• 26: [deleted by user], submitted on 2021-09-15 22:49:36+08:00.
• 27: The United States of Sanctions, submitted on 2021-09-15 22:52:00+08:00.
• 28: The United States of Sanctions, submitted on 2021-09-15 22:58:03+08:00.
• 29: The United States of Sanctions: The Use and Abuse of Economic Coercion, submitted on 2021-09-15 23:23:51+08:00.
• 30: North Korea’s Nuclear Family: How the Kims Got the Bomb and Why They Won’t Give It Up, submitted on 2021-09-15 23:42:36+08:00.
• 31: How China Exports Authoritarianism: Beijing’s Money and Technology Is Fueling Repression Worldwide, submitted on 2021-09-17 02:02:22+08:00.

26: [deleted by user], submitted on 2021-09-15 22:49:36+08:00.

—– 26.1 —–2021-09-15 22:49:58+08:00:

[SS from the essay]

“Washington’s fixation with sanctions has little to do with their efficacy and everything to do with something else: American decline. No longer an unchallenged superpower, the United States can’t throw its weight around the way it used to.”

27: The United States of Sanctions, submitted on 2021-09-15 22:52:00+08:00.

—– 27.1 —–2021-09-15 22:52:12+08:00:

[SS from article] “Washington’s fixation with sanctions has little to do with their efficacy and everything to do with something else: American decline. No longer an unchallenged superpower, the United States can’t throw its weight around the way it used to.”

28: The United States of Sanctions, submitted on 2021-09-15 22:58:03+08:00.

—– 28.1 —–2021-09-15 22:59:37+08:00:

Read Daniel W. Drezner on why Washington needs to remedy its overreliance on economic sanctions as a tool of foreign policy: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-08-24/united-states-sanctions

29: The United States of Sanctions: The Use and Abuse of Economic Coercion, submitted on 2021-09-15 23:23:51+08:00.

—– 29.1 —–2021-09-15 23:26:57+08:00:

[SS from the essay by Daniel Drezner, Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.]

This reliance on economic sanctions would be natural if they were especially effective at getting other countries to do what Washington wants, but they’re not. The most generous academic estimate of sanctions’ efficacy—a 2014 study relying on a data set maintained by the University of North Carolina—found that, at best, sanctions lead to concessions between one-third and one-half of the time. A 2019 Government Accountability Office study concluded that not even the federal government was necessarily aware when sanctions were working. Officials at the Treasury, State, and Commerce Departments, the report noted, “stated they do not conduct agency assessments of the effectiveness of sanctions in achieving broader U.S. policy goals.”

The truth is that Washington’s fixation with sanctions has little to do with their efficacy and everything to do with something else: American decline. No longer an unchallenged superpower, the United States can’t throw its weight around the way it used to. In relative terms, its military power and diplomatic influence have declined. Two decades of war, recession, polarization, and now a pandemic have dented American power. Frustrated U.S. presidents are left with fewer arrows in their quiver, and they are quick to reach for the easy, available tool of sanctions.

The problem, however, is that sanctions are hardly cost free. They strain relations with allies, antagonize adversaries, and impose economic hardship on innocent civilians. Thus, sanctions not only reveal American decline but accelerate it, too.

30: North Korea’s Nuclear Family: How the Kims Got the Bomb and Why They Won’t Give It Up, submitted on 2021-09-15 23:42:36+08:00.

—– 30.1 —–2021-09-15 23:47:31+08:00:

[SS from the essay by Sue Mi Terry, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. A former CIA analyst, she served on the National Security Council in 2008–9]

North Korea is still unlikely to launch a nuclear attack against the United States, knowing it would suffer devastating retaliation. But an emboldened North Korean regime with growing nuclear capabilities could resort to increasingly reckless behavior, such as conventional strikes, terrorist plots, or cyberattacks. Japan and South Korea, in turn, could lose confidence in the U.S. nuclear umbrella and feel compelled to field their own nuclear weapons, setting off a destabilizing nuclear arms race across the region. Moreover, if North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, believes that his nuclear and missile programs provide some degree of protection for his misbehavior, his cash-strapped regime could be tempted to sell nuclear weapons, materials, or expertise to other states and nonstate actors. (In the past, North Korea helped build a nuclear reactor in Syria and sold missiles to Iran, Myanmar, and other countries.) In short, a nuclear-armed North Korea is a security nightmare for Washington even if the regime never uses its arsenal, and the years ahead could prove a turning point for the region.
North Korea’s nuclear program has been a thorn in the side of five American presidents, sometimes approaching crisis levels, sometimes receding to secondary importance. But over the past few years, as Pyongyang’s warheads have come into striking distance of the American heartland, the threat has become a qualitatively different one. If the United States ever had an opportunity to turn back the clock on North Korea’s nuclear program—and it is far from clear that it ever did—that moment has passed. That this change was so long in the making has inured analysts and policymakers to its gravity. But before long, a crisis is all but certain to drive home how much more difficult and dangerous the North Korean nuclear challenge has become. This realization requires a new approach: one that considers the lessons of Pyongyang’s successful quest, in defiance of broad international opposition and consistent U.S. efforts, to become a nuclear power—and one that recognizes how much more constrained U.S. options in North Korea have become.

31: How China Exports Authoritarianism: Beijing’s Money and Technology Is Fueling Repression Worldwide, submitted on 2021-09-17 02:02:22+08:00.

—– 31.1 —–2021-09-17 02:05:58+08:00:

[SS from the article by Charles Edel, Global Fellow at the Wilson Center, and David O. Shullman, Director of the China Global Hub at the Atlantic Council.]

Although some analysts continue to argue that China does not pose an ideological threat to prevailing democratic norms and that the CCP does not export its ideology, it is clear that the CCP has embarked on a drive to promote its style of authoritarianism to illiberal actors around the world. Its goal is not to spread Marxism or to undermine individual democracies but rather to achieve political and economic preeminence, and its efforts to that effect—spreading propaganda, expanding information operations, consolidating economic influence, and meddling in foreign political systems—are hollowing out democratic institutions and norms within and between countries.

To respond to Beijing’s ideological challenge, advocates of democracy must have a better understanding of what China aims to achieve by exporting its political model and how its actions are weakening democracy globally. Only then can they effectively design policies that will reinvigorate democracy at home and abroad while selectively seeking to counter Beijing’s promotion of authoritarian governance.