The Middle East and European Union, particularly UK, are scrambling to avoid an implosion. New Zealand, for all its appearance of a progressive liberal government, has a venomous right-wing party ruling from the shadows, and in his totally troubled times, Trump seems to have at least got the North Korea speech right.
An imminent explosion
The Middle East could be exploding. A surprise resignation of the Lebanese prime minister, the Saudi interception of a missile launched from Yemen and the Saudi crown prince’s unprecedented crackdown – the past week has been nothing but dramatic for the region. These may be warning signs that the world shouldn’t ignore, writes Robert Malley in The Atlantic.
“Lebanon and the region arguably have seen all this before; a leadership vacuum in the context of rising tensions is nothing new. What is new, however, is an unusually apprehensive Israel, an unusually assertive and rash Saudi leadership and, of course, an unusual U.S. president. As for Israel: For months now, it has been sounding alarm bells about Hezbollah’s and Iran’s growing footprint in Syria, and more particularly about the Lebanese movement’s soon-to-be-acquired capacity to indigenously produce precision-guided missiles—a development Israeli officials view as a potential game changer they must thwart.”
“Missing from this picture is any hint of diplomacy—between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Iran and the U.S., or Saudi Arabia and the Houthi; rather, the region faces a free for all in which the only operative restraint on one’s actions is nervousness over what it might provoke. That’s hardly reassuring. Here in Lebanon, people are uncertain about who might take the first strike; who (of Iran or Hezbollah) might be its target; when or where (in Lebanon, Syria, or Iran) it might occur; and what it might look like. But they sense something will happen. And they fear that this time again, the Lebanese mirror inevitably will shatter.”
EU needs to bend in order to survive
The feeling among European leaders, as the rest of the world, seems to be that the European Union has weathered the worst blows in the last few years. The bloc can no longer do without reinvention and turning its focus to the future, writes Charles Grant in Politico EU.
“If the EU wants to survive its (inevitable) future crises, the answer is easy. The only real option is to get behind Macron’s vision: Leave reluctant countries behind and allow others to move ahead on key policies.”
“Moving toward more flexibility is a challenge to the EU’s legal order — which the bloc’s institutions in Brussels will, rightly, seek to protect like hawks. Many in the European capital will insist that if some non-members are allowed to take part in policies such as defense, trade or some aspects of the single market, they must accept the entirety of EU rules and the jurisdiction of its courts.
But flexibility would undeniably make the bloc more attractive to potential applicants. Britain, not insignificantly, would be more likely to rejoin the bloc one day, if it could move into an “outer circle” that did not involve the euro, Schengen and other policies. The same would apply to an independent Scotland or Catalonia, or to countries reticent about European integration, such as Switzerland and Norway.”
A British parody
As for British government, with “it’s rotten ideology,” it’s not a government any longer. It’s a parody of one, writes Owen Jones in The Guardian. “Theresa May has the trappings, residence and salary of a prime minister, but little else. It’s like Night of the Living Dead meets Fawlty Towers, where the politically undead govern with an almost unwatchable level of farce.”
“From the 1970s onwards, the (Conservative) party established a new order based on privatisation, deregulation, an assault on collective organising, and slashing taxes on the rich and corporate Britain. In the aftermath of the cold war and the surrender of social democracy to neoliberalism, Tories told themselves their order would last for ever.
Unfortunately that order stripped away security for millions and brought about stagnating living standards, inefficient privatised utilities charging rip-off prices and grotesque levels of inequality. In the June election, the public were presented with a viable radical alternative – and a political consensus which has prevailed for a generation collapsed, costing the Tories their majority.
Our alleged rulers are now torn. Do they, like born-again Christians, take the view they just haven’t preached with enough zeal and passion? Or do they accept that their social order is structurally failing, and concede the argument to the enemy?
Robbed of ideological purpose or a central authority to bind it together, the government is falling to pieces.”
From the shadows
For all the excitement that has accompanied Jacinda Ardern’s ascendance as New Zealand’s prime minister, the real power lies with the far right, and it is poisoning the country, writes Ben Mack in The Washington Post.
“Led by veteran politician Winston Peters — who has made racist comments toward immigrants and people of Asian descent and Trumpian abuse of the press — New Zealand First has traditionally been an afterthought in New Zealand politics. That all changed this past September, when the two largest parties finished close enough in the general election that whichever party New Zealand First decided to enter a coalition with would control enough seats in New Zealand’s German-style MMP (mixed-member proportional) parliament to govern. In other words, a far-right party that received just seven percent of the vote had the power to decide who would rule.”
“But what is new is its savvy at exploiting democracy by doubling down on these voters while mostly allowing larger political parties to attack each other on their own, thus positioning themselves as “kingmakers” who can demand concessions from those larger parties before carrying them into power. Then, they can rule from the shadows by threatening to leave the government at any time and plunge the country into chaos when things don’t go their way. It’s a dangerous tactic that could prove brutally effective in other parliamentary systems like New Zealand’s if the far right is not confronted early for its bigotry, regardless of how marginal its support may seem,” he writes.
Trump’s North Korea speech cut deep
Trump may not have called Kim Jong Un a “Little Rocket Man” or used his signature rhetorical flourishes in his latest North Korea speech, but the words that Trump did use cut deeper, writes Anna Fifield in The Washington Post.
“North Korea is not the paradise your grandfather envisioned,” Trump said to Kim. “It is a hell that no person deserves.”
“It is hard to exaggerate the reverence with which North Koreans are forced to treat the Kim family. Every home and all public buildings must display portraits of Kim Il Sung and his son Kim Jong Il that must be cleaned only with a special cloth. North Koreans must bow at monuments to the leaders and sing songs celebrating their supposedly legendary feats.”
“There is no escaping the Kims and the narrative that they have created a utopia that is the envy of the world.
So to suggest that the regime is founded on a ‘fantasy’ and that the country is something other than a socialist paradise amounts to heresy in North Korea.”