| | | | Can Americans Be Swayed by Impeachment Hearings? | | With widely differing views of the Ukraine scandal on display, will Congress's impeachment hearings—and the accounts offered by witnesses—change anyone's mind? Peter T. Coleman writes for Politico Magazine that according to psychological research, it depends.
Facts are unlikely to change strongly held views, Coleman writes, as "selective perception" kicks in and facts are cherry-picked—and regardless of what facts show, they can further entrench existing viewpoints. That said, research suggests "self-defining attitudes do not seem to change incrementally, a little at a time, but they can change dramatically, from one extreme to another." (As an example, Coleman cites "former skinheads turned tolerance trainers, peace activists turned violent militants, and religious zealots turned atheists.") And then there are those in the middle: Exhausted moderates "who are politically disengaged and thus are much less identified with either tribe, can be swayed." | | Trump and Erdoğan Keep It in the Family | | With Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visiting the White House today, the invitation may seem odd, given the bipartisan backlash over Turkey's incursion into Syria and congressional ire over Turkey's purchase of a Russian missile system. But The New York Times' David D. Kirkpatrick and Eric Lipton offer one explanation as to how President Trump and Erdoğan have maintained their relationship: A backchannel involving three sons-in-law.
Ties have been maintained by Trump' son-in-law and White House adviser Jared Kushner, Erdoğan's son-in-law and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, and Mehmet Ali Yalcindag (who helped conclude a deal between Trump and his tycoon father-in-law, in which Trump licensed his name to two Istanbul towers), Kirkpatrick and Lipton report; their discussions have included issues like the Russian-missile-system purchase. It's a common denominator for Trump and Erdoğan, Kirkpatrick and Lipton write: empowering family over bureaucracies they don't trust. | | Mexico's Drug War Still Needs a Solution | | Though it's been waged outside major tourist destinations and population centers, Mexico's drug war has continued to be part of daily life for some citizens, Alberto Diaz-Cayeros writes for The American Interest—and after claiming more than 200,000 lives in the last decade, and going relatively ignored internationally given its scale, it could conceivably get worse. As shown by the recent failed attempt, in Culiacán, to arrest a son of El Chapo (he was ultimately released by authorities who sought to avoid more violence), cartels still enjoy control.
Diaz-Cayeros worries cartels "may take the example of Culiacán as a signal that they can operate openly, with impunity"—and while President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (or AMLO) has taken a new approach that stresses reconciliation, Mary Anastasia O'Grady writes for The Wall Street Journal that drug gangs have interpreted this as weakness. Concerningly, she writes, Mexico's government has seen its monopoly on force slip away. | | For the US and China, How Deep Will Decoupling Run? | | In a detailed speech (excerpts of which originally appeared in Axios) on the potential "decoupling" of the American and Chinese economies, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, now of the Asia Society Policy Institute, asks how deep such a split might go. His answer: While capital markets are deeply intertwined (some $5 trillion is tied up in cross-border stock listings, holdings, government bonds, and Chinese stocks "intermediated" by US companies) the story is different when it comes to technology.
There, the US and China are caught in a competitive spiral, each preparing for tech supply chains to be severed, as the US voices national-security concerns and as China prioritizes the ability to self-sustain. Prospects are good for a "phase one" trade deal this year, and for a "phase two" agreement next year, Rudd says—but while China may compromise on big issues like technology theft, it's unlikely any agreement will solve the larger tech competition. | | Today, Democracy Dies With a Whimper | | Democracies used to be overthrown in coups, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write in the most recent issue of The Berlin Journal, but today they fade more gradually. As an example, Levitsky and Ziblatt point to Venezuela, where Hugo Chávez won a democratic election in 1999 but began a march toward authoritarianism in 2003, stalling a recall referendum, blacklisting those who supported it, winning reelection in 2006, and then closing a TV station and arresting or exiling opposition politicians and judges. His successor, Nicolas Máduro, continued the trend, and it "was only when a new single-party constituent assembly usurped the power of Congress in 2017, nearly two decades after Chávez first won the presidency, that Venezuela was widely recognized as an autocracy."
Similar erosions have taken place in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Ukraine, they write, with state institutions politicized and converted into tools to consolidate power. "This is how democracies now die," Levitsky and Ziblatt warn. "The tragic paradox of the electoral route to authoritarianism is that democracy's assassins use the very institutions of democracy—gradually, subtly, and even legally—to kill it." | | | | | | |
