There was only one real winner last Saturday when war broke out in Israel — Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin’s enabling of his “Arsenals of Evil” ally, Iran, resulted in the opening of a new front in Gaza in his war against the West.
Read more at: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4250708-putins-fingerprints-are-on-hamas/
Ask a Turk when it was great in Turkey. They won't be able to answer .
Erdogan just expedited the collapse . He just short-sold USD overnight and caused millions of Turks to loose money .
However I think this will end up being good for the country . Turks did not ever fight for their civil rights. I hope that once AKP is gone they will have the following otherwise the cycle will continue.
Update : What I wrote above is the common denominator in any developed country. It's not rocket science .
Read more at: https;//www.quora.com
The US-China chip war is heating up after Huawei launched a new phone featuring technology that Washington was hoping to keep out of China's reach.
Last month, Huawei released the Mate 60 Pro phone without providing much detail on the chips used for the device. But Ottawa-based TechInsights, a research organization specializing in semiconductors, made a surprising discovery after taking the phone apart for analysis — the device was run on a Chinese-made Kirin 9000s 7-nanometer processor. The scale of the chip is essential, as smaller-scale chips can be packed with more elements, thus making them faster and more powerful. The chip also appears to be 5G capable.
Read more at: https://www.dw.com
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Ukraine has systemically and strategically taken back half the territory Russia seized, inflicting humiliating loss after debilitating setback. As Ukraine's battlefield victories pile up, the U.S. and its NATO allies are giving it increasingly sophisticated weapons.
"If 2023 continues as it began, there is a good chance Ukraine will be able to fulfill President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy's New Year's pledge to retake all of Ukraine by the end of the year — or at least enough territory to definitively end Russia's threat," Liz Sly suggested at The Washington Post.
Read more at: https://theweek.com/russo-ukrainian-war/1020161/will-putin-survive-his-catastrop and
https://www.cato.org/blog/can-putin-survive-settlement-war-ukraine
Are we living in the last days? With all that going on in our world that’s a fair question to ponder. The last days in the Bible are surely coming true, right?
There’s no shortage of opinions and pieces written about the end times. Many of them are a little crazy and not actually found in the Bible. To actually answer that question we need to ask another question, what does the Bible say about the last days?
The phrase “in the last days” only appears in the Bible 6 times. That might
be surprising considering how much it’s talked about. But maybe more
surprising is that this phrase is not found in Revelation.
Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: “‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Acts 2:14-17
The EU is supporting Ukraine with a further €1.5 billion (roughly $1.6 billion). The aim is to help the country affected by the Russian war of aggression to rebuild critical infrastructure such as roads or bridges and to maintain necessary public facilities such as hospitals or schools.
"Today, we've disbursed another €1.5 billion in macro-financial Assistance to Ukraine. Month after month, we continue to play our part in rebuilding a modern and prosperous country, while helping to cover the country's needs," the European Commission announced.
Read more at: https ://dw.com.
The Moldova-born Russia is one of this year's recipients of the Free Media Award from Germany's Zeit Foundation. And this is only the latest in the string of accolades and awards for the 36-year-old, who is a member of multiple international investigative networks, including the team behind the Panama Papers investigation.
In Russia, Anin's Important Stories (IStories.media) website first drew headlines in 2020 by looking into procurement of ventilation machines during the COVID pandemic. In the same year, they also published a report on one of the most sensitive topics in the country — apparent corruption linked to the family of President Vladimir Putin. Anin was forced to leave Russia the following year.
Read more at: https://www.dw.com
European regulators slapped TikTok with a €345 million fine Friday for failing to protect children's privacy. It's the first time the popular short video-sharing app has been punished for breaching Europe's strict data privacy rules.
Ireland's Data Protection Commission, the lead privacy regulator for Big Tech companies whose European headquarters are predominantly in Dublin, said it was fining TikTok and reprimanding the platform for the violations dating back to the second half of 2020.
The Commission's investigation also found that the default settings posed a risk to children under 13 who had gained access to the platform even though they were underage.
In addition, the Commission ruled that a 'family pairing' feature designed for parents to manage settings was not strict enough, allowing adults to turn on direct messaging for users aged 16 and 17 without their consent.
Read more at https://www.euronews.com
Beijing's foreign ministry confirmed Monday that Li would be at the G20 Leaders' Summit on Saturday and Sunday, which it described as an important forum for economic cooperation.
"In attending this meeting, Premier Li Qiang will convey China's thoughts and positions on G20 cooperation, pushing for the G20 to strengthen unity and cooperation, and working together to combat global economic and development challenges," spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular news briefing.
Read more at: https://www.france24.com
Nearly half of Americans (47%) say that the United States’ influence in the world has been getting weaker in recent years. Only about one-in-five say U.S. influence has been getting stronger, while 32% say U.S. influence has been staying about the same.
This is in stark contrast with views of China: Two-thirds of U.S. adults say that the country’s influence has been getting stronger in recent years. Roughly one-in-five Americans say China’s global influence is holding steady, and only one-in-ten say China’s influence has been weakening.
Read more at: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/06/23/prevailing-view-among-americans-is-that-u-s-influence-in-the-world-is-weakening-and-chinas-is-growing/
Landlocked Belaru:s is losing more access to its western neighbors. Since the start of the month, Poland has sent more troops toward its border with the country and Lithuania has shut down two of its six crossing points with Belarus. Latvia is also considering border closures: One official told DW that "active consultations" are taking place, with a decision planned later this month.
The three European Union members bordering Belarus say they're responding to the reported presence of Wagner mercenaries on Belarusian territory, after the private Russian military group's fleeting and ill-fated June rebellion.
"This decision is one of the preventive measures aimed at managing emerging threats to national security and possible provocations at the border," Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite said last week in a statement announcing the temporary closures. "It will enable border officers to redistribute their capacities at the border with Belarus and pay even larger attention to the protection of the state border."
Read more at: https://www.dw,com
The Russian currency has broken another threshold in its decline in value. Over the weekend, 1 ruble was worth only 1 US cent. This means 100 rubles had to be paid for $1 US. The ruble also continued to lose value against the euro, with €1 at times costing nearly 110 rubles.
The ruble fell to its lowest point since March 2022 when the currency crashed following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. In the following few months, the currency regained the lost ground as Russia benefited from significantly higher energy prices. However, over the past year, the ruble has steadily declined.
Read more at: https://www.dw.com
While artificial intelligence (AI) has generally been hailed as a means of improving our daily lives, some experts have warned about the potential existential threat it poses to humanity. Or does it?
A new AI-powered algorithm has detected a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) heading in Earth’s direction that other more old-school surveys - including the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) - failed to find.
This new PHA named 2022 SF289, which is 600 feet in length and large enough to destroy a city, was detected while the asteroid-hunting algorithm was undergoing an efficiency test using data from the ATLAS survey in Hawaii.
Read more at : 'https://www.euronews.com
SICK Vladimir Putin's "days are numbered" as the tyrant faces being carted off to hospital in a "sudden end" to his rule, the former head of MI6 has warned.
Rumours have swirled for months about the 70-year-old Russian leader's reportedly failing health - fuelled by his bloated face and trembling legs.
Read more at: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/21212116/putin-days-numbered-parkinsons-spy-chief/
The Russian Federation’s recent announcement of plans to station non-strategic nuclear weapons in Belarus represents the first “nuclear sharing” agreement made since the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons entered into force in 1970, the senior United Nations disarmament official told the Security Council today, emphasizing that — against the backdrop of the Ukraine conflict — the risk such arms will be used is higher today than at any time since the end of the cold war.
Read more at: https://www.un.org/en/
Ukrainian drones hit a Russian tanker in the Black Sea near Crimea late Friday night, according to Russian officials and video circulating on social media.
The strike was the second sea attack involving drones in one day, after Ukraine struck a major Russian port earlier on Friday in an attack that underlined Kyiv's growing naval capabilities as the Black Sea becomes an increasingly important battleground in the war.
Read more at:https://www.cbc.com
Russian warship was seriously damaged in an overnight Ukrainian naval drone attack on Russia's Black Sea navy base at Novorossiysk, the first time the Ukrainian navy has projected its power so far from the country's shores.
The port, which handles two per cent of the world's oil supply and also exports grain, temporarily halted civilian ship movement before resuming normal operations, according to the Caspian Pipeline Consortium which operates an oil terminal there.
Read more at" https//www.cbc.com
An expert has told Euronews that Russia's Wagner mercenary group could stage an attack to sever the Baltic states from NATO, though he questioned if such a "suicidal" step would be taken.
Dr Stephen Hall, lecturer of Russian politics at the University of Bath, suggested the assault may involve a small incursion, akin to a provocative false flag operation, to disguise direct Russian involvement.
But he was sceptical this was feasible, owing to the immense geopolitical risks and Wagner's military strength.
Read more at:
https://www.euronews.com
After weeks of speculation that he might change prime minister, the 45-year-old head of state said on Monday that he was sticking with under-fire Elisabeth Borne.
Since his re-election last May, Macron has faced months of fierce street protests over a deeply unpopular pensions reform and was forced into crisis management again late last month when riots erupted nationwide.
Advisors and ministers had long argued over whether the centrist should carry out a major overhaul of the cabinet to signal a fresh start, but in the end the reshuffle was limited in scope.
Read more at: https://www.france24.com
I am worried that large political contributions will prevent Congress from tackling the important issues facing American today, like the economic crisis, rising energy costs, reforming health care, and global warming.
In the first presidential contest after the Citizens United decision, 84 percent of Americans agreed that corporate political spending drowns out the voices of average Americans, and 83 percent believed that corporations and corporate CEOs have too much political power and influence. This aligns with more recent research showing that 84 percent of people think government is benefitting special interests, and 83 percent think government is benefitting big corporations and the wealthy.
As already noted, the undue influence of corporate interests on the functions of government is not new, and Sen. Whitehouse’s book explains how Americans have faced and overcome this threat before.
America’s founders recognized the danger of corporate capture: In 1816, Thomas Jefferson warned the new republic to “crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of their country.” Almost a century later, President Theodore Roosevelt, in his annual address to Congress in 1907, said:The fortunes amassed through corporate organization are now so large, and vest such power in those that wield them, as to make it a matter of necessity to give to the sovereign—that is, to the Government, which represents the people as a whole—some effective power of supervision over their corporate use.
Read more at; https://www.americanprogress.org/article/corporate-capture-threatens-democratic-government/
According to a report released Monday by the Pew Research Center, the global perception of Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin, is at an all-time low.
The study, conducted across 24 nations, found that, on average, 82% of respondents say they have little or no confidence in the Russian leader to "do the right thing regarding world affairs."
Read more at :https://www.dw.com
The United States confirmed that it will send cluster munitions to Ukraine to help its military push back Russian forces entrenched along the front lines.
President Joe Biden "approved it... after unanimous recommendation," US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said, adding that this "difficult" decision was made after consultation with "allies and partners,"
Read more at: https://www.dw.com
French President Emmanuel Macron discussed the possibility of banning access to certain social media features, in a meeting with local mayors in the cities that have seen violent protests.
Macron told about 300 local leaders that "we need to reflect on social media use among the youngest [and] on the prohibitions we must put in place," in a video seen by some French and international media.
"When things get out of hand, perhaps you have to put yourself in a position to regulate or cut them," Macron added.
Read more at: https://www.euronews.com
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg will stay in his post for another year, the 31-nation military alliance decided on Tuesday.
Stoltenberg said in a tweet he is “honoured by NATO Allies’ decision to extend my term as Secretary General until 1 October 2024.”
“The transatlantic bond between Europe and North America has ensured our freedom and security for nearly 75 years, and in a more dangerous world, our Alliance is more important than ever,” he said.
Read more at:https//www.euronews.com
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has thanked French counterpart Emmanuel Macron for the shipment of light combat tanks to Kyiv, though some Ukrainian military officials have challenged their practicality.
Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov was filmed riding in a highly mobile AMX-10 RC infantry fighting vehicle.
However, a Ukrainian battalion commander strongly criticized the tanks, describing them to the French AFP news agency as "impractical" due to their "thin armor."
The commander told AFP at one instance, a crew of four were killed when a shell exploded near the vehicle, piercing the armor due to its thin quality.
Read more at: https://www.dw.còm
With more and more people using digital tools for their daily transactions, the European Commission on Wednesday presented a proposal to initiate a digital euro.
Digital currencies have been surging in popularity over the last few years as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have entered the mainstream. But unlike Bitcoin, the digital euro would be a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), essentialy electronic cash.
The aim would be to give consumers an alternative European-wide payment solution, in addition to the options that exist today, the Commission says.
Read more at : https://www.euronews.com
Ukraine has nevertheless claimed that it has recaptured eight villages so far in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia and the eastern region of Donetsk.
To better grasp the evolving situation, FRANCE 24’s Gwendoline Debono and Amar Al Hameedawi travelled to the village of Blahodatne, which lies on the road to the port city of Mariupol. Recently recaptured from Russian forces by the Ukrainian military’s 68th brigade, Blahodatne has become one of the new fronts in the war.
READ MORE AT: https://www. france24.com
Ukrainian forces have carried out a missile attack on a bridge connecting Ukraine's Kherson region and Crimea, Russia-appointed officials in both regions said on Thursday.
The Chongar bridge, which connects Russian-held parts of the Kherson region with the Crimean peninsula, was struck, the officials said, adding that traffic was diverted to another route.
Read more at: https://www.dw.com
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said direct talks between world leaders was more important than ever after high-level talks with China's Premier Li Qiang in Berlin onTuesday.
Scholz said keeping the communication lines open was more vital that ever.
"Direct dialogue, face-to-face talks, a real exchange — all this is even more important than usual in these extraordinary times full of global challenges and crises," said Scholz.
Read more at: https://www.dw.com
The European Union has again extended a ban on Ukrainian grain imports to five countries, including Poland.
The move follows anger and protests from Polish farmers who were left with unsold grain or forced to sell it cheaply when faced with lower Ukrainian prices.
Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Krzysztof Ciecióra explained: "We have fulfilled their main demand, i.e. stopping the pressure of grain imports from Ukraine.
"Today there is no such permission. It is not legal until September 15 at least. These grains will not flow to Poland. Only transit is possible."
Although the decision of the EU, supported by the government, brings temporary relief, it was not met with much approval from Polish farmers, who fear that in a few months, they will face the same problems again.
Read more at: https://www.euronews.com
Plans by the British government to revoke or amend hundreds of European Union laws on its statute book could have a "negative impact on trade", Brussels has warned.
Speaking at the EU-UK Forum's annual conference on Monday, European Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič said Brussels is following the evolution of the Retained EU Law through the British parliamentary process "extremely, extremely closely."
"I understand that (a) big part of the audience who is following this conference would like to see more seamless trade, less friction, less complication but it's very difficult to achieve that if the decision is to just simply go for more divergence or if, let's say, the law which we've been building together for many, many decades and underpins some of the fundamentals of the Withdrawal Agreement and TCA [The EU-Uk Trade and Cooperation Agreement] would be thrown into the shredders."
Read more at:https://www.euronews.com
The agreement paves the way for introducing new rules to collectively manage the reception and relocation of asylum seekers. Last year, the EU received more than 962,000 asylum applications, the highest figure since 2016.
The rules were put to a vote during a meeting of home affairs ministers in Luxembourg, which had been preceded by an atmosphere of optimism that appeared to increase the odds of a positive outcome.
But the talks prove hard and laborious: ministers and their deputies spent virtually the whole day haggling over nitty-gritty details and rewriting compromise texts.
Sweden, the country that holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council, pushed its fellow member states to stay put and continue negotiations until a wide consensus was found.
Read more at https://www.euronews.com
Vladimir Putin's continued rule will lead to the "disintegration" of the Russian Federation, Mikhail Khodorkovsky has warned.
The exiled Russian businessman, who was once considered the country's wealthiest person, was speaking on the sidelines of a two-day roundtable conference in Brussels centred on the future of Russia and the country's opposition.
The conference, called "The Day After," included EU and Russian opposition representatives and was organised by the major political groups of the European Parliament.
But Khodorkovsky said that active resistance to the war in Ukraine is not as prevalent as the opposition would like to think.
"Putin fails to completely fill people's brains with his propaganda. However, unfortunately, people's perceptions are changing under the pressure of propaganda," said Khodorkovsky, the former CEO of the oil company Yukos.
Read more at: https://www.euronews.com
Last month, Director Burns traveled to Beijing where he met with Chinese counterparts and emphasized the importance of maintaining open lines of communication in intelligence channels," the official said.
The official provided no further details on the meeting.
The US intelligence agency does not regularly announce the director's travels.
The Associated Press cited a second anonymous source as saying that Burns only met with intelligence officials and had no meetings with political leadership.
Read more at: https://www.dw.com
One of the most overused cliches in contemporary U.S. diplomacy is Ronald Reagan’s invocation of a Russian proverb: “Trust but Verify.” Originally used in the context of the Cold War, it conveyed that Washington should be willing to reach agreements with its adversaries but only if it could be sure the other side would live up to its commitments. It was a nice way to indicate both flexibility and toughness, which is of course why people refer to it whenever the United States is contemplating new negotiations with one of its adversaries.
Implicit in Reagan’s dictum is the idea that Americans are honest, plain-speaking truth-tellers who can be counted upon to keep their word and fulfill their promises. America’s opponents, by contrast, are a slippery bunch of deceptive charlatans who will exploit any loophole and seize any opportunity to hoodwink the country. Accordingly, U.S. negotiators must insist on all sorts of intrusive measures — such as the extraordinarily stringent inspection regime incorporated into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran — to make sure they can verify what others are really up to. Reagan’s proverb notwithstanding, the importance the United States attaches to verification is really a reminder that there is damn little trust involved.
Lately, however, I’ve been wondering whether this wariness has things backward. Is the real problem that Washington can’t trust others, or rather that other states can’t trust it?
Even before Deceitful Donald showed up, the United States had amassed a pretty good record of reneging on promises and commitments. At a minimum, Washington cannot claim any particular virtue or trustworthiness in its dealings with others. In the unipolar era, in fact, the United States repeatedly did things it had promised not to do.
To be sure, this is how one expects great powers to behave, especially when important matters are at stake. The Athenians famously told the Melians that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must,” and that logic did not escape U.S. leaders throughout the country’s history. Think about all the treaties U.S. officials signed with various Native American tribes and subsequently broke, modified, or reneged upon as the nation expanded steadily across North America. Or consider the Nixon shocks of 1971, when the United States unilaterally ended convertibility of the dollar into gold, in effect dismantling the Bretton Woods economic order it had helped create. President Richard Nixon also slapped a 10 percent surcharge on imports to make sure the U.S. economy didn’t suffer as the dollar rose in value
Or consider some more recent events. As more and more documents come to light,
it has become clear that U.S. officials convinced their Soviet
counterparts to permit German reunification by promising that NATO would
not expand further. Secretary of State James Baker told Mikhail
Gorbachev that NATO would not go “1 inch eastward”
and Gorbachev received similar assurances from a host of other Western
officials as well. President Bill Clinton’s administration blithely
ignored these assurances, however, in its overzealous rush to create
what it thought would be a “zone of peace” well to the east. As a number
of observers warned at the time, this decision poisoned relations with
Moscow and was the first step leading back to the level of confrontation
we are dealing with today. That blunder was compounded by the George W.
Bush administration’s decision
to abandon the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. While technically
not a breach of trust (i.e., the treaty permitted either party to leave
if it wished, provided it gave adequate notice), it was still a clear
signal that the United States didn’t care about preserving good
relations with Moscow and was Stephen R. Weissman has shown in an important article,
regime change was on U.S. officials’ minds from the get-go, and they
soon blew right past the terms of the resolution. As former Secretary of
Defense Robert Gates later recalled, “The Russians felt they had been
played for suckers on Libya. They felt there had been a bait and
switch.” And they were right. So, if you’re ever wondering why Russian
President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly blocked Security Council action
over the disaster in Syria, there’s at least part of your answer.Which brings us to Donald Trump. The world is now dealing with a U.S. president who appears to have no firm convictions or beliefs, the attention span of a hummingbird, and who apparently makes important national security decisions on the basis of whatever fairytale he just saw on Fox & Friends. As near as one can tell, he never saw a treaty or agreement signed by his predecessor that he liked, even though he has trouble explaining what’s wrong with any of them. He just likes to talk about “tearing them up” no matter what the consequences may be.
Trump is also a serial fabulist who lies with facility and frequency yet has yet to pay any political penalty for his disinterest in truth. Determined to outdo his predecessor in every way, Trump uttered six times as many falsehoods in his first 10 months as president as Obama did in his entire two terms. Add to that the frenetic pace of turnover within the White House and the cabinet, and you
Under these conditions, why would any sensible government take America’s word for anything? Why would any halfway smart adversary make substantial concessions to the United States in exchange for U.S. promises, assurances, or pledges? Why offer up a quid in exchange for its pro quo? Based on its recent track record, and the character of the current U.S. president, no adversary would concede a thing unless it were 100 percent certain the United States would deliver as promised. “Trust but Verify” indeed.
Given this situation, how long will it be before those with whom the United States is negotiating start demanding intrusive verification procedures or other guarantees designed to ensure that America doesn’t sign a deal and then tear it up a year later or demand that it be renegotiated? How long before other important states decide they cannot base their foreign-policy decisions on expectations or assurances from the United States because Washington simply cannot be trusted to do what they say.
There are already worrisome signs of precisely this sort of trend. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of people who trust U.S. leadership has dropped from an average of 64 percent at the end of the Obama administration to roughly 22 percent during Trump’s first year in office. Even more remarkably, a larger percent of people around the world have confidence that Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin will “do the right thing in world affairs” than the current U.S. president. When you’re trailing those two ruthless operators, it’s time to start asking why nobody trusts you.
To be sure, this is not to say that nobody trusts anyone from the United States anymore. U.S. business leaders continue to strike mutually beneficial deals with foreign counterparts; the beleaguered and understaffed diplomatic service continues to forge cooperative arrangements all over the world; U.S. intelligence agencies continue to collaborate with foreign countries under the protective umbrella of mutual confidence; and countless military-to-military engagements take place every day on a basis of mutual respect and regard. Indeed, given the time, money, attention, and lives that the United States has expended to reassure others about its credibility, it would be odd if other states had no confidence in Washington at all. It would be a vast overstatement, therefore, to conclude that past U.S. opportunism or the unreliable character of Trump had led others to conclude that the United States as a whole was totally unreliable.
Nonetheless, acquiring a reputation for being untrustworthy is costly. When trust disappears, reaching cooperative agreements inevitably will troops in South Korea because it doesn’t trust the North, and North Korea went to enormous lengths to build a nuclear bomb because it doesn’t trust the United States
Read more at: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/10/america-cant-be-trusted-anymore/
It has been 12 years since the conflict in Syria began to displace Syrians from their homes into neighboring countries. Since then, their numbers in Turkey have reached 3.7 million. In the absence of any traditional durable solutions — in the form of voluntary return, resettlement, or local integration — the presence of Syrian refugees in Turkey has bec protracted, with no end in sighr
The tone of the ongoing campaigns in Turkey is heating up ahead of the upcoming runoff vote between incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
While the government camp seems to be using all means necessary to defame the opposition and portray its presidential candidate as a traitor, Kilicdaroglu too is going on the offensive.
Read more at: https://www.dw.com
Russia advanced its plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, signing a deal on Thursday to facilitate a special warhead establishment in the neighbouring nation.
The plan to deploy nukes beyond Russia's boundaries was announced by President Vladimir Putin in a TV interview on March 25.
Kremlin has not specified the exact date of deployment, yet expects the new facility to be ready in just over a month's time in Belarus.
Moscow has not kept its nuclear weapons outside of the Russian borders since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The Iskander-M missiles, with warheads carrying capabilities, have already been handed to the Belarusian armed forces, Russia's defence minister Sergei Shoigu said.
Read more at: https://www.euronews.com
Russia is just one rubber stamp vote away from formally leaving a key Cold War-era security deal designed to de-escalate potential east-west conflicts by drawing down troop numbers and stocks of conventional weapons.
The upper house of Russia’s parliament, the Federation Council, will consider Russia’s pull-out on Wednesday, 24 May, more than a week after the Duma approved the legislation.
State Duma speaker Leonid Slutsky said on Tuesday the treaty “had only existed on paper”.
President Vladimir Putin introduced a draft bill on 10 May "denouncing" the Treaty of Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which was signed in Paris in November 1990 by 34 representatives of NATO states and members of the Warsaw Pact, and ratified two years later.
So, what is the significance of the move by Moscow and what implications does it have for European security?
Read more at: https://www.euronews.com
Commission (DPC), which acts on behalf of the European Union, said the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) had ordered it to collect "an administrative fine in the amount of 1.2 billion euros".
The DPC has been investigating Meta Ireland's transfer of personal data from the EU to the United States since 2020.
It found that Meta, which has its European headquarters in Dublin, failed to "address the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms of data subjects" that were identified in a previous ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).
Read more at: https://www.france24.com
Held in the ancient Chinese city of Xi’an, the historic eastern end of the Silk Road that linked China to Europe through Central Asia, Beijing has said this week’s meeting is of “milestone significance”.
And in a speech to the region’s leaders at a welcoming banquet Thursday evening, Xi said strengthening ties was a “strategic choice”.
“I am confident that with our joint efforts, tomorrow’s summit will be a full success and will herald a new era of China-Central Asia relations,” Xi was quoted as saying in a readout of the speech seen by AFP.
Read more at: https://www.france24.com
This week, we were joined at the European Parliament in Strasbourg by Maria Irish MEP Maria Walsh from the EPP, Swedish MEP Emma Wiesner from Renew and Polish MEP Robert Biedron from S&D.
The panelists discussed how the Russian attack against Ukraine has pushed European Union out of its comfort zone.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in Germany, Europe's economic powerhouse, where decades-old sacred political principles have gone overboard.
Last year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz stood before his country's parliament and declared that Germany would undertake a Zeitenwende, or an epic turning point.
This week, before the European Parliament, Scholz doubled down on this, saying that the future cannot be won by using policies of the past and advocating a more geopolitical approach for Europe.
Berlin is reworking its energy infrastructure after having spent years being dependent on Russia, and it is becoming a green energy power.
Read more at: https://www.euronews.com
fierce standoff is underway between the Democrats and Republicans, who want the White House to agree to sweeping public spending cuts as well as other reforms.
Top Republican leaders are due to meet US President Joe Biden on Tuesday at the White House to try to resolve the dispute.
Read more at: https: //www.dw.com
A planned European Union directive to create a register for foreign-funded organisations could have "unintended consequences" and limit the bloc's ability to support human rights defenders globally, scores of NGOs have warned in a joint statement to the European Commission.
Some 230 civil society organisations including Transparency International EU, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International signed the statement sent on Wednesday to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in which they lambasted the plans for a Foreign Interference Law.
Read more at: https://www.euronews.com
In a surprising diplomatic move, China and India, two countries that have carefully avoided condemning Moscow for launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine despite repeated pleas from Western allies, have voted in favour of a United Nations resolution that explicitly acknowledges "the aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine."
The reference is found in just one paragraph of a broader resolution that calls for closer cooperation between the United Nations and the Council of Europe, the Strasbourg-based human rights organisation.
The text, promoted by a wide group of European countries, together with Canada and the United States, received 122 votes in favour and 18 abstentions.
Read more at: https://www.euronews.com
More than 14 months after Russia invaded Ukraine, Chinese President Xi Jinping held his first phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday.
China emphasized that its core position is promoting peace talks while promising to send a special envoy to Ukraine and hold talks with all parties in the ongoing conflict.
Zelenskyy characterized the talks with Xi as "long and meaningful."
"I believe that this call, as well as the appointment of Ukraine's ambassador to China, will give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relations," Zelenskyy wrote on Twitter.
Read more at: https://www.dw.com
"I need to know who is ruling my country, if I am given this right, I need to have a say. It is my country at the end of the day,” she tells Euronews"
“We keep the ties alive with our home country. We always travel and stay there for months sometimes. When there, we use the same daily services such as hospitals and post offices with the people residing in Turkey. So why shouldn’t we?”
“People criticise me for living in London and being involved in Turkish politics,” she continues.
“I tell them, when I left Turkey, the atmosphere was different. We just had a massive earthquake at the time in 1999. I didn’t have many opportunities for work. The general situation wasn’t so great. But although I believe things have improved, it is not easy for someone to relocate at a certain age when you need your children and grandchildren around you”.
Read more at: https://www.euronews.com
A talented orator and wily politician credited with lifting millions of Turks into the middle class, Recep Tayyip Erdogan transformed the country as only Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Turkish Republic, accomplished before him. The 69-year-old Turkish president is now running for a third term. But the upcoming presidential election in May is no cakewalk for the seasoned politician with polls suggesting he could be defeated by opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
A profound economic crisis coupled with skyrocketing inflation, deep political tensions and mounting anger over his handling of the February 6 earthquakes, which killed more than 50,000 people, could cost Erdogan his place in the Ak Saray presidential palace. Turkish political scientist and publisher Ahmet Insel spoke to FRANCE 24 about Erdogan’s political legacy and the stakes in the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections.
Read the complete report in https://www.france24.com/en/vod/latest-news
How European should European weapons be?
That is the question currently occupying the minds of diplomats in Brussels, who continue haggling about the technical details of a €1-billion initiative to jointly buy ammunition for Ukraine.
Despite a political agreement reached one month ago, the novel proposal finds itself stuck in negotiations, a delay that stands in stark contrast with the brutal developments on the battlefield.
Read more at: https://www.euronews.com
Lula is fresh off a trip to China and the United Arab Emirates, during which he raised eyebrows in the West by accusing the United States of "encouraging the war" in Ukraine.
He also said the United States and Europe "need to start talking about peace," and that Kyiv shares the blame for the conflict, which began in February 2022 when Russian forces poured into Ukraine in an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government and annex swaths of the pro-Western country.
His remarks echoed a line frequently used by Moscow and Beijing, which blame the West for the war.
Sergei Lavrov, Russia's top diplomat, thanked Lula on Monday for his offer to mediate peace talks on the 14-month war.
Read more at: https://www.france24.com
I t's been less than a week since a leak of highly classified military documents on the Ukraine war surfaced, sending the Pentagon into full-speed damage control to assure allies and assess the scope of the information revealed.
The information on scores of slides has publicized potential vulnerabilities in Ukraine's air defence capabilities and exposed private assessments by allies on an array of intelligence matters, raising questions about whether the leak will erode allies' trust in sharing information with the U.S. or impact Ukraine's plans to intensify the fight against Russia this spring.
Read more at: https://www.cbc.com
Young people in Europe are at greater risk of falling into poverty than the overall population, according to Eurostat.
Their latest figures show that 20% of young people aged 15-29 were at risk of poverty in 2021, while the at-risk-of-poverty rate for the total population of the EU stood at 17%.
The at-risk-of-poverty metric compares those on low incomes to other residents of the same country
Read more at; https//www.euronews.com
When major oil companies announced record earnings in February, even US President Joe Biden was appalled. The White House said it was "outrageous" that ExxonMobil had raked in a profit of $56 billion (€51 billion) in 2022 as consumers were grappling with inflation rates not seen in decades.
Top policymakers in Europe have also weighed in on the issue, imposing windfall taxes on energy firms. Even though price pressures have eased lately from their record levels, the eurozone is still reeling from elevated inflation levels. Consumer prices in the common currency area rose 6.9% in March from a year earlier, keeping inflation at more than three times the European Central Bank's target of 2%.
Read more at: https://www.dw.com
Turkey's parliament ratified Finland's application to join NATO on Thursday. In doing so, it became the final of 30 NATO member states to support Finland's accession, clearing the last major hurdle for the country to join the military alliance.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blessed Finland's candidacy earlier this month after months of negotiations.
Read more at: https://www.dw.com
If civil servants in Ankara are an accurate barometer of shifting fronts in Turkey’s national politics, then the country’s longest serving leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, really could be in trouble in May’s election.
The main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), says bureaucrats are already sending in their resumes in preparation for a new order, sensing that this could be the end of Erdoğan’s more-than-two-decade dominance over the state.
That would be a relief to many in the West, who are increasingly frustrated by the Islamist populist’s confrontational statesmanship in a strategic heavyweight of 85 million people. In the past months alone, Turkey has quietly provided Russia with clandestine trade routes to beat sanctions, imposed a veto on Sweden’s entry into NATO and engaged Greece in high-risk brinkmanship with fighter jets over the Aegean.
Read more at: https://www.politico.eu/article/turkey-2023-election-erdogan-close-call-republican-peoples-party-turkey-sweden-akp-chp-kilicdaroglu-fahrettin-altun/
Chinese leader Xi Jinping was to host hosting Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in Beijing this weekend, seeking to deepen ties with another diplomatic ally following his three-day visit to Russia that took place earlier this week.
The visit was postponed on Saturday as the Brazilian leader was admitted to hospital with pneumonia.
Had it gone ahead, the state visit would have come at a time when China is trying to present itself as an important global power that can rival the US.
China's trade relationship with Brazil was set to take center stage, as Lula was to bring a delegation of 240 business representatives with him to Beijing. Trade flow between China and Brazil currently amounts to $150 billion (€140 billion) annually, and Brazilian exports to China reached $89 billion in 2022.
China now invests in a wide range of sectors in Brazil, and experts say Beijing wants to tap into the South American country's rich resources and market size.
Read more at: https://www.dw.com
Russia will station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Russian leader Vladimir Putin said on Saturday, according to TASS state news agency.
Putin said he reached an agreement with Belarusian president — and his closest regional ally — Alexander Lukashenko.
"We agreed with Lukashenko that we could place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus without violating the nonproliferation regime," Putin said, according to the TASS report.
Read more at: https//www.dw.com
Lawmakers in Sweden voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Nordic nation joining NATO, signing off on the country's membership along with the required legislation.
The 349-seat Riksdagen, or parliament, authorised Sweden’s accession to NATO on a 269-37 vote, with 43 absent. It was the last required domestic hurdle to the country becoming part of the 30-member Western military alliance.
Read more at: https//www.dw.com
A day after being accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol, scene of some of the worst devastation of his year-old invasion.
State television showed extended footage of Putin being shown around the city on Saturday night, meeting rehoused residents and being briefed on reconstruction efforts by Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin.
The port city of Mariupol became known around the world as a byword for death and destruction as much of it was reduced to ruins in the first months of the war, eventually falling to Russian forces in May.
Read more at: https://www.cb.cpm
Washington has summoned Russia's ambassador to the US to the State Department to express its "strong objection" after a Russian fighter jet struck an American surveillance drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday, causing US forces to bring the drone down in international waters.
"We will summon the Russian ambassador to the State Department," said US diplomatic spokesman, Ned Price in a press briefing, calling the incident a "brazen violation of international law."
He added that the US ambassador in Moscow had also conveyed Washington's protests in a message to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The US military says a Russian jet Su-27 jet collided with the unmanned aerial vehicle over the Black Sea, forcing the drone down.
Read more at: https//www.euronews.com
Russian forces suffered more than 1,100 dead in less than a week of battles near the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the focal point of fighting in eastern Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday.
"In less than a week, starting from 6th March, we managed to kill more than 1,100 enemy soldiers in the Bakhmut sector alone, Russia's irreversible loss, right there, near Bakhmut," Zelensky said in his nightly video address.
He said Russian forces had also sustained 1,500 "sanitary losses" - soldiers wounded badly enough to keep them out of further action. Dozens of pieces of enemy equipment were destroyed as were more than 10 Russian ammunition depots.
Read more at:https://www.france24.com
EU countries on Wednesday agreed to speed up supplies of artillery rounds and buy more shells to. help Ukraine but still have to work out how to turn these aims into reality.
Under a plan drawn up by foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, EU states would get financial incentives worth €1 billion ($1.06 billion) to send more of their artillery rounds to Ukraine while another €1 billion would fund joint procurement of new shells.
"There has been a general agreement on this procedure but there are questions pending. Everything has to be discussed in detail," Borrell said after a meeting of EU defense ministers in Stockholm also attended by their Ukrainian counterpart Oleksii Reznikov.
Borrell said he hoped the plan would be finalized at a meeting of EU foreign and defense ministers on March 20.
Read more at: https://www.dw.com
Turkey has been walking a tightrope between Ukraine and Russia, trying not to harm the relations it has with both countries.
So how did we get here, and is it a viable long term strategy for Ankara?
Less than two weeks into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on 10 March last year, Turkey entered the stage to play a mediator role between the countries, but the meetings held at foreign minister level in Antalya left participants empty-handed.
As ties got closer, concern amongst opposition in Turkey grew. Questions have been asked repeatedly in the Turkish press: would this friendship open a path for Russian manipulation of the Turkish elections in favour of Erdogan?
"Turkey's trade relations with Moscow were already at a peak, against the backdrop of a series of sanctions imposed on Russia from the US and the EU," says Professor Bilgic.
According to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK), Turkey doubled its trade volume when imports from Russia rose to $58.85 billion (€55.44 billion) in 2022 - that's up from from $28.96 (€27.28 billion) billion the previous year.
Read more at: https://www.euronews.com
Premier Li Keqiang, the top economic official, set this year's growth target at “around 5%” following the end of anti-virus controls that kept millions of people at home and triggered protests. Last year's growth in the world's second-largest economy fell to 3%, the second-weakest level since at least the 1970s.
“We should give priority to the recovery and expansion of consumption,” Li said in a speech on government plans before the ceremonial National People’s Congress in the Great Hall of the People in central Beijing.
Read more at: https://www.ap.com
The old idea that autocracies are better than raucous democracies at getting things done found new life during the coronavirus pandemic. Many Western commentators argued that while democracies dithered and debated, autocracies were quick to respond and mobilize their resources. Sometimes that might be true—but only if you are the right kind of autocracy. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, it turned out, is not one of them.
Erdogan’s response to the country’s devastating earthquake on Feb. 6 was painfully slow and uncoordinated. But regimes in which power is centralized are supposed to be fast and organized. All Erdogan had to do was pick up the phone and order his commanders to dispatch NATO’s second-largest army to the badly hit cities, mobilize the bureaucracy to send much-needed aid, and deploy emergency response teams. He did not. Just minutes after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit 10 Turkish provinces, troops stood ready to step in and take part in search and rescue operations. Yet in the critical early hours, the order from the top never came. Nor did Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) rush to help the victims. Why?
Read more af: https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/03/01/turkey-erdogan-earthquake-apk-strongman-authoritarianism-democracy-military-disaster-relief/
Around 3,000 delegates from across China are making their way to the Chinese capital, Beijing for the start of the annual parliamentary conference this weekend. The dual political sessions are expected to endorse a list of top officials for key government positions, pass a plan to overhaul several government agencies and institutions, while also formally confirming Chinese leader Xi Jinping's precedent-busting third term in power.
Typically called the "two sessions," the meetings in Beijing include the gathering of China's rubber-stamp parliament — the National People's Congress (NPC) — and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), which is an advisory body.
Read more at: https;//www.dw.com
A few days before Olaf Scholz's trip to Washington this week, an astonishing transatlantic spectacle unfolded: Joe Biden's National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said in a TV interview that the US president had only agreed to supply American Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine at the German chancellor's urging. The US tanks are to supplement the German Leopard tanks that Germany and other European NATO countries plan to send.
In doing so, Sullivan not only contradicted earlier statements by his boss who insisted that Germany had not made him change his mind, but also the German government, whose spokesman explicitly denied the notion of "a package" of German Leopards and American Abrams.
The German denial is meant to "avoid the impression that the Americans have been put under pressure," Henning Hoff of the German Council on Foreign Relations told DW. "I think what has become clear is that Chancellor Scholz was able to make it clear to Washington: 'I need this backing, otherwise it will be very difficult for me to take this step.'"
He added that this ultimately succeeded because the chancellor and the president have a good personal connection.
Read more at: https://www.dw.com
The wreckage of the pandemic surrounds us—with more than half a million people around the world dead, the ranks of the global hungry doubling, and the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression raging. Well before the coronavirus hit, however, the liberal international order built and led by the United States was becoming less liberal, less ordered, and less American. The pandemic has accelerated that trend and aggravated preexisting conditions.
With the United States and its allies reeling, distracted, and divided by the pandemic, China’s ambition to become the dominant player in Asia has grown, as has its desire to reshape international institutions and rules to suit its power and preferences. The pandemic has also magnified the insecurities of Chinese leadership, amplifying their worries about economic sluggishness and social discontent. The result is greater domestic repression and an even more pugnacious brand of “wolf warrior” diplomacy.
Always attuned to the weakness of others, Vladimir Putin is losing sight of Russia’s own weakness. The collapse of the oil market and Putin’s mismanagement of the pandemic have made Russia’s one-dimensional economy and stagnant political system even more brittle. A potent counterpuncher, Putin still sees plenty of opportunities to disrupt and subvert rival countries, the kind of tactics that can help a declining power sustain its status. His margin for error, however, is shrinking.
Europe is caught between an assertive China, a revisionist Russia, an erratic America, and its own political breakdowns—none more perplexing than Brexit. The drift in the transatlantic alliance is worsening, with the U.S. looking for Europe to do more with less say, and Europe fearing that it will become the grass on which the great-power elephants trample.
The pandemic has also intensified the Middle East’s disorder and dysfunction. Hard-liners in both Tehran and Washington pose combatively at the foot of a dangerous escalatory ladder. Proxy wars in Yemen and Libya spin on. Syria remains a bloody wreck, and Israel’s impending annexation in the West Bank threatens to bury a two-state solution.
As the pandemic’s wave crests over developing countries, the world’s most fragile societies will only become more vulnerable. Latin America now faces the biggest economic decline in the region’s history. Africa, with its growing cities and daunting food, water, and health insecurities, faces greater risks than perhaps any other part of the world.
All of these challenges and uncertainties are further complicated by ongoing technological disruptions, and by ideological and economic competition.
The pace of change has outstripped the capacity of faltering, inward-looking leaders to shape the rules of the road. False information spreads with the same alacrity as truth; infectious diseases move faster than cures. The same technologies that unlock so many human possibilities are now being used by authoritarian leaders to lock in citizens, surveil them, and repress them.
With the triumphalism of globalization long behind us, societies struggle with widening inequality and mercantilist impulses. Democracy has been in retreat for more than a decade, the compact between citizens and governments badly frayed. International institutions are beginning to break—paralyzed by too much bureaucracy, too little investment, and intense major-power rivalry. Looming above it all is the forbidding menace of climate change, as our planet gradually suffocates on carbon emissions.
This moment screams for leadership to help forge a sense of order—an organizer to help navigate this complicated mess of challenges, stabilize geopolitical competition, and ensure at least some modest protections of global public goods.
But now we are living through the worst intersection of man and moment in American history. “America First” really means Trump first, America alone, and Americans on their own.
The post-pandemic future of the United States is not preordained. We still get a vote, and we still get to make some fateful choices. They are more complicated than those we faced at the end of the Cold War, when our undisputed primacy cushioned us from our mistakes and sustained our illusions. But today’s choices are even more consequential than those of 30 years ago.
The United States must choose from three broad strategic approaches: retrenchment, restoration, and reinvention. Each aspires to deliver on our interests and protect our values; where they differ is in their assessment of American priorities and influence, and of the threats we face. Each is easy to caricature—and each deserves an honest look.
It’s not hard to persuade many Americans—struggling through the human and economic costs of the pandemic, pained by the open wounds of our racial divides, and doubtful about the power and promise of the American idea—to pull up our national drawbridges and retrench. Nor is it hard to make the case that the prevailing bipartisan foreign-policy consensus fumbled America’s post–Cold War “unipolar moment”—leaving the U.S. overstretched overseas and underinvested at home.
Proponents of retrenchment argue that for too long, friends and foes alike were glad to let the United States underwrite global security
The U.S. may be first among unequals for now, but the notion that its leaders can resurrect the era of uncontested American primacy, prevent China’s rise, or will our diplomatic relationships and tools into exactly their pre-Trump, pre-pandemic shapes is a mirage.
Retrenchment is easily distorted as a kind of nativist isolationism or pathological declinism. It is often portrayed as a Bannonite call to throw overboard a sense of enlightened self-interest, and focus at long last on the “self” part. The heart of the argument is far less radical; it’s about narrowing our concept of vital interests, sharply reducing global military deployments, shedding outdated alliances, and reining in our missionary zeal for democracy-building abroad. Retrenchment means jettisoning our arrogant dismissiveness of nationalism and sovereignty, and understanding that other powers will continue to pursue spheres of influence and defend them. And it means acknowledging that the U.S. can manage threats and adversaries more effectively than it can vanquish them.
The main risk in retrenchment lies in taking it too far, or too fast. Any effort to disentangle the United States from the world comes with complicated downsides. President Barack Obama’s attempt to shift the terms of American engagement in the Middle East offers an important caution. His thoughtful long game met the unsynchronized passions of the region’s short game, creating significant dislocations and doubts about American power.
There are bigger structural questions too. Even if the U.S. accepted its relative decline and shrank its external ambitions, where’s the rising ally to whom America can pass the baton, as the British did to the U.S. after World War II? However sclerotic some of our alliances have become, how confident are American leaders that they can shape our fate better without them? Isn’t there a danger of the United States becoming an island power in a world inhospitable to islands—with China gradually dominating the Eurasian landmass, Russia a weakening accomplice, and Europe an isolated appendage?
And would an America retrenching in hard power still be able to play the organizing role on issues like climate change, nuclear nonproliferation, and global trade, which no other country can play right now?
A case can be made that American diffidence, not hubris, is the original sin. Warts and all, U.S. global leadership ushered in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. We give it up at our peril. Retrenchers subscribe to the diplomat George Kennan’s view that the sooner the U.S. sheds its paternalistic altruism and becomes just another big country, the better off it will be. Restorationists believe that consigning America to such a role, in an otherwise rudderless world, would be a fatal mistake.
They argue that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. failed to take full advantage of its primacy. American leaders naively enabled the rise of our future rivals, thinking they’d be satisfied with a seat at our table, rather than displacing us at its head. The U.S. slowed NATO’s expansion to pacify Russian anxieties, only to see an ever more revanchist Russia get back on its feet, and welcomed China into the World Trade Organization as a “responsible stakeholder,” yet failed to hold it to account when it continued to behave irresponsibly, breaking the rules while the American middle class broke its back.
Restorationists argue that America suffers most not when it does too much, but tries too little. They believe that U.S. leaders feared the uncertain slippery slope of intervention abroad far more than the certain waves of human tragedy that would flow absent American action. They see “leading from behind” as an oxymoron and think the U.S. failed to appreciate how much emerging democracies depended on America, and how methodically authoritarians would contest the democratic model.
Although the United States may no longer enjoy unrivaled dominance, power differentials still lean significantly in our favor. Despite our self-inflicted wounds, we still have the world’s strongest military, most influential economy, most expansive alliance system, and most potent soft power.
Restorationists worry about the risk of overreaction to relative American decline. The contest with China is not another Cold War to avoid, but one to fight with confidence and win. The U.S. should reject any return to a world of closed spheres of influence—and be clear-eyed about the rise of techno-authoritarianism, and push back hard with a new concert of democracies. And although we might need to rebalance our foreign-policy tools and avoid the excesses of the post-9/11 era, the risks of slashing our defense budgets and our global military posture outweigh the rewards.
For critics, Saturday Night Live’s “More Cowbell” sketch—admittedly not your standard foreign-policy analogy—embodies the restorationist view. To paraphrase the immortal words of the producer Bruce Dickinson: The world has a fever, and the only prescription is more U.S. leadership, however discordant and self-involved we can sometimes be, and however fatigued our bandmates might be with our prima donna act.
The promised cure, however, leaves many questions unanswered. Do the American people have the stomach and resources right now for a cosmic struggle with authoritarianism or
There lies an alternative between breaking up the band and resigning ourselves to the perpetual din of the cowbell.
We live in a new reality: America can no longer dictate events as we sometimes believed we could. The Trump administration has done more damage to American values, image, and influence than any other in my lifetime. And our nation is more divided by political, racial, and economic tensions than it has been in generations. But even so, assuming we don’t keep digging the hole deeper for ourselves at home and abroad, we remain in a better position than any other major power to mobilize coalitions and navigate the geopolitical rapids of the 21st century.
We can’t afford to just put more-modest lipstick on an essentially restorationist strategy, or, alternatively, apply a bolder rhetorical gloss to retrenchment. We must reinvent the purpose and practice of American power, finding a balance between our ambition and our limitations.
First and foremost, American foreign policy must support domestic renewal. Smart foreign policy begins at home, with a strong democracy, society, and economy. But it has to end there too—with more and better jobs, greater security, a better environment, and a more inclusive, just, and resilient society.
The well-being of the American middle class ought to be the engine that drives our foreign policy. We’re long overdue for a historic course correction at home. We need to push for more inclusive economic growth—growth that narrows gaps in income and health. Our actions abroad must further that goal, rather than hamper it. Prioritizing the needs of American workers over the profits of corporate America is essential. Leaders must do a far better job of ensuring that trade and investment deals reflect those imperatives.
That doesn’t mean turning our back on trade or global economic integration, however. Supply chains in some sectors with national-security implications will require diversification and redundancy to make them sturdier, but policy makers shouldn’t disrupt global supply chains that benefit American consumers and fuel emerging markets. An improved economic approach might involve elements of industrial policy, focusing more government support on science, technology, education, and research. That ought to be complemented by reform of our broken immigration system.
A second major priority for a reinvented foreign policy involves grand global challenges—climate change, global health insecurity, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the revolution in technology. All of those problems directly affect the health, security, and prosperity of Americans. None of them can be solved by the United States on its own. All will require cooperation.
Read more at: https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/07/14/united-states-needs-new-foreign-policy-pub-82295
