Nima Khorrami, EurasiaNet
The distant war may play a role in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Alex Ross, New Yorker
The Hitler parody videos began proliferating around 2006, a couple of years after the release of “Downfall,” Oliver Hirschbiegel’s film about Hitler’s final days in Berlin. In the movie’s climactic scene, Hitler rants in his bunker while generals and adjutants look on in horror. In the parodies, alternate subtitles were inserted, to absurd effect. Amy Davidson Sorkin surveyed the genre in a 2010
C. Cooper & E. Casalicchio, Politico EU
Nearly one million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will be delivered to the U.K. for use from next week. By the end of the year, several hundred thousands more will have been sent to Britain, which has ordered 40 million doses of this vaccine, plus more than...
Joschka Fischer, Project Syndicate
After a rocky start, China has clearly ended 2020 on a high note, having brought the pandemic under control and strengthened its position both in Asia and on the global stage. Though the world has been spared another four years of Donald Trump, America and its allies will have their work cut out for them.
Bae Myung-bok, JoongAng Daily
Many people are expressing frustration at the current state of the country, wondering if this was what President Moon Jae-in meant in his inauguration speech when he said, “My heart is burning with passion to make Korea a nation never experienced before.” Some are even regretting that they joined the massive candlelight rallies to oust President Park Geun-hye.
Catherine Kim, Politico
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA—In Korea, the United States is called 미국 (pronounced miguk), which directly translates to “beautiful country.” It has always seemed like a fitting name, considering Korea’s longstanding admiration of the U.S.
Russia Matters
The share of Russians who expect their country’s relations with America to improve under the newly-elected U.S. president declined threefold from 46 percent in 2016 after Donald Trump’s election to 12 percent in 2020 after Joe Biden’s election, according to Russia’s leading independent pollster, the Levada Center. At the same time, while only 10 percent of Russians expected in 2016 that U.S.-Russian relations would...
Peter Beinart, New York Times
U.S. “leadership” is a favorite trope of the foreign policy establishment. It’s outdated and dangerous.
Michael Albertus, Foreign Policy
The country went through three presidents in a week in November—and it might soon have another if it doesn’t pursue a constitutional referendum like neighboring Chile.
Aaron David Miller & Richard Sokolsky, NPR
Joe Biden has assembled one of the most experienced and talented national security and foreign policy teams in decades. They grasp that the world has changed and that they can't hit the rewind button to 2016. Most important, they understand that the primary challenge their boss confronts is fixing America's broken house — the key to the success, or failure, of his presidency. If the administration wants to succeed, it will have to establish a... Читать дальше...
Daniel Serwer, Foreign Service Journal
Twenty-five years ago, the United States brought forth on the European continent a new state dedicated to the proposition that citizens are not equal as individuals but rather endowed with group rights. Those three groups (Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats), denominated as “constituent peoples,” are entitled to block numerical majority decisions. We have tested whether that state—Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H)—or any state so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. Читать дальше...
A. Gabuev, MT
In recent years, Moscow has tried to exploit the issue of its rapprochement with Beijing to scare the West with the prospect of a Sino-Russian bloc.
Kurt Volker, CEPA
Both the Obama and the Trump administrations sought to improve U.S.-Turkish strategic cooperation, but without much success. The stars may be aligning for the Biden administration to make it work.
