World

The legacy of John McCain was on full view in the halls of Congress this week, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers repeatedly invoked his legacy to demand that Russia release a journalist detained for criticizing Vladimir Putin. One year ago, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian political dissident and journalist, was arrested by Putin’s regime on trumped-up charges of spreading false information about Russia’s military during a speech he gave in McCain’s home state of Arizona. To commemorate his detention, and to call for his release, the McCain Institute hosted an event in the nation’s capital where lawmakers from both parties — who served jointly with McCain for almost 100 years between them — rallied to Kara-Murza’s defense.

Why should the man presiding over the single greatest cause of death for people ages eighteen to forty-five in America be reframed as a hero for social traditionalism? We live in strange times. Sohrab Ahmari wrote in defense of Andrés Manuel López Obrador's "irrepressible social conservatism" last week, views which he also promoted to Fox News audiences this weekend. Ahmari described AMLO as a "man of the old left" who is "not a cultural progressive." "In Latin America, there is this possibility of this combination of being relatively on the left on economic issues, but culturally conservative," Ahmari said. "AMLO represents that." Sadly, this is an example of hopes outpacing reality and searching for a foreign model that largely doesn't exist.

Vladimir Kara-Murza dies hard. He has withstood not one but two poisoning attempts by Vladimir Putin's government. He has withstood the targeting of Russia's officials. And he has borne the ramifications of the West's turn away from confrontation with a regime he understands for its villainy. Now, Kara-Murza is facing what could be a final challenge — a trial against him based on the 2022 laws against "misinformation" about the Russian military in the Ukraine war, by an authoritarian regime bent on silencing all its critics and sending them into the dark quiet of a cell where they will end their days. Kara-Murza is forty-one, the father of three, a former advisor to assassinated Putin critic Boris Nemtsov and a longtime advocate against the regime.

God bless Emmanuel Macron for his perseverance and self-confidence. The French president seeks to lead Europe and turn the continent into a strong, independent player in its own right. And he is eager to take on the hard, thankless diplomatic work that few of his peers are willing to do. Whether it was his ploy in 2019 to connect then-US president Donald Trump and then-Iranian president Hassan Rouhani on the phone or his months-long, intensive personal dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin before the war in Ukraine, Macron invests a lot of time and capital into these gambits. Unfortunately for him, many of them fail to accomplish anything of substance. Macron wasn’t able to convince Rouhani to speak with Trump (although Trump reportedly agreed to the call).

I almost feel sorry for John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman tasked with tidying up after the icky messes deposited about the landscape by Joe Biden.  Let me emphasize the adverb “almost.” Kirby’s job is unenviable. Basically he has to lie and pretend that his boss and that excruciating, illiterate muppet of a press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, make sense. It’s always a horrible goulash that Kirby has to contend with. He has my sympathy for that.  But yesterday, when Kirby stood before the press to answer questions about the administration’s report on Ameirca’s humiliating flight from Afghanistan in August 2021, his performance was not just cringe-making. It was infuriating.

After thirteen months of war, Ukraine’s infrastructure is in a dire state. Its armies are preparing for a counteroffensive, and its economy is not likely to fare any better this year than it did in the last. Kyiv will need more money from the West — and the West will have to provide. The need is clear, but the will, in the United States and Europe, less so. Thankfully there is a way around this looming problem, courtesy of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.  Representative Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma has submitted the Make Russia Pay Act, which authorizes the federal government to seize, deem as forfeited, and liquidate Russian assets that are currently frozen in the US.

Haiti tends to not get much attention in the American press, but it should. The country has descended into a state of near-anarchy, with gangs ruling the streets and the government more or less nonfunctional. There has not been an election since 2016, and both the legislative and executive branches of government have no elected officials in office. The country has been ruled by an unelected prime minister, Ariel Henry, since the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. Elections are tentatively planned for this year, but the timeline is not yet set. The crisis in Haiti is a problem for the whole region, including the United States.

On April 30, Paraguayans will go to the polls to select a new president. Though elections in the landlocked South American nation do not typically make headlines around the world, this vote carries outsized geopolitical importance: it could mean Taiwan loses yet another country to China. Opposition candidate Efraín Alegre of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party, or PLRA, has said that, should he win, he will retract Paraguay’s recognition of Taiwan as a country. At present, Paraguay is the largest of just fourteen countries to have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan and the only one in South America. Paraguay first recognized Taipei in 1957 while under the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner.

Relationships between dictators are bound to be a bit strange, but Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin’s stands out for its theatrical quality. Meetings are carefully choreographed for maximum propaganda effect. Lavish gifts and gilded state rooms are the norm. Fluent in the language of autocratic flattery, the two always have gushing praise for each other. In 2019, before traveling to Russia, Xi said that Putin was his “best and bosom friend,” while just a year earlier Putin praised Xi as being a “remarkable thinker” and “a good friend I can count on.” Leading up to this week’s visit, Putin referred to Xi as his “good old friend,” and recalling Confucius, wrote, “Isn’t it a joy when a friend comes from afar!