Aaron David Miller, Foreign Policy
No one is more anxious about a potential Biden presidency than Mohammed bin Salman.
Anatol Lieven, Resp. State.
The great realist thinker Hans Morgenthau stated that a fundamental ethical duty of the statesman is the cultivation of empathy: the ability through study to see the world through the eyes of rival state elites. Empathy in this sense is not identical with sympathy. Thus, George Kennan’s deep understanding of Stalinism led to an absolute hostility to that system.
Orysia Lutsevych, Chat. House
Results of the 2020 local elections clearly show Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s plans for expanding his political influence to Ukraine’s regions have to be put on hold, as he now finds himself in a position where pushing a nationwide reform agenda will be more difficult due to the fragmented political landscape.
James Gallagher, BBC
The first effective coronavirus vaccine can prevent more than 90% of people from getting Covid-19, a preliminary analysis shows.
Russia Matters
Less than a week before the start of the Democratic National Convention, Joe Biden announced Sen. Kamala Harris of California as his vice-presidential running mate. The nomination is another first in Harris’s illustrative career. In 2017, Harris joined the U.S. Senate as the second African-American woman and first South Asian-American senator in U.S. history. As a senator, she has served on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Select Committee on...
Tridivesh Singh Maini, Notes on Liberty
One of the important foreign policy priorities of President-elect Joe Biden, which will have an impact not just on the US but a number of its allies in the West – such as the UK, Germany, France (the E3), India, and Japan – is Washington’s ties with Iran.
Ian Acheson, CapX
There is a piece missing from Britain’s counter-terrorism jigsaw. As barbarity plays out on the streets of Paris, Nice and now Vienna – we need a plan to unite people around values antithetical to the sort of poisonous absolutism that imbues murderers with divine permission to kill.
Robert Farley, National Interest
Yuval Levin, National Review
Both have been rebuked in some important respects by the electorate.
Robert Zaretsky, Boston Globe
When France was liberated, its new president had to choose between incremental reforms and revolutionary changes. The path he chose is instructive now.
Jessica Batke & Mareike Ohlberg, ChinaFile
High atop Mount Xiqiao, an extinct volcano that soars above the Pearl River Delta, a towering statue of the Buddhist goddess Guanyin gazes down on the concrete sprawl of the city of Foshan. For centuries, the mountain’s scenic caves and waterfalls provided a refuge for scholars and artists. But today, Xiqiao is a far more crowded place. Some five million tourists visit each year. And as they wend...
Alexei Levinson, Moscow Times
Even opposition-minded Russians are not too excited about getting rid of Alexandr Lukashenko.
John Kampfner, Internationale Politik Quarterly
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had banked on a second term for Donald Trump. A Biden presidency and loose ties, at best, with the EU will make the task for the United Kingdom winning back credibility a long-haul undertaking.
Ian Storey, The Diplomat
The Royal Navy is sending its aircraft carrier to the Pacific. What comes next will be far more telling.
B. Quenelle, Worldcrunch
The former USSR is wobbling again …
Thirty years after the collapse of the Communist empire, the political crises in Belarus and Kyrgyzstan, and the war in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan — all emerging in quick succession — are calling into question Russia's influence on the smaller former Soviet republics.
James Stavridis, Bloomberg
The biggest differences between the new president and the old one? Experience, civility and appreciation of allies.
Peter Feaver, FP
This was no repudiation of Trumpism, making it harder for the party to heal and return to its strengths.
Frida Ghitis, World Politics Review
As a terrorist attack was unfolding late Monday night in Vienna, where four people were killed and 22 others injured in a shooting rampage on crowded bars, speculation about the culprit, unsurprisingly, was rife on social media. Many of those offering theories were quick to accuse Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of stoking the rage of militant Islamists. There is no indication that the attacker—a young extremist who it turned...
Denis Stremoukhov, Riddle
‘The President of France himself is now behaving like a terrorist’, said Ramzan Kadyrov, expressing disapproval at Emmanuel Macron’s condemnation of the beheading of Samuel Paty, a school teacher. The next day, the Russian President’s Press Secretary, Dmitry Peskov, reminded Kadyrov that foreign policy was outside the...
