| | | | Though President Trump claims his tariffs on China are lifting America's GDP, The Wall Street Journal's editorial board reminds us that tariffs don't really help anyone's economy; they've dragged on China's, America's (despite the growth figures of which Trump boasted), and the world's. Markets have dipped, Chinese goods are more expensive for US producers and consumers, and we should remember tariffs are the price of hopefully reaching a better trade arrangement, not a benefit in themselves, the paper writes.
Despite Trump's escalation, China is girding for a protracted fight, the South China Morning Post writes in an editorial: China's economy is performing well, thanks to government stimulus, and with US elections looming, President Xi Jinping may have reason to believe waiting is the best strategy. | | Not a Clash of Civilizations | | | Troubling as it may be for markets, the US/China trade war is not a "civilizational conflict," Minxin Pei writes at Project Syndicate. After a US State Department official cast China as a unique major-power competitor for the US, in that it's not "Caucasian," Pei warns that framing competition as a "race war" is dangerous and won't attract other countries into alliances with the US. The US will need those allies as its burgeoning China cold war develops further, and the Trump administration will need to abandon that kind of rhetoric if it wants to win friends. | | Will Iraq Become a Venue for US/Iran Conflict? | | | As tensions mount between the US and Iran, there's some growing discussion that Iraq could become an arena in that conflict. After Iran-backed militias helped defeat ISIS, Iraq has a panoply of them folded under its national security apparatus, and they could threaten US troops in the region, Mike Giglio recently wrote in The Atlantic.
Iran is expert at using such proxy groups against its adversaries, and there's now a concern that Iran could deploy missiles to those militias in Iraq, threatening both US forces and Israel, according to Michael Knights and Assaf Orion of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. That could "imperil the US position in Iraq and spoil the country's first chance at sustained peace after decades of conflict," they write. | | Russia Has America's Number, in More Ways Than One | | Russia is challenging the US on a host of fronts, CNN's Jim Sciutto writes in an Atlantic article adapted from his new book, The Shadow War: Inside Russia's and China's Secret Operations to Defeat America.
Tactics range from election interference to covert war in Ukraine to anti-satellite weapons to submarines—but most significantly, the array of methods shows that Russia has sensed America's vulnerabilities, including weaknesses in a polarized democratic system. American efforts to deter Russia, meanwhile, haven't been effective—especially under President Trump, who appears disinclined to acknowledge that Russia is an enemy after it sought to help him win in 2016, Sciutto writes. | | The Battle for Turkey's Future Is Being Fought in Istanbul | | When Turkey re-runs Istanbul's mayoral election in late June, at the behest of President Erdogan's party following its candidate's defeat, voters could very well deliver another blow to Erdogan's political dominance and elect the opposition party's candidate again, by an even wider margin, Asli Aydıntaşbaş writes for the European Council on Foreign Relations.
The whole saga has thrust Turkey into a new era of politics, one in which Erdogan is no longer unbeatable, Aydıntaşbaş writes, while David O'Byrne wonders, in a World Politics Review op-ed, how far Erdogan will go to secure a victory for his favored candidate in Istanbul. Annulling Istanbul's results broke with tradition and Erdogan may face more challengers, as a cadre of Turkey's former political heavyweights consider forming a new party, he writes. | | | | | | |
