| | | | Merkel vs "Axis of Testosterone"? | | German Chancellor Angela Merkel's brand of careful diplomacy will face a stern test at this week's G20 meeting as she comes face-to-face with the "Axis of Testosterone," writes the Wall Street Journal's Anton Troianovski.
"Germany, with its export-oriented businesses and its bloody past, long shied away from global power struggles or military engagements and instead sought to build deep ties with a variety of states. Like no other country, German officials often say, Europe's largest economy relies on a harmonious, rules-based world order," Troianovski writes.
But this week, Merkel meets three leaders who will pose a challenge to her patient approach: a "U.S. president [who] has accused her of ruining Germany. The Turkish president [who] says she harbors terrorists. [And] the Russian president [who], her spy agencies warn, may be about to interfere in her reelection campaign." - The limits of Germany. Angela Merkel might increasingly be spoken of as a potential leader of the free world. But Germany is in no position to step up the way the United States did 70 years ago, The Economist says.
"Germany in 2017 is not America in 1947. It is much smaller, and has little military power. Its 'Marshall Plan' [for Africa] vastly overstates its capacity…Berlin's efforts will be insignificant unless others pitch in, too. Thus Mrs Merkel intends to use the G20 to win allies for her plan. Such diplomacy is Germany's great strength."
| | EU, Japan to America: We're Taking Your Place | | The agreement on the outline of a trade deal between Japan and the European Union, which would create a deal on par with NAFTA, sends a clear message to the United States, argues Zeeshan Aleem for Vox. "We're taking your place as global leaders in free trade."
"This isn't a purely symbolic blow to the US's reputation as the world's foremost proponent of free trade. This deal means that European and Japanese exporters will gain an edge over American exporters in each other's markets. It's a real loss for American agriculture in particular, which already has huge inroads in Japan and could've seen them expanded under TPP."
"But in addition to that, Japan and Europe's negotiations will also mean they are in an unrivaled position to shape the future of trade." - Fareed says: "In my book The Post-American World, I noted several years ago that a lot of countries are taking matters into their own hands as the United States, understandably, becomes a smaller part of a larger, growing world. But what we have been seeing is an acceleration of a kind I never would have predicted.
"What the Japanese did was to decide that, since the United States abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it was going to forge ahead with Europe. This is the kind of deal that since 1945, the United States was always previously spearheading, always setting the agenda for. So, this is one of those historical turning points at which we are seeing a major expansion of global trade where the United States is not only not present, but appears to be hostile to it."
| | Why Russia's Foreign Policy Could Unravel: Frolov | | Russia's overseas adventures have been a "smashing success" for Vladimir Putin and his foreign policy elites, writes Vladimir Frolov in the Moscow Times. But they are almost out of low hanging fruit – and there are growing calls from inside Russia for restraint.
The Putin administration "has redrawn the concept of political legitimacy for Russian rulers. Now foreign policy success and the pursuit of Russia's international greatness are the satisfying sources of legitimacy -- much more than higher incomes, better health care and better education for the people," Frolov writes.
"Russia's daring gambits in Ukraine and Syria have attracted the world's attention and forced the US to directly engage with Moscow. But they are yet to produce clear wins for Russia and the risks of getting stuck in an open-ended stalemate are rising. Does Russia really need those military bases in Syria, whose sole purpose would be to defend Assad? Is getting stuck in Donbass without discernible strategic goals…really a victory for Russia?" - Trouble ahead. Russia has managed to avoid a full-blown financial crisis. But no amount of state media spin will change the prognosis for an economy that has failed to reform, argues Kenneth Rogoff for Project Syndicate.
"And, without reform, there is little reason to be optimistic about Russia's long-run growth trend, given its poor demographic profile, weak institutions, and abject failure to diversify its economy, despite having an enormously talented and creative population."
| | North Korea's Missile Test: Worse than it Looked? | | North Korea's latest missile test brought with it a "strange sense of denial" among U.S. commentators, argues Jeffrey Lewis, a scholar at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, in the Daily Beast. Ignore the talk about Alaska being within range of Pyongyang's missiles – New York could be soon, too.
"It is possible that North Korea's Hwasong-14 underperformed. But it is more likely that North Korea simply did not test the missile to its full range, wanting to bring it down into the sea. That is fairly straightforward for rockets that use liquid fuel, where it is possible to simply stop the engine to reduce the range," Lewis writes.
"The bottom line is that there is no reason at this point to conclude that the Hwasong-14 has a range of 'only' 7,000 kilometers or that it is just Alaska that is within range. The technologies on display in the Hwasong-12 and Hwasong-14 suggest that the latter is much more capable. And there is no reason to think that North Korea cannot build an ICBM that can reach anywhere in the United States."
| | What Trump Gets Right About the Middle East: Cook | | President Trump might get many things about the world wrong. But aside from his handling of the Qatar crisis, his Middle East policy shows plenty of promise, writes Steven Cook in Politico Magazine. The key? Seeing the region for how it really is.
"Focusing on Washington's core interests is the wisest path -- if only because there is no other," Cook says. "The social engineering projects of the past have done little to change the direction of politics in the region, where authoritarianism remains the norm. The effort to promote democracy also diverted funds away from areas like health, education and infrastructure, where the United States through USAID could actually make a difference in the lives of people in the region. There is no sign that Trump wants to invest more in these areas, which is a mistake, but at least he seems to understand intuitively that there is little he can do to alter the behavior of the region's strongmen." | | | | | | |
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