Global Briefing, June 1, 2011: The Thrill is Gone

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Nuclear Fallout — In an essay for Dawn.com Rafia Zakaria mulls the meaning of ‘the bomb’ in Pakistan’s collective consciousness. “The bomb that was supposed to deter and defeat has been unable to frighten anyone into leaving us alone,” she writes. “It has revealed, instead, the flimsy remains of our national pride and a confused, conspiracy-infested mental landscape.”

War Crimes — Ian Buruma considers the arrest, in Serbia, of alleged war criminal Ratko Mladić and the legal and political ramifications of trying him for ‘genocide’ rather than, say, ‘ethnic cleansing. Buruma’s concern is that, by muddying the definitions, we risk diluting their power.  “Loose definitions will encourage more military interventions, thus more wars,” he says.

Mao’s Moment — Among a certain branch of China’s Communist Party, Mao’s hard-line tactics seem, once again, to be in vogue. “The current leadership is leaning heavily on two old standbys: crackdowns and propaganda,” writes Raymond Zhang for the Wall Street Journal. The approach is increasingly at large with the increasingly “independent-minded” and “cynical” Chinese people, he says. And as the gap between the state and the people widens, the risk of conflict grows.

Move Over — At Foreign Policy, Basharat Peer evaluates the prospect of peace between ‘the hawks of South Asia,’ India and Pakistan. A productive political conversation won’t be possible unless  their respective militaries get out of the way, he says.

The Thrill is Gone— The drubbing suffered in local elections shows Silvio Berlusconi increasingly obsessed with his own personal and judicial woes — and losing touch with the sentiments of everyday Italians, writes Mario Calabresi in an editorial for La Stampa, translated by our partners at Worldcrunch.

Courage in a Glass — In a dispatch from Tokyo, Lucy Birmingham, reports on efforts to get Japan’s quake and tsunami-hit artisanal sake businesses back on track. For TIME’s complete coverage of the Japan’s quake and its aftermath, click here.

W.W.P.D. — By agreeing to act as mediator in the war in Libya, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev may have signed his own political death warrant, says Simon Shuster, in a dispatch from Moscow.

In Pictures— Light Box features James Nachtwey’s work on Thailand’s rising drug trade and the country’s controversial approach to rehabilitation.  Read the accompanying story, by Andrew Marshall, here.