Weiss & Hawez, Daily Beast
The occupation of the Green Zone may have been lifted, as of Sunday evening, but the stability and cohesion of the state are still very much in doubt. One of the protest organizers, Akhlas al-Obaidi, has given the government less than a week to broker a solution; otherwise, she said, the protestors would return on Friday.
Andres Oppenheimer, Miami Herald
Most likely, there will be a military coup — current speculation is that it would come from “Chavista” army officers concerned about Maduro’s incompetence — or a regional diplomatic offensive to press Maduro to respect the laws passed by the opposition-controlled National Assembly.
Doug Bandow, Japan Times
Since nothing else yet has worked, Washington and its allies should greet the congress by expressing a willingness to talk to Pyongyang, and not only about nuclear weapons, which almost is certainly a dead end with the Kim dynasty. With war the worst of all possibilities and sanctions able to hurt but not transform, the North’s neighbors and the U.S. need to explore other options.
Marc Thiessen, WaPo
Before his big foreign policy speech, Donald Trump let us know that “it won’t be the Trump Doctrine because in life you have to be flexible. You have to have flexibility. You have to change. You may say one thing, and then the following year you want to change it because circumstances are different.” So we had the Monroe Doctrine, the Truman Doctrine, the Reagan Doctrine and the Bush Doctrine. But the Trump Doctrine is that doctrines are for losers.
Michael Morell, Politico
The Sunni Gulf states are often painted in the Western media as shying away from a fight, not being capable of a fight and not willing to deal with terrorists and extremists in their midst. The UAE operation in Yemen proved that none of these characterizations are true of Abu Dhabi.
Ivan Eland, NY Post
Despite Trump’s usual campaign bluster, his foreign-policy views are largely well-argued and based on knowledge of, and stark admission of, numerous past instances of excessive and failed military meddling overseas.
Amberin Zaman, Al-Monitor
PKK violence is complicating US relations with Syria’s Kurds just as Turkey steps up its cooperation against the Islamic State.
Vanessa Barbara, NYT
Brazil’s political class is caught in a huge corruption scandal. The government, led by the left-wing Workers Party, is unpopular, and Ms. Rousseff’s removal from office looks imminent. Under these conditions, it seems it has gotten easier to be an advocate of the far right, praising convicted torturers as if they saved the country from much worse terror.
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, FP
The officially atheist country is salivating at a .6 trillion halal market. So far, it's been unable to break in.
Rowan Williams, New Statesman
Are we too complacent in thinking that the toxic brew of paranoia and populism that brought Hitler to power will never be repeated?
Jacob Shapiro, Geopolitical Futures
he national anti-corruption agency has reported that hundreds of statistics bureau employees provided preferential data for a fee.
Ignacio Sotelo, El Pais
Spain’s acting prime minister is a lesson in the power of inertia
S. Mayne, Crikey
What should Australia’s political class do if they are worried that a dangerous lunatic could become president of the United States?
Emma Sky, Politico
While the United States has been fixated on the Islamic State and the liberation of Mosul, the attention of ordinary Iraqis has been on the political unraveling of their own country. This culminated on Saturday when hundreds of protesters breached the U.S.-installed “Green Zone” at the heart of Baghdad for the first time and stormed the Iraqi parliament while Iraqi security forces stood back and watched. The demonstrators, supporters of radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, toppled blast walls... Читать дальше...
Economist
Arab wrangling is nothing new. Critics have decried the gap between the rhetoric and the reality from the outset. The Arab League’s first battle, for Palestine in 1948, was an ill-co-ordinated rout. Successive attempts at uniting members and joining forces against Israel quickly unravelled. But now something seems rotten not just in the institution but the ideology it represents. “The league is obsolete,” says Khairallah Khairallah, a veteran Arab opinion-writer from Lebanon. “It was... Читать дальше...
Maria Savel, WP Review
“Sturgeon and the SNP [the Scottish National Party] want to see 60 percent of Scotland in favor of independence before calling a new referendum,” says John Curtice, a professor of politics at Strathclyde University. Since public support for independence isn’t strong enough to guarantee a successful referendum, Sturgeon is choosing her words wisely, so she won’t be forced to call for another referendum she can’t win.
Boris Johnson, Telegraph
At the heart of Sadiq Khan’s pitch is a piece of classic Ken-ery. He wants to hold transport fares down so low that he would take 2 billion out of the budgets for London transport. This is a huge mistake. It will mean delaying or cancelling infrastructure projects that are desperately needed; and that means your bus not turning up; your Tube delayed; your nose thrust into someone else’s armpit. But it is also a tragic failure to understand the reality of London’s position, in an age of budgetary restraint.
B. Monteith, Scotsman
The result is that Scotland will continue to be in a state of flux characterised by the division within families and communities over the independence question. Instead of adhering to the Edinburgh Agreement whereby they would respect the outcome of the referendum, Sturgeon and Salmond will continue to seek to overturn the convincing majority that defeated them. Instead of honouring their word that the referendum was a “once in a lifetime” and again that it was a “once in a generation” opportunity ... Читать дальше...
T. Varma & A. Vasselier, ECFR
It is surprising that while China is experiencing economic slowdown and political repression, it still remains more attractive than India, whose economic growth and untapped internal market are promising and whose democratic system – with all its faults – is much closer to ours.
Max Fisher, Vox
If you have experienced even a few minutes of cable news coverage or handful of newspaper op-eds on American foreign policy, there is a word you will have encountered over and over again: credibility.
Nihar Patel, New York Times
IT’S rare when we find ourselves as the right person in the right place at the right time. More often, it’s an unsatisfying mix of those and other variables: The place is right, the timing is spot on — only you were off.
Ian Dunt, Foreign Policy
Things are getting ugly in the London election. What should have been a testament to the diversity of London life — a race between the son of a Pakistani bus driver and a wealthy white socialite — is descending into a toxic campaign that has raised doubts about just how tolerant the self-styled “world capital” really is.
Giorgio Cafiero, Al-Monitor
Oman shares the Strait of Hormuz with Iran and maintains cordial relations with Tehran, despite the formers membership in the mostly anti-Iranian Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). As Iran gradually reintegrates into the global economy, Oman is becoming a stepping stone for Iranian companies seeking to penetrate new African, Asian and Arab markets.
Alex Fukui, Ramen IR
To begin with, partition is no panacea for civil conflict. If partitions are incomplete, or if hostile ethnicities aren’t fully separated, the effects can be just as bad as, if not worse than, no partition at all. The hasty demarcation of the former British Raj into India and Pakistan presents one of the worst-case scenarios. During the hasty devolution from colonial rule, the Kashmir territory was engulfed in competing claims by both Pakistan and India. The persistent Kashmir... Читать дальше...
Jackson Diehl, Wash. Post
The regime that fostered this nightmare, headed by Hugo Chvez until his death in 2013, is on the way out: It cannot survive the economic crisis and mass discontent it has created. The question is whether the change will come relatively peacefully or through an upheaval that could turn Venezuela into a failed state and destabilize much of the region around it.
