Monday, July 10, 2017

The Biggest National Security Threat to America?

Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Jason Miks.

July 10, 2017

The Big National Security Threat? Trump's Temperament: Summers

The biggest threat to U.S. national security could be President Trump's temperament, writes former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.
 
"The United States is now isolated globally on the question of how to deal with the grave, long-run security threat of climate change. It has forced the G-20 to back way off of commitments to reject protectionism. And in part because of U.S. attitudes, the G-20 was mute on international migration at a time when refugee issues are more serious than at any moment in the past 50 years," Summers writes in the Washington Post.
 
"All of this is troubling enough. The elephant in the room, however, is the president's character and likely behavior in the difficult times that come during any presidential term. Biographer Robert Caro has observed that power may or may not corrupt but it always reveals. Trump has yet to experience a period of economic difficulty or international economic crisis. He has not yet had to make a major military decision in a time of crisis. Yet his behavior has been, to put it mildly, erratic."
 

Don't Be Fooled by Europe's Swagger

Europe may have its swagger back, but don't be fooled by the triumphalist tone, argues Hans Kundnani in The Guardian. The continent is still haunted by deep disagreements on economics and security.
 
"The problem is that the resurgence of support for EU membership is largely based on fear. Continental Europeans look at the difficulties in the UK, trying to extricate itself from the EU, and know it would be infinitely more complicated for a eurozone country," Kundnani writes.
 
On security, "[Angela] Merkel's statement at a rally in Bavaria in May that Europeans can no longer 'completely depend on others' and 'have to take our fate into our own hands' has been seen by many as a kind of European declaration of independence. The problem is that Europeans are not prepared to do what it would take to become genuinely independent – they remain either unable or unwilling to make the kind of necessary dramatic increase in defense spending."
 

The Gift Trump Should Not Give Putin: McFaul

It's understandable that the Trump administration wants a new start with Russia. After all, one of the reasons we elect new leaders is because we want change, argues former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul. But that doesn't mean we should wipe the slate clean.
 
"This prescription for improving our bilateral relations implies a false sense of shared ownership for past causes of conflict. That's wrong," McFaul writes in the Washington Post. "It has been Putin's actions, not decisions taken by Presidents Barack Obama or George W. Bush, that have contributed directly to the most contentious issues in U.S.-Russia relations today, as well as the tensions between Russia and many of our allies. To pledge to forget about these problems created by Putin lets the Kremlin off the hook without generating any positive outcome for the United States in return. That's a bad deal for the American people and our allies. In fact, it's not a deal at all – it's a perfect gift to Putin."
  • No, that extra-long Trump-Putin meeting wasn't a good sign. President Trump miscalculated in giving Vladimir Putin more than half an hour of his time for their first face-to-face meeting, argues Edward Lucas for CNN Opinion. In doing so, he gave the impression that Russia is an equal.
"Russia's population is less than half of the United States. Its GDP is less than a single good-sized American state. It has a lot of nuclear weapons, true, but most of them are obsolete. Russia's defense modernization is ambitious, but running out of money. Russia's only real asset is that Putin can act quickly -- recklessly some might say -- in foreign policy, exemplified by invading Ukraine and propping up the regime in Syria."
 

Why China is Worried About Video Games

Much of the world may be reluctant to define internet addiction as a clinical disorder. But for China the issue is clear cut – and that has the government worried about its young people, particularly their video game habits, writes Adam Minter for Bloomberg View.
 
"For the Chinese government, the perceived isolation and distraction of its youth is viewed as an increasingly urgent social problem. Immersive role-playing games, popular among students at ubiquitous internet cafes, are seen as a particular threat. As far back as 2004, state media reported that 90 percent of juvenile crimes were related to excessive internet use," Minter writes.
 
"True or not, the government has certainly responded as if an epidemic is under way. In 2004, it shut down 16,000 internet cafes to protect impressionable youth. Three years later, it required that developers install 'anti-addiction' systems in their games. In 2008, it banned the opening of new internet cafes entirely. Over the past decade, some 250 internet addiction 'boot camps' have opened; one has treated at least 6,000 patients using electroshock therapy."
 

Liberation of Mosul Far from End of ISIS Story

The liberation of Mosul may mark the end of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's "expansionist visit." But the threat posed by jihadist movements is likely to evolve -- and could, in some ways, become more potent, Hardin Lang and Yoram Schweitzer write in U.S. News and World Report.
 
For a start, "the group remains a potent force in rural areas across Iraq and Syria. With the fall of the caliphate, it is reverting to its natural state of insurgency and falling back on the asymmetric warfare that allowed it to persist in Iraq for a decade. Researchers found that the Islamic State group has carried out almost 1,500 attacks in 16 cities declared liberated across Iraq and Syria."
 
More broadly, they warn, "there is a very real danger that coalition members will see their mission as completed and succumb to donor and operational fatigue…But resources will be needed to systematically pursue Islamic State group fighters as they revert to insurgency or take their fight to other theaters."
 

What to Watch This Week

President Trump travels to France to take part in the country's Bastille Day celebrations on Friday. Reuters reports that French President Emmanuel Macron hasn't "given up on trying to get U.S. counterpart Donald Trump to change his mind about withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate change agreement."
 
Saturday marks one year since the failed coup in TurkeyHenri J Barkey writes for The National that so far, there has been no independent assessment of the events surrounding that day. "[President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan directly or indirectly controls most of the press today, who simply repeat the pronouncements of the leadership or invent salacious conspiracy theories. Was the coup concocted at the last moment by some officers? Was it a conspiracy hatched by a coalition of opportunists? There are those who think that it was all a government-induced false flag operation."

 

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