| | | | Don't Panic About the Trump-Putin Meeting | | The announcement that President Trump will meet Vladimir Putin next month has already prompted much hand-wringing among the President's critics. But meeting with adversaries can be a good thing, write John Glaser and Ted Galen Carpenter for CATO at Liberty. And Trump's past praise of Putin should be kept in perspective.
"[E]ven if Trump is more brazen than his predecessors in his fondness for autocrats, the United States has a long history of showering brutal dictators with rhetorical praise and direct support. And while Trump has been rhetorically easy on Putin in a way that has made NATO allies, and the US foreign policy community, uncomfortable, the nuts and bolts of US policy toward Russia have not changed," they write.
"The Trump administration has pushed to expand NATO, boosted US troop deployments in the Baltics, conducted provocative military exercises with its alliance partners in various East European locales as well as the Black Sea, and refused to give ground to Russian interests in Ukraine or the Balkans. Indeed, the administration has even engaged in military exercises with Ukrainian forces and approved the sale of 'defensive' arms to Kiev."
| | Pompeo's North Korea Land Mines | | | If Secretary of State Mike Pompeo travels to North Korea next week, as The Financial Times reports is planned, then it's imperative he makes sure the US and Pyongyang are on the same page over any commitments. But history suggests that that's much easier said than done, writes Joel Wit for NPR.
"For example, Pyongyang's missile test moratorium may prove to be a land mine. The Trump administration thinks the cessation includes not just missile tests but also space launches…since both employ technologies that could be used to build intercontinental ballistic missiles," Wit writes.
"In the past, however, Pyongyang has asserted that all countries have the right to conduct the peaceful exploration of space. That difference scuttled the 2012 US-North Korean 'Leap Day' denuclearization deal when the North launched a satellite into space to celebrate a national holiday against Washington's wishes. What the North thinks now is unclear. But with the 70th anniversary of the founding of the DPRK coming up in September, Pyongyang might celebrate once again with a space launch..." | | Will Sunday Be a New Nail in NAFTA's Coffin? | | | Whoever wins Mexico's presidential election on Sunday will be expected to stand up to President Trump more than the current government. That could doom NAFTA, Jorge Guajardo writes in The Atlantic.
"Notably, if elected, [front-runner Andrés Manuel López Obrador] will be the first person to win the presidency of Mexico without the support of its business community. As such, he will feel less constrained by its demands to save NAFTA at any cost. Even though he has spoken favorably about NAFTA, he is not a free-trader by heart. If Trump pulls out of NAFTA, AMLO likely won't feel obligated to offer concessions in hopes of bringing him back." | | Why the West Can't Walk Away from Syria | | The West might be tempted to give up on Syria and walk away. If it does, the migrant crisis that reached Europe's shores a few years ago could merely be a taste of the chaos to come, The Economist argues.
"It would be no surprise if Syrian refugees—many times more numerous than the 750,000 Palestinians uprooted during the birth of Israel—became similarly radicalized. They would be easy prey for jihadists. Right now, even without violence, refugees are straining host countries, such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. A lesson from the Palestinians is that the longer refugees stay out, the less likely they are to return. Many Syrians flinch at the idea of going back, fearful that they will be killed, forced into camps or dragooned into the army," The Economist says.
| | Fareed: Meritocracy Is Under Siege | | The idea of meritocracy is under siege from the right and the left, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column. But that begs a question: What would critics replace it with?
"On the right, many of President Trump's supporters see it as a code word for an out-of-touch establishment that looks down on ordinary, hard-working Americans. In Britain, Prime Minister Theresa May's call for a more meritocratic society was assailed on the left as a concept that breeds elitism and inequality," Fareed writes.
"Let's remember when and how meritocracy became the organizing ideology of modern society. Before it, people moved up in the world through a clubby, informal system that privileged wealth, social status and family connections. As Nicholas Lemann recounts in his fascinating book 'The Big Test,' America was run in every corridor of power by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants until the 1950s. Chief executives, college presidents and senators were, almost without exception, all WASPS. That WASP aristocracy was slowly but surely dislodged through the rise of merit-based systems, largely in education, that opened up elite institutions to people of talent, no matter their background."
| | Why the EU Was Desperate to Fix a Crisis That Isn't There Right Now | | European leaders secured a tentative deal in the early hours of Friday morning on addressing migration on the continent. "EU leaders agreed—but only on a voluntary basis—to set up 'controlled' migrant processing centers within Europe which would swiftly distinguish between genuine asylum seekers and 'irregular migrants, who will be returned,'" CNN reports.
The Financial Times editorializes that the deal was as much about domestic politics as addressing a crisis that doesn't really exist right now.
"[M]ainstream politicians in the West are in a corner. They cannot compete with the same fervor and vitriol as populists on the right who, with growing electoral success, have adopted an anti-immigrant platform both as a cause and a strategy. Nor can they easily persuade electorates of the benefits of a more pro-migration or humane approach," the FT argues.
"Various governments turned up in Brussels in urgent need of an agreement on the issue to take home to their domestic audiences…[But the deal] provided little of immediate substance to address the underlying problem." | | | | | | |
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