WORLD ROUNDUPRussia Is Helping Prepare China to Attack Taiwan | Israel Can No Longer Wish Palestine Away | Has Pakistan Extended Its Nuclear Umbrella to Riyadh?, and more
· Microsoft Disables Some Services to Israel’s Defense Ministry
· Drones Flown Near Military Airbases in Denmark “Part of Putin’s Strategy”
· Europe’s Hippopotamus Strategy for Handling Trump
· Israel Can No Longer Wish Palestine Away
· What an Israel-Syria Security Deal Could Mean for the Middle East
· Why Autocracies Threaten War: The Case of Venezuela and Guyana
· Goodbye Petrostates, Hello “Electrostates”: How the Clean Energy Shift Is Reshaping the World Order
· Russia Is Helping Prepare China to Attack Taiwan, Documents Suggest
· Has Pakistan Extended Its Nuclear Umbrella to Riyadh? No One Will Say.
· Israel Is Flattening Parts of Gaza City
Microsoft Disables Some Services to Israel’s Defense Ministry (Sheera Frenkel, New York Times)
Microsoft said it found that Israel was violating some terms of service for its products and that it does “not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians.”
Drones Flown Near Military Airbases in Denmark “Part of Putin’s Strategy” (Oliver Moody, The Times)
The activity at Aalborg and other airports follows incidents at Copenhagen and Oslo that caused closures and disruption two days ago.
Europe’s Hippopotamus Strategy for Handling Trump (Agathe Demarais, Foreign Policy)
EU policymakers should channel their inner naturalists as they adapt to Trumponomics.
Hippopotamuses are baffling. At first glance, these creatures look calm, slow, and placid as they wallow lazily in muddy pools. Looks, however, can be deceiving. Survivors of hippo encounters tell of the unpredictable, ferocious charges that make hippopotamuses the deadliest wild mammal on earth, killing around 500 people each year. (That’s 23 times more than lions.) Humans have few good options to defend against 6,000 pounds of erratically charging hippo. Negotiation is not much of an option—it is hard to stop a hippo with offers of food. Experts advise that the best strategy is to avoid hippos altogether. If all else fails, then playing dead can be a reasonable Plan B.
Since the return of U.S. President Donald Trump to the White House in January, European leaders have been confronting a charging hippo situation. U.S. policies are unpredictable, fast-changing, and often baffling. No one knows whether Trump is about to charge or let go. Negotiation rarely works, not least because it is hard to find out what he ultimately wants.
Israel Can No Longer Wish Palestine Away (Shira Efron, Foreign Affairs)
But symbolic statehood is no panacea for the Palestinians.
What an Israel-Syria Security Deal Could Mean for the Middle East (Dario Sabaghi, New Arab)
If agreed, the US-brokered security pact could bolster Israel’s influence, constrain Syria’s sovereignty, and complicate other regional tensions
