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 8, 2021 Whither the GWOT?
As we near this Saturday's 20th anniversary of 9/11, and as the fallout from Afghanistan starts coming into focus, opinion pages are filling up with retrospectives on the Global War on Terrorism—the Bush-era term done away with in nomenclature, but not necessarily in practice, by the Obama administration.
"The war on terror has changed both how the United States sees itself and how it is perceived by the rest of the world," former CIA paramilitary officer Elliot Ackerman writes for Foreign Affairs. "From time to time, people have asked in what ways the war changed me. I have never known how to answer this question because ultimately the war didn't change me; the war made me. It is so deeply engrained in my psyche that I have a difficult time separating the parts of me that exist because of it from the parts of me that exist despite it. … Today, I have a hard time remembering what the United States used to be like. I forget what it was like to be able to arrive at the airport just 20 minutes before a flight. What it was like to walk through a train station without armed police meandering around the platforms."
Some have pointed to broad success over 20 years, noting that after 9/11, it seemed unlikely that the US could prevent another major attack on the homeland for two decades. Others have pointed to failure: In an interview with Der Spiegel, noted former FBI agent Ali Soufan suggests the US "forgot about who we are" along the way, abandoning core values with the torture of detainees.
At Foreign Policy, a smattering of contributors explores the nuances. The last 20 years have given Americans a notable "distaste" for war, writes Anchal Vohra; state power and intelligence budgets ballooned, Peter Feaver notes; the post-9/11 style of conflict endures, as proxy wars involving jihadism are still being fought in Yemen and Syria, writes Janine di Giovanni.
"With the calamitous exit from Afghanistan and U.S. priorities unclear going forward, it does not appear that Washington has learned from the mistakes of the past two decades," Mina Al-Oraibi, editor-in-chief of the UAE-based newspaper The National, offers. "Instead, U.S. military might and weakness in implementing a strategic foreign-policy doctrine appear to be constants. Finally, the danger of extremist groups remains, and while the leadership of those groups has changed, their doctrine has not." Many have wondered whether to believe the Taliban's indications of having evolved since the 1990s. Now that the group has announced an interim government, Seth G. Jones writes for The Wall Street Journal that we should not. "So much for a kinder and more enlightened Taliban," Jones writes. "This week, the Taliban announced that Sirajuddin Haqqani—the group's deputy leader and close ally of al Qaeda—will be its first minister of interior. A U.S.-designated terrorist with close ties to the group responsible for 9/11 is now the Afghan equivalent of director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation." (Haqqani's FBI wanted poster is available here.) "He is a wily and dangerous enemy with American blood on his hands," Jones writes, concluding that the US must "treat the Taliban as the pariah it is." Sizing Up Merkel's Legacy With German Chancellor Angela Merkel set to step aside after this month's elections, at Der Spiegel Dirk Kurbjuweit takes an early look at her legacy after 16 years in power. As others have, Kurbjuweit depicts Merkel as a paragon of intellect but sometimes lacking follow-through and almost always lacking the charisma to set a national agenda.
In the Euro crisis, the refugee crisis, the constant needling of Europe by Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the blow to liberal democracy dealt by the election of former US President Donald Trump, Merkel has weathered a lot. "[T]he Merkel era is notable primarily for keeping the country on an even keel," Kurbjuweit writes. "Despite the crises and catastrophes, Germany is doing well, and prosperity is still widespread.. ... When it came to understanding and knowledge, she usually had a firm grasp of the problems facing her, Germany, Europe and the world. Ultimately, out of this huge opportunity rooted in her character, she did too little." The Delta Variant Has Torn Through Southeast Asia After making it through 2020 with relatively few deaths and infections, Southeast Asian countries were especially vulnerable to the more-contagious Delta variant of Covid-19, The Economist writes—and it took its toll, seizing on publics that lacked immunity and may have grown complacent after a comparatively virus-free year.
But the recent spike may also point to changes in how countries are approaching Covid-19, the magazine suggests, as it might partly be chalked up to "a change in strategy, says David Heymann of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. As governments come to terms with the fact that the virus will become endemic—and that it is now running rampant within their borders—they are looking for ways to live with it. That means accepting a certain number of infections and deaths as the price of opening up. Thailand, for instance, has eased many of its domestic restrictions on movement and commerce; other countries are doing the same." "Climate change means that last decade's flood is no longer a reliable indicator of next decade's deluge," Alice Hill writes for Foreign Affairs, warning that the US isn't prepared.
Calling President Joe Biden's infrastructure proposal a decent beginning, Hill nonetheless writes that the US urgently needs a coherent national strategy for mitigating the effects of extreme weather made more likely by climate change. "Although the United States must continue to cut harmful pollution, it must also begin to prepare for the inevitable impacts of climate change," Hill writes. "Creating an adaptation plan is the right place to start." |
