Новости за 02.12.2020

Mustafa Saadoun, Al Monitor

Iraqi Minister of Defense Juma Inad paid an official visit to Tehran Nov. 14 in response to the invitation of his Iranian counterpart Minister of Defense Amir Hatami a few weeks ago.

Faustine Vincent, Worldcrunch

YEREVAN — Clad still in their fatigues, two haggard soldiers returning from the front wander around the streets of Yerevan, the Armenian capital. Barely 18, they've just buried their friend. Farther on, a refugee couple from the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, in neighboring Azerbaijan, rings the bell at the gate of the French embassy, hoping it will bring them help.

Franklin Kramer, Atlantic Council

China presents critical economic, security, and value challenges to the transatlantic nations. Since the end of World War II, the trans- atlantic nations have generally faced such challenges—and oppor- tunities—in broad alignment. For several years, however, a variety

Chang Che, The Atlantic

A decades-old legal argument used by Hitler has found support in Beijing.

Xiyue Wang, RealClearWorld

New administrations in Washington have a tendency to blame foreign-policy failures more on their predecessors than on America’s adversaries. This was evident in President-elect Joe Biden’s repeated campaign criticism of President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear deal, and Biden’s pledges to rejoin the agreement “if Iran returns to strict compliance.” Weeks before the election, Biden wrote that “by any objective measure... Читать дальше...

Stratfor Worldview

The issue of Scottish independence is re-emerging ahead of the country’s May 2021 parliamentary election. The U.K. Parliament’s opposition to a new independence referendum will create debate over how to react, though the Scottish government remains unlikely to push for unilateral secession.

James Laurenceson, SCMP

While some in Australia have suggested that the country should form an economic alliance with like-minded democracies, in the world of international commerce, democratic and strategic friends are often the fiercest rivals

Janan Ganesh, Financial Times

An academic blames ‘elite overproduction’ for political turmoil in the west

Nicu Calcea, New Statesman
A new Chinese digital currency could help the country forge an alternative to the US-led global financial system.

Economist

THE BATTLE, in the end, was mercifully short. The 500,000 inhabitants of Mekelle, the capital of Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray, were spared a large-scale bloodbath. On November 28th Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, declared victory over Tigray’s ruling party, the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). A military operation started a few weeks earlier was complete, he said. This came two days after he announced an assault on the city that the army had earlier warned... Читать дальше...

Anne-Marie Brady, SMH

China-Australian relations reached a new low this week when a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson posted a fake image on Twitter of an Australian special forces soldier slitting the throat of an Afghan child with its head wrapped in an Australian flag as it cradled a lamb. It was a swipe at Australia's investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan. Prime Minister Scott Morrison demanded an apology from the Chinese government and asked Twitter to take down the image. Читать дальше...

Nick Tyrone, Spectator

Has a Brexit deal already been done? You'd be forgiven for thinking so if, like me, you listened to talk radio over the weekend. Much of the discussion on Brexit now focuses on whether or not Labour will vote for or against, or even abstain on the 'deal'. What deal? In reality there is, of course, yet to be a trade agreement between the UK and the European Union and it actually looks fairly unlikely at this stage. The clock...

E. Casalicchio & B. Moens, Politico EU

LONDON — Brexit-watchers are used to "crunch" weeks coming to nothing.

Izabella Tavarovsky, Wilson Quarterly
The official narrative of Soviet victory in World War II erases uncomfortable truths. Can Russians reclaim the forgotten human stories of those who defeated Nazi Germany?

Rocky Intan, The Interpreter
China-US rivalry tends to overshadow assessments. But this major accomplishment came with ASEAN at the centre.

Shiro Armstrong, East Asia Forum

China has unleashed a range of trade sanctions on Australia. Australian barley was hit with punitive tariffs of up to 80 per cent in June and more recently lobster from Australia has been left to rot as it waited to be inspected for quarantine. The latest casualty is Australian wine, now facing import duties of up to 212 per cent, affecting what is an AU$1.3 billion (US$900 million) a year...

George Friedman, Geopolitical Futures

The head of the Iranian nuclear weapons program was killed Friday near Tehran. The assumption is that he was killed by the Israelis, whose motive was to cripple the Iranian nuclear weapons program by killing the one man who was most critical to its success. It might well have been the Israelis, but there are a significant number of other countries that do not want to see Iran with nuclear weapons. The United States is one such country, but several Arab countries feel the same. Читать дальше...

Alex Ward, Vox

Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Afghanistan could cause short-term problems for Biden’s long-term global agenda.

Victor Davis Hanson, National Review

A wise foreign policy over the next four years would build on Trump’s strategic gains for the U.S. and the West.

Benjamin Jensen & Nathan Packard, War on the Rocks

The Biden-Harris administration is inheriting a defense strategy undermined by a mix of Jacksonianpopulism manifest in President Donald Trump’s political base, and COVID-19, a once-in-a-hundred-years pandemic. Certainly, no plan survives first contact, but it is increasingly apparent that the U.S. defense strategy has neither altered Chinese foreign...

Brad Glosserman, JT

Australia has become Beijing’s preferred pinata as China lashes out against perceived disrespect from other governments. Apparently willing to take a wait and see approach on relations with the United States and Japan as new administrations find their feet — and, it is hoped in Beijing, reset relations in a more accommodating fashion — Canberra in contrast has been handed an expansive set of demands that must be met for bilateral relations to return to what Beijing considers normal. Читать дальше...

Anton Mardasov & Kirill Semyonov, Riddle

In 2020, any remaining illusions around Russian-Turkish relations have been dispelled. For years, any strategic divergences were covered up by acrobatic feats of propaganda. The 2015 ‘stab in the back’, for instance, was soon replaced by ‘friendship’ and reflections on ‘

Eugene Chausovsky, CGP

The standoff between the United States and Russia has been a key feature of the global system, and is likely to become even more prominent with a new U.S. administration set to take the helm in 2021. Because of the global and intersectional nature of the standoff – which spans everything from the former Soviet periphery to the Middle East to arms control arrangements – the evolution of the relationship between Washington and Moscow has important implications across the world. Читать дальше...

M. Troitskiy, PONARS Eur.

(PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo) Since the end of World War II, relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, subsequently Russia, have been one of the major factors defining the global security environment. In such circumstances, arms control has always been a key activity providing Washington and Moscow a common cause and a reason to engage in negotiation. Understanding the motive forces behind U.S.-Russian arms control arrangements may help explain the... Читать дальше...

Brookings Institution