The Guardian (September 12)
“Here the issue… is that a British prime minister persists in asserting the impossible. He demands that Britain leave the European single market but with a gaping hole in its border, in Ireland. He wants a border and no border.” A no-deal Brexit would cause “chaos” in a worst case scenario, but “in Ireland it is physically impossible.”
Tags: Border, Brexit, Chaos, EU, Impossible, Ireland, No-deal, Prime minister, Single market, UK
Chicago Tribune (April 5)
“Trump is terrible at making deals. His threat to close the U.S.-Mexico border offers the latest example…. Trump tried to get Mexico to pay for his cherished wall and failed. He tried to get Congress to provide $5.7 billion to construct it and failed despite putting the country through a 35-day government shutdown.” The President “is good at making demands and issuing threats, but those are useful only if you know how to bargain and compromise. He fails at making deals because he has never learned that in negotiations, as in war, the other side gets a vote.”
Tags: Border, Compromise, Demands, Failed, Making deals, Mexico, Negotiations, Shutdown, Terrible, Threats, Trump, U.S., Wall
New York Times (January 9)
“When it comes to the border and the wall, Trump’s willful estrangement from reality is so profound that network executives and newspaper editors spent part of Tuesday in strategy sessions about how to respond to his inevitable barrage of falsehoods. Should there be a crawl of words on the bottom of the television screen to correct him in real time? Could fact checkers work speedily enough to post rebuttals online…? This is where we find ourselves. Other presidents have been untrustworthy, and others have had to be called out on it. But not like this. This is surreal.”
Tags: Border, Fact checkers, Falsehoods, Reality, Rebuttals, Strategy, Surreal, Trump, Untrustworthy, Wall
The Economist (June 16)
“The Irish border presents a near-insurmountable roadblock to a hard exit. With less than six months of negotiating time left, it is becoming clear that Brexit will be softer than Mrs May set out. That is good news for Europe and for Britain.”
Tags: Border, Brexit, Hard exit, Insurmountable, Irish, May EU, Negotiating, Roadblock, Softer, UK
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.”
Institutional Investor (October 10)
“As refugees from Syria and Iraq flood across the border and, the real economy suffers, Lebanon’s central bank is looking to start-up lending as a way to boost growth.” Despite an influx of 1.3 million refugees (roughly a third of its pre-crisis population), Lebanon’s “economy has remained intact. Growth, while meager, is still projected to reach 1.8 percent this year….Much of this resilience is down to the creativity of the central bank” and the novel approaches it is adopting.
Tags: Border, Central bank, Creativity, Economy, Growth, Iraq, Lebanon, Lending, Refugees, Resilience, Start-ups, Syria
Financial Times (October 8)
Isis looks poised to capture Kobani and much of Syria’s border with Turkey. Will this finally jolt Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, out of his ambivalence? “If he is to retain the confidence of his longstanding allies, Mr Erdogan should move decisively against Isis and put an end to international perceptions that he is willing to dally with this deadly foe.”
Washington Post (June 26)
With “gestures suggesting de-escalation,” Vladimir Putin has been working to avoid additional sanctions. But “Russia’s behavior remains unacceptably provocative. Russia continues to occupy Ukrainian territory in Crimea, it has not applied its influence to end the uprising it sponsored in eastern Ukraine and it continues to deploy forces to Ukraine’s border.”
New York Times (November 1)
An ongoing border dispute between India and China has led to war and confrontation. A recent agreement, however, “gives both sides an incentive to review their now very different maps of the region and settle on a permanent border. Until that happens, the possibility of serious conflict remains very real.”
Financial Times (April 29)
Russia settled a long-running border dispute with Norway. While the land border separating the two countries has been fixed since 1826, the maritime border has been hotly disputed. The two countries will split the sea equally, with the maritime border extending from the coast to the North Pole. With the boundary dispute settled, oil companies will be less hesitant to invest in exploration around the Barents Sea. Even more importantly, the Financial Times hopes this signals renewed commitment by Russia to the “rule of law.”
Russia settled a long-running border dispute with Norway. While the land border separating the two countries has been fixed since 1826, the maritime border has been hotly disputed. The two countries will split the sea equally, with the maritime border extending from the coast to the North Pole. With the boundary dispute settled, oil companies will be less hesitant to invest in exploration around the Barents Sea. Even more importantly, the Financial Times hopes this signals renewed commitment by Russia to the “rule of law.”
Tags: Border, North Pole, Norway, Russia