[Leonid Bershidsky] How media paywalls work in authoritarian countries

There’s been a lot of talk recently about journalism and paywalls. Much of the general conversation has been focused on the economics of supporting quality reporting.　I’d like to widen the frame on both counts -- by sharing my experience in Russia. There, the record is more complicated. In Russia, paywalls have been essential for maintaining journalistic integrity. At the same time, they have shown that charging for journalism can reduce its impact. In authoritarian countries, this can in turn l

May 17, 2018

[Eli Lake] Trump’s leniency with China’s ZTE hurts his Iran strategy

When President Donald Trump announced America’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal last week, he emphasized a broader message to foes and friends about US credibility: “The United States no longer makes empty threats.”　That was primarily directed at foreign banks and corporations that would now have to choose between the Iranian and American economy under renewed sanctions.　But the president was also saying he will not be hemmed in by advisers, the Republican Party or Washington’s foreign pol

May 17, 2018

[David Ignatius] Does the pathway to containing Iran pass through Moscow?

Arab leaders love the idea that President Trump is ready to give Iran a punch in the nose. But is this White House truly serious about challenging Iranian power in the Middle East? The evidence is mixed, at best. I heard passionate enthusiasm for Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal from prominent Arabs gathered here last weekend for a conference sponsored by the Beirut Institute. They know that scuttling the nuclear deal could be dangerous, and that the region is already a po

May 17, 2018

[Yossi Klein Halevi] Israelis, Palestinians need to honor two-story solution in the Middle East

The seemingly endless war between Palestinians and Israelis isn’t only about substantive issues of borders and land and sovereignty. It is, in essence, a war of competing narratives. This week, as Israelis celebrate 70 years of victory over repeated attempts to destroy the miraculous rebirth of Jewish sovereignty, and Palestinians mourn 70 years of defeat, displacement and occupation, each side clings to its founding story as an affirmation of its very being.　One reason that peace between Israel

May 16, 2018

[Leonid Bershidsky] Why Germans are getting fed up with US

Germans have never liked US President Donald Trump, and the backlash against his actions is stronger than ever after he pulled the US out of the Iran nuclear deal last week. But there’s a growing gap between the German establishment and German voters: The former may be anti-Trump, but the latter are increasingly anti-American.　German Chancellor Angel Merkel vented her frustration with Trump in a speech in the North Rhine-Westphalia city of Muenster on Friday, saying his Iran decision “undermines

May 16, 2018

[Jules Boykoff] Russia tarnishes World Cup

The World Cup opens in Moscow in a month, an 11-city, four-week chanting, flag-waving showcase for the world’s most popular sport and, this time around, for Vladimir Putin’s Russia.　Conventional wisdom has it that with Putin in charge (he was inaugurated again last week for a fourth term), the quadrennial world soccer championships will run like clockwork. Back in 2013, Jerome Valcke, then secretary-general of FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, said as much: “I will say something which

May 16, 2018

[Pankaj Mishra] It’s no wonder Iranians hate America

“Everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran,” a senior British official was quoted as saying to Newsweek in 2002, witnessing the competitive bellicosity in the Bush administration’s run-up to the war in Iraq.　US President Donald Trump asserted his claim to be a real man as he tore up the nuclear deal with Iran. But he has inadvertently accelerated rather than delayed an inevitable process: the emergence of Iran as a major geopolitical and scientific power in a world that is n

May 15, 2018

[Shuli Ren] Kim could make North Korea Samsung’s new backyard

It wouldn’t be hard for North Korea to become the next Vietnam, if only Kim Jong-un loosened up a bit.　North Korea today looks remarkably similar to the Southeast Asian nation in 1986, when its communist neighbor undertook “Doi Moi” reforms to tiptoe toward capitalism. North Korea may have a head start, because it’s richer and more industrialized.　Vietnam is now a huge manufacturing hub, boasting an economy that’s six times larger than North Korea’s. Last year, it expanded 6.8 percent, the faste

May 15, 2018

[Tim Culpan] Trump’s ZTE tweet points to Pyongyang, Singapore, Oslo

US President Donald Trump’s sudden concern over Chinese jobs may indicate a realization that neither a failed nor a nationalized Chinese telecoms equipment maker would be in America’s best interests.　It may also indicate just how important his meeting in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un really is.　To recap: ZTE Corp. is a Chinese company that makes telecoms equipment and mobile phones. It previously broke a US embargo on Iran by using American chips in equipment it sold to the Midd

May 15, 2018

[Rob Cohen] America needs a comprehensive economic development strategy

US President Donald Trump recently proposed a $1.5 trillion infrastructure program. This is a good idea with bipartisan support, assuming we can finance it. But infrastructure alone will not produce the long-term inclusive growth we yearn for. To achieve that, America instead needs a comprehensive economic development strategy.　That means America’s struggling communities have to simultaneously invest in many different types of capital to generate growth: infrastructure, health, education and sma

May 15, 2018

[Andy Mukherjee] Malaysia-Singapore union flickers back to life

Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, was a canny politician, an extraordinary statesman and an astute analyst of geopolitics. At times it was hard to tell which hat he was wearing.That seems to have been the case when, speaking to the press in 1996, a little more than three decades after his city was ejected by Malaysia and forced to become a nation-state, Senior Minister Lee boldly speculated on the idea of a re-merger.　Let politicians across the causeway that links the neighbors dro

May 14, 2018

[Jay Ambrose] Kicking George Washington out of church

My wife and I were docents of Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia, when I worked in nearby Washington, a city named for a former parishioner. Yes, George Washington went to church there. As I used to explain to tourists, he had even helped get the place built and had his own pew box, but docents will maybe be quiet about that now. Washington, you see, had slaves, and, in the form of a 150-year-old, marble plaque hanging in the sanctuary, he is being expelled from the church. As a politically z

May 14, 2018

[Faye Flam] Inspiring terms are simple. ‘Climate change’ isn’t.

Last week I chatted with Columbia University paleontologist Dennis Kent about some new work he and his colleagues published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about the surprisingly big influence of Venus and Jupiter on the climate of Earth. The gravitational tug of the second and fifth planets from the sun act to stretch Earth’s annual orbit like a rubber band, pulling it into a more oblong ellipse and then back to something very close to a perfect circle over a cycle of 405

May 14, 2018