| | | | What Does America Want From Iran? | | | Tensions between the US and Iran have escalated further, with the deployment of an American aircraft carrier to the Middle East, but Foreign Policy's Stephen Walt writes that it's unclear what the US is after. It could want to impress Gulf allies, reach a more favorable nuclear deal, contain Iran's regional ambitions, or provoke war—but no one knows which. Paul Pillar of Georgetown's Center for Security Studies thinks it's the latter: National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are "doing everything possible to instigate a war with Iran," he writes at LobeLog—noting that Bolton, in announcing the carrier deployment over the weekend, offered no specifics about the Iranian threats that prompted it. | | Former Human Rights Chief: World Leaders Have a Sorry Record | | | In a video op-ed for The New York Times, former UN high commissioner for human rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein offers a scathing review of world leaders. "Last year, we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and it was an appalling year for human rights," says al-Hussein, who served in that post from 2014 to 2018. "Most of our political leaders are morally weak, shortsighted, and mediocre. It used to be that abuses were called out and many were stopped. Human-rights violators had something to fear." But today, he says, violators are able to act "with complete impunity." It's worth a watch, as a call to action and a sobering assessment of the state of human rights. | | Is Populist Nationalism Really About Culture Wars? | | | We often think of populist nationalism as a response to globalization, immigration, and inequality. With working-class jobs vanishing, populist leaders have promised hard borders, lambasted elites, and promoted national self-interest. But in a Guardian op-ed, Elif Shafak makes a strong case that populist nationalism is mostly about culture wars. Far-right parties around the world share an opposition to LGBT rights, feminism, diversity—and, yes, immigration; they prize misogyny and social conservatism as much as anything else. It's a different, and more traditionally conservative, way of looking at these movements, and Shafak cites examples from Spain to Turkey to Poland. | | Should America Prepare for War With a Major Power? | | | In a Foreign Policy essay, Elbridge Colby says the answer is yes. America has long banked on a superior military, but Russia and China are growing in power. While an all-out war with those countries may not be likely, either could seize advantage by making fast moves on territory held by US allies, putting America in a precarious position, where the costs of retaliating outweigh the benefits. The US needs to rethink its military strategy to counter this new threat, Colby argues, placing more emphasis on ways to quickly neutralize small-scale strikes in other spheres of influence. That means reworking alliances, making US forces deadlier, and focusing on ways to deny adversaries access to contested space. | | The End of Secularism in India | | | India's rolling election, which will end May 19, has witnessed a rise in Hindu nationalism across the political spectrum, Milan Vaishnav writes in Foreign Affairs. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP, in its unabashed Hindu-nationalist embrace, has raised fears of deportations and contributed to a climate of religiously motivated politics. In response, the traditionally secularist Congress party has brandished Hindu credentials to avoid being sidelined. With India's fate as a pluralist, secular state on the line, prospects appear grim: "Whichever side emerges victorious in May, the consensus in India is that the Nehruvian construct of secularism is dead—killed by its one-time supporters as much as by its dogged opponents," Vaishnav writes. | | | | | | |
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