Section: The Atlantic (USA)
Photos of the Week: 3/25–3/31
A bull shark stranded by Cyclone Debbie in Australia, fighting in Libya, Ukraine, and Syria, Vladimir Putin on the ice in Franz Josef Land, an Ogoh-Ogoh in Bali, the stars at night in Texas, a memorial at Westminster, and much more. …read more Source: The...
Is Paul Manafort Nefarious or Simply Shadowy?
Washington attracts a certain type of person who loves attention—the thrill of the crowd, the glow of the camera. But it also attracts the kind of person who loves to operate in the shadows: the master of arcane rules, the backroom operator. When the second category of person ends up with the attention, things can get uncomfortable.Related Story...
What Russia’s Latest Protests Mean for Putin
MOSCOW— It’s not a rare sight in this city to see tens of thousands of people pour into the streets to express their opposition to the government that makes its home here. Moscow was the epicenter of the massive pro-democracy protests of 2011-2012, and many others since, including rallies to commemorate slain opposition leader Boris...
What America Stood For
After Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election in November, a foreign ambassador accosted one of my deputies at the State Department, where from 2014 to early this year I served as the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. “You must be so sad!” the man, a representative of a Central Asian...
Much Ado About Manafort
MOSCOW—The reports that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had had a contract for tens of millions of dollars to “greatly benefit the Putin Government” were not exactly news here. And, in a certain sense, they didn’t have to be news in Washington, either.Manafort, who has reportedly just volunteered to testify in the House...
The Next Wave of Questionable Referendums
If you thought 2016 was the year of controversial referendums—Brexit, anyone?—strap in, because 2017 is going to be a bumpy ride. While the year will see some relatively straightforward votes, as on Turkey’s proposed consolidation of power in the presidency, another series of pending plebiscites will push the borders of politics, legality,...
Murder in Kiev
MOSCOW—As he was coming out of a ritzy Kiev hotel, a shower of bullets descended on former Russian parliament member Denis Voronenkov and his bodyguard, who returned fire, injuring the shooter. In a matter of minutes, Voronenkov lay dead in the street, photographers snapping pictures of his splayed and bloodied body, still in its expensive blue...
Two Glimpses of a Grim Post-American Future
As the United States under President Trump recedes from world leadership, things are not looking so good elsewhere on earth. Two new books—with similarly morbid titles—have arrived to warn of big trouble ahead for both the European Union and the emerging economies of Asia.The End of the Asian Century by Michael Auslin offers a point-by-point...
Trump’s Former Campaign Chairman’s Tight Ties to Putin
During Monday’s White House briefing, Press Secretary Sean Spicer made a strange assertion. This is not unusual; in fact, Spicer makes strange assertions on such a regular basis that this one barely made a ripple outside of the press corps. James Comey had confirmed that morning that his FBI was investigating whether the Trump campaign...
Devin Nunes’s Curiously Selective Memory
Representative Devin Nunes, a Republican, is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He is therefore leading a key probe into whether or not Donald Trump’s presidential campaign had ties to Russian meddling in the 2016 election.Can an inquiry he leads be trusted?The skeptics include Evan McMullin, the former CIA operative who launched...
