Wall Street Journal (April 23)
“As U.S.-China tensions increase, the chance of a miscalculation grows,” especially in the South China Sea. “China’s recent behavior has badly damaged its claims to be a global stakeholder that plays by the rules. The U.S. is right to make clear that it remains a Pacific power and that the coronavirus hasn’t lessened its resolve.”
Tags: Behavior, China, Claims, Coronavirus, Miscalculation, Pacific, Resolve, Rules, South China Sea, Tensions, U.S.
BBC (March 29)
“It is certainly the case that not all of our MPs, still less our citizens, would have been reaching eagerly for the bell ropes, had this been Brexit day, as scheduled. Particularly in Scotland.” Instead, “on this non-Brexit day, we might consider the more fundamental issues which have brought us to this impasse,” especially the UK Government’s miscalculation that “the EU would back down at the last moment, as is customarily the case.” Though “the EU has capitulated in the past to dissenting member states, “the UK is on the way out” and “its clout, consequently, is reduced.”
Tags: Capitulated, Citizens, EU, Government, Impasse, Miscalculation, MPs, Non-Brexit day, Scotland, UK
Financial Times (June 26)
U.S. “intelligence agencies have for several years identified cyber threats as a bigger risk than terrorism.” Though huge, the threat is little understood. Such is “the opacity of cyber space that the risks of massive miscalculation resulting in catastrophic escalation” are “hair-raisingly high” and the “ultimate nightmare” is “that we might sleepwalk into a cyber-Armageddon, just as Europe’s political leaders had stumbled into the first world war.”
Tags: Cyber threats, Escalation, Europe, Intelligence, Miscalculation, Nightmare, Risk, Sleepwalk, Terrorism, U.S., WW1
Time (August 31)
“More missile tests, more bomber flyovers and three angry armies facing each other across the world’s most heavily armed border raises the possibility that a miscalculation could lead to real fighting.”
Bloomberg (December 18)
Early this year, Kremlin aids advised Vladimir Putin that “Russia was rich enough to withstand the financial repercussions from a possible incursion into Ukraine.” Their advice and the subsequent invasion “now looks like a grave miscalculation. Russia has driven interest rates to punishing levels and spent at least $87 billion, or 17 percent, of its foreign-exchange reserves trying to prevent a collapse in the ruble from spiraling into a panic.
Tags: Advice, Collapse, Foreign-exchange reserves, Interest rates, Kremlin, Miscalculation, Panic, Putin, Ruble, Russia, Ukraine
