Russian police said early on Wednesday they had received multiple bomb threats in the World Cup host city of Rostov-on-Don, causing bars and restaurants to be evacuated across the city.
“On June 26, police received a series of phone calls about explosives planted at locations in Rostov-on-Don,” local police said in a statement.
“Police forces made all the necessary checks and no dangerous objects were found,” the statement said. “Currently, all the venues are operating normally.”
Increasingly isolated on the global stage, Russia is keen to use the World Cup to project an image of stability and strength. Authorities have vowed to host a safe event and any security incidents involving fans could jeopardize Moscow’s efforts.
A policeman at the Topos Congress-Hotel in Rostov-on-Don, which was evacuated at around 2000 GMT on Tuesday, said 16 venues had been evacuated across the city as part of a drill.
On the other side of the city, a manager at the Luciano Italian restaurant said staff had been told to evacuate the building for around two hours after receiving a bomb threat.
“There was a phone call, an anonymous phone call, they said there was a bomb in the building,” said the manager, who declined to give their name because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
A spokesman for soccer’s world governing body FIFA was not immediately available for comment.
The Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, some 955 km (593 miles) south of Moscow, has so far hosted four matches in the World Cup, including Croatia’s 2-1 win over Iceland earlier on Tuesday. The next scheduled match at the venue is on Monday.
The city is just a short distance from Russia’s border with eastern Ukraine, where rebels backed by Moscow have been fighting Ukrainian troops since 2014, and its close proximity to the conflict had caused security concerns ahead of the tournament.
The Topos Congress-Hotel is listed as an official World Cup hotel by FIFA, but none of the competing teams are staying there, according to official documents.
Police at the scene said the hotel had been evacuated due to a bomb threat and sniffer dogs were seen entering the building, a Reuters witness said.
Security services were seen questioning people on the street outside the hotel, next to emergency vehicles and a crowd of around 60 evacuated guests who had not yet been allowed back into the building.
Russia was subject to a wave of hoax bomb threats last summer, causing disruption at businesses and public buildings in towns and cities across the country.
The Russian Federal Security Service said in October it had identified four Russian citizens behind the hoax campaign, who were living abroad and using internet phone services to call in the threats anonymously.
Additional reporting by Polina Ivanova, Polina Devitt, Tom Balmforth and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber; writing by Jack Stubbs; editing by G Crosse
America's Democrats -- still reeling from Hillary Clinton's 2016 loss to Donald Trump -- have yet to find the formula to combat the mercurial president.
His political choices, his provocative statements, his insults, his over-the-top campaign-style rallies have left them flummoxed. And Trump is revelling in it.
For some, Trump has demeaned the presidency, purposefully divided American society and has struck an at-times authoritarian tone, and thus cannot be countered with politics as usual.
That side of the party -- represented by outspoken Representative Maxine Waters, among others -- wants tougher talk, more action and a take-no-prisoners attitude. They want to fight fire with fire.
Others say that such a strategy plays right into Trump's hands.
The debate within the American left is not new but the visceral, palpable anger is. The controversy over the separation of migrant families at the US-Mexico border seemed to mark a turning point -- perhaps even a point of no return.
Last week, a restaurant owner in Virginia refused to serve White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, citing her work for an "inhumane and unethical" administration.
That owner, Stephanie Wilkinson, has become something of a folk hero for hard-core Democrats.
"If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them," Waters told supporters at the weekend.
"You tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere."
But could that approach backfire?
Julian Zelizer, a history professor at Princeton University, says yes.
"The opposition to Trump can become his greatest foil, helping the GOP to look beyond whatever they might not like about him," Zelizer said.
- Knee-jerk 'anti-Trumpism' -
Experts and some Democrats say the Pavlovian response to Trump, no matter what he says -- criticism, mockery, outrage -- may only serve to perpetuate the notion that the left is elitist and out of touch with middle America.
It also could fuel concern that political Washington is simply unable to accept a real estate mogul turned commander-in-chief who did not climb through the party ranks as tradition would dictate.
AFP/File / Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDSUS congresswoman Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, represents the wing of her party that wants to adopt a hard line on Trump
"No question about it. His base feeds off anger, and Trump can energize his followers by pointing to over-the-top rhetoric and actions by Democrats. Maxine Waters is exhibit A," veteran political analyst Larry Sabato told AFP.
Some even fear that if Democrats do not make a quick course correction, they will end up losing mid-term elections in November that could see them regain control of Congress -- and then the presidency once again in 2020.
Undecided voters and moderate Republicans may simply back Trump out of spite.
- 'Greatest base' in political history -
The 72-year-old Trump, who loves to whip up his supporters at campaign-style rallies, smelled blood in the water on Tuesday -- and pounced.
"The face of the Democrats is now Maxine Waters who, together with Nancy Pelosi, have established a fine leadership team," he said mockingly on Twitter.
"They should always stay together and lead the Democrats, who want Open Borders and Unlimited Crime, well into the future... and pick Crooked Hillary for Pres."
At a rally for South Carolina's incumbent republican Governor Henry McMaster on Monday night, Trump played on the "us versus them" mentality.
"We have the greatest base in the history of politics!" he thundered to wild applause and cheers.
Several Democratic heavyweights are afraid of falling into an expertly set trap, just a few months before Election Day, when they hope to send a blue wave cascading across the country.
"Trump's daily lack of civility has provoked responses that are predictable but unacceptable," Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi said after Waters's statements.
"As we go forward, we must conduct elections in a way that achieves unity from sea to shining sea."
One party heavyweight chose his strategy a long time ago.
Since ceding the White House to Trump, Barack Obama has been largely quiet about his successor's policies, even as Trump has sought to undo many of his crowning achievements, from climate to the Iran nuclear deal.
Some Democrats say Obama should speak up, arguing that Trump's brash style means the presidential tradition of not muddying the waters for those who follow no longer applies.
But 44 is holding firm, and hardly ever mentions 45 by name.
Greece wants the Parthenon Marbles back from the British Museum, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in London on Tuesday, trying to reinvigorate a longstanding campaign for the 2,500-year-old treasures.
British diplomat Lord Elgin removed the sculptures from the Acropolis in Athens in the early 19th century when Greece was under Ottoman rule. They comprise roughly half of the 160-metre-long frieze that was on the Parthenon temple.
Since independence in 1832, Greece has repeatedly requested their return, without success.
Tsipras, who was on his first official visit to London since he was elected in 2015, said the issue is of particular ethical importance for Greeks and he raised the matter when he met his British counterpart Theresa May.
“The Marbles belong to the world cultural heritage but their natural place is the Parthenon,” he told reporters.
Britain has resisted campaigns for the return of what it calls the Elgin Marbles along with treasures from other countries including Nigeria and Ethiopia, often citing legislation that bans its museums from permanently disposing of their collections.
Greece has stepped up its campaign since 2009 when it opened a new museum at the foot of the Acropolis hill, saying this answered any suggestion that Athens lacks a suitable place to preserve the marbles.
The museum hosts priceless relics from the Acropolis, including the Caryatids, standing columns in female form. There is space for one of the six missing figures, on display at the British museum.
In 2014, a previous Greek government hired a legal team including human rights lawyer Amal Clooney to advise it on its bid to secure the return of the marbles.
“We know Britain’s position but what has a particular value is that this effort is continued,” Tsipras said. “In due course, we’ll find increasingly more supporters of Greece’s just stance.”
U.S. President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort was dealt a major loss on Tuesday, after a federal judge who had previously expressed some sympathy for him refused to dismiss charges brought against him by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Judge T.S. Ellis in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled Tuesday that Mueller was properly appointed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and has the authority to prosecute Manafort.
Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by James Dalgleish
The U.S. government urged a federal judge on Tuesday not to require that it stop separating and quickly reunite migrant families after they illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border, saying President Donald Trump’s executive order last week “largely” addressed those goals.
In a filing with the U.S. District Court in San Diego, the Department of Justice said a preliminary injunction sought by the American Civil Liberties Union would be improper because it would require releasing parents subject to mandatory detention, and illegally releasing some children from custody.
It also said imposing the “arbitrary” deadlines sought by the ACLU would likely “cause confusion” rather than speed up family reunifications.
More than 2,300 migrant children were separated from their parents after the Trump administration began a “zero tolerance” policy in early May, seeking to prosecute all adults who crossed the border illegally, including those traveling with children.
Trump issued his June 20 executive order to end the family separations, but the government has yet to reunite about 2,000 children with their parents.
The ACLU said on Monday Trump’s order contained “loopholes,” and proposed requiring that families be reunified within 30 days, unless the parents were unfit or were housed in adult-only criminal facilities.
In Tuesday’s filing, the Justice Department said implementing Trump’s order “will, of course, take time to be undertaken properly.” It added, “The court should not accept plaintiffs’ invitation to preempt or disrupt that implementation effort.”
Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the ACLU, said in an email said he would review Tuesday’s filing.
It was unclear when U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw would rule on the injunction request, but he said this week that the case’s “urgent nature” required an accelerated timetable.
The ACLU had sued on behalf of a mother and her then 6-year-old daughter, who were separated after arriving last November in the United States to seek asylum and escape religious persecution in Democratic Republic of Congo.
While they were reunited in March, the ACLU is pursuing class-action claims on behalf of other immigrants.
Sabraw has not ruled on the case’s merits but on June 6 said forced separations could “shock the conscience,” a standard for determining due process violations under the U.S. Constitution.
The case is Ms. L et al v U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of California, No. 18-00428.
Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Frances Kerry
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he will ask Congress for an increase in funding for his proposed wall along the border with Mexico so it can be finished quickly.
Speaking to reporters during a meeting on immigration with Republican lawmakers at the White House, Trump said Republicans would make border security a centerpiece of their campaigns ahead of congressional elections in November.
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on a Republican compromise bill on Wednesday that would provide $25 billion in funding for the wall, a top Trump priority dating back to his election campaign.
There are doubts, however, whether that bill, which seeks to bridge divides over immigration policy between conservatives and moderates in the party, has enough support to pass.
Reporting by Steve Holland; Writing by Eric Walsh and Tim Ahmann; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe
The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on Wednesday on a broad-based immigration bill that would bar the separation of migrant children from their parents at the southern border, Republican Speaker Paul Ryan said on Tuesday.
“We address this in the bill we’re bringing to the floor Wednesday. We’ve made it extremely clear we want to keep families together and we want to secure the border and enforce our laws,” Ryan told a news conference.
He said he would not rule out the possibility of bringing a vote on a narrower bill addressing only the detention of immigrant families, if the broader bill did not pass.
President Donald Trump has faced a global outcry over the separation of children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, which began because of the administration’s policy of seeking to prosecute all people who cross the border illegally. He bowed to pressure last week and issued an executive order to end the family separations.
The Trump administration, however, has called on Congress to enact a permanent fix.
The government has yet to reunite more than 2,000 children with their parents.
It is also not clear how it will house thousands of families while parents are prosecuted. Although the administration has said the “zero tolerance” policy remains in place, officials said on Monday that parents who cross illegally with their children will not face prosecution for the time being because the government is running short of space to house them.
Although Trump’s fellow Republicans control both chambers in Congress, disagreements between moderates and conservatives in the party over immigration matters have hit prospects for a speedy legislative fix to the border crisis. A conservative-backed bill failed to pass the House last week.
Ryan described the broader bill as one that sought to mend the “broken immigration system” by resolving the issue of young adults who were brought to the United States illegally as children; focusing on a merit-based immigration system; and securing U.S. borders and the rule of law.
Reporting by Amanda Becker and Susan Cornwell; Writing by Eric Walsh and Frances Kerry
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding his travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries was a victory for Americans and “a moment of profound vindication” for his policy.
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a tremendous victory for the American people and the Constitution,” he said in a statement. “This ruling is also a moment of profound vindication following months of hysterical commentary from the media and Democratic politicians who refuse to do what it takes to secure our border and our country.”
Reporting by Makini Brice; Writing by Tim Ahmann; Editing by Eric Walsh
The administration of President Donald Trump wants to help allies and trade partners replicate the U.S. natural gas and oil production boom by exporting American know-how, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said on Tuesday, even as trade disputes intensified.
“We are bearing witness to this astonishing energy miracle,” Perry said at the opening ceremony of the triennial World Gas Conference, referring to a surge in U.S. fossil fuels production over the past several years made possible by advanced hydraulic fracturing drilling technology.
“But this is not just about exporting our energy bounty, it is about exporting the technology, the know-how, that unleashed our bounty in the first place,” he said.
The Trump administration has said it is eager to expand fossil fuel supplies to allies through supply agreements and technology sharing even as it imposes steep tariffs on steel, aluminum and other imports and deals with retaliatory measures against U.S. crops, motorcycles and other products including petroleum.
The United States has become the world’s biggest natural gas producer, one of the top crude oil producers, and a growing exporter of both since last year.
The administration has said it hopes exporting energy and related technology will help create alternatives to geopolitical rival energy producers like Russia, while also forging bonds with big consumers like China.
AMBITION AND CHALLENGES
The global natural gas industry is currently forecasting rapid growth driven by low-cost production from the U.S. fracking boom and rising demand from Asia.
The International Energy Agency expects global gas demand to grow an average of 1.6 percent per year over the next five years, with Chinese consumption leading the way, according to the latest forecast released Tuesday.
But the trade dispute between the United States and China could make things complicated in the short-term.
Beijing this month proposed 25 percent retaliatory tariffs on U.S. petroleum imports, which are expected to dent sales to the U.S. shale industry’s largest customer and further pressure American firms that produce gas as a byproduct of oil drilling.
LNG imports have so far been spared, but the industry is concerned that the supercooled gas could be next if China’s talks with Washington sour.
Longer-term, the IEA said the global gas market also faces the challenge of reducing its cost competitiveness in emerging markets, and of tamping down on leaks from the industry of methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases.
Gas is widely viewed as one of the cleanest fossil fuels because it burns more efficiently than oil or coal, but gas can be lost in production and transport.
The conference has drawn executives from global energy giants like Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N), BP Plc (BP.L), and Total, along with senior officials from the U.S. State Department’s energy bureau, and ministers from energy producers and consumers like Argentina and Indonesia.
It follows last week’s OPEC meetings in Vienna, where the partner countries agreed on a modest increase in oil production from next month, following calls from major consumers to curb rising fuel costs.
Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by David Gregorio
The EU's top trade official on Tuesday said the decision of Harley-Davidson to shift some manufacturing of its iconic motorcycles overseas, which President Donald Trump criticised, was a natural consequence of a protectionist US trade policy.
"We don't want to punish, but that is the unfortunate consequence, that (US companies) will put pressure on the American administration to say hey, hold on a minute, this is not good for the American economy," EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom told a news briefing.
Malmstrom spoke just hours after the announcement by the company founded in the early 1900s, which is also suffering under higher steel costs following tariffs enacted by US President Donald Trump.
The European counter-measures to Trump's 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent on aluminium did not specifically target companies, but some sectors were chosen by Brussels for their symbolism.
In the early days of his administration Trump had embraced Harley-Davidson, which sells about 40,000 motorcycles a year in Europe, as an emblematic US industrial firm.
"Surprised that Harley-Davidson, of all companies, would be the first to wave the White Flag," the president tweeted on Monday.
Trump has also threatened fresh tariffs on European auto imports, which would especially punish Germany, home of Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler.
The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency has consistently ignored recommendations from the Department of Energy to reject or limit waivers to oil refiners seeking exemptions from nation’s biofuels law, according to five sources familiar with the matter.
The U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard requires the firms to cover costs of blending corn-based ethanol into gasoline. But the EPA, after consulting with the energy department, can exempt small refineries in cases where compliance presents a “disproportionate economic hardship.”
The waivers can save refiners tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Under EPA chief Scott Pruitt, an appointee of President Donald Trump, the agency has issued more than two dozen such exemptions in recent months - about triple the usual number granted under past administrations.
During that time, EPA has consistently granted full waivers in cases where the energy department recommended only partial exemptions, and, at least once, granted a full approval when the energy department advised an outright rejection, according to two sources familiar with the decisions.
That approach marks a sharp break from Obama administration’s EPA, which had often either adopted energy department recommendations or, when it didn’t, ruled against exempting oil refiners, the sources said.
The shift between the Democratic and Republican administrations shows how political ideologies and constituencies can steer bureaucratic interpretation of a law that never changed - with major impacts on industry.
The waivers save refineries money by freeing them from their obligation to blend ethanol into their gasoline or to purchase compliance credits from those who do. The broad use of waivers lately has angered the powerful corn lobby, which argues they threaten corn demand.
The Renewable Fuels Association, which represents U.S. ethanol makers, last month estimated that the waivers have reduced the amount of ethanol refiners are required to blend by 1.6 billion gallons. The law currently requires refiners to blend 15 billion gallons of the biofuel per year.
The surge in waivers has sent the price of biofuels compliance credits to five-year lows, saving refiners such as Valero Energy Corp and PBF Energy hundreds of millions of dollars.
Until now, it was not known if the EPA gave the waivers on the basis of the energy department recommendations or despite them. The EPA has denied public records requests seeking information on the waivers, which it considers proprietary company information.
Biofuel groups have asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Washington to review legality of the waivers - arguing the EPA is “methodically destroying the demand for renewable fuels” - and to force the EPA to disclose them.
EPA spokeswoman Molly Block declined to comment on the pending litigation or on whether the agency has approved waivers that the energy department recommended rejecting.
“From the beginning of this administration, we have worked closely with our partners at DOE on this issue,” she said in a written statement.
DOE spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes did not respond to requests for comment.
‘FINANCIAL HARDSHIP’
During a recent Midwest tour, Pruitt told Nebraska farmers that the EPA works “in alliance with the Department of Energy” to grant the waivers, saying there was just one example of disagreement. EPA spokespeople have repeatedly said the agency’s criteria for granting waivers have not changed.
The sources with knowledge of the two agencies’ interactions disputed the assertion that the EPA and DOE are acting as partners in these decisions. They declined to provide a specific number of cases in which the EPA has gone against energy department recommendations or to name most of the companies involved, but did provide two examples of what they said has become regular practice.
In one case, the EPA provided a full waiver to a refiner after the energy department had recommended rejecting the exemption, two sources told Reuters.
In another, the EPA granted full waivers to refineries owned by Andeavor - a large U.S. refining company which reported $1.4 billion in net income last year - after the energy department had recommended a 50-percent exemption, according to two other sources familiar with the company’s approval. The waivers for Andeavor were first reported by Reuters in April.
The company said in a May earnings statement that the waivers, provided to its smallest refineries, saved it about $100 million in compliance costs.
Scott LaBelle, an Andeavor spokesman, declined to comment beyond the company’s previous statements.
Obama’s administration was accused of being too stingy with the waivers. Last year, an appellate judge said Obama’s EPA had used too narrow a definition of “financial hardship” when it denied Sinclair Oil waivers for its Wyoming refineries for 2014 and 2015. But appellate judges in two other similar cases upheld the EPA’s denials and its methods.
Neither the rulings nor the change in presidential administrations changed the way energy department analysts scored applications, according to the sources.
Energy department analysts score applications on a two-part test that considers whether compliance would lead to disproportionate impact or threaten a refinery’s viability. Qualifying under either leads to a partial exemption; qualifying under both leads to a full exemption.
‘WORKAROUND’ TO HELP REFINERS
The EPA’s relaxed standard for the waivers is the latest illustration of the agency’s leadership seeking to deliver relief to refiners from the law, which was signed under Republican President George W. Bush to help farmers, reduce petroleum imports and improve air quality.
Pruitt has repeatedly recommended overhauling the law to reduce strain on refiners and advocated for changes during months of failed negotiations between oil and corn representatives mediated by President Donald Trump.
Republican Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa, the top ethanol-producing state, said Pruitt’s handling of the waivers appeared to be based on a political goal of helping the oil industry - a charge the EPA has denied.
“This is definitely a workaround that they have figured out. That’s why we are demanding transparency,” Ernst said in an interview, referring to requests her and other lawmakers for the EPA to disclose information on the waivers.
The current administration has attempted to lower compliance costs for some refiners since billionaire investor and refinery-owner Carl Icahn first raised concerns to Trump during his campaign, and then again after Trump named Icahn as a “special advisor” on industry regulation after his election.
Icahn resigned from his advisory post in August under pressure from lawmakers who said his dual role as investor and advisor posed ethical concerns. Icahn’s CVR Energy was among the refining companies that received a waiver from EPA, Reuters reported earlier this year.
From pulling out of treaties to denigrating allies to starting trade wars, the impulsive actions of President Donald Trump are upending the international order that has been in place since the end of World War II.
But even before Trump’s belligerent foreign policy positions, America had been gradually losing its dominant role in world affairs.
A power shift among the nations of the world began at the end of the Cold War and has been accelerating this century.
It is not as simple as saying “America is in decline,” since America remains a powerful country. But American global power has been eroding for some time, as I argue in the Foreign Policy Association’s “Great Decisions 2018” volume. The power of other countries has grown, giving them both the ability and the desire to effect global affairs independently of U.S. desires.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: ‘We are the indispensable nation.’
AP/Joe Marquette
I am a foreign policy scholar and practitioner who has studied U.S. foreign policy through many administrations. I believe this global trend spells the end of the “exceptional nation” Americans imagined they were since the nation was founded and the end of the American era of global domination that began 70 years ago. We are no longer the “indispensable” nation celebrated by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the end of the last century.
Pax Americana no more
Since the end of WWII, the U.S. has been the central player in the international system, leading in the creation of new international organizations like the United Nations, NATO, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
American diplomacy has been essential to multinational agreements on trade, climate, regional security and arms control. Americans could and did claim to be at the center of a “rules-based international order.”
Those days are gone.
Not only do China and Russia contest America’s global role, a growing number of other countries are asserting an independent and increasingly influential role in regional economic and security developments.
Neither American political party has come to grips with this sea change. Until they do, U.S. global actions are likely to be less effective, even counterproductive.
Who’s on top?
The power shifts are increasingly visible. In the Middle East, the U.S. hoped for decades to isolate Iran as a pariah and weaken the regime until it fell.
Today, that goal is unimaginable, though national security adviser John Bolton continues to imagine it.
The Russians are in the Middle East region for good, building on their long-standing relationship with the family of Syria’s dictator.
Turkey, a rising regional power, acts increasingly independent of the preferences of the U.S., its NATO ally, playing its own hand in the regional power game.
The U.S. helped unleash these trends with the strategically fatal invasion of Iraq in 2003 – fatal, because it permanently removed a regional leader who balanced the power of Iran. The failure to create a stable Iraq stimulated regional religious and political conflicts and rendered ineffective subsequent U.S. efforts to influence current trends in the region, as the continually ineffective policies in Syria show.
The U.S. cannot slow Chinese economic growth nor contain its power. China is changing the rules, whether the U.S. likes it or not.
Elsewhere in Asia, Japan moves toward a renewed nationalism and has removed restrictions on its defense spending and the deployment of its military in the face of growing Chinese power.
North Korea behaves more and more like a regional power, winning a direct meeting with the U.S. president while making only a general commitment to denuclearize. The prospect of a unified Korea would bring into being another major regional power center in the Northern Pacific.
Other countries, like the Philippines and Australia, hedge their bets by improving bilateral relations with China. And India is a growing economic and military presence in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia.
President Vladimir Putinasserts Russia’s interests and role in the world, like any other great power. Russia is consciously and actively rebalancing the power of the United States, with some success.
Military power, the American global trump card, is not as useful a tool as it once was.
While the U.S. continues to have the world’s only global military capability, able to deploy anywhere, it is no longer evident that this capability effectively sustains U.S. leadership. Clear military victories are few – the Gulf War in 1991 being an exception. The endless U.S. deployment in Afghanistan carries the whiff of Vietnam in its inability to resolve that country’s civil war.
Meanwhile, the militaries of other countries, acting independently of the U.S., are proving effective, as both Turkish and Iranian operations in Syria suggest.
Abroad at home
The transition to this new era is proving difficult for American policy-makers.
The Trump “America First” foreign policy is based on the view that the U.S. needs to defend its interests by acting alone, eschewing or withdrawing from multilateral arrangements for trade, economics, diplomacy or security.
Trump praises “strong” nationalistic leadership in authoritarian countries, while democratic leadership in allied countries is criticized as weak.
Liberals and many Democrats criticize Trump for alienating traditional allies like Canada, France and Germany while befriending dictators. Policy-makers once critical of confrontational policies now condemn Trump for failing to confront Russia and China.
A different president in Washington, D.C., will not restore the “rules-based” international order. The underlying changes in global power relations have already undermined that order.
A neo-conservative foreign policy, featuring unilateral American military intervention, as favored by John Bolton, will only accelerate the global shift. Liberal internationalists like Hillary Clinton would fail as well, because the rest of the world rejects the assumption that the U.S. is “indispensable” and “exceptional.” Barack Obama appeared to recognize the changing reality, but continued to argue that only the U.S. could lead the international system.
America will need to learn new rules and play differently in the new balance-of-power world, where others have assets and policies the U.S. does not and cannot control.
Michael Cohen, a longtime personal lawyer to U.S. President Donald Trump, is seeking to prevent prosecutors from reviewing about 12,000 files out of more than four million seized by authorities as part of a criminal investigation.
Cohen’s lawyers said in a filing in Manhattan federal court on Monday that they had finished their review of the files and concluded that “over 12,061” were shielded from prosecutors’ review because they were privileged attorney-client communications or legal work done in preparation for litigation.
A court-appointed special master, former federal judge Barbara Jones, will review Cohen’s claims of privilege. U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood must give final approval to Jones’ decisions.
Cohen’s home and office were raided in April as part of an investigation by Manhattan federal prosecutors into his business dealings. He has not been charged with any crime.
The probe stems in part from a referral by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether Trump’s 2016 campaign colluded with Russia.
Trump has denied that there was any collusion, and Russia has denied meddling in the election.
Lawyers for Trump are also reviewing some of the materials seized from Cohen to determine whether they are protected by attorney-client privilege.
The materials seized in the raid include information from 13 mobile devices and iPads, 20 other devices including laptops, external hard drives and flash drives, and hard copy documents, according to the filing by Cohen’s lawyers on Monday.
Prosecutors said in an April court filing that they expected few of the seized materials to be protected by attorney-client privilege because they believed Cohen was “performing little to no legal work.”
Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama
AFP/File / Andrew CABALLERO-REYNOLDS
America will need to learn new rules and play differently in the new balance-of-power world, where others have assets and policies the U.S. does not and cannot control.