Washington Is Losing Credibility Over the Canada-India Spat | Sudden End to a Long, Bloody Conflict in the Caucasus | EU Is Letting Hungary and Poland Erode Democracy, and more

But the self-declared state in the mountainous enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh — recognized by no other country — vanished so quickly last week that its ethnic Armenian population had only minutes to pack before abandoning their homes and joining an exodus driven by fears of ethnic cleansing by a triumphant Azerbaijan.
After surviving more than three decades of on-off war and pressure from big outside powers to give up, or at least narrow, its ambitions as a separate country with its own president, army, flag and government, the Republic of Artsakh inside the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan collapsed almost overnight.

E.U. Law Sets the Stage for a Clash Over Disinformation  (Steven Lee Myers, New York Times)
A new European Union law aiming to combat harmful disinformation could force the world’s social media platforms to do more to fight it — or else face fines of up to 6 percent of a company’s revenue.
The law, the Digital Services Act, is intended to force social media giants to adopt new policies and practices to address accusations that they routinely host — and, through their algorithms, popularize — corrosive content. If the measure is successful, as officials and experts hope, its effects could extend far beyond Europe, changing company policies in the United States and elsewhere.
The law, years of painstaking bureaucracy in the making, reflects a growing alarm in European capitals that the unfettered flow of disinformation online — much of it fueled by Russia and other foreign adversaries — threatens to erode the democratic governance at the core of the European Union’s values.
Europe’s effort sharply contrasts with the fight against disinformation in the United States, which has become mired in political and legal debates over what steps, if any, the government may take in shaping what the platforms allow on their sites.

The EU Is Letting Hungary and Poland Erode Democracy  (Edit Zgut-Przybylska, Foreign Policy)
Media capture is one of the great causes of democratic backsliding in Central and Eastern Europe. Next month’s elections in Poland, despite a burgeoning cash-for-visas scandal rocking the incumbent administration, is largely being framed around a nonsensical referendum question on supposed EU efforts to push illegal migrants into the country.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the chairman of the country’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), is borrowing from the playbook of his Hungarian counterpart, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, by stoking fears of foreign interference and by harnessing informal power, which could undermine the fairness of the elections.
These governments used a threefold informal toolkit to consolidate control over the state and the society. First, clientelist corruption is central to controlling economic power by keeping political and economic opponents sidelined. Second, media capture is the linchpin of these regimes, used to boost the government’s support and undermine dissident voices. Third, the government is tilting the playing field with vote-buying as well as economic and policy coercion that has a negative effect on the integrity of the elections. This all comes against a backdrop of ongoing legal action taken by the EU against Poland for its persistent disregard for democratic standards and the core values of the European bloc.
For the first time, last year, the European Commission triggered the rule of law conditionality mechanism against Hungary in response to democratic backsliding. This new instrument aims to protect the budget and financial interests of the EU in the face of rule-of-law breaches, such as systemic irregularities in public procurement.
Both Orban’s Fidesz and Kaczynski’s PiS are tilting the playing field illegally and behind the scenes, in ways that are hard to detect, in order to sideline their opponents and silence critical views.
The extent to which both administrations have weakened checks and balances and undermined democratic institutions in their countries is little known to many in Europe. And this is not surprising, given that neither employs openly oppressive methods in pursuit of their aims: Instead, they both instrumentalize the law to fit their authoritarian goals.
The EU cannot be half in and half out in its engagements with administrations that are have no intention of playing by the rules of the European bloc. It has to play hardball and use every tool at its disposal if it is to safeguard the democracy of these two countries.

Monroe Mourns: America’s Latin America Strategy Needs a Revamp  (Haydon N. Parham, National Interest)
Ever since December 2, 1823, the United States has been committed to the independence of Latin America. While the precise interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine and its implications have varied over the past 200 years, the core interests of the United States have not. South and Central America is one of the few areas that could actually threaten the U.S. heartland, and American statesmen have long recognized this fact.
However, this recognition has been lost on recent administrations. A mix of regional populism and sheer American ineptitude allows American adversaries to gain footholds that could quickly turn into regional power.