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. September 29, 2021 Can America Stop the Actual Steal? Supporters of former President Donald Trump already tried to steal one election, and Robert Kagan writes in an opinion essay for The Washington Post that groundwork has been laid for another attempt in 2024.
Predicting a genuine constitutional crisis after a Trump-2024 campaign, Kagan writes: "[T]he amateurish 'stop the steal' efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters will have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state officials who effectively saved the country from calamity … are being systematically removed or hounded from office. Republican legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the election certification process. … An Arizona bill flatly states that the legislature may 'revoke the secretary of state's issuance or certification of a presidential elector's certificate of election' by a simple majority vote. Some state legislatures seek to impose criminal penalties on local election officials alleged to have committed 'technical infractions,' including obstructing the view of poll watchers. The stage is thus being set for chaos."
American democracy, in Kagan's view, is really dying, and it's up to virtuous Republicans to oppose the corruption of the US electoral system before it's too late. … But Would Trump Even Need Trickery? For all those efforts, David Frum writes for The Atlantic that Trump might well win the presidency back in 2024 without any skullduggery, given President Joe Biden's record.
"Those aghast at Republican voter suppression should not fall for the mistaken idea that protecting voting rights will by itself guarantee Democratic wins," Frum writes. "Democracy is genuinely on the ballot … But this time, so too are prices, borders, and crime. If the Biden administration cannot deliver better on those issues than it has so far done, Trump and his enablers will be just as happy to scoop power by default as to grab it by stealth or force." Britain's Bizarre Gas Shortage Isn't Really a Gas Shortage Britain has faced a gasoline shortage this week, with the military put on standby to deliver it to stations, where worried citizens have lined up.
Odd for a developed economy, the shortage is really one of truck drivers to deliver gas to stations, not of gas itself, The Economist explains: "The number of heavy-goods vehicle (HGV) drivers in Britain has fallen by 70,000, from 305,000 to 235,000, in the past year, according to the Office for National Statistics. The Road Haulage Association (RHA), an industry body, says the shortage is now at crisis point, with 100,000 more drivers needed to meet demand. A combination of Brexit and the pandemic has exacerbated an ongoing problem. In a report this summer the RHA said extended periods of lockdown and travel restrictions led to many foreign drivers leaving the country. The shutdown of HGV driving tests throughout much of 2020 led to a drop in test slots … And 20,000 HGV drivers from the European Union left Britain during the Brexit process according to the RHA's estimate. Most have not returned."
At The New York Times, Mark Landler notes some Brexit schadenfreude over the problem, while Bloomberg's Therese Raphael calls it yet another "competence test" for Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
The crisis may seem to lack larger implications, but at The Guardian, Gaby Hinsliff suggests it reflects "an economy calibrated (not unreasonably, before Brexit and Covid) for maximum efficiency rather than resilience to a series of rolling shocks." Defined by His Drug War, Duterte Hopes to Hang On Barred from seeking a second six-year term, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte will run for vice president in next May's elections "in an attempt to circumvent" the constitutional limit instated after the authoritarian Ferdinand Marcos was deposed, Cliff Venzon writes for Nikkei Asia. At stake in this election will be Duterte's legacy—in particular, that of his brutal drug war, which "is considered a human rights abomination abroad but has enjoyed wide domestic support. It will almost certainly go down in history as the signature policy of the Duterte presidency." Are Islamist Insurgencies Harder to Defeat? Having withdrawn from Afghanistan, the US and NATO saw firsthand over 20 years how difficult it can be to defeat an Islamist insurgency. In the current issue of International Studies Quarterly, Desirée Nilsson and Isak Svensson examine a large dataset on civil conflicts and find those with Islamist factions are less likely to end, more likely to recur, and more likely to do so with new actors entering the fray.
The same is true for leftist insurgencies, they find, and the data don't necessarily reveal the reasons behind the trend. But Nilsson's and Svensson's sensible hypothesis is that "being rooted in a transnational ideology, [Islamist] conflicts harbor the potential for transnational support for the rebels, as well as transnational support to governments fighting Islamist rebel groups. Such international support tends to create a high degree of uncertainty in terms of the extent and nature of support, including the potential influx of foreign fighters, monetary support from a web of sponsors on the rebel side, as well as a plethora of institutional intergovernmental support structures on the government side." |
