| | | | Twilight of the Populists? | | Occasioned partly by Prime Minister Boris Johnson's troubles in Britain, new questions are emerging over the state of global populism. The Atlantic's David Graham notes that populists are flailing from the UK to Italy, where Matteo Salvini has been ousted from power; Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces another election after failing to form a government this year; and the US, where President Trump stares down a shaky economy heading into 2020.
"[T]heir recent struggles suggest that populism is not so popular after all," Graham writes. "Each of these leaders may survive, but he will do so with minority support."
Populists' difficulties can be seen across Europe, Paul Taylor writes for Politico, as "a series of events and votes in Italy, Britain, France, Spain, Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic suggest the tide could be turning against the anti-establishment nationalist movements … leaving the barbarians howling in frustration at the gates." | | Britain's Next Election: An Ugly Campaign and a Different Tory Party | | After promising to take control of Brexit, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has done just the opposite, Philip Stephens writes for the Financial Times, as Johnson has sacked key party members and foisted upon Britons a new election "that might make even Mr. Trump blush." The campaign will bear witness to the Tories' rightward tilt under Johnson, who will campaign "as leader of the party of English nationalism," Stephens writes, predicting xenophobic dog-whistles along the way.
The campaign will feature a Tory party that now actively supports no-deal Brexit, The Economist concludes—or as the FT writes in an editorial, a party that's "shrunken to an English nationalist rump." The outcome, however, is all but certain: There's still a chance of Johnson "using a ballot to ensure an EU crash-out … or, if he wins, simply repealing this week's bill outlawing no-deal," the FT writes. | | In Afghanistan, the Real Peace Talks Loom | | | Now that the US and the Taliban have reached a tentative agreement, John Walsh writes at Foreign Affairs that more-significant work is about to begin: talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Those will hold the key to Afghanistan's future, he writes, and difficult issues abound: whether to hold the country's next presidential election; whether to form a transitional government; the future of women's rights; the fate of tens of thousands of prisoners; and, perhaps most importantly, what the country's next government might look like—a continuation, more or less, of is current form, or something closer to the Taliban's draconian, pre-2001 rule.
Walsh's advice: "Nobody expects an immediate grand bargain," but the two sides should "aim high" and pursue ambitious goals before international attention fades. | | This summer, a few observers have warned of looming instability in Asia's political order—Michael Auslin recently wrote in Foreign Policy that the nascent "Asian century is over"—and Robert D. Kaplan offers up another gloomy picture in the same magazine. "[W]e are entering a new era—one that will feature a more assertive yet more internally turbulent China, coupled with a fracturing American alliance system and a US Navy that is less dominant than it has been in recent decades. The crisis in Hong Kong and the deterioration of relations between South Korea and Japan are mere prologue to the coming years," he writes. "Asian security can no longer be taken for granted."
As the US security umbrella slowly evaporates, and as China turns more aggressive, risks and tensions grow. For a look at how things might turn dangerous, The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof games out how a war between the US and China might start: with China shutting off the lights in Taiwan. As tensions grow in Hong Kong, the worry is that China might grow even more assertive on its perimeter, starting a conflict that could draw America in. "If that happens, no one knows quite what the US would do, including the US itself," Kristof writes. | | Information Warfare Is Here to Stay | | That's among the conclusions of a new, 282-page RAND study of Russian and Chinese online influence campaigns. Foreign trolls may not yet be the West's puppet masters—"Moscow has not been inventing the grievances that produced a few recent electoral or referendum outcomes," RAND's authors observe—but that's no reason to get complacent. "[T]he marriage of the hostile intent of several leading powers and the evolution of several interrelated areas of information technology has the potential to vastly increase the effectiveness and reach of these techniques over time," the authors find.
Autocracies' disinformation plans "remain in their initial stages and … could unfold in several ways," they write. Methods could become more powerful, thanks to advancements in targeted advertising, artificial intelligence, social-credit systems, and data gathering from the Internet of things. | | | | | | |
