Week in Review: France in Yemen, America’s Assist to the Ayatollah, Turkey in Syria, ‘Sologamy,’ and Much More

Week in Review: France in Yemen, America’s Assist to the Ayatollah, Turkey in Syria, ‘Sologamy,’ and Much More

ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images, AHMAD AL-BASHA/AFP/Getty Images, BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images, KNS/AFP/Getty Images

Week in Review: France in Yemen, America’s Assist to the Ayatollah, Turkey in Syria, ‘Sologamy,’ and Much More

All you need to know about everything in the news this week

August 27, 2016

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Highlights:

French involvement in Yemen

  • “Satellite imagery suggests that French war matériel, if not French personnel, is supporting the Saudi-led war in Yemen,” according to War is Boring. “If confirmed, it represents a previously unreported escalation of French support.”
  • “Given recent developments between France and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, it appears France is deepening its relationship with the region in a substantive way.”
  • This development is further proof of a coalescing alliance prophesied in Psalm 83, as our article “Do Not Ignore Saudi Arabia’s Islamic Military Alliance” explains.

    • America’s aid to the Islamic Republic

  • In The Iran Wars, Jay Solomon reveals details about how far the Obama administration went to avoid helping Iran’s green movement against the hard-liners in Tehran.
  • For example, “The [Central Intelligence] Agency has contingency plans for supporting democratic uprisings anywhere in the world. This includes providing dissidents with communications, money, and in extreme cases even arms,” writes Solomon. “But in this case, the White House ordered it to stand down.

    • Turkey’s ground offensive into Syria

  • Turkey’s military and United States-backed coalition forces launched a large operation on August 24 to clear a Syrian border town of Islamic State militants.
  • The operation began hours after Ankara indicated it would step up its engagement in Syria.
  • Turkey’s moves further complicate the web of alliances in the Syrian conflict.
  • It’s a quagmire, as George Friedman explained in his Geopolitical Futures article “Turkey and Iran’s Problems With Russia as an Ally.”

    • The ‘New Dictators’ Club’

  • The emerging partnerships between Russia, China, Iran and Turkey resound with eerie echoes of the 1940s.
  • As Bret Stephens explained in the Wall Street Journal on August 22: “In the fall of 1940, the governments of Japan, Italy and Germany—bitter enemies in World War i—signed the Tripartite Pact, pledging mutual support to ‘establish and maintain a new order of things’ in Europe and Asia. Within five years, 70 million people would be killed in the effort to build, and then destroy, that new order.”
  • “The Pact was the culminating act in a series of nonaggression, friendship and neutrality treaties signed by the dictatorships of the day, sometimes to deceive anxious democracies but more often to divvy up the anticipated spoils of conquest. So it’s worth noting our new era of cooperation between dictatorships—and to think about where it could lead.”

    • More calls for European army

  • Speaking on an aircraft carrier off an Italian island alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said August 22 that Europe is the “biggest opportunity for … new generations.”
  • The three leaders discussed ways to improve Europe’s defense and economic prospects, as well as the future of the European Union without Britain.
  • On the same day, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said, “I’m convinced that we can’t do without a common European army in the long term. … I hope that the autumn European summit will bring concrete proposals and pledges.”

    • The rise of ‘sologamy’

  • In “The Rise of Marriage for One,” the Spectator reported: “Marriage has been on the wane for some time. But what’s new is the decline in the number of women who are looking for a partner, let alone a husband.”
  • “Sologamists are everywhere, even if that’s not how they describe themselves.”
  • Over half of American adults are single, and some 33 million live alone. According to a 2006 Pew Research poll, 55 percent of American singles aren’t even looking for a relationship.

    • Other news:

  • European Union officials signed an agreement on August 23 to train Libya’s Coast Guard. The day before that, the Libyan parliament issued a no-confidence vote against the United Nations-backed unity government that controls the Libyan Navy.

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