Judah Grunstein

Yes, but Milei dropped export duties, allowing China to load up on a month's worth of purchases in a few days, right after Bessent himself pledged to backstop the peso.

Leaked texts on Scott Bessent's phone suggest the White House got played bailing out Argentina—and U.S. soybean farmers are the casualties | Fortune “This is highly unfortunate,” the text said. “Soy prices are dropping further because of it. This gives China more leverage on us.”

After all the years of Trump wrongly claiming the world has been playing the US for a sucker under past presidents, it's so funny to actually spot a true case in the wild.

Indeed.

Under Trump II, the US is more a revisionist power than a status quo institutional power. And that requires less in the way of foreign policy infrastructure and project-building.

Bombing Venezuelan speedboats doesn't require a huge policy apparatus.

To flesh this out, the degree to which everyone in DC seems resigned and even comfortable with the idea of a prolonged shutdown gives the lie to the idea that the US is still the indispensable nation.

It also highlights the fact that the US is no longer engaged in any projects of construction.

It says a lot about how personalist US foreign policy has become under Trump, but also the fact that in addition to having no domestic legislative agenda, Trump II has no proactive international agenda.

Both Parties Are Resigned to Deadlock as Shutdown Takes Hold

I remember when the idea of the US without an operational federal govt was enough to induce panic, in DC as well as in capitals around the world.

Now it's just like, Ah, well, if Belgium could do it for 654 days, so can we.

And since Paul Simon's humor has now entered the chat:

Where did I suggest anyone should trust him?

Stevie won the Album of the Year Grammy for Innervisions in 1974 and Fulfillingness' First Finale in 1975, setting up perhaps the greatest Grammy acceptance speech of all time in 1976.

YouTube video by Stevie Wonder - Topic Blame It On The Sun

Still remember the braille lettering on the record sleeve of this one from my mom's collection.

I know Sunshine of My Life and Superstition are the hits, but this song, You and I, and I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever) were the ones I wore out on the vinyl growing up.

I did not take that to mean that @djangoroo.bsky.social believes I am holding hostages or have the power to have any hostages liberated, so please consider this matter resolved, or else take it out of my mentions.

YouTube video by johnniewalker23 Stevie Wonder - Too High

Afternoon soundtrack.

I love this one, because Stevie was like, I'm going to take some of the greatest freedom songs ever written and sprinkle them in among some of the greatest love songs ever written.

Got Talking Book lined up next.

Perhaps most importantly, the Trump plan does nothing to advance Palestinian self-determination, which as @danaelkurd.bsky.social highlighted is strikingly absent from efforts to stop the war.

To the contrary, Trump's plan further institutionalizes the obstacles to self-determination.

(Gift link.)

Yes, we're very much into the bribery phase of dealing with a toddler prone to tantrums.

From Chapter 3 of my forthcoming book, Threats and Bribes: A Realist's Guide to Parenting.

So while Netanyahu and other high-ranking govt officials may never see justice for Gaza, the same may not be true for others, for whom leaving Israel even only for vacations and business travel may soon become more risky.

I suspect we'll see something similar for the mid-level Israeli chain of command, both civilian and military, in the coming decade, esp if the Israeli exodus from Israel continues to gather momentum.

The evidence is publicly available on social media feeds, and there will be popular demand for it.

Universal Jurisdiction Is Making a Comeback Since 2011, Syria has been ravaged by a civil war that has seen numerous atrocities committed against its civilian population, including torture and war crimes. In the face of such abuses, there have ...

In fact, Syria accounts for the resurgence of universal jurisdiction in the past 5+ years after its moment in the spotlight in the late 2000s, most notably in the case of Augusto Pinochet, as Kyle Rapp wrote for us in 2021.

Unlike Pinochet, most of the Syrians who faced charges haven't gotten off.

With regard to accountability for Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, the case of Syria is instructive. In the absence of any mechanisms for bringing Assad's torturers to justice, European states turned to universal jurisdiction to do so for those who had sought refuge there.

So the plan is necessary, but insufficient. Nonetheless, if it succeeds in even its first-stage objectives, it will be cause for celebration.

What comes after will determine how lasting the pause in Israeli military operations is, which in turn could determine whether Trump remains engaged or simply washes his hands of the matter, as he seems to have done with Russia-Ukraine.

And the Trump plan does not even address transitional justice and accountability, without which the cycle of violence is unlikely to end.

But if it is an insufficient step, the Trump plan is almost certainly a necessary one, as it is the only thing that will stay Israel's hand even temporarily.

Ending the War in Gaza Requires a Regional Framework. The U.N. Can Help Build It The U.N. may not seem like an obvious partner for any new Middle East initiative, but it has capacities that make it indispensable.

But it would still be a vast improvement over current conditions.

To be clear, the Trump plan is not sufficient to establish a lasting peace or rebuild Gaza, and I think it will quickly need to be superseded by a broader multilateral effort, as outlined here by Alex Costy and Adam Day.

If Trump's plan succeeds in stopping Israel's razing of Gaza, allowing in humanitarian aid and freeing the hostages, it will be cause for celebrating.

That is not the same thing as peace, a rebuilt Gaza and accountability for the crimes committed by both sides.

Nor are the first two irreversible.

I had the same thought the other day, but more due to the committee feeling coerced than Trump deserving it.

I didn't have it in mind, but it certainly seems to qualify!

That ignores the fact that getting back to a reformed version of liberal international order is now no longer possible, but also that even a reformed version of that order would be too riddled with socio-political inequities and injustices.

But Western decadence and decline is above all a political narrative, and one that is a primary mobilizing device not only for the forces of reaction, but also for the forces of reform right now, by which I mean the idea that we can get back to how things were 5 or 10 years ago.

And when the West's sense of relative decline is transformed into a sense of responsibility to heal and repair, it starts looking like something other than loss.

To be clear, I'm not optimistic this will happen, and one of my goals is to avoid at all costs magical thinking & pink fluffy unicorns.

This, from its conclusion, is spot on:

"Integration means weaving loss into individual life stories and collective narratives, making it bearable without trivializing it."

But that narrative integration must be broadened to a global reckoning in which the West is central but no longer centered.