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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November 2, 2021

Climate's First-Mover Problem

As world leaders meet in Scotland for the annual UN climate conference, the specific challenges surrounding climate action are well known. 
 
So far, climate talks have produced more talk than anything else. Developing economies like China and India want to keep growing—and they need energy to do it. As of yet, no technological revolution has bailed out the planet. If such a revolution is to happen, it will need financing.
 
But climate change is also a game-theory problem: Individual countries reap economic benefits from burning fossil fuels, while the damage of a warming planet is suffered collectively. Perverse incentives make coordinated action difficult.

At Der Spiegel, Susanne Götze distills the quandary to "an historic stalemate: If the U.S. doesn't move [on reducing emissions], neither will China. Despite the big announcements, Chinese President Xi Jinping does not trust [US President Joe] Biden. But experts agree that without China, many emerging and developing countries won't do anything either."
 
Götze sees Europe, and particularly outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as the planet's best hope to bring everyone along. There are good reasons to agree: At the Financial Times, Pilita Clark focuses largely on western Europe in an essay detailing how climate politics have gone "mainstream," as Green parties have surged. And some are more optimistic, broadly, about the nature of the problem: The New York Times' Thomas Friedman, for instance, sees hope for a global race toward clean-energy technologies.

Will Brazil Go the Way of Venezuela?

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro faces serious challenges to his reelection prospects in next year's vote, as the Financial Times' editorial board outlines, including an abysmal response to Covid-19 (which was condemned by a lengthy congressional report last month) and a struggling economic recovery. As Fareed detailed on Sunday, Bolsonaro has responded by borrowing a tactic from former US President Donald Trump, casting doubt over whether he would acknowledge a losing result in 2022.
 
Is it time to worry that Brazil's democracy could indeed be usurped? At Foreign Affairs, Oliver Stuenkel says the answer is yes—that a "Venezuelan-style collapse, where democracy slowly erodes and eventually succumbs to pressure from an authoritarian-minded leader, is not out of the question." Bolsonaro's actions are worrisome, Steunkel writes, but so are larger factors that enable them, including Brazil's lack of reckoning with its "authoritarian past."

Why China Goes to War

"China's historical warning signs are already flashing red," Michael Beckley and Hal Brands write for The Atlantic, adding to the discussion of whether tensions in East Asia could erupt into war.
 
Beijing may feel itself hemmed in by military buildups and US alliances in the region—including with Taiwan—and may sense a closing window of opportunity to recover "lost" territory it claimed in centuries past, Beckley and Brands suggest. That's troubling, given China's historical reasons for waging war, they write: "To be clear, every decision for war is complex, and factors including domestic politics and the personality quirks of individual leaders have also figured in China's choices to fight. Yet the overarching pattern of behavior is consistent: Beijing turns violent when confronted with the prospect of permanently losing control of territory. It tends to attack one enemy to scare off others. And it rarely gives advance warning or waits to absorb the initial blow."

Afghanistan's Dangerous Present and Uncertain Future

As Afghan women's-rights activist Mahbouba Seraj told Fareed recently, Afghanistan's teetering economy could yield crime and violence. According to Foreign Policy's Lynne O'Donnell, that is coming to pass.
 
As for the country's political future, the former head of Afghanistan's intelligence agency, Rahmatullah Nabil, tells O'Donnell the Taliban face a dilemma: "If they make some changes and include educated Afghans, technocrats, or women in their system, they will lose the support of their foot soldiers who have been brainwashed for 20 years that a victorious Taliban would implement sharia law: no women, no technocrats, no one who worked for the 'puppet' government of the American occupiers. … And they are afraid the extreme young generation of their fighters may join the Islamic State-Khorasan, which has a regional agenda."

Has Covid-19 Shifted the Conversation on Crime?

The pandemic has seen murder and violent-crime rates rise in the US, but at Politico Magazine, Maya King writes in an essay focusing on Atlanta that as Covid-19 has reenergized civic leaders' focus on fighting crime, it has also renewed debate over what causes crime in the first place and whether more holistic responses—for instance improving education, mental-health services, and social work—aren't as important as more policing.