| | | | What Team Trump Is Right – and Really, Really Wrong – About | | | The Trump administration has a point when it criticizes the UN Human Rights Council – there are genuine questions to be raised about fairness and its fixation on Israel, writes Will Gore for The Independent. That doesn't mean leaving it is a good idea. "[W]e shouldn't see the UNHRC withdrawal only through the prism of America's present migrant detention policy (vile though it is), nor only in the context of the council's own operational record. Rather, this latest measure is part of a broader, much more worrying shift in American attitudes to global engagement, which paints multilateralism as liberal hogwash and nationalism as the key to future success for the US – and indeed for others," Gore argues. The UN has worked "because key members have, even when critical, stayed inside the tent and worked for reform from within. Having left UNESCO, and having withdrawn from the UNHRC – and heartened perhaps by the success of his solo diplomacy over North Korea – is it really that unthinkable that Trump will ultimately take America out of the UN altogether?" | | Why White Evangelicals Are Sticking with Trump | | | President Trump has signed an executive order allowing children of undocumented migrants to stay with their parents, following an outcry from across the US political spectrum. One group that was a little more muted in its criticism? White evangelical Christians, The Washington Post reports. Janelle Wong, also in The Washington Post, suggests Trump's rock-solid support among this group is driven in large part by racial identity – and that includes immigration. "White evangelicals are much more conservative on immigration than nonwhite evangelicals. Fully 50 percent of white evangelicals in our survey agree that 'immigrants hurt the economy,' compared with 22 percent of black evangelicals, 25 percent of Latino evangelicals and 21 percent of Asian American evangelicals," Wong writes. Meanwhile, "50 percent of white evangelical respondents to our 2016 survey reported feeling they face discrimination that's comparable to, or even higher than, the discrimination they believe Muslim Americans face." | | Bad for Refugees, Bad for America | | | The United States might now be the world leader for asylum applications. But that doesn't mean applicants are actually making it to the country, The Economist suggests. That's a shame for them – and for America. Of around 1.1 million refugees who arrived in the US between 1987 and 2016, the "labor force participation (68%) and employment rates (64%) exceeded those of the total American population (63% and 60%, respectively)," The Economist writes. "They also compare favorably to the total US population, which consists mostly of citizens, exceeding them in median personal income ($28,000 to $23,000), homeownership (41% versus 37%), access to a computer and the internet (82% to 75%), and health insurance (93% to 91%)." | | North Korea's Other, Hidden Threat | | | President Trump may be confident that North Korea is "no longer a nuclear threat" (although a New York Times editorial Tuesday begs to differ). But even if he were right, South Korea wouldn't be out of danger, Donald Kirk notes for the Daily Beast. Pyongyang doesn't need nuclear-tipped missiles to inflict significant pain on its southern neighbor. "By now about 14,000 artillery pieces are estimated to be deployed within 10 to 20 miles of the line between North and South. A 300-millimeter rocket launcher is capable of reaching the strategic US air base at Osan and the new US Forces Korea headquarters complex at Pyeongtaek, according to Seoul's defense ministry, while 240-millimeter rocket launchers and 170-millimeter howitzers can hit targets anywhere in or around metropolitan Seoul," Kirk writes. "The overwhelming problem is the defense afforded by mountains and ridgelines that make North Korean artillery virtually unreachable from the South Korean side." | | Xi's Big, Bold Vision for the Internet | | | Lost in the headlines about Chinese telecom firm ZTE and the Trump administration's efforts to help save it was a recent major speech delivered by Chinese President Xi Jinping, writes Samm Sacks for The Atlantic. Xi has a vision – one that could upend the internet as we know it. Xi's speech and other statements outline "his government's ambition not just for independence from foreign technology, but its mission to write the rules for global cyber governance – rules that look very different from those of market economies of the West. This alternative would include technical standards requiring foreign companies to build versions of their products compliant with Chinese standards, and pressure to comply with government surveillance policies," Sacks writes. "China, in other words, appears to be floating the first competitive alternative to the open internet – a model that it is steadily proliferating around the world. As that model spreads, whether through Beijing's own efforts or through the model's inherent appeal for certain developing countries with more similarities to China than the West, we cannot take for granted that the internet will remain a place of free expression where open markets can flourish." | | The World's Leading Gun Owner Is…Probably No Surprise | | | Americans own around 45 percent of the world's estimated civilian-held firearms, according to a new report [PDF], despite making up only around 4 percent of the global population. "There were approximately 857 million civilian-held firearms in the world at the end of 2017," the latest Small Arms Survey finds, with the United States holding around 393 million firearms, followed by India (71 million), China (50 million), Pakistan (44 million) and Russia (18 million). "With the world's factories delivering millions of newly manufactured firearms annually and with far fewer being destroyed, civilian ownership appears to be growing globally. In the United States alone civilians acquired at least 122 million new or imported firearms during the period 2006–17," the report notes. | | | Faith in America is sinking fast with a key ally, a new poll suggests. "Only 55% of Australians say they trust the US to 'act responsibly in the world,' a six-point fall from since 2017, a 28-point fall since 2011, and the lowest level of trust in the US recorded since we first asked this question in the 2006 Lowy Institute Poll," the Lowy Interpreter finds. | | | | | | |
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