| | | | Brexit Deal Crashes and Burns | | The Brexit deal has gone down in defeat—a crushing one—as Prime Minister Theresa May's arrangement with Brussels fell in Parliament 432 votes to 202, a record margin in the modern era. The question now is: What's next?
While a drastic blow might seem to change Brexit's fortunes, BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg had predicted it "very unlikely … that we are about to see immediately any dramatic pivot from the prime minister, even if the defeat is a resounding one."
Potential outcomes abound, as The Telegraph lays out, but the "problem is that it is not clear at the moment that there is a consensus in Parliament for any one of these options." Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has proposed a no-confidence vote in May; former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson suggested a new deal; and May has pledged cross-party talks.
Referendum supporters rejoiced in today's result, and messy as the alternatives may be, Bloomberg's editorial board has pointed out that another public vote could be messy too, while making the case nonetheless: "It could result in a reversal of Brexit as narrow as the majority that once ratified it — or, indeed, no reversal at all. It will heal no wounds. But given the immense gap between what voters were promised in 2016 and the options now on offer, simple fairness dictates that they have a say."
For Britons, Brexit mayhem may provoke anxiety, but for Europe, it's a tired scene, writes Joris Luyendijk in The Guardian: "[F]or many Europeans, the meaningful vote is just more of the same: the Brits still don't know what they want, so the politicians go round and round and round, and then round some more."
| | News that Trump has privately—and repeatedly—floated the idea of abandoning the Western alliance appears stunning. But is it?
It's not the first time President Trump has pummeled NATO with criticism: He's demanded countries live up to their spending obligations, shaking allies and winning some praise for his assessment.
"It's not surprising. There have been rumors circulating at different points that Trump was very skeptical of NATO, and of course he's been very vocal in saying it's a very bad deal for the US in terms of freeloading allies," Alexander Vershbow, former NATO deputy secretary general and US ambassador to NATO and to Russia, tells Global Briefing. "The irony of all this is that he should be celebrating the fact that allies are spending a lot more … [it's] certainly basis for him to declare victory rather than pull out of NATO."
Nine of 29 NATO member countries are expected to meet the 2-percent-of-GDP defense spending goal in 2019, including the US, compared with four in 2014, the AP has reported. | | Canada Caught in Superpower Crossfire? | | | The feud between Canada and China escalated yesterday with China issuing a death sentence on drug-smuggling charges for Canadian Robert Schellenberg, and on Tuesday China warned its citizens of being "arbitrarily detained at the request of a third nation" in Canada, after Canada's initial arrest of a Huawei executive for extradition to the US.
The Toronto Star wrote in an editorial that the cases "will likely be resolved as part of a new understanding on trade issues between Washington and Beijing." If Canada is caught in a superpower crossfire, its government isn't letting on: There "was no political interference in the arrest of Ms. Weng Wanzhou," a Foreign Ministry spokesman tells Global Briefing. "Canada respects its international legal commitments, including by honouring its extradition treaty with the United States."
Some Canadians want to engage with China as a hedge against the US, University of Toronto political science Prof. Lynette Ong writes at The Globe and Mail: "We cannot foretell what will happen, but we can be certain that the longer China allows this to drag on, the more friends it will lose in Canada and across the Western world."
Huawei's founder, meanwhile, has given a rare interview in which he denied his company spies for China and called President Trump "a great president."
| | Politicizing a Murder in Poland? | | After Gdańsk Mayor Pawel Adamowicz was killed in a stabbing attack at a charity event on Sunday—reportedly by a man who afterward criticized Poland's centrist Civic Platform Party, which supported Adamowicz and to which the mayor had formerly belonged—The Economist reports that the "attack has shaken Poland. Politicians of all stripes expressed their condolences."
Central European University professor of law and public management Maciej Kisilowski sees ominous overtones in the government's response and issues a dire warning in Politico Europe that the Polish government will exploit the murder: "While there is no evidence that Law and Justice was in any way involved in the murder of Adamowicz, the murder of one of the party's most vocal critics has created an atmosphere of fear and emergency that it is likely to exploit to accelerate its near-total takeover of independent institutions and do away with what's left of Poland's democracy."
| | Amid Tensions, US and China Cooperate on Nukes in Nigeria | | Tales of cooperation between the US and China can be hard to come by, but nuclear nonproliferation seems to offer one: Defense News details a mission in October involving the US National Nuclear Security Administration and US State Department security to remove enriched uranium from a facility in Nigeria, amid fears it could be targeted by the terrorist group Boko Haram, and transport it to China.
China helped in an international effort, even as tensions rose on other fronts, Defense News writes: "Underscoring the importance of the operation: the key role China played in transporting and storing the plutonium, with the operation happening just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump made an explicit threat to China about growing America's nuclear arsenal … By the time the ... plane — carrying the [highly enriched uranium], along with American inspectors and security — arrived at Shijiazhuang airport in China on Dec. 6, the arrest of a Chinese technology executive in Canada had inflamed fears of a trade conflict between the two countries." | | | | | | |
