| | | | | Regular editions of Global Briefing will return from July 9.
| | Why Trump Should Play Nice with NATO | | President Trump has reportedly sent a series of letters ahead of next week's NATO summit calling on allies to boost spending. If he wants to make his meeting with Vladimir Putin a success, he would be better off playing nice with America's friends, suggests Stephen Walt for Foreign Policy.
"Unlike those who see the Russian president as the prince of darkness or Trump's puppet master, I think 1) the West deserves an equal share of the blame for the deteriorating relationship, 2) it would be good if relations could be repaired, and 3) in the abstract, it makes good sense for Trump to talk directly to him to see if No. 2 can be achieved," Walt writes.
"If Trump were smart, however, and interested in striking a good deal with Putin, he would want to show up in Helsinki later this month with a successful NATO summit and a united alliance behind him. This situation would give him maximum leverage and force Putin to match any US offers with concessions of his own. By contrast, if Trump showed up with NATO in disarray, Putin would have already achieved a core strategic goal and would have little reason to do Trump any favors."
| | …And Mexico's Next President | | | Contrary to claims there is a migration crisis along America's southern border, "there are now fewer people trying to cross illegally than at any time since the early 1970s," Andrew Selee writes for Foreign Affairs. If the Trump administration wants to keep it that way, it should work with Mexico's newly-elected president.
"Mexico is now far more a country of transit and destination for immigrants from other countries than it is an immigrant-sending nation. (Several other countries around the world, including Turkey and Morocco, have undergone a similar shift.) Central Americans have been the most visible group crossing through Mexico and occasionally staying, but the largest number of immigrants in Mexico actually come from the United States," Selee writes.
But Andrés Manuel López Obrador "has made it clear that he does not want Mexican immigration policies to be merely an extension of US enforcement policies, and continuing the current Trump administration practice of simply berating the Mexican government to do more to stem the flow of migrants will likely only make things worse." | | The Homegrown Lesson of the Alleged July 4 Terror Plot | | | The FBI's claim that an alleged July 4 terror plot suspect arrested in Cleveland was interested in joining al Qaeda has a back-to-the-future feel about it, writes Peter Bergen for CNN Opinion. It should also be a reminder that the group still poses a threat – and that that threat is unlikely to be stymied by the Trump administration's travel ban.
"With ISIS largely out of business, we may see alleged terrorists such as [Demetrius] Pitts turning back to al Qaeda as a source of inspiration," Bergen writes.
But the Cleveland case is also "a reminder that the jihadist terrorist threat is almost entirely 'homegrown.' While the Supreme Court…has upheld the 'travel ban'…the ban is a solution in search of a problem that doesn't exist, because jihadist terrorism impacting the United States is largely caused by terrorists long resident in the country."
"Of the 422 terrorism cases tracked by New America since 9/11, 85% involved US citizens or permanent residents." | | The Trouble with Trump Living in the Past | | | President Trump's fixation on violent crime, trade and immigration make perfect sense – if you forget we're in 2018, Noah Smith writes for Bloomberg. Unfortunately, his focus on the issues of the past is crowding out conversations on what needs to be tackled right now. "There is probably a natural reason for this — economics finds that people's beliefs about the world are deeply and permanently affected by their formative experiences. Trump's business successes and setbacks came in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, meaning that events from those decades still probably loom large in his picture of the world," Smith writes. "This is a shame, because the US has a number of more new and more pressing problems. The opioid epidemic continues to ravage the country, along with rising alcoholism and suicide. High costs for health care, education and construction have hobbled productivity and put a strain on many middle-class families." | | China's investment in science and technology might not yet be reflected in Nobel and other prize wins. But make no mistake – the country's science revolution is well underway, writes Leonid Solovyev for Scientific American.
"Over the last 30 years, China's funding for research and development has grown by a factor of over a hundred—from just over $3 billion to over $400 billion. Indeed, the government recently has created a 'mega-ministry' to streamline the funding process. The number of citations of Chinese scientists in quality publications is increasing rapidly: last year, for the first time they came out ahead of the United States in scientific publications—at least in terms of raw numbers—with 17,000 more papers produced," Solovyev writes.
"The best Chinese scientists are also increasingly making their careers at home. Though there is still a strong appetite to gain experience in American and European laboratories, many postgraduates are now returning."
| | | China's military could have a problem, the South China Morning Post's Minnie Chan writes, citing the official newspaper of the People's Liberation Army: Not enough fighting. "According to the People's Liberation Army Daily in an editorial on Monday, 'peace disease' has infiltrated every corner of the PLA since its last battles, with Vietnam in the late 1970s," Chan notes. Chan writes that President Xi Jinping "has ordered the PLA to be transformed into a world-class fighting force in the next three decades," and that includes learning from countries including the United States. "The shift has come as China increasingly flexes its military muscle in the disputed South China Sea, and establishes missions further away, such as setting up a military hub in the east African nation of Djibouti." | | | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment