| | | | What's at Stake in Kashmir | | | In sum: regional stability and India's democratic future. In a New York Times op-ed, Haseeb A. Drabu writes that India's removal of Jammu and Kashmir's semi-autonomous status amounts to a Hindu-nationalist power grab. As India's only Muslim-majority state, it's important to India's status as a multireligious democracy, and Drabu suspects that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's plan is to undo Kashmir's Muslim majority (India will now allow non-residents to buy land there) and fulfill a Hindu-first vision of India. "The nature and the manner of changes forced upon Kashmir pitch India as a republican democracy against India as a majoritarian democracy," Drabu concludes. Writing for The Atlantic, Jonah Blank agrees, noting the potential for conflict with Pakistan and the risk that India will cease to be a pro-democratic influence in South Asia. Adding to the list of concerns, the South China Morning Post writes in an editorial that India's move could also jeopardize its relations with China, which borders the Indian state and controls part of the region. | | Will Parliament Vote 'Leave' on Boris Johnson? | | | Though Boris Johnson was just elected Britain's prime minister, it was his own Tory party that gave him that title, and now that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has signaled he will call for a "no confidence" vote on Johnson when Parliament returns to session next month, British observers are speculating as to what might happen if Johnson were to lose. (Tories don't hold an absolute majority, and with Johnson taking a hard line on Brexit, the prospective result would seem to be in question; recent analysis from The Guardian's Jessica Elgot examines how various factions are shaping up.) With debate emerging over whether Johnson would technically have to step down, in the event of a lost no-confidence vote, James Forsyth of The Spectator points us back to the intractable lack of consensus in British politics: "[E]ven if Boris Johnson lost a no-confidence vote, it is not clear who could command the confidence of the [House of] Commons," he writes. "With no alternative government ready to go, then [a general] election would be the obvious answer." | | Trump's Unexpected Effect on US Allies | | | For all the attention (rightly) paid to President Trump's antagonism of longstanding allies, Frida Ghitis writes in a World Politics Review column that Trump has disrupted the US-led alliance structure in a way that fewer may have expected. America's allies may still get along with the US, but they've stopped getting along with each other, she writes—thanks, in part, to Trump's abandonment of America's traditional role in soothing tensions among its friends. Cases in point: Trump elevated Saudi Arabia and other Gulf allies, then took credit when they turned on Qatar and instituted a blockade; he championed Brexit and insulted Theresa May on Twitter for her efforts to work out a deal with Europe; he has cheered Central and Eastern Europe's far right, even as that region's slide toward autocracy has irked America's other continental allies; and as two critical East Asian allies, South Korea and Japan, ratchet up a trade war, Trump has expressed no interest in playing peacemaker. As a result, the "network of international partnerships that have bolstered America's national security, acting as a multiplier of US influence, is clearly fraying," Ghitis writes—as Trump either declines to help or pours gas on the fire. | | A Green New Deal, but Elsewhere | | | Admitting the plan is "idealistic," Christopher Balding proposes the US undertake an Asia-focused "Development Green New Deal" in a Nikkei Asian Review op-ed. While American liberals want to revamp US energy to fight global warming, Balding notes that developing economies pose a greater climate risk, as they're growing faster than America and are doing so by burning coal. (Coal demand in Asia's developing countries is growing steadily, according to the International Energy Agency's 2019 Global Energy C02 Status Report, while it's tapered off in China and the world's advanced economies; Asia also produces more C02 emissions than any other world region.) Taking that into account, Balding suggests the US government boost American companies' overseas renewable-energy projects. It would do more to address global warming, might draw more Republican support, and would supply a (thus far missing) American answer to China's Belt and Road Initiative, he argues. | | Will Europe Scare the Internet Away? | | | That's what Asta Gudrun Helgadottir asks in the new issue of Chatham House's The World Today. In an Internet landscape dominated by Silicon Valley giants, Europe is advancing regulations that risk pushing the Googles and Facebooks of the world to offer fewer services on the continent. YouTube, for instance, will soon face new responsibilities for its users' copyright infringements, and Google News withdrew from Spain, after that country placed it on the hook for publishing rights to the stories it aggregates. The concern is that the Internet—now split between America's relatively libertarian, and China's autocratic, walled-off model—will split further, and Europe will find itself with an Internet of its own. Helgadottir's conclusion is that America's tech giants can pay the price of regulation, but Europe could scare off the platforms of the future: "Whether the next Google-like project will have access to the EU, or the next Instagram will have the money to navigate increasingly complicated EU laws is an open question," she writes. "The absence of these as yet unimagined projects could be the cost the EU pays for regulating the Internet to conform to its norms of data protection, privacy and corporate responsibility." For many observers, that cost is worth it. Count the Financial Times' Philip Stephens among them: The Internet has already split into different systems in different countries, he writes. Better, then, for Europe to set its own rules: "Why should citizens of, say, Munich or Marseille, find that their rights to personal privacy or the balance between upholding free expression and effective security against terrorists is set by the denizens of Palo Alto?" he asks. | | | | | | |
