Jacobin Magazine: Germany Is Not an Island

The other big story, and the precondition for the AfD’s surge, is the ongoing erosion of the political center. Germany has yet to witness a spectacular implosion of the center-left like in France or Greece, but the Social Democratic Party (SPD) ended the night with 20.5 percent, its worst postwar result and a humiliating defeat for its renewal candidate Martin Schulz. [...]

Though the German elections may seem relatively “normal” by contemporary European standards, a second peculiar fact stands out in the exit poll data: 84 percent of eligible voters described Germany’s economic situation as “good” — the highest number in decades. This makes sense given the country’s moderate but sustained economic growth and declining unemployment, particularly in light of conditions elsewhere in Europe. Although wages have stagnated for decades and job growth is concentrated primarily in precarious, low-wage employment, in the eyes of most German voters their country and economy now appear as an island of relative stability, making it understandable why many would be willing to “act satisfied and shut up,” as Oliver Nachtwey put it. [...]

This should come as little surprise, as the AfD stitches together a coalition between deeply conservative, former CDU voters repelled by Merkel’s shift towards the center on many social issues, and dissatisfied working-class and unemployed voters, where economic and social anxieties intermingle with racist and chauvinistic sentiments in a jumbled assortment of anti-establishment posturing. These constituencies, and other segments of the population who voted for the AfD, are united at the ballot box under a xenophobic, protectionist banner, despite the fact that the AfD’s economic program would be disastrous for many of its lower-income supporters if ever implemented. [...]

All qualifications aside, the AfD’s rise represents a true watershed in postwar German politics and a warning of what the future could bring. Germany is not an island surrounded by a crisis-prone Europe, but rather part and parcel of this crisis. Its centrifugal nature may have insulated the country from its most devastating economic effects and dramatic political shifts thus far, but as last Sunday demonstrated, nowhere in Europe is immune to the threat of right-populism today. Should present trends continue, a radical right-wing force will stabilize and consolidate itself as a permanent presence in German politics — whether in the form of the AfD or another, potentially more radical formation after it.

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Foreign Affairs: When Is It Time to End Sanctions Programs?

Sanctions have become popular with U.S. policymakers in recent years thanks to their success in changing Iran’s behavior. First implemented against Iran in 1996 but significantly stepped up between 2010 and 2012, U.S. sanctions helped shrink GDP by nine percent between 2012 and 2014, depress the value of its currency, and deepen its unemployment rate. Those effects convinced Tehran to enter into negotiations over its nuclear enrichment program. Successes such as this have encouraged U.S. officials to use so-called smart sanctions—or highly targeted sanctions programs against specific individuals, entities, and transactions as opposed to broader, less-focused programs—which leverage the United States’ primacy in the global financial system to shut down targets’ ability to do business. The most recent U.S. programs build on this success. Each, however, fails to offer a road map for its own end, a potentially fatal flaw.

Without clear goals, the United States risks enshrining sanctions indefinitely and making negotiations fruitless. The sanctions imposed on Russia in August 2017 are the worst among the new programs in this respect. Lawmakers’ desire to block President Donald Trump from unilaterally lifting the sanctions led them to create checks on the executive branch’s sanctioning authority. The new legislation codified into statute previous White House-created executive orders—including restrictions on the country’s energy, financial services, and munitions sectors—from 2014, in response to the Ukraine conflict, and from the end of 2016, in response to malicious Russian cyber activity. This codification means that Congress, not the president, will have the ultimate power to repeal the measures. The legislation also instituted a review process that allows Congress to reject even minor changes to the sanctions. [...]

Political considerations often complicate plans to lift sanctions. U.S. officials invariably call for further economic pressure during crises—for example, after a North Korean missile launch—without thinking about how to eventually ease that pressure down the line. In these situations, politicians present an aggressive sanctions posture to confront the enemy and to appeal to constituents demanding a strong response but underplay planning for the end of sanctions for fear of signaling weakness or lack of resolve. Policymakers also must be disciplined in distinguishing the conditions the United States’ targets must meet for Washington to lift sanctions. If Russia complies with the Minsk agreements, for example, U.S. policymakers should lift the sanctions, regardless of the country’s continued human rights abuses. And more missile tests by Iran should not be not a basis to reimpose sanctions meant for its nuclear program.

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The Atlantic: Is Saudi Arabia Really Changing?

Perhaps anticipating yesterday’s news, last week a Saudi cleric said that the ban on women driving should remain in place. He argued that women had only half the brainpower of men; when they went shopping, it was reduced to a quarter, he said. The uproar was instantaneous. The cleric was banned from preaching, though he probably still remains on the government payroll.

Saudi society traditionally venerates age and at least publicly respects Islamic preachers. But all this might be changing. The decision to remove the ban was nominally King Salman’s, but it is clear the driving force was his son, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman. The 32-year-old wunderkind is trying to transform the kingdom’s economy. His Vision 2030, a grand plan announced last year to bring the Saudi economy and society into the 21st century, envisages an economy with a broader industrial base less tied to oil. He also has a much less conservative view of social mores. Authorities allowed women to attend a celebration of Saudi Arabia’s Independence Day in a sports stadium this week. Part of his economic plan involves the development of tourist resorts along the Red Sea coast, a paradise for divers. The facilities will be built to “international standards,” a term widely interpreted as allowing not only gender-mixed bathing, but also bikinis and probably alcohol. [...]

In reality, the driving ban has never been enforced 100 percent. Out in rural Saudi Arabia, tribal women have been driving for decades to look after animals and perform other farm chores. In the cities, expatriate compounds where many foreigners live have allowed women to drive, safe in the knowledge that the Saudi police, or worse still the religious police, are not allowed inside the gates. Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, has allowed women drivers inside its “little America”-style townships since the days when it was owned by American oil companies. [...]

The credit for the breakthrough may go to the crown prince, or MbS as he is known, but the ground has been well-prepared. Brave Saudi women have been tempting arrest in organized groups protests since at least the 1990s. In 2005, it was once again a live issue when Barbara Walters interviewed King Abdullah. “In time, I believe it will be possible. And I believe patience is a virtue,” he said. The brake at that time was identified as the now-dead Prince Nayef, then Abdullah’s interior minister and rival, who notoriously alleged that Jews had perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. Abdullah’s daughter, Princess Adela, was known to support women driving.

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Political Critique: Nostalgia for the present in Tunis’s belle-époque downtown

The people and buildings in these photos no longer exist. One postcard features an Arcadian-looking Benghazi in what is today Libya, all pergola-lined walkways and skillfully-carved Italianate stone arcades – a far cry from the mounds of rubble that years of post-revolutionary fighting have reduced the city to. [...]

Once the French project got under way, the colonial power expanded the city by dredging the marshland, lapping up against the Medina walls and laying down Haussmannian boulevards. First among them was the Boulevard Marine known today as Bourguiba after the country’s first post-independence leader, which formed the background to media coverage of the 2011 Tunisian revolution. Apartments with elaborate façades fronted such boulevards and electric trams coursed along them. To the pre-modern locals, it must have looked like a spell had been cast on their city. [...]

Like Istanbul, Thesssaloniki, Cairo and many other once-upon-a-time metropolises whose cosmopolitanisms were pulverized by geopolitics and the reductionist founding myths of the nation-state, Tunis is a city of absences. These are most felt in La Goulette, the pleasant seaside neighborhood now deserted by its Jewish and Catholic residents; the suqs in the Medina abandoned by Jewish traders and Muslim aristocrats alike; the decaying, high-ceilinged apartments, bars and synagogues of Lafayette, once rowdy with the sound of Italian and French; the soaring bell-towers of the Cathedral and St Croix, or the onion domes of the Greek Orthodox church close to Bab al-Bahr, the Gate to the Sea.

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Financial Times: Saudis lift driving ban on women