Week in Review: Is War in Syria Over?, Galileo Goes Live, China Threatens Taiwan, Germany in Mideast, and Much More

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Highlights:

More conflict in Syria

• A ceasefire in Aleppo, Syria, unraveled on Wednesday. It resumed on Thursday, but it appeared to have temporarily collapsed again on Friday.
• “Aleppo was liberated thanks to a coalition between Iran, Syria, Russia and Lebanon’s Hezbollah,” said a top Iranian official. “Iran is on one side of this coalition, which is approaching victory, and this has shown our strength. The new American president should take heed of the powers of Iran.”
• However, as the Wall Street Journal noted, the fall of Aleppo does not mean Assad’s forces can claim victory in Syria just yet. As Aleppo was being conquered, the Islamic State was retaking the Syrian city of Palmyra from government forces.

Europe’s GPS goes live

• Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system officially went live on December 15 after 17 years of preparations.
• “Galileo will underpin the common European defense policy that the member states have decided to establish,” wrote European Union directorate-general for transport and energy back in 2002. The system now has 18 operation satellites. It needs 24 to be fully operational and become more accurate than America’s gps system.
• Europe’s Galileo system reveals its superpower ambition, as we explained in our article “The Quiet Space Race.”

‘Peace does not belong to cowards’

• In response to comments by United States President-elect Donald Trump that the U.S. would not necessarily be bound by the one-China policy regarding Taiwan, Beijing said it should be prepared to take Taiwan by military force.
• China’s state-run Global Times, which is a mouthpiece for the Communist Party, said Trump’s statements give China no reason to “put peace above using force to take back Taiwan.”
• It also wrote that “the future of Taiwan must not be shaped by the [main ruling party in Taiwan] and Washington, but by the Chinese mainland.”
• “[T]he Chinese mainland should display its resolution to recover Taiwan by force. Peace does not belong to cowards.”

Germany transfers weapons to Jordan

• German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen met with King Abdullah of Jordan in Amman on December 11 as she shores up Middle Eastern allies in the fight against terrorism.
• Jordan received 16 “Marder” armored vehicles from Germany. It will receive an additional 34 vehicles by the end of next year.
• According to Spiegel Online, Germany is considering establishing a base in Jordan as part of the anti-Islamic State mission.

Other news:

• China has deployed advanced weapons systems, including antimissile configurations, on all seven of the islands it has built in the South China Sea.
• A growing number of today’s youth appear to be giving up on democracy as a viable form of government, according to a report by Harvard University researcher Yascha Mounk and University of Melbourne political scientist Roberto Stefan Foa titled “The Danger of Deconsolidation.”
• A new study published by jama Internal Medicine on Monday showed that one in six American adults is taking at least one psychiatric drug.

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