WORLD ROUNDUPHave We Learnt Any Lessons from the Dystopia of Covid Lockdown? | Iraq and the Pathologies of Primacy | Haiti’s Police in Retreat, and more
· How the Iraq War Bent America’s Army Out of Shape
As it exhausted itself battling insurgents, China re-armed
· Iraq and the Pathologies of Primacy
The flawed logic that produced the war is alive and well
· Have We Learnt Any Lessons from the Dystopia of Covid Lockdown?
“Lockdown” is a word that turned out to be as changeable as the virus
· As Haiti’s Police Retreat, Gangs Take Over Much of the Capital
The outgunned, outnumbered, underpaid, and demoralizednational police is in retreat
· Skilled Migrants Aren’t Interested in Germany
Why Europe’s biggest economy can’t get the immigrants it desperately needs
· If China Arms Russia, the U.S. Should Kill China’s Aircraft Industry
The West can bring China’s commercial aircraft industry to a halt
· Rare Earths Supply Chains and Confrontation with China
China controls more than 70% of the world’s extraction capability and nearly 90% of the world’s processing capacity
· Ex-Spy Says MI5 Did Not Want Real IRA Leader Arrested
Informer inside a dissident Irish republican group says MI5 did not want its leader arrested
· 2 Jewish Teens Indicted on Terror Charges for January Firebombing of Herzliya Mosque
Terrorists considered lynching Arab Israeli but instead decided to target mosque
How the Iraq War Bent America’s Army Out of Shape (Economist)
The American-led coalition conquered Baghdad in just over three weeks, a remarkable display of raw military power against what was then the world’s fourth-largest standing army. But in the years that followed America was sucked into a campaign of nation-building and counter-insurgency against armed groups, including Sunni jihadists, disaffected members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and Shia militants. Barack Obama, then president, pulled American troops out in 2011, only to send many back after Islamic State, an al-Qaeda splinter, tore through northern Iraq and Syria in 2014. Around 2,500 American troops remain today.
“For much of the past two decades, Washington’s focus on the Middle East has reduced military readiness, distorted force-structure priorities and, until recently, left the joint force ill-equipped and unable to prepare adequately for high-end military competition with a peer adversary,” concluded a scathing assessment of Asian security trends published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think-tank, in June. A war that was waged in 2003 partly to awe adversaries and cement American military primacy has left long-lasting scars on the victor.
Iraq and the Pathologies of Primacy (Stephen Wertheim, Foreign Affairs)
Twenty years ago, the United States invaded Iraq. It spent a decade breaking the country and then trying to put it back together again. It spent another decade trying to forget. “We have met our responsibility,” U.S. President Barack Obama told the nation in 2010 while declaring a short-lived end to the U.S. combat mission in Iraq. “Now, it is time to turn the page.” (Cont.)
