Attention to the Unseen

Peter Beinart writes: The United States has a long history of intervening overseas to solve one problem and inadvertently creating others. In the 1980s, the Reagan administration armed rebels fighting Afghanistan’s Soviet-backed government only to find that some of them later targeted the United States. During that same decade, America armed the government of El Salvador in a gruesome civil war against leftist rebels that spawned the migration that produced the now notorious gang, MS-13. It’s worth remembering these precedents…

Read More Read More

Politico reports: France pledged on Sunday to stand by the G7 summit statement disowned by Donald Trump and took a swipe at the U.S. president by declaring that international cooperation could not depend on “fits of anger” or “little words.” Apparently incensed by remarks about U.S. tariffs at the closing press conference on Saturday by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump — who had already left the gathering in Quebec — tweeted that he had instructed U.S. officials not to…

Read More Read More

South China Morning Post reports: China and Russia pledged to support each other on key global issues during a summit in Beijing on Friday, as the two sides hailed an “all-time high” in bilateral ties amid strained relations with the US. The two countries also signed a raft of deals, including for nuclear cooperation projects totalling 20 billion yuan (US$3.13 billion) and a US$1 billion industrial investment fund. Chinese President Xi Jinping met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin ahead of…

Read More Read More

Anna Fifield reports: “This unprecedented meeting with the U.S. president will make Kim Jong Un feel very proud, having achieved something his father and grandfather didn’t,” said Joo Seong-ha, who escaped from North Korea and now writes about the country for South Korea’s Dong-A Ilbo newspaper. And although “maximum pressure” may have helped bring Kim to the negotiating table, the other reality is that he is coming to the summit from a position of relative strength, said Kenneth Dekleva, a…

Read More Read More

The Observer reports: Arron Banks, the millionaire businessman who bankrolled Nigel Farage’s campaign to quit the EU, had multiple meetings with Russian embassy officials in the run-up to the Brexit referendum, documents seen by the Observer suggest. Banks, who gave £12m of services to the campaign, becoming the biggest donor in UK history, has repeatedly denied any involvement with Russian officials, or that Russian money played any part in the Brexit campaign. The Observer has seen documents which a senior…

Read More Read More

The New York Times reports: President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia arrived in Austria on Tuesday sensing an opportunity almost unimaginable just months ago: to overhaul frosty relations with a European Union infuriated by President Trump on a host of issues, from climate and Iran to, most recently, tariffs and trade. Never mind that Mr. Putin was until recently virtually a pariah in Europe after his military interventions in Ukraine, Crimea and Syria; after meddling in European elections and working…

Read More Read More

The Guardian reports: A Cambridge Analytica director apparently visited Julian Assange in February last year and told friends it was to discuss what happened during the US election, the Guardian has learned. Brittany Kaiser, a director at the firm until earlier this year, also claimed to have channelled cryptocurrency payments and donations to WikiLeaks. This information has been passed to congressional and parliamentary inquiries in the UK and US. Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks are already subjects of special counsel Robert…

Read More Read More

Al Monitor reports: Dozens of politicians, writers and human rights activists were attacked June 5 by unknown assailants at the iftar dinner party for the breaking of the daily fast during Ramadan organized by the Civil Democratic Movement. The assailants crashed the iftar at the Swiss Club in Cairo and overturned the dinner tables while chanting “Traitors! Spies!” The head of the Constitution Party, Khaled Dawoud, who attended the dinner, said in a Facebook post on the day of the…

Read More Read More

RFE/RL reports: An important but widely overlooked demographic transformation has been under way in the Ukrainian region of Crimea since it was annexed by Russia in 2014. Ukrainian officials and analysts say hundreds of thousands of people from across Russia have been brought into the disputed region in an effort by Moscow to transform the composition of its population. “Since 2014 there has been a mass movement of people from Siberia,” Sergei, who moved to Crimea from St. Petersburg and…

Read More Read More

14% of Germans consider the US a reliable partner36% of Germans consider the Russia a reliable partner43% consider China a reliable partner Source: Politbarometer, 17 May 2018, sample size 1,200 pic.twitter.com/NhcRPsp5M0 — Thomas Rid (@RidT) June 5, 2018