One of the oddities of our political moment is how frequently we are asked to tease out the layers of meaning of remarks by President Donald Trump as though he had chosen them with the care of a good poet. The latest controversy -- although by the time this appears it may have been overtaken by another one -- concerns the president’s comment, “These aren’t people. They’re animals.”　The New York Times and USA Today were among the media outlets that suggested that Trump had referred to illegal imm

Viewpoints May 20, 2018

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

Viewpoints May 17, 2018

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

Viewpoints May 17, 2018

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

Viewpoints May 16, 2018

“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

Viewpoints May 15, 2018

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

Viewpoints May 15, 2018

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

Viewpoints May 15, 2018

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

Viewpoints May 14, 2018

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

Viewpoints May 14, 2018

What would Karl Marx think of contemporary China? China certainly seems to think highly of Marx, holding celebratory events this month for the 200th anniversary of his birth. The government even sent a large statue as a gift to his hometown of Trier, Germany. China is proudly parading Marx and his thought as an alternative to Western liberalism.　I think Marx, if he could be magically reincarnated, would love today’s China but not for the reasons Beijing might appreciate. He would see China as a

Viewpoints May 13, 2018

It’s been nearly two years since the UK voted to leave the European Union. But the intervening period has done nothing to resolve the question of what that should mean.　Consider the latest Brexit-related fracas, which has seen members of Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet publicly squabbling about Britain’s future trade relationship with Europe. For many Brexit supporters, the debate has become a test of whether the UK is really leaving, or just pretending to.　This isn’t a polite disagreement:

Viewpoints May 13, 2018

Is the US better off trying to shape the world as party to an imperfect international accord, or as an outsider insisting on better terms?　One lesson from the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998 ought to be: Rejecting ideas from allies merely opens the door to alternatives over which the US will have zero control. This wisdom is newly relevant, not only because US President Donald Trump is chipping away at the Iran nuclear deal. Today the US frets about increasing Chinese influence in Asia and b

Viewpoints May 13, 2018