| | | | Has Trump Finally Beaten the 'Deep State'? | | In the course of arguing that President Trump's recent moves involving Ukraine and Syria all benefit Russia, former US Ambassador Michael McFaul makes another point at Foreign Affairs. By circumventing traditional procedures—and allegedly outsourcing his policy on Ukraine to his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and a handpicked cadre of official advisers—Trump has finally managed to sideline the foreign-policy bureaucracy he has long derided as the "deep state."
In his calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and, more recently, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Trump did not seem to have been thoroughly briefed, to have read talking points, or to have consulted advisers. Early in his administration, the appointment of experienced foreign-policy hands like Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster had ensured relative continuity in US policymaking. No more: Trump's war on the "deep state" seems to have reached its denouement. And yet, his relationship with the foreign-policy bureaucracy could get worse, as a steady stream of congressional testimony makes clear. | | On the Brink of a Hard Brexit? | | Parliament may have delayed his deal, but things are looking up for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. As James Forsyth and Katy Balls write for The Spectator, Johnson's deal appears to have both majority backing (which Parliament offered in a nonbinding vote, even as MPs declined to enact it then and there) and the support of Brexiteers who helped derail Theresa May's version.
That puts him in good position to pass the deal and muster enough support to force an election, "while the electorate are still sighing with relief, and the longer-term consequences of the agreement are not yet apparent," as Nick Witney of the European Council on Foreign Relations puts it. After three years of wondering, it appears a relatively "hard" Brexit will be the outcome—to be followed, Witney writes, by a "Trumpian transformation" of the UK's "economy and political culture," ushered in by a victorious Johnson. | | Isolated Abroad, Winning at Home: How the Syria Operation Has Helped Erdoğan | | Not long ago, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was on the ropes, after his party lost mayoral races in Ankara and Istanbul. But now, Hannah Lucinda Smith recently wrote for the New Statesman, his military operation against Syrian Kurds has galvanized support: Turkey's government-dominated media has rallied around Erdoğan, and some critics of the operation have been arrested on allegations of supporting terrorists.
Erdoğan may have incurred US sanctions (since lifted) and rebukes from Europe, but there's little domestic pressure to change course, Smith writes, as even opposition politicians have dropped their criticism. If the international community wants to stop Turkey's incursion, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis recently offered a proposal at Bloomberg: that NATO should step in, occupying a smaller version of Erdoğan's desired buffer zone on the Syrian-Turkish border, while the West tries to convince him Syria's Kurds aren't a threat. | | Will ISIS Return to Its Jailbreak Strategy? | | With ISIS detainees reportedly escaping in Syria, Aki Peritz writes for Foreign Affairs that the group can now revive the strategy that allowed it to grow in the first place: breaking fighters out of prison. "Among the facilities ISIS targeted were jails in Tikrit, Kirkuk, and Taji, as well as Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, from which it freed more than 500 fighters in July 2013," Peritz recounts. "By mid-2014, ISIS was strong enough to challenge Iraqi forces for control of entire cities, including Mosul."
While President Trump has downplayed the damage, Peritz writes that the 10,000 ISIS fighters held in "pop-up" prisons aren't the only issue; 70,000 ISIS family members held in the al-Hol camp also pose a risk. "Kurdish-run detention facilities have become incubators of the next generation of extremist fighters and sympathizers. Two-thirds of al Hol residents are under the age of 12; many of them will be ISIS's reinforcements in the next round of fighting," Peritz predicts. | | Are Trade Wars Really About Inequality? | | In a Foreign Policy essay, Michael Pettis argues that trade wars are inevitable, given global trade imbalances—which are themselves produced by inequality. China, for instance, shouldn't run such large trade surpluses; given the size of its income, it should consume (and import) more. But that income is diverted to state-supported companies, and the economic dividends are invested abroad. The US used to be a world producer, but its flexible and safe financial system has become a place for foreign countries to stash their (unequally distributed) savings—and as that money flows in, the American trade deficit grows. As the financial sector has played a larger role in the US economy, wealth has been concentrated in it, and the landscape now looks different from the trade-surplus-running, manufacturing-oriented American economy of decades past.
Forebodingly, Pettis points out that inequality converged with trade imbalances to drive European imperialism in the 1800s (as capitalists needed new markets) and trade competition that preceded World War II. It's a good reason to address inequality sooner than later, he suggests. | | | | | | |
