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ID:
143234
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| Summary/Abstract |
“BRITAIN HAS got its mojo back,” said the British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne on December 7. He wasn’t doing an impression of Austin Powers. He was speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations about the British Parliament’s decision to bomb ISIS in Syria. Osborne explained to the council that he and the prime minister, his close friend and ally David Cameron, had tried to intervene militarily in Syria two years earlier and had been rebuffed by the House of Commons. “It was quite a striking moment,” he recalled, with sadness. “It was a moment when Britain was unable to follow the lead asked of it by our prime minister and the government.” But George Osborne felt better because now Britain was dropping bombs over Syria—for him a “source of real pride.”
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| 2 |
ID:
143238
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| Summary/Abstract |
VENEZUELA IS a failing state. Despite having the world’s largest proven hydrocarbon reserves, the nation is bankrupt. Basic consumer goods are scarce or unavailable. Purchasing power is falling fast as a result of the world’s highest inflation rate. The healthcare system is in a state of collapse. Infrastructure is in disrepair. Common crime is out of control as the social order begins to break down. The U.S. alleges leading government figures to be engaged in narcotics trafficking and money laundering.
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ID:
143235
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| Summary/Abstract |
THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL campaign is turning into a mirror of the 2008 race. Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton seeks to distinguish herself from the policies of the sitting chief executive, while sundry Republican candidates maintain that Obama’s incompetence has made America less safe and diminished its position in the world. No one seeking to become Barack Obama’s successor is promising to continue his approach in foreign policy, just as, in 2008, no one ran on a platform of adopting the policies of the George W. Bush administration.
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| 4 |
ID:
143233
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| Summary/Abstract |
THERE ARE times—and the present moment is very much one of them—when certain great poems, minatory and ominous, force their way into the mind. It might be Cavafy’s “Waiting for the Barbarians,” or Auden’s “The Fall of Rome,” not to mention Kipling’s “Recessional” and “The White Man’s Burden.” Published in 1898, the latter’s subtitle, more interesting than its lurid title, is “The United States and The Philippine Islands,” but might just as well be “The United States and the Middle East” more than a century later, with its warning about “The blame of those ye better, The hate of those ye guard.”
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| 5 |
ID:
143239
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| 6 |
ID:
143232
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| Summary/Abstract |
In his parliamentary novel Phineas Redux, Anthony Trollope observed, “The apostle of Christianity and the infidel can meet without the chance of a quarrel, but it is never safe to bring together two men who differ about a saint or a surplice.” It’s an observation that captures the current state of the Republican party.
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| 7 |
ID:
143237
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| Summary/Abstract |
CHOE RYONG-HAE, North Korea’s second- or third-ranked figure, did not attend a state funeral in November, and, more significantly, his name did not appear on the list of the event’s organizing committee. Choe’s sin? A water leak at the newly constructed Mount Paektu Hero Youth Power Station.
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| 8 |
ID:
143236
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| Summary/Abstract |
OVER THE LAST five years, the United States has struggled to influence Chinese behavior. Washington’s responses to Beijing’s increasingly assertive activities—ranging from economic espionage to artificial island construction—have been largely ineffective. Yet U.S. leaders are now considering a new option: economic sanctions. Conventional wisdom holds that the U.S.-Chinese economic relationship is “too big to fail” and that Washington therefore has little economic leverage with Beijing.
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