| | | | For Google, Is China Worth It? | | The Financial Times says no. Claims that Google has stopped selling ads in China for some VPN services—which can let citizens circumvent government controls—has the paper worried that Google might be considering a return to the Chinese market, despite government censorship that would make it difficult to operate there.
Google's Project Dragonfly, an experiment in censored search, drew condemnation from Amnesty International, and the FT warns that while China's market is alluring, it's not worth it for Google and its parent company, Alphabet, to sacrifice their values. | | Time for NATO to Look East? | | For the entirety of its existence, NATO's focus has been Russia. Now, some suggest it should turn its attention to China: With Chinese trade and investment threatening to divide Europe, and with Chinese cyber capabilities on the rise, China has grown as a security question—and these concerns have become a rare point of consensus for NATO members—writes Matthew Karnitschnig in Politico Europe.
Russia will remain NATO's core concern, writes Erik Brattberg of Carnegie Europe, but the alliance will have to think about China, especially as 5G construction risks endangering intelligence sharing. China will force NATO to engage more with political questions, including European cohesion and trade policies, than it's usually comfortable talking about, Brattberg writes. | | | After the demise of the physical caliphate, Der Spiegel's Christoph Reuter reports that in some regions, ISIS "has returned, (and) in others, it never really left." In an area west of Mosul, Iraq, ISIS has continued to terrorize the population; in parts of southern Syria, "hundreds" of members "operate undisturbed" in one part of Syria; a Der Spiegel driver sped through one eastern Syrian town, describing it as "all IS territory, full of sleeper cells and extremely dangerous."
The return of the caliphate is being romanticized among tens of thousands of former fighters in detention, Reuter reports, though a split has emerged between the "fanatics" and those who think it's over. Reuter's detailed account points to an ISIS that is plotting its eventual reemergence, either as a racketeering operation in the shadows, or as the territory-holding entity it once was. | | An Alliance Between Russia and China? Not So Fast. | | Though some have warned a growing Russia-China alliance could further upend the Western-built world order, Leon Aron throws cold water on that idea in Foreign Affairs. True, Russia and China have embarked on military and economic cooperation, but those efforts have sputtered. And while the countries' respective leaders, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, seem to like each other's style, their affinity might not overcome misalignments of incentive.
The countries step on each other's spheres of influence and don't always back each other up in international settings, which reflects an imbalance: China is a much larger and more diversified economy, and it gains less from upending the current geopolitical system. In other words: The West doesn't need to worry about Russia and China teaming up, just yet. | | The Most Complicated Election In History? | | Indonesia's April 17 elections will mark "the most complicated single-day ballot in global history," writes Ben Bland of The Interpreter. In the world's third-most-populous democracy, 193 million voters, spread across hundreds of islands, will mark ballots with metal nails; double voting will be prevented by 1.6 million bottles of halal ink, marking voters' hands.
Unlike India, which votes on a rolling schedule, Indonesia will hold local, national, and presidential elections on the same day. That's how America votes, but Indonesia will operate nearly seven times the number of polling places—800,000, compared with 117,000 in the US. Paper ballots are counted in public, while many US jurisdictions use electronic voting machines.
Despite the complicated effort, Indonesia has a "surprisingly good track record of delivering fair elections," Bland writes. And the scale is an advantage: With so many polling stations, systemic ballot-stuffing is tougher to pull off. | | | | | | |
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