| | | | Course Correction on North Korea? | | In what seems to be a course correction from the President's strong rhetoric on North Korea, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson write in the Wall Street Journal about the administration's "peaceful pressure campaign," a "diplomatic approach" to the Korean Peninsula's denuclearization.
"The U.S. has no interest in regime change or accelerated reunification of Korea," Mattis and Tillerson write. "We do not seek an excuse to garrison U.S. troops north of the Demilitarized Zone. We have no desire to inflict harm on the long-suffering North Korean people, who are distinct from the hostile regime in Pyongyang."
"Our diplomatic approach is shared by many nations supporting our goals, including China, which has dominant economic leverage over Pyongyang," Mattis and Tillerson write.
"While diplomacy is our preferred means of changing North Korea's course of action, it is backed by military options."
| | America Is Now a Dangerous Nation: Rachman | | President Donald Trump's recent actions lend credence to Russian and Iranian propaganda that America is a "threat to world peace," Gideon Rachman argues in the Financial Times:
"Over the past week, Mr Trump has indulged in nuclear brinkmanship in North Korea, issued vague threats of military action in Venezuela and flirted with white supremacists at home," Rachman writes. "He is offering the very opposite of the steady, predictable and calm leadership that American allies seek from Washington."
"The international crisis that Mr Trump is stoking is increasingly inseparable from the domestic problems besieging his administration... [N]ow there is political violence on the streets, as white supremacists and neo-Nazis attack, and even kill, protesters in Charlottesville — while the president issues evasive and equivocal statements from a golf course.
"The danger is that these multiple crises will merge, tempting an embattled president to try to exploit an international conflict to break out of his domestic difficulties," Rachman writes.
| | Violence in Charlottesville | | | Trump's statement today condemning white supremacists and neo-Nazis followed strong criticism of his Saturday remarks for failing to explicitly do so. Jeffrey Goldberg explains in the Atlantic that Trump's response is striking given his own criticism of former President Barack Obama for failing to say "radical Islam."
"Trump, in his remarks on Saturday, refused to align himself against the so-called alt-right protest movement," Goldberg writes. "His decision to maintain a neutral stance on the activities of the racist and anti-Semitic right has opened him to charges of hypocrisy."
"But the issue here is substantially larger than mere hypocrisy," Goldberg argues. "Obama carefully measured his rhetoric in the war against Islamist terrorism because he hoped to avoid inserting the U.S. into the middle of an internecine struggle consuming another civilization. But the struggle in Charlottesville is a struggle within our own civilization," Goldberg notes. "It is precisely at moments like this that an American president should speak up directly on behalf of the American creed, on behalf of Americans who reject tribalism and seek pluralism, on behalf of the idea that blood-and-soil nationalism is antithetical to the American idea itself."
-- Tom Perriello, a former diplomat and congressman for the Virginia district that includes Charlottesville, reflects in Slate on the militias that marched in his hometown this weekend:
"Saturday showed us a vision of a dystopian future that is the logical extension of our current gun laws," Perriello writes. "Not just gun ownership but AR-15s. Not just concealed carry but open carry. And not just the right to open carry even long guns but to dress in full military fatigues with accessories (earpieces, vests, insignias) to blur every line between legitimate law enforcement and a fully armed white nationalist militia."
"I have spent time in multiple conflict zones and still would not have known at a quick glance if bullets started flying which heavily armed men in camouflage and flak jackets represented law and order and which were armed terrorists," Perriello writes.
"Donald Trump, who claims to be the hero of law enforcement, has issued no criticism of those who blur the line between public and private security forces, who blur the most sacred blue line between violence and force. Is there anything more vital of a commander in chief who claims to care about those who serve in uniform than to condemn those who fake the uniform?"
| | Lessons from Germany on Combating Neo-Nazism | | Following the violence in Charlottesville, the Economist examines Germany as "a case study in how not to give an inch to the dark politics of 'Blut und Boden'":
"That begins with the significance placed on remembering where this politics led in the past. Every German school child must visit a concentration camp... The country's cities are landscapes of remembrance," the Economist writes.
"Relativisation, endorsement by hint or omission, far-right symbols as 'irony', dog-whistle prevarications and creeping extenuation are rarely tolerated... The line between the acceptable and unacceptable, in other words, is stark."
"Germany, of course, carries a unique historical burden," the Economist notes. "But every country has dark periods in its national past and far-right revisionists in its political present. The Charlottesville protests, marching under Confederate flags against plans to remove Confederate statues, are a distinctively American reminder of that."
| | Blasphemy Laws in... Italy? | | A new ranking by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom of 71 countries on the severity of their blasphemy laws includes a surprising result: Italy comes in seventh, behind just six Muslim-majority nations.
The Economist explains the commission's findings:
"In truth, [Italy] is hardly in the same league as those that execute, lash or lynch blasphemers," the Economist writes. "But the terms of an Italian court decision in 2015 were rather troubling to free-expression campaigners. It upheld a fine imposed on an artist who, in a public place in Milan, had depicted a sexual act involving the former Pope Benedict and one of his clerical advisers. The judgment said criticism of religion was legitimate if it was carried out by qualified people with relevant experience—a category into which the artist clearly did not fall."
| | Vice President Mike Pence is on a Latin American tour through Friday. It began yesterday in Colombia, where Pence faced questions about Trump's comment that a "military option" is on the table for dealing with Venezuela. Pence will also visit Argentina, Chile, and Panama.
Tonight, former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci will appear on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Scaramucci, who was removed from his White House post on July 31 after just ten days on the job, told ABC yesterday that he thinks White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon's "toleration" of white nationalism "is inexcusable." | | | | | | |
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