Tara Palmeri, Politico EU
“The majority of the Swiss would be happy for Great Britain to leave because they would see it as the end of the EU,” he said. “People are saying listen, we’re doing everything we want them to do, but they’re just not listening.” He added, “You talk about Europe and you almost always add the word crisis.”
Konrad Yakabuski, Globe and Mail
If Mr. Obama has always been more of a realist than idealist in foreign policy matters, his presidency has made him a fatalist, willing to give Mr. Putin as much rope as he wants.
Zakem & Saunders, National Interest
While protection of Russian compatriots in neighboring countries looks more like a political justification than a motive for Moscow’s seizure of Crimea and its intervention in eastern Ukraine—notably, Russia’s own formal strategy documents describe this as a foreign-policy objective, but not a national-security objective—tensions surrounding the rights, treatment and grievances of compatriot populations are likely to continue.
Ben Caspit, Al-Monitor
For quite a while, discussions have been taking place in Israel regarding the “day after” an arrangement is agreed to on Syria. Israel’s decision-makers have taken into account the possibility that the Russian declaration was the result of contacts and agreements between Putin and US President Barack Obama regarding the partition of Syria into segments. In such a case, said a senior Israeli defense figure to Al-Monitor who requested anonymity, “We must not agree to a new... Читать дальше...
Andrei Lankov, NK News
Few reasonable people would deny that the sudden collapse of North Korea is possible, though experts are likely to argue about its probability and time frame. If North Korea faces a grave internal crisis, this will not be a nice, bloodless, velvet revolution with rock bands singing resistance songs on Pyongyang squares and police refusing to shoot demonstrators. For many reasons, North Korea is a very different place than the Czechoslovakia or East Germany of the late 1980s... Читать дальше...
Duarte & Tadeo, Bloomberg
Catalonia is deliberately flirting with default on its bank loans as the region’s separatist government tries to force the Spanish state to deliver aid payments, according to two people familiar with the situation.
Peter Foster, Daily Telegraph
Yet again, Europe is about to agree to a deal that is illegal, impractical and unenforceable, and everyone knows it – not least the German public, 71 per cent of whom do not believe it can work according to a YouGov poll this week.
Daniel Gallas, BBC News
The plot to Brazil's political crisis has become so complicated that even makers of political drama 'House of Cards' joke they are now following events. There is even an online quiz where one has to guess: did it happen in Brazil or in House of Cards, or both? But this is no laughing matter in Brazil.
Maia de la Baume & Barbara Surk, Politico
Macedonia wants a reward for stepping up to be the EU’s virtual new southeastern border: a firm date for the launch of talks on EU membership.
Marc Champion, Bloomberg View
The Jekyll side is less understood. This is the Iran where an American is more likely to get an enthusiastic reception than in any other country I've visited in the Middle East; as far back as 2002, survey data suggested that three quarters of Iranians wanted closer relations with the U.S. Iranians are better educated than citizens of other countries in the region and women make up 60 percent of the university student body (enough for the regime to try to start excluding them from certain courses). Читать дальше...
Mustafa Akyol, NY Times
This willful closed-mindedness is not an inherent feature of Islam. A thousand years ago, Muslim societies were open and curious, while Christian Europe was insular and fearful of “blasphemy.” Aristotle’s books were translated and studied in Baghdad and Crdoba, and banned in Paris and Rome. No wonder the Muslim world was then the home to groundbreaking discoveries in science, medicine and mathematics. In theology, too, Muslim thinkers like Ibn Rushd, also known as Averros... Читать дальше...
Business Insider
The armed forces of the U.S. and South Korea began their annual military exercise known as Operation Foal Eagle. Over the weekend, soldiers from the two countries, joined by personnel from Australia and New Zealand, staged an assault on a beach on South Korea's southeastern coast.
Rodger Baker, Stratfor
At the core of the monograph is an assertion of China's strategic imperatives - the core compulsions and constraints on the state imposed by the interaction of geography, economics, politics, security and society throughout history. As we stated at the time, China has three overriding geopolitical imperatives:
S. Jenkins, Evening Standard
Each of Johnson’s incarnations — as bumptious schoolboy, bumptious journalist and bumptious mayor — were dismissed as “peak Johnson”. He has deftly turned each into a stepping stone. But now for the big one. Ruling a city-state such as London is not a bad dry run for government. But Johnson’s London is on the record, for use against him by rivals. The race will not be Trump-dirty, but dirty it will be.
Chris Colin, Afar
As we nibble at pork with ginger, Yumi cheerfully tells me about the gigs she has had since joining Client Partners. (The six-year-old agency is the largest in Japan, with eight branches across Tokyo and another that recently opened in Osaka.) There was the mystery writer who wanted her to read the novel he’d toiled away at for 10 years. Another man needed someone to talk with about his aging parents—not in person, but via months of emails. Like Miyabi, Yumi works weddings. For... Читать дальше...
Ciku Kimeria, Quartz
I cannot fully explain the incredulous looks on the visa officers’ faces when I said I was not visiting friends or family in those countries but simply traveling as a tourist. “Then you need to show us confirmed hotel bookings if you cannot provide all these documentation from your host.”
Krishnadev Calamur, Atlantic
North Korea’s Supreme Court has convicted Otto Warmbier, a 21-year-old student at the University of Virginia, of subversion.
Mounir, ALM
Officials are taking tourists’ complaints to heart as they prepare to rejuvenate the great pyramids area, employing a company affiliated with the armed services to pick up the project that was abandoned in 2011.
Daniel Hannan, Conservative Home
The damage is already being done. The Republican Party is being tainted by association, America is being diminished in the eyes of her allies and, worst of all, the whole concept of participatory democracy, based on open primaries, is being tarnished.
Rashmee Roshan Lall, The National
If ISIL is especially focused on Tunisia right now, it may be more in the way of a vulture watching over its weakening prey than anything else. In the five years since the Jasmine Revolution, Tunisia’s laundry list of problems has only grown longer.
James Traub, Foreign Policy
If Europe is to survive both as a coherent institution and as an embodiment of the liberal values of the Enlightenment, it will do so only by resisting the universalism of the left as much as the nativism of the right
Barbie Latza Nadeau, Daily Beast
Bertolaso’s candidacy is supported by Silvio Berlusconi, who, not surprisingly perhaps, was the second politician to publicly share the archaic sentiment. “Being mayor means being in your office 14 hours a day,” said Berlusconi, whose milestones include his bunga-bunga orgiastic parties and being tried for abetting underage prostitution. “It’s clear to everybody that a mother can’t do that job,” he told Radio Ancio’io radio station.
Max Boot, Los Angeles Times
Seen through a lens of morality, what Putin has done is monstrous — he is helping to prop up a bloodthirsty regime that has been responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of people and turning millions more into refugees. But from the narrow vantage point of Russian self-interest, Putin has pulled off another coup and shown that he is a more adept international poker player than his counterpart in Washington.
Jochen Bittner, NYT
Consider these three bits of hyperbole. Churchill liberated Europe. Margaret Thatcher molded it into a single market. Tony Blair enlarged it. Hyperbole or not, there’s no doubt Britain played critical roles at the critical moment. Do you really want to look on now, a spectator like Switzerland, as Europe retreats into illiberalism and protectionism, and its eastern fringes drift into the orbit of a neo-imperial Russia? You can’t isolate yourself from these; you can only worsen them by refusing to do your part. Читать дальше...
Michael Bloomberg, Bloomberg View
The value of the Canadian dollar and the price of oil, one of the nation’s top exports, have both tumbled to near record lows. But those details -- and the apparent demise of the Keystone XL pipeline -- don’t begin to tell the story of what lies ahead for the economy of Canada, America’s second-largest trading partner.
