The Weekly Leaf
This week, NATO marked its 75th anniversary, President Joe Biden warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. could condition further military aid to Israel on concrete steps to protect aid workers and civilians, and the Turkish opposition party won historic victories in local elections.
Read more below.
This Week's Content Highlights
Features from Aspen Strategy Group Members
Joseph Nye interviewed by Josephine Ma for the South China Morning Post: “‘Very Bad Idea’: U.S.-China Full-Scale Trade War Unlikely but Soft-Power Gap Will Persist”
Michael J. Green, Joseph Nye, Richard Armitage, Victor Cha, Zack Cooper, Wendy Cutler, Matthew P. Goodman, Christopher B. Johnstone, Sheila A. Smith, and Nicholas Szechenyi, with opening remarks from John J. Hamre at CSIS: “The U.S.-Japan Alliance in 2024: Toward an Integrated Alliance”
Chris Howard and Eric Garcetti at the ASU+GSV & Emeritus Summit: “Global Leadership in Action”
David Ignatius for The Washington Post: “The Agonizing Story Told by Two Israeli Airstrikes”
Jack Reed interviewed by Tamara Sacharczyk for NBC: “Sen. Jack Reed Discusses Global Response to Gaza Airstrike”
Susan E. Rice joined Stanford HAI as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow and was named the new Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
David Rubenstein, Fareed Zakaria, and moderator Peter Feaver for the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy: “The Challenges Facing America and Higher Education”
David E. Sanger and Peter Baker for The New York Times: “Biden Is ‘Outraged.’ But Is He Willing to Use America’s Leverage With Israel?”
Robert B. Zoellick for The Wall Street Journal: “The Biden-Trump Economy of Nostalgia”
Tweet of the Week
Things to Know
Content Relevant to Aspen Security Forum Discussions
José Andrés for The New York Times: “Let People Eat”
David Cameron and Tobias Billström for Foreign Policy: “What NATO Needs for Its 75th Birthday”
Morgan Chalfant for Semafor: “Biden, Xi Speak for First Time in Months”
Steven A. Cook and Sinan Ciddi for Foreign Policy: “Post-Erdogan Turkey Is Finally Here”
The Economist: “Israel Is Ratcheting Up Its Shadow War With Iran”
Henry Foy for the Financial Times: “NATO Plans $100BN ‘Trump-Proof’ Fund for Ukraine”
Ellen Ioanes for Vox: “Good News: Democracy Won in Senegal. Here’s Why It Matters.”
Aynne Kokas for Foreign Affairs: “What the TikTok Bill Gets Wrong”
David Lawder for Reuters: “Yellen Faces Tough Road on China’s Vast Overproduction Problem”
Aaron David Miller interviewed by Isaac Chotiner for The New Yorker: “Biden’s Increasingly Contradictory Israel Policy”
Kevin Roose for The New York Times: “Did One Guy Just Stop a Huge Cyberattack?”
Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li for Nikkei Asia: “Taiwan Earthquake Kills at Least 9; TSMC Plants Recovering”
From the Archives
Revisit our conversation on the future of NATO from the
Kay Bailey Hutchison, Former U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO
Representative Brendan Boyle, Member, House Committee on Ways and Means
Ivo Daalder, Former U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO
Marcin Przydacz, Deputy Foreign Minister, Poland
Moderator: Dafna Linzer, Executive Editor, POLITICO
Book of the Week
by Jacob Heilbrunn
"In America Last, Jacob Heilbrunn, a highly respected observer of the American Right, demonstrates that the infatuation of American conservatives with foreign dictators—though a striking and seemingly inexplicable fact of our current moment—is not a new phenomenon. It dates to the First World War, when some conservatives, enthralled with Kaiser Wilhelm II, openly rooted for him to defeat the forces of democracy. In the 1920s and 1930s, this affinity became even more pronounced as Hitler and Mussolini attracted a variety of American admirers. Throughout the Cold War, the Right evinced a fondness for autocrats such as Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet, while some conservatives wrote apologias for the Third Reich and for apartheid South Africa. The habit of mind is not really about foreign policy, however. As Heilbrunn argues, the Right is drawn to what it perceives as the impressive strength of foreign dictators, precisely because it sees them as models of how to fight against liberalism and progressivism domestically.
America Last is a guide for the perplexed, identifying and tracing a persuasion—or what one might call the “illiberal imagination”—that has animated conservative politics for a century now. Since the 1940s, the Right has railed against communist fellow travelers in America. Heilbrunn finally corrects the record, showing that dictator worship is an unignorable tradition within modern American conservatism—and what it means for us today.”
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As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, the Aspen Institute is nonpartisan and does not endorse, support, or oppose political candidates or parties. Further, the views and opinions of our guests and speakers do not necessarily reflect those of the Aspen Institute.