Matthew Karnitschnig, Politico EU
A quorum of Europe’s leading financial technocrats gathered last week for the painful ritual of assessing the status of Greece’s bailout. The meeting followed a familiar script: Greece’s creditors complained Athens had yet to deliver the required data. The Greeks protested, explaining that they had sent the information — the night before. Greece is back. Just not in the way Europe had hoped.
Manning & Przystup, NAR
Unless tough measures, that take away things the North Korean elites value, are put in place, Pyongyang will almost certainly disregard the modest opprobrium of U.N. Security Council resolutions and thumb its nose at China and the U.S. In the event, North Korea's efforts to perfect its nuclear weapons and delivery systems will continue, uncertainty and tension in Northeast Asia will grow, and China will likely face the very instability its appeasement of North Korea is designed to prevent.
Jonathan Marcus, BBC
The Russian military's increasingly aggressive patrolling and exercises on the margins of Nato have raised genuine concerns - even in a country such as Sweden - that a conflict with Russia can no longer be regarded as impossible.
Christopher Clark, Narratively
Strutting down the streets of South Africa, a band of dashingly dressed migrants proudly display their loud and colorful subculture in a place that can be less than welcoming to outsiders.
Noah Feldman, Bloomberg View
Assad will probably calculate that he doesn’t need to beat Islamic State, just contain it so that it doesn’t constitute an existential threat to his regime. That would put Islamic State well on its way to becoming a statelet, accepted by its neighbors for lack of will to defeat it. The long-term consequences for the world would be high, but Assad’s regime would be substantially better off.
Louise Mensch, New York Times
The case for leaving the union is, indeed, a positive one. Britain is the world’s fifth largest economy, with deep cultural and economic ties to the English-speaking world. We are not anti-immigrant; rather, we wish to manage our own immigration policy. We are pro-free trade, and as the European Union’s chief export market, we will not need to pay for access to its markets; and we want more freedom to trade with India, China and the rest of the world.
Madawi Al-Rasheed, Al-Monitor
With no end in sight to Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen, is Riyadh ready to risk major casualties by sending ground troops to Syria?
Fabio Rafael Fiallo, RCW
Smothering price controls, unrealistic official exchange rates, lavish money printing, and criminalization of the entrepreneurial class, all characteristics inherited from Hugo Chavez, have continued to be applied with frantic fervor by Nicolas Maduro. Little wonder that Venezuela's economy is on the verge of collapse.
Soo Kim, RealClearWorld
Northeast Asia is already fraught with security tensions and rivalries. Imagine the regional response should South Korea ever decide to pursue a nuclear weapons program. China and Russia are already declared nuclear weapons states; North Korea has conducted several nuclear tests; Japan has the latent technological capacity to build nuclear weapons; and North Korea just demonstrated twice this year its nuclear weaponization potential, through an alleged hydrogen bomb test and a satellite launch. Читать дальше...
Soo Kim, RCWorld
Northeast Asia is already fraught with security tensions and rivalries. Imagine the regional response should South Korea ever decide to pursue a nuclear weapons program. China and Russia are already declared nuclear weapons states; North Korea has conducted several nuclear tests; Japan has the latent technological capacity to build nuclear weapons; and North Korea just demonstrated twice this year its nuclear weaponization potential, through an alleged hydrogen bomb test and a satellite launch. Читать дальше...
Vikram Nehru, National Interest
Can Jakarta translate economic heft into global influence?
Carl Bildt, Politico EU
A chance for a different kind of Munich pact this week.
A. Robock & O.B. Toon, NYT
We haven’t heard much about this apocalyptic future in recent years. But the research into the destructive potential of a war involving nuclear weapons has continued. Even with the reduced nuclear arsenals that the United States and Russia agreed to in 2010, we have the ability not only to set off instantaneous destruction, but also to push global temperatures below freezing, even in summer. Crops would die and starvation could kill most of humanity.
Shawn Crispin, The Diplomat
Thailand is currently under the strictest military regime the country has seen since the early 1970s, an era when China-backed communist guerrillas threatened to overthrow the established monarchy-military symbiotic order. Despite rising controversy surrounding the current National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) junta’s heavy-handed rule, it’s a military regime that will likely remain in power for the foreseeable future.
Bergman, Israel Hayom
A recent government-sponsored report found that anti-Semitism is rampant in many Dutch schools, especially among Muslim students. The 55-page report, "Two Worlds, Two Realities -- How Do You Deal with It as a Teacher" was published last week by journalist Margalith Kleijwegt at the Dutch Education Ministry's request.
James Blitz, Financial Times
Franois Hollande’s government is in the throes of passing a new law that will allow the state to strip convicted terrorists of their French nationality. The move is proving highly controversial across the political spectrum and for good reason.
George Soros, Project Syndicate
The leaders of the US and the EU are making a grievous error in thinking that president Vladimir Putins Russia is a potential ally in the fight against Islamic State. The evidence contradicts them. Putins aim is to foster the EUs disintegration, and the best way to do so is to flood Europe with Syrian refugees.
Tim Wigmore, New States.
Only 40 miles away lies Polzeath, where David Cameron has holidayed every summer since 2010. Yet while the Prime Minister enjoys Cornwall’s alluring beaches, the scene in Redruth provides a better reflection of the county today. Cornwall is England's poorest county. If it were a country, it would be poorer than Lithuania and Hungary.
Laura Pitel, Spectator
In Istanbul, signs of the Syrian influx are everywhere. Syrian mothers sit on pavements clutching babies wrapped in blankets; children from Homs, Syria’s most completely devastated city, push their way through packed tram carriages begging for coins. Arabic adverts offer rooms for rent. It’s almost inconceivable how many Syrians Turkey has taken in as refugees — around 2.5 million of them so far. That’s almost three times the number who have sought refuge in Europe. And while the Turks are hospitable... Читать дальше...
Ira Chernus, TomDispatch
It was half a century ago, but I still remember it vividly. "We have to help South Vietnam," I explained. "It's a sovereign nation being invaded by another nation, North Vietnam."
Alex Taylor, Telegraph
If Britain does withdraw from the EU, two million of us will be stranded and no longer have equal rights as the citizens of the countries we live in – overnight. Other EU countries are not going to grant hundreds of thousands of us nationality. We are UK citizens and yet very proud to be Europeans, our lives having been greatly enhanced through free movement. All of a sudden it seems more than likely that we will lose a lot of our rights, and find ourselves in a legislative limbo. Читать дальше...
Dan Drezner, Washington Post
Between trying to change Trump’s mind in private and writing about his idiot ideas in public, the latter seems like the better and more ethical option to me. If Trump wins South Carolina, we’ll see how the rest of the foreign policy community feels about that premise.
James Traub, Foreign Policy
The past may be a poor guide to the present. The 160,000 asylum-seekers who came to Sweden last year is double the number it has ever accepted before. I met many critics who were prepared to raise impolite questions about whether Sweden could afford to lavish generous benefits on so large a population, whether it could integrate so many new arrivals with low levels of skills, whether a progressive and extremely secular country could socialize a generation of conservative Muslim newcomers. Читать дальше...
Michael Auslin, Forbes
It is therefore timely to bring together the three leading democracies of Asia, Europe, and the Western Hemisphere, and explore how more explicitly to articulate their joint interests in global stability. Uniquely over the next two years, the three can join forces to shape how the U.N. Security Council responds to global crises, perhaps giving some heft to the much-tarnished idea of liberal internationalism. Perhaps more importantly, the three can use the forum of the Security... Читать дальше...
Doreen Peskin, Al-Monitor
Israelis view corruption as the price for getting things done, but it’s in all layers of the governance, despite the economic, social and moral consequences.
