The Economist 07Dec2019

The EconomistDecember 7th 2019 5

1 Contents continues overleaf

Contents

The world this week

9 A summary of political

and business news

Leaders

13 Britain’s election

The nightmare before

Christmas

14 NATO’s summit

Good, bad and ugly

14 Unrest in the Arab world

System failure

16 Sergey Brin and Larry

Page leave Alphabet

Search result

18 Climate change

Reverse gear

Letters

20 On billionaires, groceries,

the National Health

Service, wind power,

Kurt Vonnegut

Briefing

24 Negative emissions

The chronic complexity

of carbon capture

Special report:

Asian tigers

Still hunting

Afterpage 46

Britain

29 If the Tories win...

30 ...and if they don’t

31 Rehabilitating terrorists

32 Swing seats: Wrexham

32 The campaign in quotes

34 London’s election

34 Super-safe seats

35 BagehotPants on fire

Europe

37 German politics

38 NATO comes to London

39 France faces huge strikes

39 Turmoil in Malta

40 China and the Czechs

41 Charlemagne The Five

Stars burn out

United States

42 Refugee resettlement

43 Impeachment’s next phase

44 Christian adoptions

45 An American theocracy

46 LexingtonJoe Biden’s

stickiness

The Americas

47 “Wexit” in Canada

48 Desi Bouterse’s murder

conviction

49 BelloJair López Obrador

Middle East & Africa

51 Iraq’s uncertain future

52 Arabs lose faith

52 Repression in Iran

53 Algeria’s unfair election

53 Sudan’s terrible traffic

54 Identity in Africa

Bagehot Truth has been

the first casualty of

Britain’s election,page 35

On the cover

A divided country faces an
election that will tear it still
further apart: leader, page 13.
Under Boris Johnson, the
spectre of no-deal would
return in December 2020,
page 29. If the Lib Dems surge,
they could hurt the Tories as
much as Labour,page 89

• The carbon-capture
  conundrumThinking seriously
  about pulling carbon dioxide out
  of the atmosphere is difficult,
  but necessary: leader, page 18.
  Climate policy depends on being
  able to trap carbon dioxide. That
  is hard: briefing, page 24


• NATO: the good, the bad, the
  uglyNew troublemakers have
  emerged in the alliance: leader,
  page 14. NATO marks its 70th
  anniversary in chaotic fashion,
  page 38


• A special report on the Asian
  tigers After half a century of
  success, South Korea, Taiwan,
  Hong Kong and Singapore must
  reinvent their economies, after
  page 46


• Our books of the yearThe
  best books of 2019 were about
  the IRA, Harper Lee’s lost work,
  rational economics and an Ohio
  housewife,page 83. And by our
  own staff: this year our writers
  went to the Moon and back,
  page 86