The New York Review of Books: Brexit’s Irish Question

The simplest way to understand how radically Irish identity has changed is to consider the country’s new prime minister, Leo Varadkar. He is thirty-eight and in many ways a typical politician of the European center-right. He is also part Indian—his father Ashok is originally from Mumbai. And he is gay. When Varadkar was born in 1979, over 93 percent of the population of the Republic of Ireland was born there and most of the rest were born in Northern Ireland or in Britain (often as children of Irish emigrants). Ethnic minorities were scarcely visible—just one percent of the population was born in what the official figures charmingly described as “Elsewhere.” Now Varadkar leads an Ireland in which over 17 percent of the population was born Elsewhere. The ultraglobalized Irish economy sucks in migrants from all over the world, notably Poland, Romania, the Baltic states, and Nigeria. [...]

But the Irish radically revised their nationalism. Three big things changed. The power of the Catholic Church collapsed in the 1990s, partly because of its dreadful response to revelations of its facilitation of sexual abuse of children by clergy. The Irish economy, home to the European headquarters of many of the major multinational IT and pharmaceutical corporations, became a poster child for globalization. And the search for peace in Northern Ireland forced a dramatic rethinking of ideas about identity, sovereignty, and nationality. [...]

This reciprocal withdrawal of territorial claims has recreated Northern Ireland as a new kind of political space—one that is claimed by nobody. It is not, in effect, a territory at all. Its sovereignty is a matter not of the land but of the mind: it will be whatever its people can agree to make it. And within this space, national identity is to be understood in a radically new way. In its most startling paragraph the Belfast Agreement recognizes “the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose.” It accepts, in other words, that national identity (and the citizenship that flows from it) is a matter of choice. Even more profoundly, it accepts that this choice is not binary. If you’re born in Northern Ireland, you have an unqualified right to hold an Irish passport, a British passport, or each of the two. Those lovely little words “or both” stand as a rebuke to all absolutist ideas of nationalism. Identities are fluid, contingent, and multiple. [...]

English nationalism is also naive. Wrapped up for so long in the protective blankets of Britishness and empire, it has not had to test itself in the real conditions of twenty-first-century life for a middle-sized global economy. Unlike Irish nationalism, it has not been forced to rethink itself and imagine how it might work in a world where collective identities have to be complex, ambiguous, fluid, and contingent. It does not know how to articulate itself without falling back on nostalgic notions of Britishness that no longer function. And since it is not sure what it is, it is not good at adding those crucial words “or both” and becoming comfortable with an identity that is European as well as English. It gives the most simplistic nationalist definition of “us”—we’re not them.

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The Atlantic: What Happens if Brexit Negotiations Don't Work?

“We could be headed for a ‘chaotic Brexit,’ which is no deal at all—no deal on the terms of our withdrawal, let alone the future relationship,” he said, noting that such a scenario would have damaging consequences, such as undermining the economic and political stability of Northern Ireland, as well as leaving EU citizens in the U.K. and British citizens in the EU in legal limbo. Though such an outcome is in neither party’s interest, Portes said the U.K. would have more to lose than the EU if it occurred. “The issues are pretty much the same, it’s just the magnitude that’s different because we’re a much smaller market for them in size terms than they are for us.”

This hasn’t been the negotiating posture of British Prime Minister Theresa May, who declared in January that “no deal is better than a bad deal.” But the threat appears to have fallen on deaf ears in Brussels, in part because EU negotiators know exactly what would happen if no deal is reached, particularly on trade. As noted by John Springford and Simon Tilford of the Center for European Reform, a cliff edge scenario—in which the U.K. would leave the EU (including its single market and customs union) without a trade deal or transition period—would make the 40 percent of overall U.K. exports that go to the EU subject to automatic tariffs and customs barriers. This, in turn, could cause the attractiveness of the U.K. as a place for investment to rapidly decline and prompt a further drop in the pound, which has lost more than 13 percent of its value against the dollar since the U.K.’s referendum to leave the EU took place. [...]

But fruitful discussions are a far cry from actual agreement. With only two rounds of talks remaining before October’s EU summit (during which it will be decided if talks can proceed to trade), the likelihood of reaching agreement on all three major divorce issues before next month’s projected deadline is slim. “I still think the most likely thing is that there will be … [a] deal, but it’s not going to happen by October,” Portes said. “The longer this drags on, the less time you have to talk about anything else.”

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The Atlantic: What Right-Wing Populists Look Like in Norway

Yesterday was a good day for Norway’s populist Progress Party. Results in the country’s parliamentary elections on Monday show it nearly maintained its support from four years ago and, along with the Conservative Party, its coalition partner, appears headed for another four years of governing in this traditionally left-wing country, as support for the center-left Labor Party drops to historic lows. Buoyed by its anti-immigration, anti-Islam rhetoric, the Progress Party received 15.3 percent of the vote here, barely a percentage point lower than in 2013. [...]

By any objective standard, the Progress Party is among the most successful right-wing populist parties in Europe: it’s the third-largest party in Norway and, unlike many of its counterparts elsewhere in Europe, is actively serving in a governing coalition in Oslo’s parliament. This is a not-insignificant feat for a populist party—and its expected four more years in government are a seeming endorsement of the coalition’s right-wing tack on immigration. It would be easy to look at Progress and arrive at a broad conclusion that, after a string of less-than-successful elections for similar parties across Europe, this anti-immigration, anti-Islam party is a bright spot for the movement heading into another round of key European elections this fall. [...]

“It has to do, essentially, with priorities,” Cas Mudde, an expert on European right-wing populist parties at the University of Georgia, told me. “Nativism isn’t really the core of their agenda, and they’re also still very neoliberal, which parties like the Front National of course are not.” Right-wing populism in Scandinavia is “very diverse,” Mudde added, referring not just to Norway’s Progress Party but to the Finns Party in Finland, the Sweden Democrats in Sweden, and the Danish People’s Party in Denmark. “Almost none of the parties is a really good, perfect fit for what we see as the prototype, such as Front National.” [...]

It’s true that the Progress Party’s anti-Islam rhetoric is restrained compared with the election-season rhetoric in nearby Germany. For example: There, AfD posters designed solely to stoke anti-Islam sentiment abound. (“Burqas? We prefer bikinis,” one poster says, featuring the posteriors of two bikini-clad women.) Still, an electronic billboard in Oslo’s Central train station in the lead-up to Election Day displayed a Progress Party ad calling for a burqa ban in public spaces, a key tenet of the party’s platform on immigration. And in its active social media presence, similar messages often appear.

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Vox: What Hillary Clinton really thinks

Slate: You Snooze, She Wins

There are a few factors that explain why Merkel has barely had to sweat—even though establishment politicians in other Western democracies have been besieged by populist challengers from the right and left. For one thing, Germany’s economy has done comparatively well for the past decade. In light of its past, Germans may also have a deeper aversion to radical political experiments. Finally, Merkel has undoubtedly been a competent chancellor: Calm, moderate, and highly deliberate, she remains one of the world’s least divisive leaders. As George Packer, quoting the German columnist Georg Diez, wrote in the best profile of her to date, she “took the politics out of politics.” If voters are willing to put Merkel back in charge, the reason is in good part because, unlike her brash predecessor, she is minimally invasive. So it is perfectly understandable that most journalists have focused on the remarkable stability of Germany’s political system or celebrated Merkel’s imminent re-election as a healthy sign for liberal democracy. And yet, the German election campaign has been much more eventful than most foreign observers have noticed: If you scratch the surface, it quickly becomes apparent that populism is making significant inroads in Germany—and that Merkel herself is, at best, a highly imperfect defender of liberal values. [...]

This is now likely to change. Four years ago, the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany, or AfD, narrowly fell short of the votes it needed to enter the national parliament. Since then, it has entered 12 out of 16 state parliaments. Polling at just under 10 percent nationally, it is now virtually certain to enter the Bundestag—becoming the first right-wing extremist party to do so since World War II. [...]

Once the AfD is represented in the Bundestag, its ability to set the agenda will only keep growing. And if the experience of other European countries is any guide, this will give people like Gauland and Weidel a big opportunity to expand their base over the coming years. Though its success so far is less spectacular than that of similar parties in other parts of the continent, it would be bizarre to see the AfD’s breakthrough as anything other than a potential turning point in Germany’s postwar history. [...]

For another, Merkel has so far proved unwilling to reform the European Union in a meaningful way. While she has done just enough to stop Greece from crashing out of the eurozone, she refused to countenance the structural changes that would be needed to solve the lingering problems of the single currency. By proposing to give the eurozone a lot more freedom—including a budget and an independent finance minister—Emmanuel Macron has raised hopes that the EU might finally address its flaws. As in the past, Merkel has signaled her willingness to consider these plans. But as in the past, her deep reluctance to go beyond the realm of the immediately necessary makes it unlikely that she would allow Macron’s proposals to turn into reality. And so her lack of political vision may once again doom a valiant effort to make the euro sustainable.

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The Washington Post: Trump is making Americans see the U.S. the way the rest of the world already did

The Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie once observed that there are “two Americas” — one at home and one abroad. The first is the America of Hollywood, work-in-progress democracy, civil rights movements and Ellis Island. The second is the America of coups and occupations, military dictators and CIA plots, economic meddling and contempt for foreign cultures. The rest of the world knows both Americas. But as Shamsie has written, Americans don’t seem aware of the second one at all.

The debate about how the United States elected an irresponsible nationalist like Trump has focused on why the first America, the supposedly beautiful one, failed, rather than why the second America, the ugly one, triumphed. But from abroad, Trump makes a lot more sense — and has much more in common with his predecessors and his countrymen — than many Americans realize. [...]

In those fleeting moments, I would feel a terrifying gulf open between us: The United States had wielded the power in this relationship, and Americans took no responsibility for it. As a journalist, I had been sent to write about the Greek financial crisis for a major American magazine with no knowledge of how our mutual history might have produced unconscious prejudices in both countries. [...]

That is largely because the United States’ Cold War architects deliberately constructed an empire that concealed its existence through language. As critics such as Nils Gilman have chronicled, academics working for the U.S. government in the mid-century knew not to use the word “Westernization” to describe their economic or political interventions abroad, for fear they might be compared to their European imperialist predecessors. Americans were taught to view the United States as simply the ideal modern nation — the shining city on a hill, as Ronald Reagan put it (echoing the early Puritans who settled in Massachusetts), that all foreign countries should aspire to emulate. Even if the United States “made mistakes” abroad, Americans were people with uniquely good intentions who wanted to help foreigners along to a better, freer life. 

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Politico: Juncker’s one-president proposal draws few cheers

Given that Juncker’s proposal at a minimum would require the unanimous support of EU leaders, the initial reaction to his call to combine the two top jobs in Brussels suggested it would not fly anytime soon.

Speaking to German public broadcaster ARD after his address, Juncker acknowledged that he was “not expecting to clap their house in excitement” about the proposal. [...]

Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, and his sole predecessor, former Belgian premier Herman Van Rompuy, have fashioned the job into a neutral advocate for national leaders in Brussels, simultaneously a defender of European integration and national sovereignty and sensibilities.

The possibility that the Council would vote to eliminate that role seemed far-fetched, and several EU officials and diplomats suggested Juncker was playing to his audience in the European Parliament, where federalist sentiment is strong. Some said Juncker was savvy enough to realize it was an old and unrealistic idea, and he put it forward primarily to stir debate. [...]

Some European officials said they were more perplexed by Juncker’s decision to push the idea than they were opposed to it. One senior diplomat called it “a deliberate provocation to stir up debate” on an issue that has long been limited to “theoretical discussions.”

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Haaretz: Airbnb to Blame for Steep Rise in Tel Aviv Rent Prices, Study Says

Airbnb is responsible for the steep rise in Tel Aviv rent, as seen in the market for 1.5-to-two-room apartments – the most typical property offered by the San Francisco-based company, according to a new study.

The study was conducted by Yoav Kerner, an expert on statistics and operations research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, at the request of the Israel Hotel Association and the Social Congress. The latter group, made up of veterans of the 2011 social protest movement, studies the origins of Israel’s housing crisis and suggests solutions. [...]

As expected, Kerner found that the rate of increase is higher for Tel Aviv than for the national average, at a ratio of 1.38 to 1. That is, for every one-shekel rise in apartment rents nationally, Tel Aviv rents will rise 1.38 shekels.

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The Atlantic: Rand Paul's Maneuver Against Endless Wars

Senator Rand Paul is trying to pressure his colleagues in Congress to reassert power over where the United States wages war. Should U.S. troops be fighting in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan? Should American drones carry out lethal strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and beyond? The Kentucky Republican wants the House and Senate to decide questions like that through new votes that force legislators to go on the record so that they are fully accountable to their constituents—and discharging the role enumerated for them in the U.S. Constitution.

In recent years, Congress has instead ceded such questions to successive presidents. For example, President Barack Obama waged war in at least seven countries under the auspices of an Authorization to Use Military Force that legislators passed shortly after 9/11, even though its language specifies “those nations, organizations, or persons” that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,” a limit that has been oft exceeded. [...]

Why wouldn’t legislators jealously guard and assert their war power as the Framers of the Constitution anticipated? If Congress does finally assert itself this year, with House members and Senators going on record about where they favor and oppose the use of U.S. military force, voters will finally be able to support or oppose them on that basis. And the gap between elected officials and the public on waging war is wide.

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