The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.
1. Ryan Heath on Politico
on the US president’s global threat
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Can the world survive four more years of Donald Trump?
“A world order designed to function through slow consensus and underwhelming compromise, on a good day, has had virtually no coping mechanism for the American president’s disruption. In the name of putting America first, Trump has pulled out of one global deal after another, unpredictably reversing course on some of America’s biggest global priorities and moral commitments. He has snubbed democratic leaders and longtime allies while cozying up to Vladimir Putin and other autocrats. While the most important Western institutions - NATO, the European Union, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization - are still standing, it’s an open question whether they will be able to survive another four years of pummeling and disinvestment by the world’s superpower.”
2. Yiannis Baboulias in The Atlantic
on Golden Dawn’s twilight
How to Beat the Nazis in 2020
“The experience of Golden Dawn - from riding high to effectively destroyed in a matter of years—offers lessons… It had openly sought to undermine democracy, yet it was largely using the tools of democracy that it was defeated - through the justice system, and at the ballot box. The party is financially broken, and in recent months has been forced to close dozens of offices across Greece. At least partly as a result, its electoral support has more than halved since it first entered Parliament, with Golden Dawn failing to meet the 3 percent support threshold required to win seats in 2019 legislative elections.”
3. John T. Bennett in The Independent
on Trump’s growing desperation
As his Fox interview this morning proved, Trump knows he’s losing and he’s panicking about it
“As he ranted and raved as the sun rose in a list of key East Coast and Rust Belt swing states, the president did not exert confidence about a November victory. Trump’s every word, tweet and action since he was airlifted to the military medical facility suggests projecting the kind of strength a high school football coach uses to fire up teenagers on Friday nights. It is the last club left in his reelection golf bag.”
4. Ann Treneman in The Times
on the sound of silence
We’re bereft of all the hubbub of normal life
“I am not sure what the auditory equivalent of ‘a sight for sore eyes’ might be called but you know what I mean. This refers to those sounds of everyday life that we no longer hear in lockdown, or semi-lockdown, or whatever this is (very hard to tell most days). Now the New York Public Library has come up with a brilliantly evocative way of reminding us what life used to sound like, with a digital album called Missing Sounds of New York. Its eight tracks, described as ‘an auditory love letter to New Yorkers’, include sounds from a baseball game, a busy restaurant and (apparently a favourite) ‘The Not-Quite-Quiet Library’.”
5. Nate Anderson on Fox News
on America’s ‘forever wars’
In Afghanistan, as we enter our 20th year, it's time to come home
“The war in Afghanistan is officially in its twentieth year. It’s difficult to appreciate how so much time has gone by as we remember those first news clips of warplanes launching from aircraft carriers, and grainy night vision images of the first Americans on the ground bringing retribution for the September 11, 2001, attacks. Yet as someone who volunteered for service, fought in Afghanistan, and watched good friends give their lives for the mission there, it’s difficult to accept that 19 years hasn’t been enough.”
