• 140: When Antibiotics Stop Working: The Next Pandemic Is Already Here, submitted on 2022-03-01 05:27:30+08:00.
• 141: The Return of Containment: How the West Can Prevail Against the Kremlin, submitted on 2022-03-01 23:40:12+08:00.
• 142: The Beginning of the End for Putin?: Dictatorships Look Stable—Until They Aren’t, submitted on 2022-03-02 23:26:32+08:00.
• 143: Invasions Are Not Contagious: Russia’s War in Ukraine Doesn’t Presage a Chinese Assault on Taiwan, submitted on 2022-03-03 23:25:36+08:00.
• 144: What If Russia Loses?: A Defeat for Moscow Won’t Be a Clear Victory for the West, submitted on 2022-03-04 23:11:11+08:00.
• 145: Russia’s Menacing Mix of Religion and Nuclear Weapons: In the Kremlin, Faith and Force Go Hand in Hand, submitted on 2022-03-05 23:19:02+08:00.

140: When Antibiotics Stop Working: The Next Pandemic Is Already Here, submitted on 2022-03-01 05:27:30+08:00.

—– 140.1 —–2022-03-01 05:28:55+08:00:

[SS from the article by Ramanan Laxminarayan, Senior Research Scholar at Princeton University, and Sally Davies, Master of Trinity College at Cambridge University]

“Researchers at the University of Washington estimated that 1.3 million people die each year from bacterial infections that are resistant to antibiotics. Such infections kill more people annually than do HIV/AIDS, diarrhea, and malaria. Antibiotic resistance causes more deaths than any infectious disease apart from COVID-19 and tuberculosis.
These new estimates have brought the problem of antibiotic resistance out of the shadows and confirmed what most public health experts, researchers, and clinicians have known for a long time: the overuse of antibiotics risks making the drugs useless and brewing the next major health crisis. As incomes around the world have risen, so has the consumption of antibiotics—in particular in the agricultural sector, where the drugs are used at an industrial scale on animals. Such extensive use creates the conditions that allow bacteria to become resistant to the drugs. Antibiotic resistance could well become the leading cause of death by infectious disease in the coming years. In 2016, the United Nations General Assembly called for global action to protect the world’s antibiotics, but there has been little progress since. The consequences of inaction are serious. With antibiotics rendered ineffective, societies would return to a world of greater death and deteriorating life expectancy in which common surgeries, transplants, and chemotherapy become much more dangerous because of the high risk of untreatable infection.”

141: The Return of Containment: How the West Can Prevail Against the Kremlin, submitted on 2022-03-01 23:40:12+08:00.

—– 141.1 —–2022-03-01 23:41:09+08:00:

[SS from the article by Ivo H. Daalder, President of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former U.S. Ambassador to NATO.]

“A return to a robust policy of containment is now the West’s best option. The fundamental goal will remain the same as the old policy: to counter Russian expansionism, inflict real costs on the Russian regime, and encourage internal change that leads to the ultimate collapse of Putin and Putinism. Of course, it needs to be adapted to the realities as they exist today rather than those that prevailed at the end of World War II. In particular, Russia’s close ties to a strong and newly assertive China will have to be addressed proactively.Still, Russia isn’t the Soviet Union, a military and ideological colossus nearly equal to the United States. Although it remains a nuclear power, its military is a shadow of its former Soviet self, and its economy is smaller than Canada’s, which has a quarter of Russia’s population. Meanwhile, the West has grown stronger. The United States retains unrivaled military power and has an economy 13 times larger than that of Russia. Europe, a defeated continent scarred by war and poverty after World War II, has emerged as a cohesive economic giant with a military that, although underfunded, enjoys significant modern capabilities to defend against a stretched Russian military. As a result, although a policy of containment will not deliver swift success or victory, its steady application in the months and years ahead should drive the necessary change in Russia within the next five to ten years.”

142: The Beginning of the End for Putin?: Dictatorships Look Stable—Until They Aren’t, submitted on 2022-03-02 23:26:32+08:00.

—– 142.1 —–2022-03-02 23:27:37+08:00:

[SS from the article by Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Senior Fellow and Director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, and Erica Frantz, Associate Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University.]

“Whether or not Putin’s war of choice becomes the mistake that unseats him from power is an open question. But Russia is experiencing rising dissatisfaction from the public, fissures among its elite, and broad-based international punishment. Putin’s downfall may not come tomorrow or the day after, but his grip on power is certainly more tenuous than it was before he invaded Ukraine.”

143: Invasions Are Not Contagious: Russia’s War in Ukraine Doesn’t Presage a Chinese Assault on Taiwan, submitted on 2022-03-03 23:25:36+08:00.

—– 143.1 —–2022-03-03 23:26:54+08:00:

[SS from the article by Oriana Skylar Mastro, Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and a Senior Nonresident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.]

“As I have argued in Foreign Affairs, Chinese leaders are considering “armed reunification” with Taiwan more seriously than at any time in the last 50 years. But Xi will assert Chinese control over the island only if he is confident his military can conduct a successful amphibious invasion and if he believes the timing is right for his own career.
Shifts in the international environment would be important for Taiwan if they changed Xi’s thinking on either count. But the war in Ukraine has not. Xi’s views about U.S. power and resolve and about the likely international response to an invasion of Taiwan probably remain unchanged. If anything, China’s desire not to invite comparisons with Russia at a time when the world is united against Moscow will lengthen its timeline for taking control of Taiwan, not shorten it.”

144: What If Russia Loses?: A Defeat for Moscow Won’t Be a Clear Victory for the West, submitted on 2022-03-04 23:11:11+08:00.

—– 144.1 —–2022-03-04 23:12:41+08:00:

[SS from the article by Liana Fix, Resident Fellow at the German Marshall Fund and Michael Kimmage, Professor of History at the Catholic University of America and a Visiting Fellow at the German Marshall Fund.]

“Putin will be unable to win this war on his preferred terms. Indeed, there are several ways in which he could ultimately lose. He could mire his military in a costly and futile occupation of Ukraine, decimating the morale of Russia’s soldiers, consuming resources, and delivering nothing in return but the hollow ring of Russian greatness and a neighboring country reduced to poverty and chaos. He could create some degree of control over parts of eastern and southern Ukraine and probably Kyiv, while fighting a Ukrainian insurgency operating from the west and engaged in guerrilla warfare across the country—a scenario that would be reminiscent of the partisan warfare that took place in Ukraine during World War II. At the same time, he would preside over the gradual economic degradation of Russia, its growing isolation, and its increasing inability to supply the wealth on which great powers rely. And, most consequentially, Putin could lose the support of the Russian people and elites, on whom he depends to prosecute the war and maintain his hold on power, even though Russia is not a democracy.

Putin seems to be trying to reestablish some form of Russian imperialism. But in taking this extraordinary gamble, he seems to have failed to recall the events that set in motion the end of the Russian empire. The final Russian tsar, Nicholas II, lost a war against Japan in 1905. He later fell victim to the Bolshevik Revolution, losing not just his crown but his life. The lesson: autocratic rulers cannot lose wars and remain autocrats.”

145: Russia’s Menacing Mix of Religion and Nuclear Weapons: In the Kremlin, Faith and Force Go Hand in Hand, submitted on 2022-03-05 23:19:02+08:00.

—– 145.1 —–2022-03-05 23:20:02+08:00:

[SS from the article by Dmitry Adamsky, Professor at the School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, Reichman University]

“If Putin uses religion to enhance nuclear coercion, his actions may start to resemble “madman theory,” in which a leader acts somewhat irrationally in order to make his threats appear credible. If coercive signals that combine nuclear brandishing with messianic rhetoric start arriving from Moscow, it will be a brand-new experience for the world. The West will have even more trouble analyzing Putin and discerning his plans.”