This Week's #Winners and #Losers

Back with my winners and losers for the week.

Presidential Dropouts

Winner: Rand Paul—stood on principle throughout the primaries and gets to leave with his head held high. He’ll have a voice in the GOP after the election.

Loser: Martin O'Malley—If you’re angling for a position in the next administration, demonstrating your complete political irrelevance for six straight months is probably not the best way to go. Even Jeb! managed to get 3% in Iowa.

Whistleblowers

Winner: Edward Snowden—receives yet another nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize, continues to rock governments around the world through his leaked revelations and doesn’t even have to live in an Ecuadorian embassy.

Loser: Julian Assange—a UN panel found that Assange was being “arbitrarily detained” by the governments of Sweden and the UK. Too bad no one cares about the UN.

Syria Talks

Winner: Russia—refuses to stop its airstrikes supporting Assad, dares the world to do something about it. Turkey even claimed that a Russian jet violated its airspace, but didn’t shoot it down this time. Russian swagger is in full force.

Loser: The United States—the breakdown in talks shows that the US is increasingly a marginal player in determining the future of Syria, not that you would know it from listening to Washington.

EU Exits

Winner: Brexit—Prime Minister David Cameron struck a provisional deal with the European Commission this week with just enough concessions to convince the public to keep the UK in the Union.

Loser: Grexit—Greece was essentially told to solve the migrant crisis or risk being kicked out of Schengen. This for a country that can’t even reform its pension system. What could possibly go wrong?

UN World

Winner: Fundraising—a conference in London raised more than $10 billion dollars for aid to Syrians.

Loser: Peace talks—those failed UN talks mean there will be plenty of Syrian refugees who need that $10 billion.

Martin Shkreli Hearings

Winner: US Congress—it’s not every week that Congress gets to grandstand and still come off looking like the good guys.

Loser: Sick people—they still have to pay egregious prices for drugs. #FeelTheBern

Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group, global research professor at New York University and foreign affairs columnist at TIME. You can also follow him on Twitter and Facebook.