| | | | Why Trump's North Korea Diplomacy Is Backward | | President Trump suggested Wednesday that he would announce in the "very near future" when his next meeting with Kim Jong Un will take place. The Korea Herald warns in an editorial that there's just one problem with the denuclearization process: It's all backward.
"Generally, denuclearization progresses from declaration to inspection to destruction, but now the process seems to be moving backward: The North destroys the facilities it selects, allows experts to inspect the destroyed facilities, and only then promises to declare its nuclear inventory in return for the lifting of sanctions," the paper says.
"That won't do. North Korea can be considered to have denuclearized completely only once it takes the correct steps in the correct order."
"What the North has done so far is to declare a nuclear freeze, not substantial measures such as the elimination of nuclear warheads and materials."
"It is important to keep the North in the orbit of denuclearization. Be that as it may be, it is risky for Trump to rush into a summit with Kim for political reasons, such as concern about the upcoming midterm elections."
| | America's Next Big #MeToo Moment | | | The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday featuring Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford comes almost exactly a year since the #MeToo movement took off with the allegations against Harvey Weinstein, The Economist notes. But while there has been progress, the movement's future hangs in the balance.
"The good news is that the appetite for change is profound; the bad news is that men's predation of women risks becoming yet one more battlefield in America's all-consuming culture wars," The Economist says.
"If #MeToo in America becomes a Democrats-only movement, it will be set back. Some men will excuse their behavior on the ground that it is hysteria whipped up by the left to get at Republicans. Those questions about proof, fairness and rehabilitation will become even harder to resolve.
"It takes a decade or more for patterns of social behavior to change. #MeToo is just one year old. It is not about sex so much as about power—how power is distributed, and how people are held accountable when power is abused." | | The Trouble with Labeling Iran the No. 1 Terrorism State Sponsor | | | The Trump administration isn't the first to manipulate the terrorist threat to bolster its diplomatic hand. But by insisting on labeling Iran the leading "state sponsor of terrorism," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others are presenting a misleading picture, writes Paul Pillar for The National Interest.
"The Trump administration's new terrorism report, and the accompanying pitch by Coordinator for Counterterrorism Nathan A. Sales, illustrate how much the administration tries to stretch the canvas to put Iran in the center of the picture of international terrorism," Pillar writes. "The section about Iran in the portion of the report on state sponsorship of terrorism is unable to name any specific, current or recent, attack that Iran instigated or executed."
"The other principal type of observation concerns Iran's alliances with groups such as Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas. Those groups certainly have done terrorism, but they are much more than terrorist groups and are part of broader political conflicts and political systems where Iranian motivations for the alliances are to be found." | | China's Surprising, Devastating New Weapon | | China has already tested a weapon that could have devastating economic consequences for countries that cross it, writes Nithin Coca for Foreign Policy: Tourism.
Beijing's pressure on tour agencies booking trips to South Korea after Seoul decided to deploy a US missile defense system "was the first successful large-scale use of tourism to damage a major economy," Coca says.
"And what happened in South Korea could be a sign of things to come. In a little more than a decade, China has gone from a minor player to the most important country of origin for tourists across the Asia-Pacific region. Whether it's Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Singapore, or Bali, Chinese are now the largest inbound group of tourists, with 129 million making overseas trips in 2017. In many cases, they also spend far more per visitor than their Western or Asian counterparts."
| | Brazil Has Some Good News. Politicians Should Talk About It | | Brazilians may be frustrated with their political system and soaring violent crime, but there's some good news emerging from an unlikely part of the country, argues Mac Margolis for Bloomberg: the country's rainforests.
"For the last several years, deforestation in the Amazon, a calamity at which Brazil unfortunately has always excelled, has plummeted. And with it, so have emissions of climate-cooking carbon gases loosed by forest clearing and slash-and-burn agriculture. So much so, that Brazil is already well ahead of its 2020 target for reducing greenhouse gases, as agreed at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, in 2009," Margolis writes.
"True, the felling spiked again last year to around 7,000 square kilometers, more than six times the size of Hong Kong…The difference is that Brazilians no longer seem willing to shrug off the ruin as the collateral damage of progress…"
"The reversal of misfortune in the Amazon is a victory of public policies and good governance, wrought against pressure by vested interests."
| | The World's Most Socially Progressive Country Is… | | Norway has made more "social progress" than any other country, according to a new report that ranks non-economic areas of development, scoring top marks for political rights and access to water, electricity and quality education.
The annual Social Progress Index, produced by US-based non-profit the Social Progress Imperative, ranks countries based on 12 factors, including personal safety, nutrition, environmental quality and personal freedom. Following Norway were Iceland, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland and Japan.
The United States ranked 25th overall, scoring highly on factors including access to electricity and globally ranked universities, but struggling on factors including homicide rates, greenhouse gas emissions and overall access to quality health care. | | | | | | |
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