Section: The Atlantic (USA)
Where Countries Stand With Donald Trump: A Cheat Sheet
Donald Trump has vowed to put “America first,” but who comes second, and third, and 193rd? Barack Obama may have been more willing than his predecessors to “question why America’s enemies are its enemies, or why some of its friends are its friends,” as Jeffrey Goldberg once wrote in The Atlantic, but Trump has thrown U.S. allies and...
Google Remakes the Satellite Business, by Leaving It
Last week, Google pushed one of the most interesting sectors in Silicon Valley toward maturity—and brought a milestone in cartography closer to reality. It accomplished all that, paradoxically, by getting out of the market.From a business standpoint, here’s the news: Google sold its in-house satellite business, known as Terra Bella, to...
How to Survive a Russian Hack
In response to Donald Trump’s executive order banning citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham issued a joint statement on Sunday arguing that the measure would “do more to help terrorist recruitment than improve our security.” In response, Trump took to...
It’s Putin’s World
In 2012, Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency after a four-year, constitutionally imposed hiatus. It wasn’t the smoothest of transitions. To his surprise, in the run-up to his inauguration, protesters filled the streets of Moscow and other major cities to denounce his comeback. Such opposition required dousing. But an opportunity...
How Trump’s Order Ended Decades of American Openness to Refugees
In 1989, my family and I were living in a small shared apartment in Santa Marinella, Italy, just northwest of Rome, waiting to find out if the United States would accept our application for asylum. Throughout the 1970s and 80s, the U.S. accepted about half a million Soviet Jews like us as refugees, considering us a persecuted minority group in...
Ranked: International Relationships Trump’s Made Complicated
Britain’s Theresa May will become the first world leader to officially visit President Donald Trump on Friday, but the newly inaugurated leader of the free world is already making his mark on global relationships. While Trump’s effect on Brexit Britain is still to be seen—it will be years before any free-trade negotiations between the...
‘Even a Shining City on a Hill Needs Walls’: Senator Tom Cotton
Tom Cotton, the junior senator from Arkansas, and the future Republican candidate for president (mark my words), has accommodated himself handsomely to the reality of the Trump presidency. On the one hand, this is unsurprising—his political base accommodated itself to Trump (Arkansas gave its adopted daughter, Hillary Clinton, only 34 percent of...
How One NATO Country is Preparing for Trump
BODØ AIR FORCE BASE, Norway—When the ready-room alarm went off—high-low, high-low—two Norwegian Air Force pilots pulled on cold-water survival gear, grabbed their flight bags, and sprinted through swirling snow to their hangars. Their decades-old F-16 fighter jets roared to life, and as the airport snowplow halted to let them pass, the jets...
Why Russian Banks Have an Interest in Washington
In the debate over whether to lift U.S. sanctions against Russia, at least one player has a clear stake in the outcome: Russia’s state-run banks. Sberbank and VTB Group—Russia’s two largest financial institutions—have been lobbying Congress to ease sanctions levied on the banks in 2014 as punishment for the country’s annexation...
When Protest Fails
The signs were so clever.“We shall overcomb.”“Viva la vulva.”“I MAKE THE BEST SIGNS I REALLY DO EVERYONS SAYS SO THEY’RE TERRIFIC.”Someone even made a papier-mâché vagina dentata.The people were so cheerful and happy to be with one another, forgetting the cold and enjoying what often seemed less like a protest and more like a block party....
