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November 2020

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The World Still Watches America Fears of waning soft power aside, the U.S. remains the example of free democracy. By Walter Russell Mead

By on November 3rd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-world-still-watches-america-11604360015?mod

For the 58th time since George Washington headed to New York for his first inauguration, U.S. voters are choosing the president, and again the eyes of the world are firmly fixed on the spectacle.

This is partly because American policy still matters. Will Donald Trump or Joe Biden be strong enough to manage a deteriorating U.S.-China relationship—and smart enough to still preserve the elements of cooperation that benefit both parties? What role will the president play in the global recovery from the pandemic? Will he embrace international institutions like the World Trade Organization and agreements like the Paris climate accords, or will he undermine them? How will he deal with rancorous countries like Russia, Turkey and Iran? Will he side with traditional allies in Europe and the Middle East, or will he look for new relationships in an era of shifting geopolitics? Will he open America’s borders to migrants, or will he try to slam them shut?

Not only U.S. voters care about these issues. So do people around the world whose lives will be directly affected by the choice Americans are making this fall.

The world’s love-hate relationship with the U.S. is about more than military might and policy ideas. For all the talk about decline and the supposed collapse of American soft power, the U.S. remains the unrivaled diva on the global stage—the most arresting figure, if not always the most sympathetic one, whose antics keep all transfixed.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Demystifying Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge Shoshana Bryen •

By on November 3rd, 2020

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/authors/shoshana-bryen/

The cornerstone of America’s security commitment to Israel, since the administration of Lyndon Johnson, has been an assurance that the United States would help Israel uphold its Qualitative Military Edge (QME). This is “Israel’s ability to counter and defeat credible military threats from any individual state, coalition of states, or non-state actor, while sustaining minimal damages or casualties.” This commitment and the language were written into law in 2008 and every security assistance request from the Israeli Government is evaluated in light of America’s promise.

So, what happens when the United States agrees to sell the F-35 jet fighter – the most sophisticated plane in our arsenal – to the United Arab Emirates after UAE establishes relations with Israel? Is UAE permanently out of the group of “individual states or coalition of states” that QME refers to? Can other states get out?

Following the announcement, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said that Israel has no power to prevent U.S. sales of advanced weaponry to the Gulf states. Steinitz, in an interview, explained that if countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia “want it and are willing to pay, no doubt that sooner or later they’ll get” the aircraft and other weapons systems.  

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Woke Universities Lead America to a Primitive State Higher education now stands for mob rule, civic ignorance and contempt for truth and free inquiry. By John M. Ellis

By on November 3rd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/woke-universities-lead-america-to-a-primitive-state-11604359918?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

In this election season it’s almost impossible to find pro-Trump bumper stickers or signs anywhere in my town. The reason is not lack of support but fear of vandalism, or worse: People nationwide have been physically assaulted and even threatened with loss of their livelihoods for no other reason than that they plan to vote as one half of the country does, and political goals are now commonly pursued by violent means. With this our civilization seems to be regressing to a more primitive stage of its development—a time when disputes were settled by force instead of rules, and before the First Amendment guaranteed the right to speak freely on the social and political issues of the day.

That’s bad enough in itself, but worse yet is that this social regression began on college campuses, of all places, before spreading to the national culture. On one-party campuses, radical-left faculty have established a political orthodoxy that student mobs enforce, and the political culture of the nation is poisoned as those students take home with them their professors’ habit of seeing opinions that differ from theirs as an evil not to be tolerated.

The left-wing political orthodoxy is also taking the place of traditional civics. Recent graduates know much less about U.S. government than older Americans do. In 2018 the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation gave a sample of Americans a test based on the exam for U.S. citizenship. Only 19% of people under 45 passed, while 74% of those over 65 did, meaning even elderly people who learned the material more than 40 years ago can summon it from memory better than recent grads. Similar studies have found a regression in knowledge of U.S. history. Today’s universities are presiding over a nationwide reversion to civic illiteracy. That’s a disaster for the country, but it suits campus radicals. A well-informed citizenry would hardly wish to be governed by people whose ideological kin have reduced so many countries to economic and political deserts.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe’s Covid Hospital Lesson Government health care has led to funding caps and too few ICU beds.

By on November 3rd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-covid-hospital-lesson-11604361293?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Europeans are back under lockdown as another virus surge threatens to overwhelm their hospitals, which even before the pandemic were sick and malnourished. This is a side effect of government-run health care and a warning to the U.S.

More than half of the ICU beds in France and two-thirds in Paris are occupied by Covid patients. “At this stage, we know that whatever we do, nearly 9,000 patients will be in intensive care by mid-November, which is almost the entirety of French capacities,” President Emmanuel Macron explained last week as he ordered a second national lockdown.

Hospitals across Europe are close to their limits. The Netherlands is sending some patients to Germany, but Chancellor Angela Merkel warned last week that “if the tempo of infections stays the same, we will reach the capacity of our health-care system within weeks.”

Some U.S. hospitals are also dealing with a Covid surge, and more could be stretched if it continues through the winter. Field hospitals have been set up in Wisconsin and El Paso. But hospitals in hardest-hit regions currently have far more capacity than those in Europe.

Covid patients occupy 27% of ICU beds in South Dakota and 38% are still available. Virus patients take up about 40% of hospital beds in El Paso—still less than in Europe’s hot spots. Other areas of Texas that were slammed harder during the summer now have spare capacity. Covid patients occupy only 4% or so of hospital beds in San Antonio, Houston and Austin.

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