| | | | Fareed: Trump's Foreign Policy Is a Triumph of Gut Over Brain | | "Has there ever been a foreign policy move that has produced more crises more quickly?" Fareed asks, in his latest Washington Post column, of President Trump's withdrawal from northern Syria. It exposed US-allied Kurds to an assault; was followed by sanctions against Turkey, a NATO ally; and left America's friends in the region dumbfounded.
And yet, Trump's Syria policy is "part of a pattern of erratic moves elsewhere," Fareed writes. In case after case, Trump and his team have assumed a "knowledge-free" approach, one that ignores expertise, would yield positive results. It hasn't.
"The policies we are witnessing from Ukraine to the Middle East are a direct consequence of the triumph of gut over brain, of emotion over intelligence and of personal ambition over national interest," Fareed writes. | | How and Why the Brexit Deal Could Fail | | After wrangling a new Brexit deal from Brussels, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces a tall task in selling it to Parliament, The Economist writes. Given Conservative defections and skepticism among other allies, Johnson may need votes from Labour MPs—which could be hard to come by.
Rejecting the deal will simply mean the saga drags on longer, possibly through another election, which Labour might want. (If the deal fails, Johnson will be required to ask Brussels for a Brexit extension past Oct. 31, to which Brussels would likely say "yes.") Some Labour MPs represent pro-Brexit districts and would like to wrap things up, but it's still a tough sell: "Defying the whip to rescue a Tory prime minister when an election is looming is a challenge even for those Labour MPs keenest to get Brexit done," the magazine writes. | | Trump's Syria Hypocritics | | Yes, the situation in Syria is bad, Peter Beinart writes for The Atlantic, but some of the Democratic presidential candidates condemning President Trump's sudden withdrawal are being hypocritical. They've proposed doing virtually the same thing in Afghanistan, he writes: pulling out US troops, with or without an agreement to safeguard US partners. Presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren have criticized Trump over Syria, but they've also called for an Afghan withdrawal; when the former was asked, in a September debate, "whether he would stick to his pledge to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan in his first year despite warnings from top American commanders, Buttigieg ducked the question and insisted that 'we have got to put an end to endless war,'" Beinart notes.
"What makes these statements so remarkable is that experts warn that if the United States withdraws its troops from Afghanistan in the absence of a peace agreement, Afghanistan will suffer a fate remarkably similar to what is happening in northern Syria," Beinart writes.
And yet, Syria's future could be genuinely catastrophic, as Brian Katz and Michael Carpenter portray it in Foreign Affairs. ISIS had already been on the rise, before Trump pulled US troops back: It "has spent recent months regrouping in rural sanctuaries, carrying out guerilla assaults on SDF patrols, and gathering its forces for later attacks on important cities and towns," they write. Meanwhile, a former al-Qaeda affiliate, Hay'at Tahrir al Sham (HTS), has thrived in the country's West, where President Bashar al-Assad's assault on civilians has only made things worse. The country now appears destined to become an extremist hotbed, in their view. | | President Trump: China's Best Friend? | | | He's levied tariffs and blacklisted Huawei, but according to a Foreign Policy op-ed by Paul Haenle and Sam Bresnick, President Trump should be China's top pick in the 2020 election. Trade negotiations have obligated Beijing to buy more US agricultural goods, but deeper issues have remained unresolved, while Trump has weakened US alliances, diminished American influence, and pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was meant to compete with Chinese trade. China may find Trump difficult to deal with, Haenle and Bresnick argue, but in the bigger picture, his presidency has been good for Beijing. | | What to Make of Kim on a Horse | | Recent propaganda images of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un riding a white horse may have drawn some Internet sarcasm, but their release "augurs a potential shift in national strategy in the weeks and months ahead," Ankit Panda writes for The Diplomat. The setting was Mt. Paektu, which carries mythical significance in the supernatural lore surrounding North Korea's ruling dynasty; "with [Kim's] New Year's Day warning this year of a 'new way' ahead should diplomacy with the United States lead to a dead end," his appearance in the significant locale could signal that "Kim may be getting ready to take his country down a different path," Panda speculates.
Then again, the accompanying state-media article noted that Kim "has promised to 'strike the world with wonder again,'" Panda points out, which could be taken to imply that something less bellicose, like a satellite launch, is in store.
CORRECTION: Yesterday's edition of the Global Briefing misidentified Elana DeLozier as being associated with the Hoover Institution. She is instead a research fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. | | | | | | |
