| | | | How Reagan Would
Do North Korea | | For three generations "Kim family despots" have confounded US leaders. If President Trump wants to ensure Kim Jong Un's pledges on denuclearization stick, he should take notes from Ronald Reagan's handling of the Soviet Union, writes William Inboden for The Hill.
"First, 'distrust and verify.' Reagan often intoned the old Russian proverb 'trust but verify,' in reminding Gorbachev of the importance of a verification regime for monitoring compliance with any agreements. In the case of North Korea, trust is not warranted…Any agreement that tempts Trump must include strict verification standards," Inboden writes.
"Second, do personal diplomacy, but don't personalize the outcome. Reagan appreciated that diplomacy must include leaders personally connecting with each other, as he and Gorbachev found in their first meeting in Geneva in 1985. But Reagan also knew this personal chemistry should not turn into personal aggrandizement."
Other tips from the Reagan playbook? "[T]ake the initiative and expand the agenda" to human rights and other issues, "stay aligned with allies," and "don't relinquish…leverage" like sanctions, and "don't schedule a summit until the circumstances are ripe."
| | The Upside Down World of Iran Deal Critics | | | Critics of the Iran deal seem to have things backward, suggests Peter Beinart in The Atlantic. "The more interesting question isn't whether Iran has been complying with the nuclear deal. It's whether America has."
"The deal doesn't only require the United States to lift nuclear sanctions. It requires the United States not to inhibit Iran's reintegration into the global economy. Section 26 commits the US (and its allies) 'to prevent interference with the realization of the full benefit by Iran of the sanctions lifting specified' in the deal. Section 29 commits the US and Europe to 'refrain from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the normalization of trade and economic relations with Iran.' Section 33 commits them to 'agree on steps to ensure Iran's access in areas of trade, technology, finance and energy."
But by lobbying European partners to stop doing deals with Iran, Beinart says, the "Trump administration has likely been violating these clauses." - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left no doubt which party he thinks is at fault, claiming in a primetime TV address that "Iran lied about never having a nuclear weapons program," Reuters reports.
"'One hundred thousand secret files prove it did. Second, even after the deal, Iran continued to preserve and expand its nuclear weapons knowledge for future use,'" Reuters reported him saying. "Although the presentation was live on Israeli television, Netanyahu made clear that his audience was abroad: he delivered most of his speech in English, before switching to Hebrew." | | The Friendless Leader of the Free World? | | | From his globalist and pro-European views to his push for economic reform, Emmanuel Macron might have admirable instincts, but without allies among Western leaders, there's only so much a mid-sized European power can do, writes Gideon Rachman for the Financial Times.
"[F]or all the quirky, dandruff-plucking bonhomie between the two presidents, there is little evidence that Mr Macron was able to shift Mr Trump on anything substantive," Rachman writes.
"Without strong German support, Mr Macron has few obvious alternatives. Brexit creates a natural divide with the UK, which is accentuated by the British suspicion that France is pushing the European Commission to take a particularly tough line in the negotiations."
"The danger for Mr Macron is that he could be a leader who is out of tune with the times. At home, he is a liberal economic reformer, at a time when 'neoliberalism' has never been less fashionable. He is a pro-European at a time of mounting Euroscepticism across the EU. He is a globalist and an internationalist at a time when protectionism and nationalism are on the march." | | China's Baby Problem Isn't Getting Any Better | | China may have abandoned its one-child policy in 2015, but the reality is that the economic time bomb of an aging society is still ticking. And it might be too late to do anything about it, the Wall Street Journal reports.
"In 2017, births slowed to 17.23 million, well below the official forecast of more than 20 million."
"In a generation that grew up without siblings, a one-child mind-set is deeply entrenched. Maternity-leave policies have been expanded but some women say taking leave twice is a career impediment."
The result?
"By 2050, there will be 1.3 workers for each retiree, according to official estimates, compared with 2.8 now."
| | Barring a last-minute breakthrough, tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the EU take effect on Tuesday. Per The New York Times: "What began as a way to protect American steel and aluminum jobs has since become a cudgel that the Trump administration is using to extract concessions in other areas, including car exports to Europe or negotiations to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada."
President Trump's top economic officials are heading to China for talks this week. Linette Lopez writes for Business Insider that like previous talks with China, little concrete is likely to come of the meetings -- and that state of limbo is likely to create problems down the road. "It's a status quo where the absence of diplomacy leaves room for action to come from accidents — from heightened rhetoric forcing hands to save face," she says.
President Trump is expected to speak at the National Rifle Association convention this week. Paul Waldman writes for the Washington Post that while the speech itself is unlikely to hold many surprises, the context this year is different. And that means Trump's appearance could hurt, not help the NRA's cause. "In the wake of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, the politics of guns have shifted in one critical way: Democrats are no longer afraid of the issue. The idea that the NRA wields terrifying power before which every politician of any party must bow has been punctured; more Democratic candidates are talking openly about new gun control measures, and liberal organizing on the issue has increased significantly." | | | | | | |
