World

Monday

James Forsyth

What is behind the British PM’s threat to Russia?

British Prime Minister Theresa May has given Russia until Wednesday to explain why a nerve agent that it has developed was used in an attack in Salisbury, Wiltshire. She told the House of Commons that it was ‘highly likely’ that Russia was responsible for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter. She said that Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson had summoned the Russian Ambassador and put it to him that were only two explanations for what had happened, one that the Russian government itself was responsible or that Moscow has lost control of its stock of deadly nerve agents. I think it is safe to assume that no explanation, at least not one that would satisfy a reasonable observer, will be provided before Wednesday.

Friday

Jacob Heilbrunn

At last, an American president grasps the North Korean nettle

Donald Trump’s acceptance of Kim Jong-un’s invitation to meet is a master stroke. It’s exactly the kind of thing Ronald Reagan liked to do. Reagan, you may recall, announced his pursuit of a missile defence system in March 1983 on national television without alerting his advisors beforehand. Liberals went crazy. Then he decided to end the Cold War by reaching out to Mikhail Gorbachev. Conservatives went bonkers. Reagan, we were told, had become a useful idiot. Today he is hailed as a visionary by all and sundry. Whether Trump’s move will work depends in part on how eager the North Korean regime is to escape the increasingly draconian sanctions that have been imposed upon it.

Friday

Daniel McCarthy

Why Trump’s ‘trade war’ makes strategic sense

Has Donald Trump sparked off a trade war? His plans for a 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent tariff on aluminum have shocked friend and foe alike. China is outraged; so are Canada, Japan, and South Korea—allies that in fact export more steel to the U.S. than China does. They stand to be hurt worst if they aren’t granted exemptions or cut special deals by the president. Trump accuses the Chinese of 'dumping' steel into the American market, while the legal grounds for his new tariffs rest in the idea that strategically critical manufacturing is endangered by a diminished U.S. metals industry.

Thursday

iandouglas

Rolling tanks, plastic flowers and madness on parade: A visit to North Korea

As Kim Jong-un might blow up the world next year, if not this, and people are forever trying to work out what is going on in his country, perhaps it is worth describing a military parade I attended in Pyongyang a few years back. The occasion was the centenary of the birth of the current Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung, the founder of the Marxist monarchy who, despite his death more than two decades ago, remains Eternal Leader of the nation. Other attendees included some flotsam and jetsam of the Cold War, a reunion of the Axis of Evil and representatives from various other rogue states and immiserated nations. Presuming it to be one of the better covers under which to pass as an admirer of the regime, I claimed to be a schoolteacher from England.

Wednesday

Douglas Murray

Sharia law and the relative mercies of French justice

For many years, the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Tariq Ramadan, has been one of my closest enemies. In Switzerland and France this Islamist dauphin had a slightly hard time establishing his reputation. This was not just due to his poor scholarship (the basis of which lay in a fawning book about his grandad) but also to his double-speak in public debate and (at best) borderline Islamist views. In France these views were most famously exposed in a television debate with Nicolas Sarkozy in which Ramadan infamously could not bring himself to condemn the stoning of adulterers outright, merely calling for a ‘moratorium’ on the punishment.

Monday

Michael R. Auslin

China vs America: the espionage story of our time

Why aren’t spy stories sexy anymore? The revelations last year that Beijing destroyed America’s espionage ring inside China a few years ago, including executing a number of US informants, got a brief flurry of attention and then subsided beneath the waves. News reports of American bureaucrats arrested for passing information to the Chinese have also barely raised eyebrows. Now the ex-CIA agent suspected of being the mole that led to the collapse of America’s spy operations in China has been arrested, though on a lesser charge of simply possessing classified information. How long before Americans turn back to Donald Trump’s tweets or the latest #MeToo charges?

Tuesday

Harry Mount

Meghan Markle and the return of American Anglophilia

Prince Harry's imminent wedding to Meghan Markle will reinvigorate the dying special relationship between Britain and America. It is a boost for the fading American regard for the monarchy.In America, the mother country is increasingly the forgotten country – and it has been fading for a century, ever since the First World War. As Sellar and Yeatman put it in 1066 and All That, after the allied victory 'America was thus clearly top nation, and History came to a full stop'.As the increasingly weaker party in the 242-year affair, we cherish the special relationship much more than the dominant partner. That great Anglo-American WH Auden – an exile to New York, born in York – got it right: 'If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me'.

Saturday

Christopher Caldwell

If China backs Trump on North Korea he won’t like the quid pro quo

The first election day since Donald Trump was elected president a year ago brought a funereal mood to Washington that you could feel on the streets. The swamp, apparently, remains undrained. Elections for governor in Virginia and New Jersey and for mayor in New York City cheered the locals a bit, producing the expected victories for Democrats. Virginia was the most consequential of these. It seemed a harbinger of the next presidential race. The moderate, decidedly un-Trumpian Republican Ed Gillespie was accused of making ‘ugly racial appeals’ — this for expressing the opinion that the statues of Virginia’s Civil War heroes should not be razed in a frenzy of revisionism.

Saturday

Douglas Murray

The consequence of this new sexual counter-revolution? No sex at all

We are in the middle of a profound shift in our attitude towards sex. A sexual counter-revolution, if you will. And whereas the 1960s saw a freeing up of attitudes towards sex, pushing at boundaries, this counter-swing is turning sexual freedom into sexual fear, and nearly all sexual opportunities into a legalistic minefield. The rules are being redrawn with little idea of where the boundaries of this new sexual utopia will lie and less idea still of whether any sex will be allowed in the end. It is partly whipped along by the fact that each episode in the revolution is so grimly fascinating, and each has its own internal propulsions. For instance, nobody outside Hollywood could regret the disgrace of an overpraised toad who spent far too long surrounded by overly attractive people.

Douglas Murray

The consequence of this new sexual counter-revolution? No sex at all

We are in the middle of a profound shift in our attitude towards sex. A sexual counter-revolution, if you will. And whereas the 1960s saw a freeing up of attitudes towards sex, pushing at boundaries, this counter-swing is turning sexual freedom into sexual fear, and nearly all sexual opportunities into a legalistic minefield. The rules are being redrawn with little idea of where the boundaries of this new sexual utopia will lie and less idea still of whether any sex will be allowed in the end. It is partly whipped along by the fact that each episode in the revolution is so grimly fascinating, and each has its own internal propulsions. For instance, nobody outside Hollywood could regret the disgrace of an overpraised toad who spent far too long surrounded by overly attractive people.