| | | | US and Iran on a Collision Course | | | As President Trump has taken a hard line on Iran, the latter has done the same, Sina Toossi writes in The National Interest: Amid escalating US sanctions pressure, the patient, wait-until-Trump-is-gone approach of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif is falling out of favor. That puts the US and Iran on a collision course, as Iran's restraint won't last forever, Toossi suggests. America's strategy is a risky one for another reason, Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman write at Foreign Policy: In seeking to block Iran's oil sales, the US risks irking other countries, and it remains to be seen whether America can really enforce its sanctions on buyers like China. | | Eurosceptics Will Rise, But Centrists Will Be the Kingmakers | | | Anti-EU parties are expected to make gains in European Parliament elections in late May, and the European Council of Foreign Relations conducts some modeling to quantify them: Based on an agglomeration of polls, the group predicts Eurosceptics will take 35% of seats (they currently hold 30%, by the group's count) vaulting over both the right and left to become the EU's second-largest bloc. Paradoxically, that will put more power in the hands of centrists: As the far-right rises, much will ride on how the left, right, and center choose to form coalitions. Centrists, including French President Emmanuel Macron's party, La Republique En Marche, are poised to play "kingmakers" in the new landscape, the group concludes. | | Can the US Compete with Belt and Road? | | | The world needs infrastructure, and lots of it—$94 trillion in roads, water systems, and telecom by 2040, according to the G20-launched Global Infrastructure Hub. Predicting "history's largest infrastructure boom," a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies urges the US to compete with China for a piece of it. China's Belt and Road Initiative plans to connect some 65 countries, but its vulnerabilities (corruption and cost, namely) are beginning to show. America is "way behind the power curve," but there's room to compete, as Belt and Road will contribute just over $1 trillion to that massive global demand, CSIS writes. The US can leverage its private sector and technical expertise, but it will have to start identifying opportunities, working with allies, and spending some taxpayer money on overseas projects. | | Birth of the Virtual Campaign | | | In 2016, President Trump upended the conventional campaign wisdom by spending very little, tweeting a lot, and riding media coverage to victory. In Ukraine, comedian president-elect Volodymyr Zelensky took things further, on the way to a landslide 73% win, the Atlantic Council's Adrian Karatnycky writes for Politico Magazine, calling Zelensky's the world's first "entirely virtual" presidential campaign. Zelensky "did no face-to-face campaigning, made no speeches, held no rallies … gave no press conferences, avoided in-depth interviews" and did not debate until the final day of the campaign, Karatnycky writes. Zelensky's campaign "centered on his television series, public appearances that resembled stand-up shows, and social media messages,"writes Gwendolyn Sasse at Carnegie Europe, noting that Zelensky also defied traditional geographic voting patterns, as old lines broke down amid widespread rejection of incumbent Petro Poroshenko. | | The Antidote to Strongmen: Hope | | | The success of democratically elected strongmen, from President Trump in the US to Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, proves that healthy democratic institutions alone "cannot contain" the rise of authoritarian populism, Martin Wolf argues in the Financial Times. The politics of fear are powerful, and they've helped populist leaders gain power, but Wolf offers up an antidote: Where institutions fail to keep societies democratic, the answer is to campaign against authoritarian leaders with "a politics built partly on hope," appealing to voters' "better angels." | | | | | | |
