| | | | Venezuela's Revolution Stalls | | | The opposition movement led by National Assembly President Juan Guaido is faltering, The Economist writes, after some key pieces didn't fall into place this week. The military has mostly stuck with President Nicolas Maduro, and while this week's protests and low-level defections shook Maduro's regime, the main "blow" was to Guaido's momentum. The US is running out of political weapons to use against Maduro, The Atlantic's Uri Friedman writes, recounting how this week's moves went awry. But while Maduro has kept his grip on power, he also hasn't been able to squash the movement to oust him, the International Crisis group writes, arguing there is no "winner take all" solution and that negotiations are the best way out. | | Abe Has Played President Trump | | | Of all the leaders who've clashed with President Trump over trade, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may be playing him the best. William Pesek writes at Politico Magazine that Abe is outsmarting the American president and has maneuvered himself into a position of strength as the US and Japan negotiate a trade deal. Unlike other US allies and adversaries, Japan hasn't retaliated against Trump's tariffs; instead, Abe has let Trump claim victories while developing their personal relationship (the two play golf, and Abe once gifted Trump a gold-plated club). As importantly, he's diversified Japan's trade relationships, pursuing closer ties with partners like Canada, India, and the EU, which has given him leverage to use against Trump. | | | If Scotland breaks away from the UK in the wake of Brexit, it could spark a "secessionist wave" in Europe, John Lloyd writes in The American Interest; simmering secessionist movements in Catalonia, Flanders, and Venice all share similar claims to national identity and desires to leave, he points out. (Lloyd speculatively throws California and Bavaria into the mix, nodding to their economic strength.) Scottish independence isn't so far-fetched: Scotland's independence-backing first minister has promised a referendum within two years (a 2014 vote failed with 45%), and "some sort" of independence is inevitable, Simon Jenkins has written in The Guardian. Brexit wasn't Scotland's fight to begin with, and Philip Stephens writes in the Financial Times that it removes Scotland's reasons for staying in the UK; in five years, he predicts, few Scots will want to remain in Britain. | | To Block, or Not to Block? | | | As governments and social-media companies struggle to remove hateful, radicalizing content from the Internet, Alex Krasodomski-Jones makes the case against taking down (or blocking links or access to) platforms and message boards rife with hate. In a Time essay, Krasodomski-Jones argues doing so would only make extremist elements stronger. It's "the community–not the content–that drives radicalization," he writes, recommending we focus more on what drives would-be gunmen to seek belonging on fringe sites. | | Terrorism's ISIS Generation | | | The caliphate may have been defeated, but its presence in Syria produced a generation of experienced terrorists, Edmund Fitton-Brown, who leads a UN monitoring team for ISIS and al Qaeda, says in an interview with West Point's CTC Sentinel. "We're talking about a generation of fighters with the credibility and credentials to make them leaders in the future," he says; with as many as 30,000 ISIS members believed to still be alive—a "vastly" larger pool than al Qaeda's members after the US invasion of Afghanistan—the diaspora could pose a "significantly multiplied" threat, compared to that posed by al Qaeda in the post-9/11 years. | | | | | | |
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