Mustafa Saadoun, Al-Monitor
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has announced that 40,000 Sunnis will join the mostly Shiite Popular Mobilization Units, fueling speculation that the new balance could lead to formation of a National Guard.
Hernando de Soto, Project Syndicate
It is time to consider that the strength of our opponents derives, at least to some degree, from sentiments similar to those that animated the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolution: frustration with and alienation from the prevailing system. In Britain’s American colonies before 1776, and throughout France in the years leading up to 1789, ordinary people became convinced that their lives, assets, and businesses had been subject for too long to the predations of arbitrary rulers. Читать дальше...
Kaj Leers, RealClearWorld
As with revolutions, people usually know who they want thrown out of office, but they often have little idea of what is to come after the bums are out. This is where opinions invariably start to diverge, often culminating in a minority of minorities somehow (but often enough through force) seizing power and foisting their radical minority opinions onto the divided majority. That divided majority then invariably rebels to spark another revolution at the ballot box.
Philip Stephens, Financial Times
The EU, though, is a club with rules. Where Poland’s partners have a legitimate voice is in weighing up whether the concentration of power in the hands of the ruling party meets the test of political pluralism. The European Commission is assessing whether the media and judicial changes respect this “rule of law framework”. Warsaw’s response is that the measures have been misrepresented. There is not much the commission can do beyond express disquiet.
G. Eaton, New Statesman
The hope of the Out campaign is that Johnson will side with them to differentiate himself from George Osborne (his chief leadership rival) and win over the anti-EU Tory grassroots. But the smart money is increasingly on the mayor siding with In. He will reportedly be offered the post of foreign secretary (or another senior cabinet job) in return for backing EU membership. Before Christmas, he is said to have told Tory MPs: "The trouble is, I am not an 'outer'".
Economist
Since the disappearances look disastrous for China’s image, many in Hong Kong believe that they cannot have been a deliberate policy by the central leadership. They speculate that lower-level officials overstepped the mark, or even that Communist Party factions hostile to Mr Xi are trying to embarrass him. China is left with a headache. It will have to cook up some plausible-sounding explanation for the mystery and coax, cajole or coerce the missing men into playing along. That, the theory goes, explains the prolonged silence.
Florian Eder, Politico EU
Voters abandon the center, alliances turn regional — and Merkel stands alone.
Fred Kaplan, Slate
The quick release of the U.S. sailors by Iran shows the value of the president’s calm, even-keeled approach to foreign policy.
Maxim Suchkov, National Interest
Given that there are about 150 groups currently on the ground in the Syrian crisis—and the different amounts of leverage that Moscow, Washington, Riyadh, Doha and Tehran have with their respective proxies—practical implementation of a political transition may be impossible. Nonetheless, Moscow’s intent to bring the conflict into the political realm as soon as possible seems real and understandable; carrying it out militarily is a politically costly and demanding enterprise, especially when acting alone.
Benjamin Soloway, Foreign Policy
When Islamic State militants used handguns and grenades to carry out a deadly attack in Jakarta on Thursday, a top Indonesian police official immediately compared it to the brutal assaults in Paris late last year that killed 130 people.
Ali Gharib, Los Angeles Times
“No one should be surprised by Iran's behavior today,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said, correctly, since seizing other countries' military ships in one's territorial waters is entirely unsurprising. “President Obama should communicate to the ayatollahs that unless they immediately release our sailors and boats, the United States will nullify the Iran nuclear deal and take all necessary measures to recover the service members they've apprehended.”
Liat Collins, Jerusalem Post
Standard wisdom has it that you can't beat opening a column or a talk with a joke. Last week I came across a whole "banta" of jokes (along with that wonderful suggestion for a collective noun) when I least expected it.
N. Feldman, BV
This is more than the usual international diplomatic incident. Wallstrm’s response poses core questions about the nature and uses of international law itself: to what extent can it be applied to instantaneous events that take place in the course of policing? As a teacher of international law, I find Wallstrm’s interpretation at best confused, and at worst outright mistaken.
Marwan Hisham, NY Times
These young men want to be listened to when they speak, and feared. These motives — “respect,” cash and guns — are turning ordinary young people into murderers.
David Ignatius, Washington Post
But Xi is off to a bad new year. The Chinese economy is slowing sharply, with actual gross domestic product growth last year now estimated by U.S. analysts at several points below the official rate of 6.5 percent. The Chinese stock market has fallen 15 percent this year, and the value of its currency has slipped. Capital flight continues, probably at the trillion annual rate estimated for the second half of last year.
Tom Kool, Oil Price
Saudi Arabia knows it won't have U.S. support for a direct war with Iran
