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Smoke billows from the site of an Israeli airstrike on the southern Lebanese village of Majdel Zoun on April 15, 2024, amid ongoing cross-border tensions. AFP/Getty Images

MundoOriente Próximo,

An eerie relative calm has descended on the Middle East — Gaza obviously excluded — since a highly alarming exchange of missile, rocket and drone attacks by Israel and Iran in recent weeks. Fears of an imminent regional war have subsided, with both sides suggesting that, for now at any rate, they believe they have restored deterrence strategically and bolstered national morale enough to offset criticism from hawks and hardliners.

For the meanwhile, it appears that neither Israel nor Iran wants a direct war with each other, and both appear ready to consider the recent exchange of attacks, although not their underlying causes, resolved.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalEconomía

The Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England have all engaged in some form of quantitative tightening (QT). This involves central banks either not reinvesting maturing government debt or, in the Bank of England’s case, selling bonds to shrink their balance-sheets. Partly as a result of central banks’ relative absence from government-bond markets as they implement QT, yields—which move inversely to prices—have been rising.

QT is the reversal of quantitative easing (QE), which is the expansion of central-bank balance-sheets to stimulate the economy, done by purchasing government debt to bring down long-term interest rates. Central banks adopted QE when policy rates hit the floor and could not be lowered further during the global financial crisis and, a decade later, the covid-19 pandemic.…  Seguir leyendo »

Migrants wade out to board a boat on a beach near Dunkirk, in northern France.Credit...Sameer Al-Doumy/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Europa,

Last week Britain’s Parliament passed a law that seeks to redefine reality.

The Safety of Rwanda Act declares Rwanda a “safe” country, regardless of the evidence to the contrary — and orders British courts to do the same. Its purpose is to allow the British government to finally, after two years, enact its policy to permanently deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Some of the most vulnerable people in Britain will be rounded up, detained and then — in theory — flown some 4,000 miles to Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. What to do about people seeking asylum is one of the most complex policy issues facing governments around the world, and the British government insists it has the answer: promise cartoonish cruelty.…  Seguir leyendo »

A military recruitment poster in Kyiv, March 2024. Valentyn Ogirenko / Reuters

Europa, , ,

After months of delay, Congress’s passage of a nearly $61 billion U.S. aid bill to Ukraine has provided a vital lifeline to Kyiv. But the aid package alone will not solve Ukraine’s larger problems in its war with Russia. Ukrainian forces are defending frontlines that span some 600 miles of the south and east of the country, and prolonged inaction in Washington has left them severely stretched. The influx of U.S. weapons and ammunition should significantly raise the cost to Russia of its impending summer offensive. The aid also offers Ukrainian forces enough materiel to support more systematic military planning for the summer and fall.…  Seguir leyendo »

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu, Beijing, January 2024. Cnsphoto / Reuters

MundoAsia

The competition over Asia’s so-called swing states is heating up. China’s growing economic and political reach has impelled Australia, India, Japan, and the United States to try to gain influence in the countries not yet tightly aligned with either bloc. U.S. President Joe Biden has repeatedly characterized Asia as a battleground between autocracy and democracy. Observers who worry about such a contest point to recent pro-China turns in the Solomon Islands, which in 2019 severed its diplomatic relationship with Taiwan and then signed a security pact with China, and the Maldives, which in 2023 elected a president who criticized his predecessor’s ties to India and vowed to draw closer to China.…  Seguir leyendo »

This picture taken from southern Israel, near the border with the Gaza Strip on November 7, 2023, shows smoke rising from northern Gaza during shelling by Israeli forces amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images

MundoOriente Próximo

From Israel’s founding to the present, no concept has so thoroughly dominated the country’s strategic imagination as much as deterrence. Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once said deterrence was the country’s “main weapon—the fear of us”. “Israel”, remarked the fabled Israeli general Moshe Dayan, “must be seen as a mad dog; too dangerous to bother”.

That’s why, after the attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, an unprecedented existential urgency was placed on reestablishing the country’s deterrence, which had been steadily waning since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000. “What happened today has never before been seen in Israel”, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israelis after the Oct.…  Seguir leyendo »

A woman looks at a board showing the rates of dollars and euros against the ruble in Moscow. (Photo by Contributor/Getty Images)

Europa, , , ,

Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022 contravened the most important principles of the UN charter. The G7 must continue giving strong economic, political, and military support to Ukraine, enabling it to defend itself. This benefits the Ukrainian people and is critical to the long-term security of G7 countries themselves.

But confiscating $300 billion of sanctioned Russian state assets to help pay for this support is a more complex question. It is not certain that the benefits to the G7 will outweigh the costs it will bear. Financing support for Ukraine through normal public expenditure, at least for the time being, is likely to be the better option.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ukrainians demonstrate in front of the Belgium-based financial services company Euroclear to advocate seizure of frozen assets of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation on April 11, 2024 (Photo by Thierry Monasse/Getty Images)

Europa, , , ,

It seems odd, considering the scale of destruction caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that seizing Russian money immobilized in Western clearing houses is as hotly debated as it is.

The costs of Ukrainian reconstruction are difficult to agree. $1 trillion is sometimes stated. A more conservative estimate would be around half that – $500 billion.

But before reconstruction can even begin, Ukraine needs to finance its war effort – costing around $50 billion per year – and maintain its day-to-day economy.

In other words, Russian state assets, if repurposed, could cover the costs of five years of war, or three-fifths of the conservatively estimated reconstruction costs.…  Seguir leyendo »

Emmanuel Macron speaking on European policy at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, 25 April 2024. Photograph: Accorsini Jeanne/Abaca/Rex/Shutterstock

EuropaUnión Europea,

In the latest of his visionary speeches on the future of Europe, Emmanuel Macron called for the EU to transform itself into a military power or face “death”. Yet his own presidency of France may be about to enter a long twilight zone unless he can reverse his party’s deepening slump in June’s European parliament election.

Macron’s unpopularity is the main reason why his centrist pro-European Renaissance party is trailing a distant second in opinion polls behind Marine Le Pen’s hard-right National Rally (RN). Le Pen’s list is led by Jordan Bardella, 29, the rising star in the populist anti-immigration party.…  Seguir leyendo »

A courtroom drawing depicts Michael R. Dreeben, counselor to special counsel Jack Smith, arguing before the Supreme Court on April 25. (Dana Verkouteren/AP)

MundoAmérica

One aspect of special counsel Jack Smith’s arguments to the Supreme Court last week in Trump v. United States has not gotten enough attention: his claim that the Justice Department has independent power to confer immunity on the president. Adopting this argument would be a disaster for the presidency.

Smith was represented at the Supreme Court by Michael R. Dreeben, who served as a deputy solicitor general in the Justice Department for 24 years. In that role, Dreeben had primary responsibility for overseeing the department’s criminal docket before the Supreme Court. Dreeben thus spent nearly a quarter-century as the top advocate at the Supreme Court for federal prosecutorial interests.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoOriente Próximo,

Our decision to resume feeding in Gaza is both the hardest and the simplest one we could make.

Hardest because barely a month has passed since Israeli forces killed seven of our World Central Kitchen family, despite knowing their location, movements and the nature of their essential work. Our colleagues risked everything to feed people they did not know.

Yet it’s a simple decision for us because the need is so great. We cannot stand by while so many people are so desperate for the essentials of life. Food is a universal human right, and we will not cease until those basic human rights are respected.…  Seguir leyendo »

Russian Volunteer Corps fighters near Ukraine’s border with Russia, May 2023. Viacheslav Ratynskyi / Reuters

Europa, , ,

The day after Russia’s presidential election in March, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a surprising speech. Having eliminated all viable political opposition, he had just sailed to victory by the highest margin in post-Soviet Russian history, garnering 88 percent of the vote. Yet rather than embracing his triumph—and his fresh mandate for a fifth term in office—he warned of an apparently grave threat facing the country: Russian defectors who have been joining the enemy in Russia’s two-year-old war in Ukraine.

Although their forces remain small, these Ukrainian-based Russian rebels have recently claimed responsibility for several attacks on Russian soil. In a speech delivered at his campaign headquarters, Putin compared these fighters to vlasovstsy, the name given to the Soviet soldiers who defected to the Nazi side during World War II—part of a movement that was considered one of the worst episodes of treason in Soviet history.…  Seguir leyendo »

Israeli soldiers patrolling Gazan-Israeli border, April 2024. Amir Cohen / Reuters

MundoOriente Próximo

Until last month, the war between Iran and Israel was largely fought in the shadows. The Iranians decided to take it out of the shadows, openly attacking Israeli territory directly, from Iranian soil, for the first time in the Islamic Republic’s history. Some observers have argued that Iran’s April 13 drone and missile assault on Israel was a symbolic gesture. Yet given the quantity of drones and missiles fired at Israel and their payloads, Iran clearly meant to inflict serious damage.

Israel’s defenses were nearly flawless, but it did not repel Iran’s attack entirely on its own. Just as Iran’s assault was unprecedented, so was the direct military intervention of the United States and a number of its allies, including some Arab states.…  Seguir leyendo »

Donald Trump giving a statement after the eighth day of his trial for falsifying business records, New York City, April 26, 2024

MundoAmérica,

On April 25 the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. United States, on whether a former president enjoys immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while in office. The Court did not need to accept the case; it could easily have passed on former President Donald Trump’s extraordinary claims of blanket immunity and allowed his trial on federal felony charges for attempting to overthrow the 2020 election to go forward. But since a federal grand jury in Washington indicted him over the election, the Court has done everything possible, as I argued recently in these pages, to delay the case from being brought to trial: first by refusing to rule expeditiously on the immunity motions back in December, then by taking the case in February, then by setting oral arguments for the very last day on its schedule.…  Seguir leyendo »

Pedro Sánchez, leader of the Socialist Party (PSOE), and his wife Maria Begoña Gómez. Photograph: Pablo Blázquez Domínguez/Getty Images

EspañaAspectos Generales

Pedro Sánchez has built a reputation as a successful political gambler, but suspending public duties and threatening to resign, as he did last week, was a political bombshell. It was so extraordinary it led to five days of national puzzlement and the wildest speculation over his motives: from mental health to true love and all kinds of shenanigans associated with the dark arts of politics in between. His announcement that he would not, after all, be resigning, came as another surprise, even to some of his political allies.

The timing of this apparently self-inflicted political turmoil adds to its oddity. The centre-left socialist prime minister spent months putting together a fragile parliamentary majority after a close election in July 2023.…  Seguir leyendo »

Justin Trudeau Is No Match for a Polarized World

MundoAmérica

Political careers often end in failure — a cliché that exists because it too often happens to be true. Justin Trudeau, one of the world’s great progressive leaders, may be heading toward that moment. In a recent interview he acknowledged that every day he considers leaving his “crazy job” as Canada’s prime minister. Increasingly, the question is not if he will leave but how soon and how deep his failure will be when he goes.

At stake is something that matters more than one politician’s career: Canada’s contemporary liberal and multicultural society, which just happens to be the legacy of the prime minister’s father and predecessor, Pierre Trudeau.…  Seguir leyendo »

British Labour opposition leader Keir Starmer speaking in Bristol, United Kingdom, January 2024. Toby Melville / Reuters

Europa

The United Kingdom is likely to hold a general election in the fall, and the outlook appears dire for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Conservative Party. In December 2019, the Conservatives were reelected with an 80-seat majority in the House of Commons on the strength of campaign promises to “get Brexit done” and “level up” those parts of the country that had not broadly shared in the benefits of economic growth and investment. However, the illegal Downing Street parties during COVID-19 lockdowns, former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s fiscal meltdowns, and the creeping costs of Brexit have demolished what had seemed an unassailable lead.…  Seguir leyendo »

This Isn’t the China I Remember

MundoAsia

In 1979 my mother pulled out a Band-Aid in a Nanjing hospital. The nurses clustered around it, amazed. “The West has everything!” they said.

We were on a family visit to China, where my Shanghai relatives were similarly wowed by our excellent teeth and ample body fat, not to mention our descriptions of American dishwashers, refrigerators and air-conditioning. And with the general awe came V.I.P. treatment. Hosts broke out bottles of expensive orange soda that they freely mixed with expensive warm beer. We could not escape drinking this any more than we could escape our government-assigned “guide”, whose job was to strictly monitor visitors like us.…  Seguir leyendo »

War Unbound

InternacionalOrden Mundial

Hamas’s attack on Israel and Israel’s response to it have been a disaster for civilians. In its October 7 massacre, Hamas sought out unarmed Israeli civilians, including women, children, and the elderly, killing close to 1,200 people and taking around 240 hostages. Israel’s subsequent air and ground campaign in Gaza has, as of March 2024, killed more than 30,000 people, an estimated two-thirds of whom were women and children. The Israeli offensive has also displaced some two million people (more than 85 percent of the population of Gaza), left more than a million people at risk of starvation, and damaged or destroyed some 150,000 civilian buildings.…  Seguir leyendo »

Why the Military Can’t Trust AI

MundoAmérica, ,

In 2022, OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT, a chatbot that uses large language models to mimic human conversations and to answer users’ questions. The chatbot’s extraordinary abilities sparked a debate about how LLMs might be used to perform other tasks—including fighting a war. Although for some, including the Global Legal Action Network, LLMs and other generative AI technologies hold the promise of more discriminate and therefore ethical uses of force, others, such as advisers from the International Committee of the Red Cross, have warned that these technologies could remove human decision-making from the most vital questions of life and death.

The U.S. Department of Defense is now seriously investigating what LLMs can do for the military.…  Seguir leyendo »