Uncle Sam takes the losses on unpaid student loans ? and those are mounting very rapidly. If the banks that made the loans and colleges that enrolled unqualified students had to bear those losses, rest assured they would screen students much more carefully ? a lot of unqualified students would only be admitted if their parents footed the entire bill. Universities would not be so eager to push majors that impart left-wing ideological biases. They would ensure students spent more time in the classroom and learned something useful and less time at student unions with Club Med amenities or demonstrating for social justice. Independent assessments show that 40 percent of college graduates lack essential critical thinking and problem solving skills required by businesses for entry level of management and professional positions. It is no surprise that 40 percent of college graduates end up serving coffee at Starbucks or in other positions that do not require a bachelor’s degree. Many more young people should be enrolled in Department of Labor-certified apprenticeships or similar private sector programs. Privately-supported apprenticeships are not merely in blue-collar trades like welding but rather the full range of good-paying entry-level opportunities in banking, hospitality, information technology and automation systems that define the post-industrial economy. Offering free tuition to young people will actually make many college freshmen worse off. They will still borrow to cover living expenses and either won’t complete college or receive a degree that is not worth much when they could be earning a decent wage and learning a useful skill. That’s something university faculties seem too clueless.

A cross the country, millions of families are preparing to send their 18-year-olds off to college ? for many, this will be the worst thing they ever did to their children. For half the students who give college a try, it will prove a lousy investment. Democratic presidential hopefuls promising free tuition should know better than to hawk such snake oil. The whole premise behind federal student loan programs is that higher education is a good investment. For the nation, a more skilled labor force increases national productivity and for the students, graduates enjoy higher lifetime earnings. The nation sends about 70 percent of high school graduates to college but judged by their math and reading scores, too many are unqualified and only about 60 percent graduate. The other 40 percent borrow huge sums, but their productivity and earning power is not much improved. College debt often haunts them for decades, delay marriages and children, homeownership and other goals that would simply be more attainable had they never set foot on a college campus. Fully one-quarter of graduates earn no more and often less than the typical high school graduate. They simply would have been better off learning a skill through the military or enrolling in an apprenticeship program. For Uncle Sam, over half of the student loans offered to freshmen actually lowered national productivity and GDP. The money spent on tuition could have been better invested elsewhere ? better roads, support for private apprenticeship programs, R&D grants. And many highly-educated college faculties might be better deployed in managerial and professional roles elsewhere in the private sector or government service.

In Russia’s long-term war against the West that includes the infiltration of domestic political systems, blackmail and the indirect influence of elected officials through “ethnic political organizations,” one of its most prized and enduring tactics is its exploitation of ethnoreligious rivalries and fissures within the states along its borders. However, nobody should be fooled by Russia’s claim of right to intervene on behalf of “oppressed” Russian or Russian Orthodox minorities, or its enduring readiness to offer support to allegedly repressed minorities in targeted countries. Indeed, this tactic originated with Peter the Great, if not early. Thus, today in Ukraine, Moscow has not only incited Russian speakers in Crimea, but also Hungarian minorities in the Carpathians. In Georgia, it champions the Abkhazians and South Ossetians against Georgia, claiming that many of them are really Russians and suggesting a perspective that looks to their eventual incorporation into the Russian state and the destruction of Georgian territorial integrity. Thus, across its borders, Moscow habitually plays this “national question” card to break states, render them subservient to Moscow, and simultaneously furnish grounds for rebuilding the Russian empire. Moscow can play this card in many ways across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and has frequently done so in the past. As the current travails of Syria or the Yugoslav and Transcaucasian wars of the recent past should remind us, in these parts of the world ethnic issues are not forgotten, and there are too many “political entrepreneurs” willing to stoke animosities for their own and Moscow’s benefit for us to be complacent about the threat they could present to regional security.

Like America’s Wall Street bankers, they grow richer by enabling the globalization that impoverishes France’s working and middle class as represented by the Yellow Vests. By proposing another fuel tax to combat global warming, which would do diddle if China and other developing nations continue to increase emissions, President Macron unleashed more than a revolt against the high cost of driving. Yellow Vests are violently protesting the deaf greed and statist superstitions of France’s aristocrats. In the U.K., Theresa May, who opposed Brexit during the referendum, has coyly obstructed the outcome by acceding to all of the EU demands. In America, Donald Trump offered hope and change to America’s Yellow Vests ? those away from the large coastal cities who have long suffered from jobs-destroying free trade and immigration. The residual establishment among Democrats and center-right Republicans in Congress have obstructed President Trump’s legitimate mandate by stalling appointments. Democrats have abandoned support for Obama-era policies where those coincide with his agenda. They forget President Obama ratchetted up border enforcement and deportations. The West faces a mass migration from collapsing regimes in the South. It threatens the cultural cohesiveness and values that made possible liberal democracy and two centuries of progress from the Age of Invention to the post-World War II middle class prosperity. Gerard Collomb, a respectable center-left politician and Interior minister until last October, warned Mr. Macron that France risks civil war if legal and illegal immigration are not sharply curtailed.

President Xi Jinping believes China’s ascent to global dominance is inevitable, because its authoritarian government and socialist-market economy can better deliver technological progress and prosperity than decadent Western democracies. Established elites in the West may be proving him correct. The euro is overvalued for the Mediterranean region and undervalued for Germany and other northern states. Consequently, Italy and others must run large trade deficits with Germany and pile up foreign debt or accept perpetual austerity and high unemployment. Eurozone rules strictly limit national deficits. When the League and Five Star Movement won enough seats to form a coalition government that would break Italy loose from those rules, Sergio Mattarella ? president and de facto protector of the establishment ? refused permission to form a government unless the coalition effectively pledged not to implement policies that could eventually exit the country from the euro and EU. That effectively canceled the mandate of a democratically elected government. When the coalition proposed a budget deficit outside EU guidelines, Brussels struck it down and Italy was thrust into recession. In France, Emmanuel Macron won office on a fraud. His program of hope and change is little different than center-left Socialists and center-right Republicans that governed in recent decades ? incremental labor market reforms, high taxes on the working and middle classes to finance costly social programs in the face of flagging growth and allegiance to the EU’s strict rules on for economic, environmental and immigration policy. A graduate of ENA, he is the very epitome of France’s metro elites.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Martin Feldstein, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan, wrote: “The day is coming, experts tell us, when artificial intelligence and robotics will massively disrupt the labor market. Autonomous vehicles will put 3.5 million truck drivers at risk of losing their jobs. Checkout machines may replace 3.4 million cashiers. That is only the beginning of the long list of jobs that will be destroyed by technological change.” In fact, labor market disruption is constant. Fifty years ago almost no one was employed in Information Technology, and few were as recently as 30 years ago. Now, broadly defined, about 7 million people are IT workers. It is hard to imagine any future innovation that could destroy almost three-quarters of all the jobs as the farming revolution did ? the result of the combination of much better seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, farm mechanization and greatly improved farm management. Internet commerce has already destroyed millions of relatively low-skill retail jobs, but even so there is full employment in the country. Where did all of these people go? They are obviously working at something. Remember Kodak, Fuji, Nikon and all of the other household names in the camera, film and photofinishing industry? Twenty years ago, who could have imagined that Apple would be the U.S.’ largest camera company and the world’s most profitable maker of telephones? Every month, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. go out and kill entire existing industries and large companies with tens of thousands of employees. Yet again, we have full employment. So where did all of the workers in the destroyed companies go? I am willing to bet that in 50 years there will still be plenty of jobs for everyone ? just different jobs than most people have now.

And Mr. Kim should understand that securing this type of normal relationship with the Unied States, with inherent security assurances, is achievable only if he abandons his nuclear weapons and facilities. If, however, Mr. Kim believes normalization of relations with the United States is possible without having to abandon all nuclear weapons and facilities, then it’s a no-brainer ? that’s what he’ll pursue. And that’s likely what his senior advisers are telling him to pursue, arguing that the United States wants a deal and will relent, as they did with Pakistan, and eventually accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state. De facto acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear weapons state would be a nuclear proliferation nightmare. Other countries in the region, definitely to include South Korea and Japan, will feel the need to acquire their own nuclear “deterrent,” regardless of U.S. extended nuclear deterrence commitments. This could then incite a nuclear arms race in the region, with other countries seeking their own nuclear deterrent. Also, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and/or fissile material to rogue states or non-state terrorist organizations is another possibility that will endanger the region and beyond. A freeze (or halt) to all nuclear tests and fissile material production, and a moratorium on all missile launches, as part of a comprehensive denuclearization agreement with North Korea would be a historic accomplishment. President Trump’s two summits and his DMZ meeting with Mr. Kim made it now possible to secure a comprehensive nuclear agreement with North Korea, something that has eluded us for the past 25 years. Equally important will be making it abundantly clear that the United States will never accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state.

It appears that North Korea is close to achieving its ultimate goal ? de facto acceptance as a nuclear weapons state, while on a path to normalize relations with the United States. The June 12, 2018, Singapore Summit of President Donald Trump and leader Kim Jong-un produced a Joint Statement that committed both countries to the establishment of a new bilateral relationship, while building a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. It also committed North Korea to work toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Unfortunately, during the past year, despite a second Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi and a June 30, 2019, historic meeting in the Demilitarized Zone, there has been no apparent movement on achieving any of the goals cited in the Singapore Joint Statement. What we’re hearing, instead, is that North Korea may be amenable to a “freeze,” something China and Russia proposed more than two years ago. That proposal was correctly discarded, since the goal was and is complete and verifiable dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and facilities. A freeze doesn’t address the ultimate goal of complete denuclearization. Yes, it could be the first phase on a path to complete and verifiable denuclearization, but if that were the case, then a freeze should be part of an overarching agreement that commits North Korea to complete denuclearization, in return for movement on the normalization of bilateral relations and a peace treaty to end the Korean War, with the ultimate lifting of sanctions imposed by the United Nations. If Kim Jong-un is serious about economic development for North Korea and improving the living conditions for the 25 million people in the North, many malnourished, then pursuing a normal relationship with the United States is the path he should follow.

We have concluded such agreements with 26 countries and cooperated with them in developing their nuclear plants for more than 50 years. Today, two of our most technologically advanced American companies are offering to provide next-generation small modular reactors (SMRs) to Jordan. Jordan has signed the NPT, agreed to the additional protocol of the IAEA, and wants to sign a standard 123 agreement. Such a decision on Jordan’s part would create the strongest possible non-proliferation guarantee. A 10-year 123 Agreement would allow our companies to compete against China for the deployment of SMRs and prevent China from penetrating Jordan and undermining its sovereignty. For decades, our country has engaged allies in negotiations until both sides agree and accept the terms that will meet their needs. At the end of such a negotiation with Jordan, both sides will come away with an agreement that assures they will be protected against any plausible threat in their region. Underwritten by decades of mutual trust and respect, such agreements are more honored ? and therefore more reliable ? than standardized restrictions in a perishable agreement. Let’s be clear: We’re entering the Soft Power fight of our lives. Today, Russia and China are in a position to run the table in the Middle East. We’re about to see whether our country can make the comeback of the century. Any alternative holds incalculable consequences.

Still, two things stand in the way of this cutting-edge technology ever going into production, or of our ever catching up with Russia or China. The first is that international competitions worth hundreds of billions of dollars over the 80-year life of the plant are not carried out on a level playing field. When we’re competing against Russia or China, they’re able to subsidize the development, marketing and the offering price tendered by their state-owned companies. In short. Russia and China can simply “buy the project.” Authoritarian states do that. We can’t. We haven’t adopted an industrial policy that enables our government to “pick winners” and get behind them with financing and political support. But here is where our own version of Soft Power ? underwritten by more than 50 years of faithfulness in our commitment to peace and stability among the countries of the Middle East is brought to bear. Throughout their modern histories, every nation in the Middle East ? and indeed throughout the world ? has known that the United States operates on the basis of certain values; respect for their sovereignty and territorial integrity, fidelity to agreements openly negotiated, and an unshakeable commitment to nurturing growth and stability wherever we are asked. That counts for a lot. The second challenge is posed by the need to assure against a country deciding to develop nuclear weapons. Our approach is to require that any country that wants our help in developing nuclear power generation must sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a straightforward agreement whose terms are prescribed in Section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act.