World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

The evidence that the US is getting ready to make an arrangement with the Taliban in Afghanistan continues to mount.  What is interesting, however, is that the increasing ability of the Taliban to control areas within Afghanistan is occurring even as the US steps up its bombing.  The discrepancy between military power and political power has never been more apparent, and that discrepancy should be noted by all who believe that military power can be decisive in what is essentially only a political matter.

On 31 October, I posted an article published by the Washington Post that a research paper had indicated that the world’s oceans were warming faster than climate models had assumed, raising the possibility that global warming might be more rapid than predicted.  Today the Post published an article acknowledging that the research paper had made some crucial errors.   The errors were raised in a blog post by an independent researcher.  I am certain that the article published in Nature will undergo intense scrutiny and that amended conclusions will be published at some point in the near future.

British Prime Minister Teresa May has secured the support of her Cabinet for the Brexit agreement with the European Union.  The draft runs 585 pages and it deals with a very large number of issues, the most important of which are:

• Britain’s financial settlement with the EU to meet agreed commitments.
• The post-Brexit rights of EU citizens in the UK and British citizens on the continent.
• A mechanism to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland.

The agreement works largely because both sides have agreed that Great Britain and the EU will forge a free trade agreement after the British leave the Union.  Such an agreement would allow Great Britain to not be bound by many of the regulations of the EU but would allow the passage of goods and services without any trade barriers. It is an intriguing resolution, but one which will not satisfy some members of May’s Conservative Party members.  Presumably, she will be able to get the votes to pass the agreement through Parliament.  The agreement has to be approved by all the other members of the Union and may be subjected to a second national referendum in Great Britain.  So there is much left to be done, and it is premature to think that the crisis has passed.