The US policy of crippling Iran's oil exports "has no chance—zero—of working if major oil importers like India and China don't agree to cut off purchases from Iran. Sanctions that make it difficult to use US currency to buy or sell Iranian goods will go back into effect in November. So originally announced plans for the president to chair a session of the Security Council on Wednesday focused just on Iran made some sense. If, that is, you believed that the president would make a positive, persuasive case that would convince not just leaders but their publics that sacrificing not just cheaper oil but a little bit of national sovereignty to US demands made sense." "As sanctions have begun to bite, the Iranian economy is once again under tremendous pressure, its currency plummeting, its oil sales jeopardized. His enemies in the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite military unit that also oversaw the nuclear program, have been in the ascent, arguing that the United States was an untrustworthy negotiating partner, and that Mr. Rouhani was naïve to have entered the agreement." | | The 1930s Comparison that Actually Makes Sense | | Drawing comparisons with 1930s Germany is commonplace now. But there's one parallel that makes sense, suggests David Keys for The Independent. Britain's Conservative Party should brush up on its history if it wants to understand quite how damaging Brexit will be.
Britain's government "seems to think that we have no strategic need to fully participate politically in continental Europe. It fondly imagines that, conceptually, the empire is still there ('disguised' as the Commonwealth), just waiting to sustain and help rescue us," Keys writes.
"Again, in continental Europe, Tory policies will lead (in the absence of the UK) to a consequent massive increase in German power in Europe, an increase which is likely ultimately to lead to problems in the EU as a whole. And just as in the 1930s, the UK's departure from Europe (due to appeasement and the Second World War) made us utterly dependent on the USA, so our 2019 departure from Europe (due to Brexit) will also massively increase American influence over our economic and geopolitical existence."
| | Latin American nations are gearing up for an even greater flow of migrants fleeing Venezuela's economic crisis. The result is a situation that looks increasingly like the migrant crisis Europe faced in 2015, writes Krishnadev Calamur in The Atlantic. In some ways, this could be worse.
"If the European migrant crisis is any indication, Venezuela's neighbors are unlikely to remain welcoming for long. European nations like Germany and Sweden, which opened their arms to migrants in the early days of the crisis, quickly soured on the new arrivals, with dramatic political consequences. There's also the fact that Latin American nations are far poorer than those in the European Union—something that's sure to become a destabilizing political issue for a place like Colombia," according to Colombia's ambassador to the United States.
| | Will Brazilians Score an Own Goal? | | Brazilian voters are frustrated with their political system. The resulting apathy could have dangerous consequences if they choose not to vote, write Joe Leahy and Andres Schipani in the Financial Times.
Analysts say that "a victory for either Mr Haddad or Mr Bolsonaro that was backed by only a quarter of eligible voters could be a disaster for the country, which needs to end political infighting in Brasília and pass important fiscal reforms," they write.
"With society already polarized between the far-left and right, a president with minority support might have trouble managing the country's fractious congress, possibly resulting in another impeachment with unpredictable results for Brazil's young democracy."
"The number of voters planning to cast a null or blank vote is running at the highest level in 16 years with less than a month to go before the first round on October 7 of the two-round election, according to pollster Datafolha." | | | | | | |
