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 23, 2021

Europe Hits Covid-19 Turbulence

For vaccinated Americans, the pandemic seems to be fading. For nurses in Germany, the story is different: At Der Spiegel, Tobias Großekemper chronicles gallows humor and dread in a Leipzig ICU, as Europe braces for what some predict will be a disastrous fourth wave of Covid-19 this winter.
 
How bad does it look? A rise in cases has been alarming, but perhaps more significantly, hospitalizations and deaths have surged, too; the picture varies by country, aligning roughly with vaccination rates. The World Health Organization warns a winter wave could cost 500,000 lives in Europe, and at Der Spiegel, Großekemper hints anecdotally that the unvaccinated and those with complicating conditions will likely face the worst of it.
 
New restrictions have followed, and so has "popular fury," The Economist writes, noting a wave of angry protests across Europe. (After Austria imposed a headline-grabbing national vaccine mandate, 40,000 demonstrated in Vienna; violent unrest has unfolded in Belgium and the Netherlands; in Italy, protesters have clashed with police.)
 
"Some degree of popular anger … looks inevitable," the magazine writes. Public officials could embrace a softer approach "when taming the pandemic looked doable. Now, however, just as winter weather is forcing more people together indoors and the Delta variant is thriving, the pressure to return to lockdowns and resort to tougher vaccine mandates looks ever harder to resist."

Meet the 'NatCons'

What's becoming of America's conservative establishment, after the presidency of Donald Trump? Writing for The Atlantic of a visit to the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, David Brooks profiles the so-called "NatCon" movement that signifies "the intellectual wing of the emerging right." Comprising the traditional set of think-tank and fellowship alumns, it embraces culture wars, sees politics as existential and zero-sum, and rails against the perceived oppression of the left's woke-ism.
 
"The movement has three distinctive strains," Brooks writes. "First, the people over 50 who have been hanging around conservative circles for decades but who have recently been radicalized by the current left. … The second strain is made up of mid-career politicians and operatives who are learning to adapt to the age of populist rage … The third and largest strain is the young. They grew up in the era of Facebook and MSNBC and identity politics. They went to colleges smothered by progressive sermonizing. And they reacted by running in the other direction."
 
To Brooks, the movement is both a response to cultural-progressive ham-handedness and a disturbing, illiberal trajectory for conservatives in the US.

For Xi Jinping, What's the Rush?

Chinese President Xi Jinping seems to be in a hurry, observers have warned: He has pursued big domestic changes, and some worry he'll make a drastic move—like invading Taiwan—out of fear that China's window of ascent is closing.
 
But at Foreign Affairs, Jude Blanchette surveys Xi's urgency and asks if it's really necessary. China's economic trajectory doesn't portend a quick "collapse," in Blanchette's view; nor does Blanchette think China will enjoy "a seamless path to superpower status"; something in the middle is more likely, Blanchette argues. Meanwhile, Beijing's "pressure campaigns" are turning erstwhile diplomatic partners into skeptics. Whether or not Xi's boldness is helping or hurting China, Blanchette writes that the rest of the world must find a way to deal with it.

Note to readers: At 9 p.m. ET this Sunday, Nov. 28, CNN will premiere Fareed's latest special report, "China's Iron Fist: Xi Jinping and the Stakes for America," which examines Xi's motivations, where he's leading China, and what that means for the rest of the world.

Eyes (Still) on the Fed

"Biden Signs Up for Powell's Inflation," declares the headline of a Wall Street Journal editorial, after US President Joe Biden nominated Jerome Powell to continue in his role as Federal Reserve chairman. Noting low interest rates and continued asset purchases (the latter of which the Fed will slow), the Journal calls Powell's monetary policy the "loosest … in history," predicting inflation will continue as a result.
 
The Economist notes that Powell will have other big decisions to make—for instance on the Fed's role in addressing climate change and whether to issue a digital currency—but a more immediate question hangs over monetary policy. As Sebastian Mallaby writes for Foreign Affairs, "[b]ecause inflation seemed dormant" in recent years, "central banks faced no penalty for conjuring money out of thin air" to spur economic growth. Now that inflation has arrived, the era of "magic money" might be over.

#ChinaToo

A #MeToo scandal in China—and, more specifically, an appearance of the story being suppressed—can only damage China's global soft power, Clara Ferreira Marques writes for Bloomberg. The fact that tennis star Peng Shuai faded from public view after accusing former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of coercing her into sex suggests to Marques a bungled handling of the kind that won't endear China to citizens of the world. At SupChina, Jeremy Goldkorn and Jiayun Feng write that online censorship surrounding the story has been "extreme"; it's not the first time a high-profile case has generated criticism of how such allegations are handled in China.