President Donald Trump is on the verge of making a spectacularly bad decision. The White House is soon expected to announce its plans to remove the 2,000 US troops now serving in northeastern Syria.This is not totally unexpected. Trump ran for president in part on the idea of smashing the Islamic State group, but he also said there was no point in trying to stabilize the country after the terrorists were defeated. Since getting elected, he has regularly signaled that its time for US forces to le

Viewpoints Dec. 20, 2018

Most lists of the year’s best books reflect the personal tastes of those who produce them. This list is different. It’s entirely objective. What unites these five books is that nothing is rote or by-the-numbers about them. Each of them crackles with a kind of demonic energy.“A Crisis of Beliefs: Investor Psychology and Financial Fragility,” by Nicola Gennaioli and Andrei Shleifer.What caused the financial crisis of 2008? What’s likely to cause future crises? Gennaioli and Shleifer offer an origi

Viewpoints Dec. 19, 2018

Nobody can know if, when Deng Xiaoping launched his strategy of “Reform and Opening Up” 40 years ago, even he could have predicted the near-miraculous transformation of the Chinese economy that would follow. In the years since, hundreds of millions have been lifted out of abject poverty and into the ranks of the global middle class; China’s industrial heartland became the workshop of the world; and it has muscled its way into the first ranks of global powers.Yet the tone with which Chinese Commu

Viewpoints Dec. 19, 2018

Japan’s police recently threw the chairman of Nissan Motor Co. into a jail cell. Carlos Ghosn, a Brazilian-born executive with French and Lebanese citizenship, has been accused of falsifying financial reports and hiding $44 million of personal income.Ghosn is unlikely to receive anything resembling justice. Officially, under Japanese law, a suspect can be held and questioned for 23 days without being charged. During this time he can be interrogated for as long as eight hours a day with no lawyer

Viewpoints Dec. 16, 2018

Suppose that within the next few months, it becomes clear that President Donald Trump has committed impeachable offenses. Does the House of Representatives have discretion to decide whether to impeach him? Or does the constitution require it to do so?The simplest answer, and the best, is that the constitution requires the House to do so.To avoid political bias, let’s bracket all questions associated with President Trump, put current events to one side, and assume that some future president commi

Viewpoints Dec. 13, 2018

The Trump administration has pulled out all the stops to attack the European Union. Realizing its relative weakness, the EU hasn’t tried a muscular response. Instead, it has used the same tactic as it did with Britain’s Brexiters.On Tuesday, the US ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, accused Europe of disregarding all the goodwill built up since the Marshall Plan and of frustrating US efforts to redress the trade imbalance.“What we have done for Europe since the end of World War II speaks for

Viewpoints Dec. 13, 2018

If you only scan the headlines, you could be forgiven for thinking that the US-China trade war is mainly about tariffs. After all, the president and trade-warrior-in-chief has called himself “Tariff Man.” And the tentative trade deal between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was mainly about tariffs, especially on items like automobiles.　But the startling arrest in Canada of a Chinese telecom company executive should wake people up to the fact that there’s a second US-Ch

Viewpoints Dec. 11, 2018

Chancellor Angela Merkel has been accused of killing German politics with her boa constrictor-like dominance and her contempt for electioneering fireworks. But on Friday, as she handed over the leadership of the Christian Democratic Union, it was clear that exciting political competition is alive even within the CDU, and that Germany’s next chancellor and Europe’s next de facto leader will be a star politician.　That star is Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, a Merkel disciple and chosen successor.　The

Viewpoints Dec. 11, 2018

As the cradle of democracy, Greece knows better than most countries what politics is all about. Yet, for the last eight years, any discussions between lawmakers from the left and right there have been overshadowed by the country’s economic collapse, and the string of rescue programs put together by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.Athens has been locked in permanent confrontation with its European partners, which culminated in the showdown of 2015 when Greece very nearly exited

Viewpoints Dec. 11, 2018

The US is looking like the dog that caught the car. It needs to decide what to do next.Except that Wanzhou Meng is a person. She’s the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies as well as deputy chairwoman and the daughter of its founder. She’s in Canadian custody awaiting extradition to the US, and China is outraged.　With Huawei finally being fingered for alleged sanctions-busting, a charge already leveled at compatriot ZTE, the US Department of Justice and the Trump administration have an

Viewpoints Dec. 9, 2018