Section: The American Interest (USA)
Think Tank Report: China Building Reinforced Hangars
CSIS’ Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative has long been reporting on China’s aggressive land reclamation efforts in the South China Sea, publishing satellite photos and analysis that has tracked Beijing’s relentless progress. The think tank’s latest dispatch shows that China has not been deterred at all by the recent...
Will the Russians Try Another Land Grab in Ukraine?
The war in eastern Ukraine has lately resembled the anecdote about boiling a frog: the fighting has been slowly increasing in intensity, but the international community has thus far acted as if nothing was happening. Then, over the weekend, a car bomb went off wounding Igor Plotnitsky, the head of the so-called breakaway Luhansk People’s...
Obama’s Syria Play a Failure
Russia has not only avoided a quagmire in Syria, its successes on the battlefield against C.I.A.-backed rebels have given it new leverage in the Middle East. The New York Times: “Russia has won the proxy war, at least for now,” said Michael Kofman, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.Russia’s battlefield successes in Syria...
Medvedev to Struggling Teachers: Get a Job
Russian teachers who are not happy with their low salaries ought to go into business for themselves. That was the official advice of Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, in any case.Medvedev was speaking at a forum called the Territory of the Senses taking place outside of Moscow. A teacher from Dagestan State University asked the PM...
Boohooing Over Brexit?
In the direct aftermath of the Brexit vote, when gobsmacked global elites tried to make sense of what had just happened, a curious narrative started making the rounds in the press: voters didn’t really know what they were voting for! Dubbed “Bregret” by some wags, anecdotal evidence seemed to pour in that Out voters were merely venting...
The Siloviki Shuffle Goes Nationwide
Last week, Vladimir Putin made some major political moves, marking the biggest Russian government staff reshuffle in recent years. Four regional heads lost their posts, and five Presidential Envoys to Federal Districts, as well as the head of the Federal Customs Service, were appointed by Russia’s President in one day. Three appointees are...
The Ballad of Barack and Hillary
Alter Egos: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Twilight Struggle over American PowerBy Mark Landler Random House, 2016, 432 pp., $28 Anyone looking for a handy guide to foreign-policymaking in President Obama’s administration, and confirmation of Mr. Dooley’s pronouncement that “politics ain’t beanbag,” would do well to pick...
Putin is a Distraction
“If Trump wins (or comes close),” Vox’s Timothy Lee wrote on Twitter earlier this week, “liberals are going to need a better answer than writing half the electorate off as racist.”As the possibility that Trump will indeed win (or come close) starts to look less remote, liberals are already experimenting with a different answer—one that we...
Bartholomew’s Picnic
From June 19–26, 2016 The Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church (a.k.a. Pan-Orthodox Council) met on the island of Crete. It had been announced years ago as the first ecumenical/pan-Orthodox gathering since 787 CE. Given this billing, it is remarkable how little it was noted in the secular media. However, a diligent surfing of the...
Russia and the (Scoop) Jackson Democrats
The rush of internationalist Republicans to the Clinton campaign is one of the most striking developments of this unusual year. Anti-Semitic Trump trolls, many apparently Putin-bots, are spewing the usual distortion, hate and bile about how this is some kind of Jewish plot, revealing the lack of patriotism of American Jews. Brent Scowcroft...
