** Weekly Round-Up
Quincy in the news
May 3, 2020
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Toward sustainable self-sufficiency
By Andrew Bacevich, President
RealClear Defense, 4/28/20
So this is how it happens: American global hegemony ending not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with shoppers in homemade facemasks wondering why grocery shelves are half-empty.
In the United States, shelves are always supposed to be chockful. People of Plenty is the title of a book that the noted historian David Potter published in 1954. And so we have always been in our own eyes and in the eyes of others around the world. Or so at least we and they have come to believe and expect.
READ HERE ([link removed][UNIQID])
How to tell whether crazy North Korean stories are true
By Jessica Lee, Senior Research Fellow for East Asia
Foreign Policy, 4/30/20
It has been a week since rumors of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s death surfaced, and Americans still don’t know if he is dead or alive. Clearly, the Western media is in the dark about the intricacies of North Korea. But are North Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and South Korean media—which are often quoted as if they were monolithic or infallible—any better?
READ HERE ([link removed][UNIQID])
Trump can either leave the Middle East or have war with Iran
By Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President
RealClear Defense, 4/30/20
“Everybody who has touched the Middle East has gotten bogged down.” Candidate Donald Trump rightly pointed this out in October 2015 as he laid out his vision for a foreign policy that would end America’s forever wars and extract America from its Mideast quagmires. Trump not only tapped into public anger toward Washington’s indifference to the American people’s pain and suffering, but he also pointed to America’s indisputable interest in ending misguided foreign adventures and refocus on domestic needs. President Trump, however, speaks of leaving the region while doing precious little about it. Nowhere has his policy contradicted his promise to get out of the Middle East more than his maximum pressure strategy on Iran.
READ HERE ([link removed][UNIQID])
Kissing The Carter Doctrine Goodbye (Shouldn’t Be This Hard)
By Andrew Bacevich, President
The American Conservative, 5/2/20
Writing in Foreign Policy, three distinguished members of the foreign policy establishment—Hal Brands of Johns Hopkins, Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Ken Pollack of the American Enterprise Institute—have issued a warning: Don’t look now, but President Trump appears intent on repudiating the Carter Doctrine. If he does, all the great successes achieved by U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf over the past several decades will be lost. This, they want you to believe, would be a terrible thing.
READ HERE ([link removed][UNIQID])
MORE MORE MORE
* The blob attacks: gaslighting or just gasbagging? ([link removed][UNIQID]) by Kelly Beaucar Vlahos/ Cited: Andrew Bacevich, President, The American Conservative, 4/30/20
* Covid-19: what we can learn from wartime efforts ([link removed][UNIQID]) by Adrienne Bernhard/Quoted: Mary Dudziak, Non-Resident Fellow, BBC, 4/30/20
* South Korean workers fear extended furlough amid cost-sharing standoff with US ([link removed][UNIQID]) by Kim Gamel and Yoo Kyong Chang/ Quoted: Jessica Lee, Senior Research Fellow for East Asia, Stars and Stripes, 4/30/20
* The Trump administration is suddenly pretending that it didn’t blow up the Iran nuclear deal ([link removed][UNIQID]) by Fred Kaplan/ Quoted: Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President, Slate, 4/28/20
* Economic sanctions: an alternative to war or war by alternative means? ([link removed][UNIQID]) by Matthew Petti/ Quoted: Trita Parsi, Executive Vice President, The National Interest, 4/28/20
* Kim Jong-un’s health isn’t North Korea’s biggest problem ([link removed][UNIQID]) by Heather Hurlburt/ Quoted: Jessica Lee, Senior Research Fellow for East Asia, New York Magazine, 4/28/20
* Right-wing think tanks are using Covid-19 to push war with Iran ([link removed][UNIQID]) by Sarah Lazare/ Quoted: Eli Clifton, Director of Democratizing Foreign Policy, In These Times, 4/27/20
* Book review — MBS: the rise to power of Mohammed bin Salma ([link removed][UNIQID]) n ([link removed][UNIQID]&mc_cid=c4ea744877&mc_eid=[UNIQID]) by Annelle Sheline, Research Fellow for Middle East, Responsible Statecraft, 4/30/20
* Five ways to reset US foreign policy amid the COVID-19 crisis ([link removed][UNIQID]) by Diana Ohlbaum, Responsible Statecraft, 5/1/20
* Continuity in Oman’s problems and policy prescriptions ([link removed][UNIQID]) by Imad Harb, Responsible Statecraft, 5/1/20
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