| | | | Fareed: National Service Can Mend the Country | | America faces a growing social divide, particularly between rural and urban residents, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column; national service, he suggests, might be a good way to fix it.
"Imagine if in today's America the sons and daughters of hedge-fund managers, tech millionaires and bankers spent a year with the children of coal miners and farmers, working in public schools or national parks or the armed forces," Fareed writes.
It wouldn't solve all our problems, but a robust national-service program could help bridge the country's widening cultural and economic chasm. | | | For all the panic about China's rising global influence, we should all just settle down a bit, Doug Bandow writes at The American Conservative. China's ambitions involve regional territorial claims with historical precedent, he writes—not world domination. Its military doesn't threaten America, and it remains surrounded by competitors, like South Korea and Japan, that will naturally contain it. China's influence will grow, and that will pose some problems, but the US shouldn't treat China as an "enemy," Bandow argues; doing so would only turn it into one. | | The Consequences of War With Iran | | | America has the firepower to win a war with Iran, but the cost would be catastrophic, Amin Saikal writes in Project Syndicate. Iran could sink US ships, threaten countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel with missiles, and launch suicide attacks, he writes, warning of an "uncontrollable regional inferno."
With those consequences in mind, Steven Simon and Richard Sokolsky write at Politico Magazine that it's imperative for Congress to check the Trump administration's escalation. After National Security Advisor John Bolton cited threatening intelligence reports, Simon and Sokolsky call on Congress to vet the details—lest it repeat the mistakes of 2003's Iraq invasion. The recently cited intelligence involved Iran loading missiles onto ships, and writing for the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Fabian Hinz suggests those missiles were most likely headed for Yemen to assist Houthi rebels, not necessarily to threaten American troops. | | Beware the Kushner Peace Plan | | Jared Kushner's pending Middle East peace plan would be a disaster, argues The Washington Institute for Near East Policy Executive Director Robert Satloff—not if implemented, but if merely released. Sotloff recently interviewed Kushner about the plan onstage, and he notes that Kushner has troublingly avoided any mention of "statehood" for Palestinians.
Kushner has departed from previous efforts by drafting terms on his own, rather than encouraging Israelis and Palestinians to sketch out a plan through negotiations. He's approaching peace like a New York real-estate developer, Satloff writes, and with Israelis and Palestinians far apart on what they'd accept, there's real danger that even releasing this plan would delegitimize any good ideas it might contain. | | The Trade War's Political Paradox | | As US/China trade talks drag on, Bloomberg's David Fickling writes that domestic politics could impede the deal-making. For China, President Xi Jinping can't be seen as giving into US pressure, and President Trump faces a political paradox.
If the US "wins" in negotiations, it will force China to reform practices on intellectual property and how foreign firms are treated. Effectively, that will attract more US businesses and mean more American outsourcing. "(I)f you're looking to make America great again by bringing jobs home, making China a more attractive place to do business seems a strange way to go about it," Fickling surmises. | | | | | | |
