Joe Baur, Tablet
The Shtetl Berlin Yiddish Culture Festival kicked off on Dec. 6 with a Montreal-style bagel-making workshop led by Laurel Kratochvila, the American-born owner of Berlin's Fine Bagels. Klezmer musicians and artists filled the static periods with Yiddish tunes and poetry while the bagel dough rose. American Jewish musicians such as Daniel Kahn and Craig...
Larry Luxner, Atlantic Council
Syria's decade-long civil war. A humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Ongoing hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians. The rising death toll from COVID-19 throughout the Middle East.
Michael Shurkin, RealClearWorld
President Joe Biden's early foreign-policy agenda might include resetting America's relationship with Europe. Washington might specifically reconsider its stance toward the prospect of a Europe capable of what French President Emmanuel Macron refers to as strategic autonomy.
John McLaughlin, Ozy
Getting Iran back into compliance with the 2015 agreement constraining its nuclear work will rank highly on President Joe Biden's list of urgent foreign policy challenges. This will require untangling a web of interlocking problems left by the Trump administration.
Micha'el Tanchum, Turkish Policy Quarterly
urkey's decision to provide an unprecedented level of military assistance to Azerbaijan empowered Baku to achieve a resounding victory in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, changing the geopolitical rules of the game in the South Caucasus. Moreover, the war has enhanced Ankara's ability to project its influence in Central Asia. Benefiting from its inclusion in the Chinese-led BRI network of connectivity across Central Asia, Turkey may have outfoxed China... Читать дальше...
RAND
hen advocates of restraint apply their beliefs to current con
-
ditions, they generate many recommended changes to existing U.S.
policy. Because the level of U.S. interests and threats to those interests
vary by region, so too do the prescriptions of advocates of restraint. For
example, some advocates of restraint see greater threats to U.S....
Oliver Wiseman, The Dispatch
Presidential transition periods in the United States are rarely a relaxing time for British prime ministers. The leader of the country that prides itself on its special relationship with the United States is prone to fret about just how special things will be with the new White House occupant. But even by these high standards, the transition from Donald Trump to Joe Biden has been uniquely fraught from a British point of view. U.K. ministers will be pleased to see Trump depart... Читать дальше...
Robert Skidelsky, Project Syndicate
On one level, Brexit was simply the unintended outcome of the United Kingdom's 2016 referendum on its European Union membership. But in retrospect, there was a whiff of inevitability about the UK's separation - not from Europe, but from a particular institutional expression of it.
David Gardner, FT
The incoming president could face problems with traditional US allies such as Israel, as well as with adversaries
Jon Allsop, Foreign Policy
Britain's prime minister has always been a political weathervane, and he knows the wind from across the Atlantic is now blowing in a different direction.
Daniel Larison, The American Conservative
There is a growing hawkish consensus in the United States that views the Chinese government as an aggressive and expansionist power that seeks global domination. This consensus view exaggerates Chinese power and ambitions, and threatens to push the U.S. towards a heavily militarized standoff with the world's most populous country in its own backyard. Fortunately, there are dissenters in the debate over U.S. policy in East Asia that recognize the flaws... Читать дальше...
William Alan Reinsch, CSIS
While many people are saying that 2021 will be the year of China, just as the past four years have been, I think we may well see our relationship with Europe occupying much of the debate space this year. There are compelling reasons for improving it, just as there are compelling obstacles to doing so.
Hal Brands, Foreign Affairs
Donald Trump's presidency will end on January 20, but his influence on U.S. foreign policy will not. For decades before Trump's election in 2016, the United States pursued a strategy of hardheaded internationalism, employing its power on behalf of a relatively cooperative, open world order. The outgoing president rejected that tradition, marrying American muscle to a starkly...
Jimmy Quinn, National Review
This isn't the first time that Beijing has targeted U.S. officials this way.
Joshua Tallis, War on the Rocks
There is no public Air Force Middle East strategy, no high-profile Latin America strategy from the Army, no Navy Africa strategy. So why are the services now competing to release Arctic ones? As the Biden administration fills out its national security team, new and returning arrivals will face a curious development in Arctic defense policy: the proliferation of Arctic strategies from the service branches. The Navy and Marine Corps
Masha Gessen, New Yorker
Vladimir Putin just doesn't know what to do about Alexey Navalny. Putin's regime generally knows how to perpetuate itself. It controls all state institutions—not only the executive branch but the courts and the parliament—insuring that Putin's power remains unchecked. It dominates the information sphere, creating the illusion that no alternative to Putin exists. It has reduced elections to
Melanie McDonagh, Spectator
Well, now that we're all fired up about Britain's moral role in the world courtesy of Theresa May, who is indignant about cuts to the overseas aid budget, how about moving on to...
Ilan Zalayat, Jerusalem Post
In this context, the new administration has to determine whether to adopt the UN-mediated framework that is currently on the table for a settlement in Yemen.
Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz
Another question is whether Biden is seeking to repair the world or whether he will get sucked into the whirlpool that Trump bequeathed him and just try to fix a few things
Perry Anderson, London Review of Books
t is now a year since Britain left the EU, and less than a month since the terms of its separation were sealed, on Christmas Eve. What explains its departure from the Union half a century after joining it, and what light does this cast on the future of Europe itself? An answer to either of these questions requires a longer view than the vote on Brexit and the brief period since. In 1950, convinced of the...
Matthias Bartsch et al, Der Spiegel
The student didn't really stand out among the nearly 700 cases of the coronavirus recorded by the public health department in Berlin's Steglitz-Zehlendorf district during the week before Christmas. The young woman was home for the holidays to visit her family, having traveled back to Germany from the university where she is studying in the United Kingdom. It appeared to be an everyday case of the coronavirus in the affluent southern part of Berlin.
Daniel McDowell, World Politics Review
The dollar's status as the global reserve currency is in grave danger—at least that's what a growing chorus of pundits and observers are saying. The U.S. government has embarked on a debt-driven spending spree as the country grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic repercussions. This explosion of U.S. borrowing, combined with more "money printing" by the Federal Reserve, has led
George Friedman, GPF
U.S. foreign policy comes in phases. From the end of World War II to 1972, its goal was to confront the Soviet Union and affiliated communist governments. Things changed a little in the early 1970s, when the U.S., weakened by the Vietnam War, began to work with China against the Soviet Union to eventually reach a detente. This lasted until 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union. From the early 1990s to 2001, Washington fixated on leading a global, peaceful world order. Читать дальше...
David Lepeska, The National
After pushing each other to the brink of war last summer, Ankara and Athens are set to launch exploratory talks next week
James Crabtree, Nikkei
Vital maritime area is strategically up for grabs
