| | | | Iranian FM Zarif: Trump Doesn't Want War | | In an interview published in LobeLog, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif reminds us that, while President Trump has offered harsh rhetoric and aggressive sanctions on Iran, the president also has often pointed out "that previous US wars in the region have been disastrous," as Zarif puts it.
That's why, Zarif says, he believes Trump's "advisers and those who have influence on him from the outside are pushing him in the direction that is conducive to greater tension and escalation"—something other observers have said about National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. | | Military Spending Hits a High | | Global military spending has hit its highest level since record-keeping began in 1988, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and The Economist chalks it up to "the contest between America and China for primacy in Asia."
Last year, the US upped its defense spending for the first time since 2010, and while America still dwarfs the rest of the world on that metric—its defense budget nearly totals those of the next eight competitors, combined—China increased its military spending by a whopping 83% between 2009 and 2018. Sensing the competition, Japan and South Korea have upped their budgets, too. Elsewhere, European NATO countries have upped their defense budgets 4.2%, the magazine writes, citing the International Institute for Strategic Studies. | | As melting ice caps make Arctic shipping easier, a race is on for control of its sea routes and oil deposits, Nastassia Astrasheuskaya and Henry Foy write in the Financial Times. Though it's only passable three months out of the year (for now), shipping through the Arctic means a 40% faster route from Europe to China, and Russia is making a play for supremacy, with bases along a key shipping lane and a superior fleet of ice-breaking ships.
In response, NATO held its largest war games since the Cold War in Norway last October, they point out. The Arctic isn't yet as significant as the Suez Canal or the South China Sea, Geoff Upton recently wrote in The National Interest, but it's "becoming a major geopolitical flashpoint," thanks to trade routes and "vast hydrocarbon resources." | | Africa's Extremist 'Powder Keg' | | | Extremism has loomed in northern sub-Saharan Africa for some time—from al Qaeda's offshoot in Mali, to Boko Haram in Nigeria, to al Shabaab in Somalia—but former British prime minister Tony Blair raises a particularly urgent warning in an op-ed for Project Syndicate. The region is a "powder keg," he writes, with climate change and weak governance compounding the risks for radicalization.
"If and when the eruption comes," he writes, "the consequences will include fresh waves of extremism and migration, affecting Europe and spreading further afield to America and Arabia." Blair warns that world powers need to channel their aid more efficiently, and African governments need to make reforms, before a crisis hits. | | Turkey Looks Past America | | Turkey is on its way to "joining a post-American alliance architecture," Micha'el Tanchum writes at the Turkish Policy Quarterly. The NATO member is in the process of acquiring a missile-defense system from Russia, leading to friction and possible US sanctions, but Tanchum writes that the breakup has been building for a while.
American support for Syrian Kurds (aligned with a group Turkey considers terrorists), and staunch Russian support for President Erdogan following the attempted coup in 2016, have led Ankara to turn away from NATO and toward Russia. Unless the US offers some concessions, Tanchum writes, the US and Turkey will go separate ways. | | | | | | |
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