Greek Prime Minister Tsipras accused Greece’s creditors of “criminal responsibility” and of trying to humiliate Greece. The harsh rhetoric did not sit well with the economic ministers that are scheduled to meet for the last time this weekend. Tsipras is holding to a very hard line, but the troika is doing so as well. Such rhetoric is not unusual at the moment just before a crisis breaks, but both sides are going to have a difficult time walking back their words if a compromise is eventually found.
It did not take long for Russia to respond to the US decision to place heavy equipment and more troops in the Baltic states and other eastern European states. Russia President Putin announced that Russia would increase its intercontinental ballistic missiles by 40 in order to address what he termed as the US attempt to place anti-ballistic missiles in eastern Europe. President Putin has referred to the Russian nuclear capability on a number of occasions since the Ukrainian crisis developed, and the implicit message is that Putin believes that Russia should be taken more seriously in world affairs because of that capability. It is a strong but dangerous message.
Abdel Bari Atwan is one of the Arab world’s most respected journalists and he has written a new book on the Islamic State that will be published in September. It is reviewed in The New York Review of Books and the book apparently does a very good job of explaining the attractiveness of the Islamic State and its ability to run the affairs of the caliphate in the manner of a traditional state. Its application of sharia law seems barbaric to many in the West, but Atwan argues that the Islamic State is a very disciplined and ordered state. The West would be well advised to shed its misconceptions about the IS and deal with the group as an adversary not completely dissimilar from other non-liberal states that it has faced in the past.
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