HOT AIR BALLOON FLIGHT

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Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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October 19, 2021

The Pacific: A Tinderbox in a New Cold War?

After China tested what was reported to be a hypersonic missile—but what Beijing insists was a spacecraft—The Wall Street Journal's editorial board points also to reported missile-silo construction and declares, "This isn't the behavior of a nation merely interested in defending its sovereignty," suggesting the US think harder about its own defense budget.

Some of the alarm may be overblown. The US tested a hypersonic missile just last month; North Korea says it has done the same; Russia says its ships will be equipped with them. But some argue this is beginning to feel more like the Cold War—and that the Pacific feels more like a tinderbox.
 
As for the nomenclature, The New York Times' David Sanger hears different views on whether the US and China are or aren't in a "cold war." By one definition—enmity falling short of active conflict—one longtime Asia analyst tells Sanger we're already there.

Regarding the Pacific as a tinderbox: The new security partnership between the US, UK, and Australia, dubbed AUKUS, "is just one of many military projects in the region," Georg Fahrion, Katharina Graça Peters, Alexander Sarovic and Bernhard Zand write for Der Spiegel. "Almost all countries that play a strategic role in the Indo-Pacific are investing in their militaries, including North and South Korea, India and Taiwan ... it is hard to foresee where the development might lead ... But the arms race in the Indo-Pacific could ... drive this economically dynamic and politically fragile region of the world into a military confrontation."

On the dryness of the kindling, a Foreign Policy essay by Andrew S. Erickson and Gabriel B. Collins elucidates a fear expressed by others: That China's rise has slowed and that Beijing might pounce—on Taiwan, in particular—out of fear that a window is closing.

Colin Powell's Legacy: A Doctrine of Restraint

As the late Gen. Colin Powell told Fareed in a 2008 interview, he wanted to be remembered primarily as a soldier. With Powell's passing this week, many are reviewing his legacy as, debatably, the most important soldier-statesperson of his generation. 
 
As Spencer Ackerman details in his newsletter, Forever Wars, the UN speech advocating for war in Iraq, and the political cover Powell gave to hawks in the George W. Bush administration by delivering it, do shade how Powell's career will be viewed. But Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, who worked with and for Powell over decades, writes that Powell bequeathed a foreign-policy doctrine of restraint.
 
"Powell's experience in Vietnam profoundly influenced his thinking about the use of military force," Haass writes. "The doctrine that bears his name sets criteria to be considered before force is used.  … Powell saw war as a last resort. Articulated in the aftermath of the battlefield-oriented Gulf War and later, amid debates over less clear-cut, less traditional interventions in the Balkans and Somalia, Powell's doctrine argued that questions be asked before military force be employed. Are there important, clear-cut objectives that military force could best accomplish? Would the likely benefits exceed the expected costs? How would the initial use of military force change the situation and what then? It was this last question that triggered his reference to the so-called Pottery Barn rule: if you break it, you own it. Powell understood that the measure of an intervention is not how it begins but how it ends."

Covid-19's Endgame May Be Clear. How We Get There Isn't.

"Covid will eventually become endemic," The Economist declares confidently, arguing it's all but certain that the virus will be with us for the long haul. As more people gain immunity through vaccination or sickness, the magazine writes, Covid-19 will take on a lowered risk level more akin to the flu or the common cold. That said, the virus "will throw up many challenges in the months and years ahead. The road to the new normal could yet be very bumpy."
 
That's because—although endemicity may be the end point—as the magazine argues elsewhere, it matters how we get there. The next year should see a "glut" of global vaccine supplies, but it's important that rich countries share them, the magazine argues, rather than boosting their own adults or vaccinating low-risk children. If doses are spread equitably, more people in developing countries can gain immunity through vaccination, not sickness, and lives can be saved, the magazine writes; if not, Covid-19 "risks becoming a poor-country killer."

Would Iran Regret Going Nuclear?

So far, diplomacy has failed to end Iran's nuclear-weapons program, Ray Takeyh writes for Foreign Affairs, concluding it's time to assume Tehran will eventually construct and successfully test a nuclear bomb. But in Takey's view, Tehran might not reap much benefit from doing so.
 
With a nuclear weapon at their disposal, Iran's ruling powers might start to make demands of rivals, Takeyh imagines, asking: "But what will they do if they are rebuffed?" All-out nuclear war being unlikely, Takeyh writes, Tehran will likely discover that "the costs of having a nuclear weapon will far outweigh the benefits," as Iran's pariah status would only be enhanced.