| | | | Trump Has Crossed a Red Line: WSJ | | President Trump has crossed legal and political lines with his attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Wall Street Journal editorializes.
"If Mr. Trump wants someone to blame for the existence of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, he can pick up a mirror. That open-ended probe is the direct result of Mr. Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey months into his Russia investigation and then tweet that Mr. Comey should hope there are no Oval Office tapes of their meeting," the Journal argues.
"No matter how powerful the office of the Presidency, it needs department leaders to execute policy. If by firing or forcing out Jeff Sessions Mr. Trump makes clear that his highest priority is executing personal political desires or whims, he will invite resignations from his first-rate Cabinet and only political hacks will stand in to replace them. And forget about Senate confirmation of his next AG."
"…Mr. Trump prides himself as a man above political convention, but there are some conventions he can't ignore without destroying his Presidency."
| | How Russian Spies Recruit You | | There are three phases that Russian foreign intelligence operatives undertake when they are looking to recruit foreign assets, writes Naveed Jamali, a former FBI double agent, in the Daily Beast. All three stages are "designed to minimize Russian exposure while maximizing their ability to assess the potential asset."
"The first step is the approach -- whereby the Russians determine how to actually make contact with a target. In most cases this approach relies on an overt and legitimate contact," Jamali writes. "It could be through a mutual interest in a hobby, perhaps a meeting at a conference or even through the front purporting to make a legitimate business request."
"The next phase can be either the longest or the shortest…Being a willing candidate is not enough, a target must have a clear use, be controllable and (most importantly) be determined to not be a double agent controlled by U.S. intelligence."
And if the potential asset makes the cut: "he or she is brought to the final phase -- where the risk to both sides is greatest -- and become an operational asset. This is where the asset receives clear direction known as 'tasking,' a step akin to business deliverables."
| | Has Trump Found a Reason to Continue America's Longest War? | | President Trump has been searching for something to justify the continued U.S. military presence in Afghanistan. And he may have found it: the country's enormous mineral wealth, suggest Mark Landler and James Risen in the New York Times.
"In 2010, American officials estimated that Afghanistan had untapped mineral deposits worth nearly $1 trillion, an estimate that was widely disputed at the time and has certainly fallen since, given the eroding price of commodities. But the $1 trillion figure is circulating again inside the White House, according to officials, who said it had caught the attention of Mr. Trump," they write.
"The lure of Afghanistan as a war-torn Klondike is well established: In 2006, the George W. Bush administration conducted aerial surveys of the country to map its mineral resources. Under President Barack Obama, the Pentagon set up a task force to try to build a mining industry in Afghanistan -- a challenge that was stymied by rampant corruption, as well as security problems and the lack of roads, bridges or railroads."
| | How Putin Ate Trump's Lunch: Carpenter | | The Syrian ceasefire announced by the United States and Russia is likely to be exploited by Moscow to help keep Bashar al-Assad in power. It's "just one more indication of how Putin ate Trump's lunch (or was it dinner?) at the G20 summit," writes Michael Carpenter in The Atlantic.
"Going into the G20 meeting, Putin knew, of course, that Trump would be eager to make progress on Syria. By quickly agreeing to a deal before expert negotiators had a chance to develop a solid monitoring and enforcement mechanism, perhaps involving opposition groups on the ground, Trump appears to have been suckered into a flawed agreement," Carpenter writes.
"Without credible monitoring and enforcement, Iranian-backed Shia militias and Hezbollah could start quietly infiltrating southwestern Syria, setting up the Assad regime and its Iranian friends to consolidate control over the border areas near Israel and Lebanon. This would be a major strategic play."
"Trump's argument that the ceasefire is saving lives, even temporarily, is a powerful one. But even if the death toll slows in the southwestern 'safe zones,' regime troops freed up by the agreement are already launching attacks elsewhere, like the new offensive against opposition forces in eastern Ghouta." - Almost 200,000 Syrian refugee children in Lebanon have been forced into child labor, writes Lisa Khoury for Vox, citing UNICEF figures.
"Syrian refugees as young as 5 years-old are working long hours, often in hazardous conditions -- using dangerous machinery in factories, being abused by employers, and working under the hot sun in agricultural fields. They're missing out on the chance for an education, and the grueling nature of the work leaves them little time to process, or heal from, the emotional and psychological wounds they've suffered."
| | Germany's Dirty Energy Secret | | Germany's vocal support for tough climate goals and its embrace of renewables is welcome. The trouble is, for all its renewable energy talk, Germany is struggling to meet its climate goals, writes Paul Hockenos for CNN Opinion.
"Greenhouse gas emissions in Germany have not sunk significantly since 2009, but rather have stagnated at about 900 million tons of carbon dioxide a year: the highest in Europe by far. (France's, for example, are less than half as much)," Hockenos writes.
"In fact, Germany is in real danger of not meeting either its 2020 or its 2030 emissions targets, the kind of goals it has pushed other countries to adopt."
A key culprit? Coal. "Germany's electricity sector, more dependent on coal than renewables, accounts for over a third of the nation's carbon emissions."
| | Why Cuba Matters to America | | The Trump administration's announcement that it will cool warming ties with Cuba is a mistake, writes James Stavridis in Foreign Policy. There's nothing wrong with calling out the Castro regime for wrongdoing, but reversing the Obama administration's decision to open up to the island hurts America's regional diplomacy.
"Diplomatically, an open, pragmatic relationship with Cuba moves the United States into a vastly stronger position in the hemisphere," Stavridis writes. "Our ability to work with powerful partners like Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil -- all of which have sensible relationships with Havana -- is strengthened by a common approach. If we seriously want a solution in Venezuela, for example, we should be working in concert with our friends through the Organization of American States (OAS) -- a prospect that would be far easier if we had an aligned position on Cuba. Ditto on our counternarcotics efforts throughout the hemisphere." | | | | | | |
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