| | | | The Cloud Over Modi's Victory | | After Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared victory in his country's elections, James Crabtree writes in the Nikkei Asian Review that Modi faces significant challenges after his landslide win. Modi ran a divisive campaign and has yet to live up to the economic promises on which he campaigned the last time around; now, he must offer new ideas and find a way to spur growth, which dipped from just over 8% in 2016 to just over 7% in 2017.
Bloomberg's editorial board writes that Modi's win has come at a nationalistic cost. The "signals from the top" have led to anti-Muslim prejudice, and if Modi wants to be an effective leader, he "has to show he can be one for all Indians," Bloomberg writes. | | Why Iran Isn't Talking to Trump | | | President Trump has asked Iran to call him, so why hasn't that happened? Iran is pursuing a strategy of "no war, no negotiation," Mehdi Khalaji writes at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, positing that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "does not want to open talks with a leader who withdrew from the nuclear deal, ruined Iran's diplomatic efforts, continues to impose new sanctions, and uses humiliating rhetoric against the regime." Iran's reluctance to engage the US openly has a long history, and the revolutionary regime counts on anti-imperialist (and anti-American) resistance as a source of its basic legitimacy, Shireen Hunter writes at LobeLog. | | | Peer into the future of an endlessly escalated trade war, and one finds a possibility that could have far-reaching consequences, if experts are to be believed: China banning exports of rare-earth elements to the US. Foreign Policy's Keith Johnson and Elias Groll write that China has floated the idea—which one expert calls a "nuclear option" of trade-war escalation—which would affect US industries from oil refining to high-tech production, as rare-earth elements are necessary components of high-tech products, from earbuds to electric cars.
It sounds drastic—China produces a large share of rare earths and accounted for 80% of US rare-earth imports from 2014-2017, according to the US Geological Survey—but perhaps we shouldn't worry: Richard Harris writes in the South China Morning Post that China sought to slash exports and corner the rare-earth market once before, in 2010, which only encouraged substitution and weakened China's producers in the long run. | | The World Is Failing to Solve Libya | | Grim as Libya's stalemated conflict may be, Daniel DePetris of Defense Priorities has written that it might be an opportunity for Europe to grow more assertive and solve a major problem in its own neighborhood. European powers like France and Italy have vested interests in Libya, and it could be time for them to take a larger role on the world (or at least regional) stage.
The International Crisis Group predicts a "long, destructive, and deadly" fight over Tripoli, barring a sudden change. It's a sad example of international paralysis, the group writes, as the UN Security Council has failed to call for a ceasefire, the US reversed its stance and backed rebel general Khalifa Haftar, and European powers officially recognize the UN-backed government in Tripoli but "appear to have lost hope in it." | | Lindh Will Test Theories on Radicalization and Imprisonment | | | As the world tries to figure out what to do with captured foreign fighters, the UN has warned that imprisoning them isn't the same as deradicalizing them—and that concern is being tested in the case of "American Taliban" fighter John Walker Lindh, upon his controversial release from prison in the US. The Atlantic's Graeme Wood tells the strange tale of corresponding with the imprisoned Lindh (researching ISIS, Wood wrote to Lindh asking for his impression of ISIS's take on conservative Islamic law; Lindh wrote back with "bookwormish" requests for materials to study in Arabic), and Wood concludes that while Lindh probably won't take up arms immediately, his time in prison seems to have converted him "from an al-Qaeda supporter to an Islamic State supporter." After his release, Lindh is likely to live freely as a jihadist. | | | | | | |
