Today's WorldView: 'Dunkirk' and the West's myopia about World War II
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• International pressure is ratcheting up on North Korea in the wake of its repeated ballistic missile tests. On Saturday, the United Nations Security Council passed a new round of punitive sanctions on Pyongyang with the significant assent of permanent members China and Russia. The Chinese, historic allies of North Korea, are now displaying their impatience with the dictatorial regime of Kim Jong Un.
“Do not violate the U.N.’s decision or provoke international society’s goodwill,” said the Chinese foreign minister at the ASEAN regional conference in Manila. The summit was attended by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who sought to enlist other nations to pressure Pyongyang after the sanctions passed.
U.S. diplomats stress that they’re not pushing regime change, and that they want the North Koreans to submit to negotiations. “Certainly we want to resolve this issue through negotiations, and this pressure campaign, the sanctions, it’s all about trying to convince the North Koreans that the fast way forward is to come back to the table and talk,” said Susan Thornton, the assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
Meanwhile, prominent Singaporean former diplomat and public intellectual Kishore Mahbubani discusses how ASEAN, much maligned in the past for its perceived fecklessness, ought to be seen as a template for global governance.
• The situation in Venezuela continues to deteriorate. On Sunday, authorities put down a small insurrection at a military base near the city of Valencia, arresting seven men who they say participated in a "terrorist attack" against the government of unpopular leftist President Nicolás Maduro, according to Reuters:
“Venezuela's armed forces issued a statement calling the rebellion an ill-fated ‘propaganda show’ aimed at destabilizing the country and reaffirmed their allegiance to Maduro.
"Authorities said the men were mercenaries working for a U.S.-backed opposition to bring down nearly two decades of Socialism in oil-rich Venezuela, raising the specter of a further government crackdown on dissent in coming days.
"'These attacks, planned by delirious minds in Miami, only strengthen the morale of our armed forces and the Bolivarian people,’ said Socialist Party official Elias Jaua.”
Some in the opposition have staked their hopes on the military turning against Maduro and his allies, but observers believe too many high-ranking officers and top brass have benefited from the regime’s largesse and lucrative government contracts.
• Israel plans to shut down the offices and revoke the credentials of Qatari-funded network Al Jazeera and its journalists, arguing that the channel is guilty of “incitement.” Government officials, though, did not offer specific examples to my colleagues to justify the decision. From my colleague Loveday Morris:
“Accusing Al Jazeera of incitement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed last month to shut down its Jerusalem bureau amid clashes between Israeli authorities and Palestinian worshipers over access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque site in Jerusalem’s Old City. However, his office declined to give specific examples of content they deemed to have stoked tensions."
However, Al Jazeera sees Israel operating in lockstep with Qatar’s adversarial neighbors, who have imposed a diplomatic and trade boycott on the Qataris for the past two months:
"The collusion by Netanyahu with his Arab autocratic neighbors leaves little doubt that free independent media and truth are ready to be sacrificed as collateral damage in the power politics of the region,” wrote Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem bureau chief, Walid Omary, in an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “Since its inception, Al Jazeera has provided Israel with a rare conduit for airing its viewpoints to Arab and Muslim audiences and participating in dialogue with them.” |
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A man carries a child in front of campaign posters showing Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga on Aug. 6. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)
Face-off
A concrete bridge and a narrow, garbage-filled river divide the slum of Mathare in Nairobi into two parts, a space between ethnic groups and voting blocs that are competing fiercely — and many say dangerously — over Kenya’s presidential elections scheduled for Tuesday.
On one side of the rutted bridge is a community of ethnic Kikuyus, the tribe of incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta, 55. On the other side are the Luos, the tribe of opposition candidate Raila Odinga, 72. Most days, those tribes peacefully coexist. But as the election approaches, the river is a line not to be crossed.
For all of Kenya’s success and modernization, its elections are still decided almost exclusively by ethnicity, with the Kikuyus and Luos at the forefront of a fractured electorate. Since Kenya became independent in 1963, three of its four presidents have been Kikuyu. A Luo has entered, and lost, every presidential election.
“There’s no ideological daylight between the candidates,” said Murithi Mutiga, a researcher for the International Crisis Group. “It’s just about numbers that the ethnic alliances will bring them.”
In 2007, a tightly contested race devolved into ethnic violence that left 1,200 dead, with swaths of Mathare burning to the ground and young men clashing with machetes. Kenyatta and William Ruto, his current vice president, were among those charged by the International Criminal Court for inciting violence. Both cases were later dropped for lack of evidence.
Odinga, the son of a former vice president and himself a prime minister from 2008 to 2013, has lost three presidential elections since 1997. It’s likely that this might be his last attempt at the presidency, and Odinga has already said that the only way he could lose is if the results are rigged.
Last week, when Chris Msando, an election official, was found dead, with signs of torture on his body, Odinga supporters said it was an early sign that the vote could be marred. Msando was one of few officials with access to the country’s computerized voting system. So far, there are no indications of who killed him. Human Rights Watch called his death “catastrophic” for the election preparations.
On Friday, families in Mathare were packing their belongings, preparing to leave the slum before possible violence. Some of Odinga's supporters have suggested that a loss would translate into immediate bloodshed. “If he loses,” said Akal Nicholas, a Luo lab technician, "Kenya will burn." — Kevin Sieff
A woman browses in a Moscow newsstand among papers featuring President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on July 8. (Kirill Kudryatsev/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)
The big question(s)
Reporting from Russia in 2017 is, predictably, a somewhat fraught adventure. Even as ties between Washington and Moscow continue to deteriorate — and the Russian government's tolerance for a free press remains low — the appetite for stories on election meddling and potential ties to President Trump grows ever greater. So The Post's Russia team — Moscow bureau chief David Filipov, Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth and national security editor Peter Finn — took to Reddit over the weekend to answer questions on just what it's like to cover this story right now. The whole chat is well worth your time, but here are some of the most interesting moments:
Are you ever afraid of repercussions from the Russian government due to your reporting?
Filipov: We have to constantly watch what we do and say, and follow the laws, because you can get in trouble here if you don't. But that's just like reporting anywhere. My feeling is that the Russian government wants its reporters to work in the US, so they aren't going to constantly give us a hard time. What's difficult is getting official sources to talk!
What are some generalizations of how the Russian people view the American people?
Filipov: That Americans are not their government, they want to be friends, they are a big nation like Russia, friendly, prosperous. But in the past 25 years since the end of the Cold War, the predominant view is that America did not want Russia to join the West, it wanted the West to subvert Russia ... In general, there's a sense that Americans talk about friendship while they're trying to roll you.
Is the Russian public generally aware of the reputation of the Washington Post and the role it's taken in reporting on the recent Russia-related scandals? And has that affected how Russians, or particularly Russian officials, interact with you on a professional basis?
Roth: Russian officials know about the reputation of the Washington Post, and in some cases that reduces their willingness to talk to us. It's not quite the reception you expect for Radio Free Europe or Voice of America, but we're getting there. To the general public, if you tell someone you're from the "Vashington Post" they hear "Washington" and get the picture. That said, there are plenty of people who take a chance on working with us, plus sources that we've been working with for years, and nothing has really changed. |
It seems like we'll never escape some Russia story or another, doesn't it? The New York Times has an explanation of why that seems to be the case, while The Post urges the U.S. to stand up to disinformation from Moscow and other corners. Elsewhere, the Guardian sees good news in the U.N.'s vote against North Korea this weekend, while Al Jazeera runs down what's at stake beyond Kenya's borders in the country's election this week.
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Parenting is hard enough without having to worry whether or not the state will remove your children from your custody. But in a deeply reported piece, The New Yorker explores why that worry is much more oppressive for some Americans than others. Meanwhile, The Post learns more about a celebration of twins in a small Ohio town that was founded by a pair, while The New York Times reports on how air conditioners have become ubiquitous in parts of the country where they were once a rarity.
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 The United Arab Emirates are a valuable U.S. ally, one American officials have nicknamed "Little Sparta” thanks to its zeal in expanding its fight against terrorism. But as the UAE has boosted its military capabilities, it's also running afoul of — even undermining — American policy goals in places like Yemen and Libya, both home to grinding and brutal wars, and in the dispute with Qatar. “It’s great that we have a partner in the Emiratis," said a former senior U.S. official, "but we don’t always see eye to eye." (Adam Schreck/Associated Press) |
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