Attention to the Unseen

Eric Levitz writes: American democracy is unwell; on this much, President Trump’s detractors can agree. But when they turn to the tasks of identifying our republic’s symptoms, naming its illness, and writing a prescription, different factions of “the resistance” produce divergent diagnoses. One group — comprised of comparative politics scholars, liberal pundits, and NeverTrump conservatives — have their eyes fixed on Donald Trump. They see the moral cowardice of a Republican elite that declined to deny an illiberal demagogue their…

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The Washington Post reports: Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has cast himself as a reformer, advocating equality for women and granting them the right to drive. But in the past few days, Saudi activists who called for exactly those things were arrested, accused by the authorities of undermining national security and branded “traitors” in pro-government newspapers. The unusually vicious state-led crackdown has targeted Saudi Arabia’s most prominent women’s rights advocates, including activists who led the first protests against…

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Jeffrey Lewis writes: For the past few weeks, new national security adviser John Bolton has been publicly emphasizing that the United States would seek a “Libya-style” agreement with North Korea. A lot of experts, including me, warned that this was a deliberate effort to sabotage the prospect of a summit with North Korea. After all, bringing up instances of leaders who disarmed only to be brutally murdered is not likely to be an effective testament to the security of a…

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The New York Times reports: From the moment President Trump accepted an audacious invitation to meet Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, he raised expectations that he would finally do what none of his predecessors had: get North Korea to abandon its nuclear arsenal. Yet, as a warning last week from the North made clear — and as most experts on the country have long declared — Mr. Kim may have no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons any time…

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Philip Róin and Mikkel Danielsen write: On Saturday 13 August 2016, six bodyguards from the protection detail of the Gambia’s president, Yahya Jammeh, squeezed into a rental car and drove to the sprawling coastal town of Serekunda. They stopped in Senegambia, the capital’s famous party street, where music blares from bars and white tourists walk around in flip-flops hand-in-hand with young lovers. The men drank some juice and nibbled at some food as they awaited nightfall. At 1am, when they…

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The Washington Post reports: President Trump is blaming Kim Jong Un for changing the scope of their summit talks planned for next month and will doubtless air his frustrations when he meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Washington on Tuesday. But in South Korea, many say the blame for the sudden problems in the diplomatic process lies squarely at the feet of someone else: John Bolton. “There are several land mines on the way to the summit between…

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The Washington Post reports: President Trump said Sunday that he would demand that the Justice Department explore whether it or the FBI “infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes” — escalating a battle over federal law enforcement’s use of a confidential source to aid its probe into whether the Trump campaign and Russia coordinated to influence the 2016 election. Trump wrote on Twitter, “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look…

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Vladimir Kara-Murza writes: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” This phrase from Stalin’s secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria, even if apocryphal, summarizes the Soviet regime’s attitude to repressing its citizens. The “crimes” used most often for political prosecutions in the Stalin era were the ones detailed in Article 58 of the criminal code, from “counter-revolutionary activity” and “anti-Soviet agitation” to “contacts with foreigners with counter-revolutionary purposes” and “urging a foreign entity to [conduct] aggressive actions against…

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Reuters reports: A political bloc led by populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, a long-time adversary of the US who also opposes Iranian influence in Iraq, has been confirmed as the winner of the country’s parliamentary election, the electoral commission said on Saturday. Sadr himself cannot become prime minister as he did not run in the election, though his bloc’s victory puts him in a position to have a strong say in negotiations. His Sairoon electoral list captured 54 parliamentary seats. The…

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The New York Times reports: A night after the dedication of the new United States Embassy in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel convened American evangelicals to plan their next steps. In a conference room off his office, Mr. Netanyahu thanked the small circle of prominent pastors and activists on Tuesday for pressing President Trump to open the embassy, breaking with decades of American policy that Jerusalem’s status should be decided in peace talks. Which embassy would be next?…

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