| | | | What Impeachment Means for US Foreign Policy | | | Though it's a domestic affair, impeaching President Trump is necessary to protect the integrity of US foreign policy, Stephen M. Walt argues at Foreign Policy. After the Ukraine revelations, Walt writes, Americans can no longer trust that Trump is conducting foreign policy in US interests, rather than his own—"not a risk any of us should be forced to run" in a dangerous world. | | How China Views Hong Kong | | While some observers see a pro-democracy groundswell in Hong Kong, Andrew Nathan writes for Foreign Affairs that Beijing views things differently. President Xi Jinping has concluded that protesters don't enjoy such broad support, that economic problems (housing costs, specifically) are driving discontent, and that Beijing can prevail by waiting patiently while addressing those concerns, Nathan writes.
In Beijing's calculus, demonstrations will become smaller and more extreme, losing public support and eventually dying out, he writes. Beijing won't send in troops, but it doesn't worry about Western criticism, either, according to Nathan; it has concluded that broad Western opposition to China is a given, no matter what happens in Hong Kong. | | How China's Communist Party Stays in Power | | As the Chinese Communist Party prepares to celebrate 70 years in power, some argue it needs to become more open and less repressive in order for China to reach its potential, as David Shambaugh does in the South China Morning Post. But in a New York Times op-ed, Ian Buruma takes a slightly different view.
China has allowed its middle class to prosper in exchange for political cooperation, Buruma writes, but an important element of the Communist Party's success, dating back to Mao, has been ideological control. President Xi Jinping has realized this, and that's why he has sought to "revive Maoist thought, while cracking down on dissident thinking in universities, mass media and online." China's economic liberalization may persist, Buruma writes, but ideological control and a demand for obedience "will prevent people from coming up with any viable alternative" to one-party rule. | | As Fareed recently noted, Britain's Conservative Party—arguably the most successful political party of the modern era—seems to be collapsing under the weight of Brexit. In a new essay, The Atlantic's Tom McTague delves into the question of whether the Tories will indeed survive. The party has held opposite positions on big issues over the decades, but it has persisted due to the enduring appeal of its sensibility—"skeptical, traditional, patriotic, conservative"—rather than any policy.
The trouble for Conservatives now, he writes, is a bigger political realignment and the difficult tradeoffs of swapping districts on Britain's electoral map. "The dilemma for the Conservatives is that the harder they go on Brexit, the more they risk losing seats elsewhere: They might win votes in Leave-heavy areas of northern England, but lose them in the wealthy, Remain-supporting south," McTague writes. What's more, right-leaning voters today want a new mix of social conservatism and leftist economics—the opposite of what Tories have stood for recently. | | China's Concerning Military Buildup | | When China displays its latest military hardware, at the People's Republic of China's 70th-anniversary celebration on Oct. 1, it will show off capabilities that will worry neighbors and rivals, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Adm. James Stavridis writes in the Nikkei Asian Review. Military technology and strategy are changing, Stavridis writes—drones, hypersonic missiles, and special forces are now the vanguard—and given Chinese developments in these areas, countries like Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Japan will watch keenly.
China's goals, Stavridis writes, are to consolidate its territorial claims and eventually capture Taiwan; in the next decades, new Chinese ships and planes will make the South China Sea a "deadly environment" for anyone contesting Chinese control. "All of this is worrisome in a region, the Pacific rim, whose nations spend over 70% of the world's defense budget," Stavridis writes. | | | | | | |
