Новости за 19.02.2016

Omar Encarnacion, WP Review
When Spain went to the polls last December, the outcome sent the country into a state of political limbo. Neither the incumbent conservative Popular Party (PP) nor the main opposition party, the social-democratic Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), captured the majority of seats necessary to form a new government in the Congress of Deputies, Spain’s parliament. The PP won 28.7 percent of votes; the PSOE won 22 percent. At the same time, two political newcomers... Читать дальше...

Jasper Mortimer, Al-Monitor
The leaked minutes of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s meeting with top EU officials contain embarrassing gaffes by both sides.

Alan Philps, The National
It does not matter what Friedman or any other journalist – including me – says. It is up to the Israelis and the Palestinians to work out their fate. The point here is different – it is about how the outside powers and their publics relate to the conflict.

Der Spiegel
Aleppo has been a horrific place for some time now and few thought that it could get much worse. But things can always get worse -- that's the lesson currently being learned by those who have stayed behind in an effort to outlast this brutal conflict. People who have become used to dead bodies in the streets, hunger and living a life that can end at any moment.

Miguel-Anxo Murado, Guardian
To some, it may look like a case of “be careful what you wish for”. The Spanish were supposed to crave a different sort of politics: a more diverse parliament, new parties and new faces who would be keener to share power in the absence of crushing majorities. And Spain got what it wanted. After December’s election there are now four middle-sized political forces, two of them new to parliament, together with a number of smaller groups. The perfect environment for practising the art of compromise, one might say.

Shahid Javed Burki, Project Syndicate
LAHORE – Turmoil has seized much of the Muslim world. In Syria, a brutal war has already taken 250,000 lives, displaced half of the country’s 21 million people, and sent a million refugees to Europe seeking asylum. In Yemen, the Houthi tribe has risen up against the government, and are now facing Saudi-led airstrikes. Conflicts like these reflect a number of factors, the most prominent of which are the conflicts between Islam’s two sects, Sunni and Shia, and between fundamentalists and reformists.

Andrew Kaczynski & Nathan McDermott, BuzzFeed
For months, Donald Trump has claimed that he opposed the Iraq War before the invasion began — as an example of his great judgment on foreign policy issues. But in a 2002 interview with Howard Stern, Donald Trump said he supported an Iraq invasion.

Maurits Elen & Kevin Rudd, The Diplomat
The spirit of the American dream is well-known, the Chinese Dream has begun to emerge, and how China and the U.S. can work together to achieve a “Dream for All” would be of significant relevance for us all. How Beijing and Washington shape their future does not just affect those two countries. It affects all of us, in ways perhaps we have never thought of: the air we breathe, the water we drink, the fish we eat, the quality of our oceans, the languages we speak in the future... Читать дальше...

Fred Kaplan, Slate
Like many things that presidents call into being, blue-ribbon panels are whatever their creator wants them to be. Over the years, some have inspired serious debate and new policies, while others have proved to be purposeful distractions—a way of pretending to give an issue grave attention while in fact evading the deep thoughts and hard choices it entails.

Amberin Zaman, Foreign Policy
Some suggest the United States should use its leverage over the YPG to get the PKK back to the negotiating table. But it is the YPG that takes its cues from the PKK — not the other way around. Either way, the idea that the Syrian Kurds would ditch their ties with the PKK to preserve their alliance with Washington is outright naive. There will always be others — the Russians or the region’s perennial mischief-maker, Iran — to step into the breach.

Maxim Trudolyubov, Wilson Center
The Kremlin’s foreign policy tool kit is severely limited. Moscow has made some half-hearted attempts at projecting soft power, but it has never been strategic or credible at it. After the annexation of Crimea and a number of other unilateral moves, the level of trust between Moscow and the West is as low as it might have been at the height of the “first” Cold War.

A. Minter, Bloom. View
The prestige and status that accrue to countries that succeed in science is something China’s leaders covet. Days after a U.S.-based team announced it had confirmed the existence of gravitational waves, Chinese scientists proposed three separate, highly expensive projects to extend the country's space research. The Communist Party's official newspaper ran an editorial simply titled, “Why did we miss the gravitational waves?” Clearly, the intent is not to miss the next big discovery.

Richard Cohen, Washington Post

C-Span
BRAD ADAMS: We were very disappointed the meeting even took place at all because Obama invited people who previously had been persona non grata to the United States and gave them a lot of profile and legitimacy. This included Hun Sen, the long-serving dictator of Cambodia, General Prayuth, who carried out a coup in 2014 in Thailand. And the very obvious purpose of the meeting was to create an anti-China alliance in Southeast Asia. The United States is in a long-term competition with the... Читать дальше...