Foreign Affairs: Is Going It Alone the Best Way Forward for Europe?

The ongoing tensions in transatlantic relations are first and foremost about a power imbalance. Americans are frustrated at Europe’s lack of defense investments and do not see the continent as a reliable ally; Europeans resent American unilateralism and disregard for their policy concerns. This isn’t new. With the Soviet Union’s collapse, the United States became the sole superpower and was no longer hindered by concerns of provoking its old enemy. It was also increasingly willing to take unilateral actions, which Europeans were expected to accept. Under President Bill Clinton, the United States led the NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia, ignoring Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s objections. U.S. President George W. Bush ignored European protests when he chose not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Although France (alongside Germany) led the opposition to the Iraq war at the UN Security Council, even threatening to use its veto, Washington moved forward. And the centerpiece of U.S. President Barack Obama’s foreign policy in his first term was a strategic pivot to Asia, which inevitably meant a move away from Europe as the core of U.S. economic and strategic interests. [...]

As Europeans begin to ponder the reality of strategic autonomy, they should heed the advice of Macron and Maas—there is no going back to the comforts of dependency after Trump. Strategic autonomy means, first and foremost, a vision for Europe as an actor on the world stage capable of defending itself at home and pursuing its objectives abroad. Although the current imbalances in U.S. and European security and defense spending make such a Europe difficult to imagine, it should nonetheless be the guiding principle for long-term European stability.[...]

Strategic autonomy should, however, not solely be based on defense and security. As the United States’ expansive use of extraterritorial sanctions has shown, Europeans are vulnerable to U.S. weaponization of its economic power. Inevitably, the economic imbalance will mean a reckoning by EU leaders with the role of the euro in the global economy. Taken as a whole, the EU is one of the world’s largest economies, accounting for 22 percent of world GDP. Yet the euro represents a much smaller share of global currency reserves and international trade than the dollar, a sign that investors still don’t trust the long-term future of the eurozone after years of crises and ad hoc responses to address the zone’s shortcomings. Germany, as the economic powerhouse of the eurozone, should work together with France and the European Commission to take concrete steps to ensure the sustainability and competitiveness of the monetary zone.[...]

Chinese foreign direct investment in Europe is nine times larger than in the United States. Some European capitals are concerned that Chinese investments, especially in central and eastern Europe and along the Mediterranean, give China too much political influence. Greece, for example, where China has invested heavily in ports, recently blocked an EU statement on China’s human rights abuses at the United Nations.

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Foreign Policy: Nowhere to Run in Xi’s China

For centuries, Dimaluo’s villagers sought shelter from subjugation and religious persecution among the valley’s 13,000-foot-high mountain peaks. A decade ago, it was still hard to reach by car and was without power. Today, a road cuts the town in half, Chinese flags fly over every house, and living rooms are occupied by the sermons of a distant, foreign president for life.[...]

“The reason why … some people didn’t ‘develop,’ may not be a question of them not having the talent, or being backward and so on, but may be historically produced by their desire to avoid what they saw as the inconveniences of states,” he told the Boston Globe in 2009.[...]

In October 2017, Xi announced a “new era” of socialism that could provide “a new option for other countries and nations that want to speed up their development.” By 2035, Xi proclaimed, China would have transitioned from developing to developed, proving the infallibility of the Chinese model.[...]

Less common are ID checks when entering individual towns or villages. Dimaluo bucks that trend, with well-manned, well-armed, gated checkpoints not far from each of its ends. Other state propaganda is more subtle in Dimaluo. I saw many calendars in town, all carrying photos of Xi, standing tall above the leaders of each of Nujiang’s minority communities, during his 2014 visit to the valley. Chinese flags fly prominently over every building—even Tenzin’s.

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Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell: Why Beautiful Things Make us Happy – Beauty Explained

It’s hard to define what makes something beautiful, but we seem to know beauty when we see it. Why is that and how does beauty affect our subconscious?

The Calvert Journal: Destination unknown

Armenia declared independence from the USSR in 1990. Two decades on, the young country is still finding itself, not helped by an ongoing sporadic war with neighbouring Azerbaijan over the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh. French photographer Julien Lombardi first travelled to Armenia in 2012 in order to explore the enigmatic country of his mother’s origin. His dreamlike and fragmentary photo project, The Unfinished, reveals a nation reluctant to address its past and facing an uncertain future.[...]

On a second visit in 2014 I embarked on a series of interviews and discussions, aided by a translator, with people from different backgrounds, including an historian, a manual worker, a civil servant, a politician, an artist and a farmer. The interviews transformed my personal approach into a more collective project. We spoke openly about the history, memory and future of the country, which has only been independent for two decades. I delved into their memories, the towns and villages where they grew up and the places where they work — subjective perspectives and fragments from which I freely drew inspiration for my photos. [...]

I had the impression that I was experiencing a place that was evolving on the fringes, according to its own rules and notion of time. Armenians are an ancient people in a young country marked by the remnants of a bygone Soviet civilization. You come across timeless scenes in a setting that is occasionally reminiscent of science fiction: shepherds with their flock in abandoned factories, children playing in a fountain in a deserted town, train stations no longer expecting the next train. The atmosphere is very peculiar.

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Politico: Mark Rutte’s leaden touch

As insiders fret that Rutte’s third term will not last very long, speculation has begun as to whether the prime minister’s future ultimately lies in Brussels. This is not particularly good news for Rutte. History shows that early speculation about a Dutch leader’s move to Brussels is unlikely to translate into reality. What it does do, however, is underscore the idea that his best days in national politics are over.[...]

But working with Rutte has a downside: Any party that joins forces with him gets pummelled by voters. After the center-left Labor Party suffered a historic shellacking in the 2017 election, having worked with Rutte for five years, the conventional wisdom in Dutch politics was cemented: Joining a Rutte administration is close to political suicide.[...]

Things took a turn for the worse earlier this month when Unilever announced it had decided against moving its headquarters to Rotterdam. Rutte had suffered intense blowback for a proposed tax break for companies like Royal Dutch Shell and Unilever and had defended the measure by arguing it could lure the firms into establishing permanent headquarters in the country. Rutte was forced to withdraw the proposal, and two close allies in his previous administrations, the far right Party of Freedom (PVV) and social democrats (PvdA), both supported a vote of no confidence against Rutte last week.[...]

Rutte has changed his tone about Brussels — from a fierce critic of EU bureaucracy five years ago to an avid admirer of the European project. But his new foe on the far-right, rising star Thierry Baudet, routinely attacks him for angling for a top EU job. So Rutte has been forced to repeatedly deny any such ambition for more than a year.

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Financial Times: Why Donald Trump will likely have the last laugh

FT chief foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman explains why the US president may go down as a leader who changed the course of history and embodied the spirit of an age.