Nepal has been hit by a devastating earthquake which registered 7.8 on the Richter Scale. Early reports suggest that at least 1400 people died in the quake, but that number is sure to rise as rescue teams conduct search operations. The quake shook India, Bangladesh, and Tibet, and triggered avalanches in the Himalayas. The world is mobilizing aid missions, but Nepal is a desperately poor country and has likely been set back a number of years in economic development.
Roger Moorhouse has written a book entitled The Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939-1941. The book is reviewed by John Lukacs in The New York Review of Books. The book is a history of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty of 1939 in which Hitler and Stalin sign a non-aggression pact. The deal frees Hitler to attack France without fear of a Soviet counterattack; in return, the Soviet Union gets a huge chunk of Poland and the Baltic States in addition to a brief respite from a German attack. Apparently, however, according to Moorhouse, even after Hitler defeated France and then invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin did not believe that Hitler was actually breaking the treaty. According to Lukacs:
“During the ten days before the Nazi invasion—all kinds of information about the German threat notwithstanding—Stalin did his best or, rather, his worst, to affirm his faith in Hitler and in Germany. I do not know of a single instance of such abject behavior (for that is what it was) by a statesman of a great power.
“The German attack shocked Stalin into silence at first. (Molotov’s words after the German declaration of war were also telling: “Did we deserve this?”) Stalin’s first orders for the Soviet army were not to respond at all. It took him hours after the invasion—until noon—before he ordered the army to resist.”
A remarkable mistake by a master of realpolitik.
The US has been negotiating a trade deal with 11 other countries called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. These twelve countries account for about 40% of global GDP and reducing tariffs and trade barriers among them would unquestionably boost economic activity. It would also, however, cost Americans their jobs as some production would shift to low-wage countries. There is a battle brewing in Congress between Republicans and Democrats over whether President Obama should be given the authority to proceed quickly toward the trade deal.
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