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A central tenet of the Trump foreign policy, a work in progress, has been that the U.S. would rebuild its relationship with America’s allies. That commitment is being put to the test in northern Iraq.

On Monday Iraq’s army, assisted by Iranian forces, launched a major assault on the Kurds in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. Across the length of America’s recent history with Iraq, we have had no more reliable ally than Iraq’s Kurds and their fighting force, the Peshmerga.

So far the Trump Administration has said little about the attack on the Kurds. “We’re not taking sides, but we don’t like the fact that they’re clashing,” President Trump told reporters at the White House Monday. “We’ve had, for many years, a very good relationship with the Kurds, as you know. And we’ve also been on the side of Iraq, even though we should have never been in there in the first place. But we’re not taking sides in that battle.”

But if the U.S. allows one of its most visible allies to be defeated in the Middle East, make no mistake: Other allies in the region will notice and start to recalculate their relationship with the Trump Administration.

The Iraqi Kurds, to be sure, have contributed to their current plight. Kurdish President Masoud Barzani went forward with a needless independence referendum last month, despite pressure from the U.S. not to hold the vote. The pro-forma vote gave the Baghdad government a pretext to play the nationalist card and retake Kirkuk.

Kirkuk is a multi-ethnic city that lies just south of Iraq’s Kurdistan, an autonomous region whose borders abut Iran and Turkey. The Kirkuk region is also rich in oil. The Kurds gained control of Kirkuk in 2014 after Iraq’s army famously fled under attack from Islamic State, which seized control of Mosul in June that year.

After the Iraqi forces abandoned the region, the Peshmerga became the primary reason that Islamic State was never able to consolidate its control of northern Iraq. Arguably, the Kurds, backed by U.S. air power, saved Iraq by giving Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi time to reconstitute his nation’s army into a fighting force capable of driving Islamic State out of Iraq’s major cities, with the help of the Peshmerga.

Possibly the phrase “no good deed goes unpunished” originated in the Middle East. Having taken back Mosul from Islamic State, Mr. Abadi now wants to drive the Kurds back into their northern Iraqi homeland. But the strategic details of this attack on the Kurds are important. Iraq’s offensive includes Iran. According to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, Iranian-backed militias and the 9th Iraqi Armored Division moved toward Kirkuk last week to support the Iraqi army.

The Abadi government in Baghdad is under constant pressure from Shiite Iran to align itself against the interest of Iraq’s Sunni populations in the north and west. It follows that after Iraq’s progress on the battlefield against Islamic State, Iran would encourage the Iraqis to drive the Kurds out of Kirkuk.

Notice this is all happening within days of President Trump decertifying the Iran nuclear deal, based in part on the assumption that Europe will support U.S. efforts to resist Iran’s ballistic-missile program and its penetrations across the Middle East. But what will the Europeans or our allies in the Middle East conclude if we abandon one of our oldest regional allies, the Iraqi Kurds?

The U.S. no doubt has lost much of the political leverage it had before the Obama Administration pulled out of Iraq in 2011. But abandoning the Kurds to an Iraq-Iran Shiite alliance would only deepen U.S. losses.

Before Iraq and the Kurds go to war, the U.S. could insist that Iraq reaffirm the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan and also that it work out an agreement to share revenue from the region’s oil reserves. The alternative to such a modus vivendi for Prime Minister Abadi is a capable Kurdish fighting force in a state of permanent insurrection.

The U.S. owes a debt to the Kurds. Abandoning them now would damage America’s credibility, and not least Mr. Trump’s ability to enlist allies against Iran’s expansion across the Middle East. The assault on Kirkuk matters.

One day Europe will be able to hold an election without a freak-out over a feared return of the far right. That day isn’t here. So Austria’s election on Sunday, in which voters rejected a center-left governing cartel in favor of a resurgent center-right, has the Continent rushing for the smelling salts.

Sebastian Kurz of the center-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) placed first in the parliamentary vote, with early results pegging him at 32%. The 31-year-old has served as foreign minister in a coalition government led by the center-left Social Democrats. Mr. Kurz abandoned that centrist coalition and positioned his party further to the right, especially on immigration after the surge of Middle Eastern and African migrants into Europe.

His strategy worked, especially in pulling voters from the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), the outfit that really gives Europeans palpitations. Leader Heinz-Christian Strache has tried hard but not always credibly to shed the FPÖ’s reputation as a political haven for xenophobes and Nazi sympathizers. At the start of the year it polled at 35%, after its candidate for the ceremonial presidency won 47% last year. But on Sunday its share fell to about 20%

Mr. Kurz reversed the far-right’s march by co-opting some of its main policies. Those include tighter bars on asylum-seekers and intra-European Union migrants claiming social benefits, and a push to shut off the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean by returning most to refugee camps in North Africa. He added an economic platform of tax-rate cuts, especially on individual income to below 40% and a new focus on business-friendliness.

Some of our media friends present this as a resurgence of an ugly far-right party, and Mr. Kurz is likely to form a coalition with the FPÖ. But the FPÖ already has done a turn in a governing coalition, from 2000-2005, and it ended badly amid divisions about economic policy and leadership. The lesson was that voters care about results, and an electorate supporting a fringe party out of frustration won’t blithely follow that party into an abyss.

Sunday’s result confirms that conclusion, as voters came home to a centrist party that now aims to compete for votes rather than taking them for granted as part of an ideologically neutered left-right coalition. That should be good news for worried European politicians. Voters will give mainstream parties plenty of opportunity to reform themselves, but the parties have to listen to the voters.

Moscow’s sale of a better defense system to the Saudis than to its “ally” Iran is consistent with the pattern of its attempts to influence outcomes in the region.

Remarkably little comment attended the strangest outcome of Saudi King Salman’s four-day visit to Moscow in early October, namely Russia’s sale of its top-of-the-line S-400 air defense system to a country whose relations with Russia have been hostile until recently. It was strange because Iran, habitually characterized as Russia’s “ally” in Western media, was permitted to purchase a much older and inferior Russian system, the S-300.

Not only the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but also Russia’s Cold War adversary Turkey will buy the far more advanced S-400, a “game-changer,” as former Pentagon official Stephen Bryen described it in an October 13 analysis for Asia Times. The S-400 is highly effective against the sort of cruise and ballistic missiles that Iran will be able to field during the next several years.

Russia’s carefully-calibrated weapons sales to the opposing Persian Gulf powers follows a pattern established by China over the past decade. China sells missiles to Iran as well as to the KSA, but it sells more advanced missiles to the Saudis, because the Saudis are the weaker of the two adversaries, and China wants to maintain the balance of power. Russia has been called a “spoiler” in the Middle East so often that the term clings like a Homeric epithet. In recent weeks, Russian policy has shifted to classic balance-of-power politics.

“Peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power,” Henry Kissinger likes to say. Powers that cannot exercise hegemony, in other words, attempt to maintain a balance that contains the ambitions of prospective rivals. The classic example is Britain, which allied with Prussia against France through the Napoleonic Wars, and then allied with France against Germany at the turn of the last century. Britain could not aspire to be a hegemon on the European continent, so it sought to prevent either France or Germany from dominating. Russia does not have the wherewithal to replace the United States as a regional hegemon, but it does have considerable means to affect the balance of power.

On October 12, Russian Foreign Minister Mikhail Bodanov offered to mediate between Iran and the KSA, but talk is cheap. Installation of top-of-the-line weapons systems is not. The United States belatedly offered the Saudis its THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) system, probably as a rushed response to the Russian offer. In Dr. Bryen’s analysis, the S-400 is simply a better system, and gives the Saudis an important edge in any prospective conflict with Iran.

Tocsin is in the air. The North Korean representative to the U.N. said President Trump’s recent speech was tantamount to a declaration to war. While this kind of verbal saber-rattling has occurred in the past, it is worth asking whether U.S. forces have the technological superiority to thwart any potential foe and the nuclear superiority to deter a “first strike.”

While the U.S. still enjoys some technological advantages over potential adversaries, that advantage is declining at a rapid rate. An American Enterprise Institute study noted that “The diffusion of advanced military technology and the means to manufacture it have accelerated. Capabilities in which the United States once enjoyed a monopoly (e.g. precision munitions and unmanned systems) have now proliferated…to virtually all U.S. adversaries in short order; Nations such as China and Russia have made concerted efforts to out pace and counter the military – technological advancements of the United States.”

While AEI study is not dispositive and several military officials have criticized the conclusion, no one disputes the fact that U.S. superiority is being challenged. Similarly, the once dominant nuclear arsenal of the U.S. is in descent. At the 2009 new Start Treaty meeting, President Barak Obama traded away U.S. nuclear superiority in what was a high risk experiment in unilateral disarmament. This decision was in keeping with his adolescent dream of a world without nuclear weapons.

However, President Obama made his decision without the consent of Congress or any consultation with the American public. Since the 2009 Start Treaty, Russia has tested several new mobile ICBM’s such as the SS-25 and the RS26, in violation of the treaty, but the Obama administration chose to ignore the violations. Moreover, the Chinese buildup of its Theater Strategic Rocket Force is a matter of concern, but the magnitude of the problem is concealed by the secrecy of stockpiling. Added to this equation is the growing nuclear arsenal of North Korea and Iran, both basically allied in targeting the U.S. with its fledging nuclear weapons.

Despite the fact military assessments invariably refer to the strength of U.S. armed forces, training budgets are at alarmingly low levels. One plausible explanation for the naval accidents in Asia is congestion in the Straits of Malacca and the lack of adequate training for naval officers in the region. Moreover, conventional war may be a condition of the past. It is conceivable that cyber warfare is in our future which could lead to a breakdown of the American economy.

Angela Merkel’s misguided migration policy — which allowed nearly 1 million people from Africa and the Middle East to enter Germany in 2015 — has claimed another political victim. Her centrist Christian Democratic government lost a great deal of support to the populist Alternative for Germany in last month’s election because of her mishandling of the migration flood. And today, Christian Kern, the left-wing Social Democratic chancellor of Austria, lost his job because of his own party’s involvement in opening Austria to 75,000 new migrants. Germany borders Austria, and many refugees and economic migrants entered Germany through Austria, with 75,000 remaining.

Festering public anger at uncontrolled immigration, crime, wasteful spending, and bureaucratic arrogance has hurt all established political parties. But the damage to left-wing parties has been the most severe. Taken together, the three left-wing parties in Germany — the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the Left party — won only 38 percent of the vote in last month’s elections. Twenty years ago, the three combined won 53 percent. Similarly, in Austria, the three left-wing parties together won only 34 percent of the vote today, with the environmentalist Greens shut out of parliament for the first time in more than 30 years.

The clear winners are the parties of the populist Right. Take Austria. The center-right People’s Party was floundering early this year, trapped in an unpopular, status-quo coalition with the leftist Social Democrats. Then, in May, 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz — the leader of the party’s youth wing — mounted a coup and ousted the party’s complacent leadership.

Kurz quickly moved his party to the right. He promoted tougher policies in a range of areas: migration, welfare benefits for foreigners, relations with the European Union, and border controls. He called for a ban on the wearing of burqas. He then announced his party could no longer govern with the Social Democrats, forcing this month’s snap election.

All these moves pushed Kurz’s People’s Party into first place in the polls, leapfrogging both the Social Democrats and the Freedom Party, a long-time populist party that once had neo-fascist associations but has worked to purge itself of questionable elements. Heinz-Christian Strache, the Freedom Party’s leader, joked at the “late bloomer” Kurz for stealing his party’s ideological clothing. He proclaimed himself “the visionary” who had shown Kurz the way.

In the end, Kurz and his party took first place, with 31.4 percent of the vote. The Freedom Party won 27.4 percent, and the Social Democrats won 26.7 percent. Even Chancellor Kern of the Social Democrats had to admit the nation has seen a “massive slide to the right.” The Freedom Party’s Strache was exultant that the negative media coverage hadn’t prevented his party from gaining votes. “The voter is always right. The ongoing hounding of us libertarians did not work,” he told Der Standard newspaper.

The almost certain outcome of the election will be a coalition government of the People’s Party and the Freedom Party. They governed together once before, from 2000 to 2005, and were able to implement what for Austria were radical economic reforms before they split after various scandals.

The death toll from twin bombings in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu climbed above 200 over the weekend, making it one of the deadliest attacks in the country since an Islamist insurgency started a decade ago.

A truck bomb exploded at a busy intersection on Saturday, ripping through several buildings, including hotels and government offices, the African Union Mission in Somalia said.

Hours later, a second explosion hit the suburb of Medina, setting dozens of vehicles on fire.

The two blasts killed at least 231 people, Abdirizak Mohamed, a member of Parliament and former minister of international security, said in a message on Twitter, citing the number of dead counted at two local hospitals he said he visited.

Officials said some 275 people had been injured in the attacks, which followed several months of relative calm in the capital.

The attacks came amid a renewed push from the U.S. to rid Somalia of al Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabaab militants.

President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo declared three days of mourning and called for more international support to fight the Islamic militants.

“Terrorism seeks to stop the light of our government,” Mr. Farmaajo said on Sunday, as he inspected the carnage at the scene of the first blast. “We must stand together and oppose terror.”

Emergency workers and police were digging through the rubble of flattened buildings in search of more victims. Hundreds of people waited in the hope of getting news about missing relatives, witnesses said.

At least five Red Crescent volunteers were among those killed in the blast.
People in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, on Sunday walked through the scene. Photo: mohamed abdiwahab/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The International Federation of the Red Cross warned the death toll could rise.

“As early as first grade, students in Saudi schools are being taught hatred toward all those perceived to be of a different faith or school of thought. The lessons in hate are reinforced with each following year.” — Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East Director, Human Rights Watch.

The Saudis “are both the arsonists and the firefighters. They promote a very toxic form of Islam that draws sharp lines between a small number of true believers and everyone else, Muslim and non-Muslim” – which spur jihadis to take action — yet they are “our partners in counterterrorism.” — William McCants, senior fellow, Brookings Institution, to the New York Times, August 2016.

In fourth-grade second semester Monotheism textbook, Saudi students learn that polytheists, “the worst of creatures,” are condemned to Hell. They also study a Quranic verse in which Allah dictates that: “Indeed, they who disbelieved among the People of the Scripture and the polytheists will be in the fire of Hell, abiding eternally therein. Those are the worst of creatures.” (98:6, Sahih International)

A review of the Saudi Ministry of Education’s school religion books currently available at the portal for digital curriculum (visited on September 25, 2017) found out that the curriculum still has violent and intolerant teachings. These books were published for the school year 2016-17.

At a very early stage, the fourth grade, the curriculum begins to teach Saudi children that Muslims are essentially different but superior to all non-Muslims.

In a fourth-grade second semester Monotheism textbook, Saudi students learn that polytheists, “the worst creatures” according to the Quran (98:6), are condemned to Hell.

In a lesson entitled “Universality of Islam and Prophet Mohammed” fifth-graders are taught that Prophet Mohammed was sent to all human beings: “Say, [O Mohammed], “O mankind, indeed I am the Messenger of Allah to you all (7:158).

They also learn that all human beings should believe in the Prophet Mohammed and in Islam, and leave supposedly corrupted religions.

A Steel tariff destroys more jobs in cars, aviation, construction and machine-making than it saves in steel, while free trade deals will help boost growth
The Institute of Free Trade will aim to use Brexit to cut prices, boost growth, and help world trade
AS Britain got ready to join the EEC in 1973, one of the biggest arguments in the build up was over whether food prices would go up.

They did — by as much as 40 per cent.

Britain was no longer free to buy on world markets — Canadian wheat, Argentine beef, New Zealand lamb.

Instead, we had to get much of what we wanted from expensive Continental producers. There have been some reforms to the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy since then but, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, it still adds 17 per cent to our grocery bills.

Pricey food is bad for everyone. It means we have to spend more on the basics, so have less for other things. That makes the whole economy suffer.

But it is especially bad for people on low incomes, because food bills are a higher proportion of their monthly budget.

On Tuesday, alongside Boris Johnson and Liam Fox, I’ll be launching the Institute for Free Trade, which aims to use Brexit to cut prices, boost growth and help world trade. Outside the EU, we can sign deals with Australia, China, India, the US — helping our own folk and theirs.

Until recently, it went without saying that free trade was good for ordinary people. Protectionism was seen for what it was — a way to transfer money from the poor to the rich.

Outside the EU we can sign deals with Australia, China, India and the US

Nowadays, though, free trade is often seen as exploitative.

Well-meaning youngsters protest against trade deals, imagining they are standing up for poor countries against big business.

In fact they are doing the opposite.

Nothing has done more to reduce global poverty than the spread of markets.