Bryan Harris, Financial Times
Alice Pamplona da Silva celebrated her fifth birthday last year the way a child should. Her parents presented her with cake and muffins, each bedecked in luminous icing and cut-out images of the Little Mermaid. Her hair tied in long braids, Alice beams at the family photographer.
F. Kempe, Atlantic Council
This week Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, signed an agreement with the Chinese National Space Administration to create an International Scientific Lunar Station "with open access to all interested nations and international partners." It was the most dramatic sign yet that Moscow sees its space future with China and not the United States, further underscoring its growing strategic alignment with Beijing.
Salem Alketbi, Jerusalem Post
The zero-sum game between Iran and Turkey over influence in Iraq is an attack on Iraq's sovereignty and national dignity.
Asser Khattab, Newlines
new death notice appeared in a Lebanese village north of Beirut last September, glued to a public wall. As residents of the village went about their days, some of them probably stopped, out of habit, to read the name of the man who had recently died. It would have been a scene repeated every day in Syrian and Lebanese villages: Those who didn't know the deceased proceeded to peruse the names of his surviving family members to find out whether condolences were in order.
Alex Massie, Spectator
The first thing to be said about David Davis's dramatic intervention in the Salmond-Sturgeon affair is that it is a masterful piece of concern-trolling. The second thing to be said is that this does not matter. Davis, speaking armoured by parliamentary privilege, revealed information passed to him by a 'whistleblower' that has hitherto been kept secret. On the face of it, there are very good reasons explaining why the SNP...
Richard Whitman, Chatham House
Intended to provide a comprehensive answer as to the substance of what ‘Global Britain' - a description in use by the UK government since 2016 - truly means, the long-awaited Integrated Review sends the signal that departing the European Union (EU) does not make for an introspective Britain with a diminished international role.
Yascha Mounk with CFR
In this special series of The President's Inbox on the future of democracy, James M. Lindsay speaks with experts to discuss whether and where democratic governance is faltering around the world. This week, Yascha Mounk, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, discusses the signs of a worldwide democratic recession. This episode is part of the Council on Foreign Relations' Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy.
Emma Ashford & Erica Borghard, AC
We've spent the last year of the pandemic locked inside with our children, managing Zoom school and frantically trying to come up with new ideas for entertaining our increasingly bored offspring. But there's a silver lining to parenting in a pandemic: It's an education in the core concepts of international relations, as well as a useful reminder that whether you're a toddler, tween, teen, grown-up, or fully fledged state, we're all operating in a condition of anarchy. Читать дальше...
Raúl Peñaranda, Americas Quarterly
Furthermore, Arce issued another executive order in March requiring aspiring public administration employees to go through a "decolonizing and depatriarchalizing community social service" and be vetted by a group of social organizations. Critics say this is nothing more than a way to ensure that all civil servants come from the governing party's ranks.
Jeremy Hutton & James Rogers, CapX
Today sees the much-anticipated publication of the Integrated Review, Britain's bold strategic proclamation of its role in the world. Building on the Global Britain concept, which has been criticised for several years as little more than a slogan, the review finally puts some meat on the bone and offers insight into where Britain sees itself and what it wants to achieve over the next decade.
Ho-fung Hung et al, ChinaFile
When large-scale protests began to blanket Hong Kong's streets in 2019, economists and investors warned that erosion of the territory's freedoms and political institutions threatened its unique financial market. The demonstrators were calling for the suspension of a controversial extradition bill, seen to open Hong Kongers and foreigners to prosecution in mainland China. Such a bill
Polly Toynbee, Guardian
ow we know that British exports to the European Union plummeted by a cataclysmic 41% after Brexit on 1 January, what next? This is not the "slow puncture" predicted, but a big bang. Yet so far, it registers little on the political Richter scale.
Anchal Vohra, Foreign Policy
Ten years after entering Syria's civil war, Tehran is using religion to make its influence there permanent.
Jacob Heilbrunn, National Interest
Two state elections this past Sunday suggest that chancellor Angela Merkel's final bequest to Germany may have been to prepare the path for the Green party to run it.
Shahn Savino & Charles Dunst, WPR
Russia's 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine prompted much international outrage but little meaningful action. President Vladimir Putin was able to forcefully redraw his country's borders, shrugging off the international sanctions that the United States and European Union imposed in response. Putin's success augmented "the belief among some that bigger...
George Friedman, Geopolitical Futures
One of the hardest problems of foreign policy is developing an accurate evaluation of a potential adversary's intentions and capabilities, which are frequently separate realities. I discussed this recently in a piece that pointed out the degree to which the United States misinterpreted the Soviet Union's intentions and capabilities. The Soviets were focused on reconstruction after World War II, something that required decades of work. A war that would... Читать дальше...
Graeme Wood, The Atlantic
Gov.Uk
The Integrated Review is a comprehensive articulation of the UK's national security and international policy. It outlines three fundamental national interests that bind together the citizens of the UK - sovereignty, security and prosperity - alongside our values of democracy and a commitment to universal human rights, the rule of law, freedom of speech and faith, and equality.