Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Subscribe here. August 1, 2021 On GPS, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET: First, Fareed gives his take on recent challenges to liberal democracy around the world—including in Tunisia, where the President has suspended parliament; in Haiti, whose President was recently assassinated; and in Afghanistan, where the Taliban is advancing against government forces.
"If political order is rare, liberal political order is rarer still," Fareed says. Citing the work of scholars Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Fareed says that "liberal democracy is the Goldilocks form of government. It needs a state that is strong enough to govern effectively but not so strong that it crushes the liberties and rights of its people."
It has flourished in the West only by the luck of historical trends, Fareed says, noting what Benjamin Franklin reputedly said about the type of government the Constitutional Convention should choose in 1787: A republic, if you can keep it. "The delegates could design the best system in the world, but its success ultimately rested with the people," Fareed says. "That sounds like an ominous warning, but we might also take comfort—the power to preserve democracy is in our hands." After that, Fareed discusses two of the biggest pandemic-related issues facing the country with two Nobel laureates. First, the US economy has bounced back, but will Delta wreck the recovery? Fareed asks New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.
After that: As President Biden and top health officials struggle to convince more citizens to get vaccinated, can behavioral science help? Fareed asks a pioneer in that field, "Nudge" coauthor and Nobel-winning behavioral economist Richard Thaler.
Next: Did Tunisia just experience a coup? Tarek Masoud of Harvard's Middle East Initiative weighs in on recent developments in the Arab Spring's lone success story.
Finally: A House committee is examining what happened on Jan. 6, but does the US need a truth-and-reconciliation process to heal its divided politics after the Capitol riot? Scholar Danielle Allen discusses how that might work. Volkswagen, Xinjiang, and Everyone In recent years, Volkswagen has drawn criticism for operating a plant in Xinjiang, China, given the disturbing reports of human-rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in the region. (Volkswagen has said it does not use any forced labor in its Xinjiang plant.) At The Guardian, historian and commentator Timothy Garton Ash writes that Volkswagen's controversy is deeply symbolic.
Volkswagen "is an example of a western company that has become so dependent on the Chinese market that it can hardly do without it," Ash writes. "China accounts for more than 40% of Volkswagen's global car sales. Whatever the exact calculations that led Volkswagen to open its relatively small plant in Xinjiang in 2013, it seems clear that to close it down now would negatively impact its whole relationship with the Chinese regime, on which its business in the country depends. … Behind this leading western company that is too dependent on China is a leading western country that is at risk of becoming too dependent on China. Under Angela Merkel, China has risen to be Germany's largest single trading partner." As Western companies, countries, and investors hanker for—and come to need—business with China, navigating such problems will require care and integrity, in Ash's view. Get Ready for a 'Law and Order' Election? In the US, one type of crime has risen sharply during the pandemic: According to the FBI's preliminary data, homicides rose 25% from 2019 to 2020. At Politico Magazine, Joshua Zeitz traces the Republican Party's history of campaigning on crime, suggesting another law-and-order election may be on the horizon.
This time could be different. "[V]oters aren't distributed the way they were in 1970," Zeitz writes, noting the racist dog whistles of George Wallace's anti-crime rhetoric and Richard Nixon's success in "dislodge[ing] middle class white voters" from the Democratic Party. "It's the educated suburbs that are up for grabs now, and voters there simply don't confront violent crime on a daily basis in the same way that the working-class Democrats of Brooklyn or Milwaukee did a half century ago," Zeitz writes. At the same time, Black voters appear to welcome more police on the streets, "if and when that presence is protective of their safety." Minority voters could be prime audiences for law-and-order campaigning, if not for the GOP's "open embrace of white nationalism," Zeitz writes, concluding broadly that crime politics have changed. Afghanistan Faces Covid-19, Too In the midst of a growing insurgency, Afghanistan also faces the same problem all other countries do, Kabul-based journalist Ruchi Kumar writes for Undark: Covid-19.
"Several doctors working across Afghanistan painted a grim portrait of the conflict and its effect on health care delivery," Kumar writes. "Last month, [Baghlan Provice private-hospital director Haji Shaker] Zahedi's district experienced a surge in Taliban attacks. 'Our hospital building looks like a checkpoint right now because of the bullets and the shooting,' he said." Zahedi tells Kumar, "We ask both the Taliban and government sides to not target the health centers," but "we don't feel safe, and we can't save the lives of those in need." The New Emerging-Markets Zeitgeist: Uncertainty Emerging markets were all the rage in the early 2000s, but The Economist writes in a new cover story (and companion briefing) that headwinds abound—including political volatility.
"Today South Africa is reeling from an insurrection, Colombia has suffered violent protests and Tunisia faces a constitutional crisis," the magazine writes. "Illiberal government is in fashion. Peru has just sworn in a Marxist as its president and independent institutions are under attack in Brazil, India and Mexico. This wave of unrest and authoritarianism partly reflects covid-19, which has exposed and exploited vulnerabilities, from rotten bureaucracies to frayed social safety-nets."
Some large trends look unfavorable, as the magazine tells it, including a global slowdown in trade, the prospect of rising US interest rates, China's inward economic focus that has capped lofty expectations for its imports, a pandemic that threatens to linger and cause still more instability—and, of course, climate change. As a congressional committee examines the causes of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, in a New York Review of Books essay Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson ponder ways to curtail right-wing militias in the US. Civil war may seem far-fetched, given that a territorial split is unlikely, but Simon and Stevenson write that simmering militia violence is within the realm of possibility, pointing to the Irish Republican Army as an example. (Harrowingly, they write: "An assassination or two could cause social tension to descend into civil conflict.")
Rather than take any overt measures to curtail right-wing speech and assembly—which could fuel suspicions of an overbearing, repressive state—they recommend treating right-wing criminals the same as others. As various analysts have proposed before, they recommend drawing lessons from Germany, which has stayed vigilant about right-wing violence and has remained aware that extremist networks can infiltrate the military and police, for instance. "The overarching lesson for America is to stick to criminalization and strictly civilian law enforcement, both to preserve civil liberties and to avoid provoking even more extreme reactions. A small core of far-right extremists may survive counterterrorism enforcement efforts in the medium term. If US law enforcement can substantially stop infiltration and generate better intelligence for tactical warnings, though, the right-wing threat is not likely to be more resistant than that of other lethal groups—mafia families, spy rings, the Hell's Angels—that have been dismantled one search warrant, wiretap, and indictment at a time." |
