[Bill Emmott] Preparing for President Trump

As America’s friends and allies look on in astonishment at the all-but-certain prospect of a contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in November’s US presidential election, they need to do more than just wring their hands. They must hope for the best but prepare for the worst.The crucial point about the 2016 election is not just that a reality-TV star and property magnate who has never held elected office has emerged as the presumptive Republican candidate. It is the enormous difference

May 25, 2016

Death of the store? Not buying it

If we say, “Let’s do some shopping,” do you grab your car keys … or whip out your smartphone? Judged by the numbers, your new favorite mall may be the couch.Internet and catalog sales are up 10 percent over the past year, while department store sales have sagged. Macy’s, J.C. Penney and Nordstrom all say 2016 got off to a terrible start. “Just like bookstores and music stores and hardware stores before them, apparel retailers are underestimating how fast Amazon is going to eat their lunch,” reta

May 25, 2016

[David Ignatius] Defeating IS means getting the politics right

A tour of the war zones in Iraq and Syria with the top American commander ends, appropriately enough, here in Turkey, the strongest power in the region and the place where the modern troubles began a hundred years ago with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.The abiding strategic fact about the current war against the Islamic State group is that it’s part of a bigger process of reordering the post-Ottoman structure of this part of the world. We don’t know yet what the outcome will be or what the

May 25, 2016

[John Kass] Hillary needs a long hard look in the mirror

Hillary Clinton’s political advocates -- I prefer “meat puppets” -- are wringing their hands over the Republican vulgarian Donald Trump.They’re upset over the boorish things he says about women, but, even worse, they’re anguishing over the death of American outrage.What bothers them is that anti-Trump outrage isn’t as widespread as the Clinton campaign hoped. And GOP Chairman Reince Priebus triggered them even more by suggesting that Trump’s character issues weren’t all that big a deal.This so e

May 24, 2016

[Anders Fogh Rasmussen] Make America trade again with courage

No matter how much some U.S. presidential candidates may deride free trade, it remains the backbone of the American economy. Without it, the country would become significantly poorer and its global influence would diminish significantly. So why has bashing free trade become a key theme in this year’s presidential race?One of the clearest reasons for this is that economic anxiety is widespread in the United States, which is still reeling from the aftereffects of the 2008 financial crisis. Too man

May 24, 2016

Why Vietnam and U.S. have reason to coordinate

All these decades after the Vietnam War, mentions of Hanoi or Saigon summon ghosts. That trauma will never be erased, but slowly, appropriately, it is being eased aside by the realities of a changing world.So it is that President Barack Obama goes to communist Vietnam early this week on a visit that is more about the future than the past. And as much about countering the rise of China as reframing U.S.-Vietnam relations.Obama will visit Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). His trip is t

May 24, 2016

[David Ignatius]Taking the fight to the Islamic State

BAGHDAD -- Amid hedgerows of computer screens in the joint operations center that runs the war against the Islamic State, Marine Brig. Gen. Bill Mullen explains the complex assault that drove the extremist fighters last week from the strategic town of Rutbah at the western edge of Anbar province. The battle showed how the campaign against the Islamic State, which has had a slow takeoff over the last 18 months, is supposed to work: In early May, a U.S. drone attack on a nearby highway killed Shak

May 23, 2016

[Robert Park] Trump and the myth of U.S. magnanimity in Korea

U.S. Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s highly publicized charges that South Korea has not been paying its fair share within the U.S.-R.O.K. military alliance has caused a political firestorm in the South, with Koreans almost universally expressing offense or alarm at his inaccurate and denigrating assertions. In a 2013 statement about extracting further payments for the ongoing American military presence in South Korea, Trump stated: “They’re rich because of us. … They sell us every

May 23, 2016

[Eric Frazier] Wake me when this election is over

If I were still predigital enough to own a paper calendar, I’d circle Wednesday, Nov. 9, on it. Why?　That’s the day after Election Day. The day when all the grown people of America who are losing their minds over politics can finally -- I hope -- begin to regain their sanity.　The general election season has barely begun, but it seems like it’s already been going on for two years. Donald Trump’s relentless bloviating curdles forth on seemingly every news show. Hillary and Bill Clinton’s transgres

May 23, 2016

[Jeffrey Robertson] South Korea’s diplomatic style on the world stage

At the end of this year, Ban Ki-moon will leave the office of United Nations secretary-general. Since January 2007, he has crossed the globe building support to address the challenges of development, climate change, conflict, and humanitarian crises. Despite early criticisms, he has dutifully fulfilled a role that the Second Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld labeled “the most impossible job on earth”. As a career diplomat and former foreign minister, he has also broadcast to the world South Kor

May 22, 2016

[Mark Davis] Conservatives who oppose Trump need to wise up

In a hazardous year for political predictions, I’ll offer one confidently: if the Republicans currently freaking out over Donald Trump can redirect that energy toward beating Hillary Clinton, she’s toast.　But that is a giant “if.” Many conservatives need to examine what keeps them mired in their objections to Trump now that the Republican primary race is over.　During that race, it was proper to weigh his pluses and minuses versus the competition. Maybe his inconsistent conservatism made some peo

May 22, 2016

[Seamus Hughes] The path to radicalization

As one father told me the story of his daughter’s radicalization, his every word was heavy with regret. He should have intervened earlier, he said, when he first noticed she was hiding her online conversations from him. When his daughter disappeared, he frantically tried to call her. But it was too late; she’d gone to Syria to join the Islamic State.　Now she is among the 250 individuals who have attempted to or succeeded in traveling to Syria or Iraq to join terrorist organizations such as the I

May 22, 2016

[Ann McFeatters] How do tyrants rise? Ask Trump

It’s long been a tenet of this country that Americans believe in fair play. But millions are ready to elect a president who believes the rules do not apply to him. And millions more are willing to be convinced that if this man is elected, somehow he will change from a self-centered oligarch to a leader who will put the country first.　It used to be that politics stopped at the water’s edge. That meant that unless a controversial vote on declaring war were involved, presidential candidates did not

May 22, 2016

[David Horsey] Trump supporters look like the O.J. Simpson jury

Donald Trump’s loyal voters share something with the jurors in the O.J. Simpson trial: a predisposition to ignore disturbing, hard facts while buying into a narrative that absolves their celebrity hero, acknowledges their own grievances and reinforces their perception of how the world works.　With lifetimes of negative experiences that made them suspicious of the Los Angeles Police Department, the African-American jurors who formed the majority on the Simpson trial jury were inclined from the sta

May 20, 2016