The Evening CSIS: Warning Shots, Talking Taiwan, Spill the Wine & More

Good Evening,

Welcome to The Evening CSIS—my daily guide to key insights CSIS brings to the events of the day plus HIGHLY RECOMMENDED content from around the world. To subscribe, please sign up here.

Warning Shots

A US Navy destroyer fired three warning shots at four Iranian fast-attack vessels near the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday after they closed in at high speed and disregarded repeated requests to slow down, US officials said today, as Reuters' Idrees Ali reports.

Dive Deeper: See Anthony Cordesman’s essay for the CSIS 2017 Global Forecast, “What Are the Main Risks We Face in the Middle East?”

Talking Taiwan

Against the objections of Chinese officials, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) met with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in Texas on Sunday during her much-scrutinized overseas trip, as the Washington Post’s Amy Wang reports.

Dive Deeper: See CSIS’s 2017 Global Forecast for “How Should We View China’s Rise?,” a conversation with CSIS’s Christopher Johnson, Victor Cha and Amy Searight.

And, from CSIS’s Bonnie Glaser and her interactive website, ChinaPower, see: “Could China seize and occupy Taiwan militarily?"

Sinn Fein Shake-Up

The top Catholic official in Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government, Martin McGuinness, abruptly resigned today, plunging the territory into political uncertainty and adding to Britain’s complications as it plans to leave the European Union, as the New York Times’ Sinead O’Shea reports .

Dive Deeper: Chatham House director Robin Niblett recently authored, “The Demise of Anglo-American Economic Leadership.”

In That Number

900 yards

The distance between a US Navy destroyer and four fast-approaching Iranian attack vessels whose menacing behavior led the US ship to fire warning shots on Sunday. Source: Reuters’ Idrees Ali.

Critical Quote

“What we should be seeing in the chaos, though, is not how much conditions are the same across the Arab world. We should be seeing instead just how different they are. Now politics and societies are diverging, and they will continue to diverge in the years ahead.”

—CSIS’s Jon B. Alterman authored a new piece in the Atlantic, “When the Middle East Seemed Stable.”

One to Watch

Tom Karako (@tomkarako) is the director of CSIS’s Missile Defense Project. In collaboration with the CSIS iDeas Lab, Tom and his team have created a new micro-website, MissileThreat, an authoritative source of information and analysis about ballistic and cruise missiles around the globe and the systems designed to defend against them. As tensions rise on the Korean peninsula, check out MissileThreat’s feature on North Korea’s missile program.

Optics

(Photo Credit: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images.)
Mourners gather around the coffin of one of the late founders of the Islamic Republic, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, during the mourning ceremony at Jamaran mosque today in Tehran.

Highly Recommended

The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan on retiring the “tainted term of fake news.”

CSIS Wednesday

Join CSIS's Burke Chair in Strategy on Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. for "Afghanistan Reconstruction: Enduring Challenges for the New Administration and Congress," featuring a conversation with Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John F. Sopko.

Join us on demand at 4:30 p.m. for the Sam Nunn National Security Leadership Prize and Lecture, featuring inaugural prize recipient Ash Carter, US secretary of defense.

This Town Tomorrow

Join CFR online at 8:30 a.m. for “Counterterrorism, Cybersecurity, and Homeland Security” with Lisa O. Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism.

Join the US Institute of Peace at 9:00 a.m. for “Passing the Baton: America’s Role in the World.” Participants will include former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, former secretary of defense Chuck Hagel, and former national security advisers Stephen Hadley and General James Jones.

And join AEI at 4:30 p.m. for “The End of the Asian Century.”

CSIS On Demand

“Challenges from North Korea” from our 2016 Global Security Forum, featuring Ambassador Robert Gallucci, General Walter L. Sharp (USA Ret.), and Christine Wormuth, former under secretary of defense for policy.

Sounds

This week's CSIS podcast talks to CSIS’s James Lewis on what Russia's interference in the 2016 US presidential election means for the future of cyber policy.

I Like It Like That

Axios, the new Mike Allen-Jim Vande Hei venture, provided a sneak peek and the ability to subscribe to its newsletters, such as “Axios AM (All Mikey)” today.

Smiles

One of my favorite premium television series, Showtime’s “Shameless” wasn’t nominated this year for a Golden Globe. But it’s seventh season concluded with an epic episode featuring one of the most cinematic pieces of music in rock and roll’s cannon.

“Spill the Wine” by Eric Burdon and War is an improbably smash hit first released in 1970. It has a Latin-funk swagger that is at once infectious, dreamy and completely irresistible. It draws you into its spell in an uncommon way—maybe that’s why it sounds so fresh almost five decades after it was recorded.

Eric Burdon is one of rock and roll’s seminal figures best known for his work with The Animals. But I’ll take “Spill the Wine” over any other Burdon performance—including “House of the Rising Sun.” Check this out.

Feedback

I always welcome and benefit from your feedback. Please drop me a line at aschwartz@csis.org