HOT AIR BALLOON FLIGHT

View this email in your browser 

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.

November 7, 2021

On Today's Show

On GPS, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET:

First, Fareed gives his take on a vital imperative as the world seeks to confront climate change: to think about the problem rationally—and to avoid both complacency and the paralysis that dire predictions can cause.
 
Venture capitalist and climate activist John Doerr's new book, "Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving our Climate Crisis Now," may be the "single best guide" to swift and meaningful action, Fareed says, as it recommends diverse emissions-slashing measures. "We need to embrace hundreds of such efforts, of all kinds," Fareed argues, pointing to renewables, nuclear, and transitioning developing countries from coal to natural gas.
 
Doerr notes an encouraging example: Hawaii, which transformed itself from relying on fossil fuels to leading on renewables by instituting laws and rules to encourage the shift. "Now, we need to scale the Hawaii example for the entire world—and fast," Fareed says. "It's a daunting task, but surely, if Hawaii can do it, others can as well."
 
Next, can America keep leading on the world stage, even if it's no longer a global hegemon? How is it approaching its weighty relationship with China? Is President Joe Biden merely continuing former President Donald Trump's foreign policies? And will Washington provide monetary aid to help Afghanistan stave off collapse, even if it means filling Taliban coffers? Fareed talks with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in a wide-ranging conversation about US foreign policy under Biden.
 
After that, Fareed talks with French author and public intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy about the rise of extreme nativist Éric Zemmour ahead of next year's presidential vote and about Lévy's newest book, "The Will to See"—a memoir of his work reporting on some of the world's desperate places.
 
Finally, Fareed examines The Next Big Idea: geoengineering. With too much carbon already in the atmosphere, we may need to alter the earth in order to save ourselves from climate catastrophe. Fareed weighs some leading-edge proposals to absorb CO2 or make the planet more reflective, in the name of humanity.

Does the US Have a China Strategy?

Fareed will explore America's broad approach to China in depth with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan on today's GPS, but that approach has had its skeptics. Among them is retired four-star Navy Adm. James Stavridis, who writes for Time that US strategy seems fuzzy. Pointing to President Joe Biden's recent comment that Washington would defend Taiwan if Beijing attacked—and the White House's subsequent walking-back of the notion that US policy had changed—Stavridis proposes a more deliberate and clearly defined approach, across the board.
 
"Crisp, professional signaling and communications to Beijing are essential, especially in regard to Taiwan," Stavridis writes. "Our nominated Ambassador … cannot get to China soon enough. And above all … China strategy needs to be launched at hypersonic speed—right now we need strategic ideas as much as we need missiles. The good news is that there is broad bipartisan agreement on the immediacy of the challenges—now we need a plan."

A Nativist Rises in France

A Le Monde headline calls him "the radicalized." Le Figaro notes his challenge to established star Marine Le Pen on the far right of France's political stage, ahead of next year's election. The right-wing pundit and potential presidential aspirant Éric Zemmour has drawn attention with outspoken ethno-nationalism and a desire to exclude Muslim immigrants, in particular, from what he sees as pure French society. (For instance: In his recent book "La France n'as pas dit son dernier mot"—or, "France has not said its last word"—Zemmour warns of a broad racial and cultural "replacement," France's "mixed-race" future, its march toward "creolization," and "Islamic civilization" having "imposed their customs" once its "diaspora … set foot on European soil." Along the way, Zemmour's polemic makes many historical references to "barbarians.")
 
Nativism is not new in French politics, but the explicitness of Zemmour's xenophobia is shocking. Writing at Project Syndicate, Ian Buruma portrays Zemmour's rise as a culmination of right-wing strands in French history, which have flirted for centuries with the notion of an ethnically defined France. Ironically for the son of Algerian Jews, some of Zemmour's bombast might be considered anti-Semitic, as well as Islamophobic, Buruma suggests. (Zemmour has reconsidered, of all things, the Dreyfus Affair, which spurred European anti-Semitism in the late 1800s.) Buruma wonders if Zemmour's cultural and ethnic background might, strangely, have freed him to advocate racial exclusion in public.

In the US, Younger Jews Take Issue With Israel

Support for Israel was once "unconditional" among American Jews, Marc Tracy writes for The New York Times Magazine, but for the younger generation, criticism of Israel's government and policies has become more common, even if support for the country itself remains strong. A letter signed by seminary students this year criticizing the (now-former) Netanyahu government and its most recent round of war with Hamas, as Tracy details, highlighted the generational change and exposed a political rift among the American community of rabbinical students and teachers.

Vaccine Donations and 'National Self-Interest'

"There now appears to be a greater push among the international community to 'vaccinate the world,'" Nicholas Bugeja writes for the Australia-based Lowy Institute's Interpreter blog. (Pledges in June by the G7 countries to donate one billion Covid-19 vaccine doses by year's end, to developing countries who still need them direly, are cases in point.) But even some of the apparent good will is being driven by "national self-interest," as Bugeja sees it.
 
"In what has been dubbed 'vaccine diplomacy', Australia has pledged to donate 60 million vaccine doses to countries in need," Bugeja writes. But "[t]he vast majority of the 4.9 million doses Australia has donated so far were sent to important regional neighbours, including Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Unsurprisingly, China has also been actively distributing vaccines in the Asia Pacific, seeking to bolster its ties in the region and to obscure the United States' influence." Given concerns that Covid-19 will mutate into a vaccine-proof variant as it infects the world's unvaccinated population, Bugeja calls for spreading doses widely with a more purely altruistic, less politically driven approach.

'Squid Game,' Soft Power, and Currents of 'Despair'

The popularity of the South Korean Netflix hit "Squid Game" has prompted many a nod to South Korea's cultural exports and the "soft" geopolitical power seen as accompanying the global rise of any country's film, music, TV, and the like. At Nikkei Asia, Alice Wang contrasts South Korea with China: "While Beijing's hard-line presented serious problems for cultural exports, South Korea has transitioned to more global markets"; from the 2012 "Gangnam Style" craze to the boy-band BTS to "Parasite" and "Squid Game," South Korean has sent its cultural media far and wide.
 
The line to diplomatic success may not be so straight. At Bloomberg, Alex Webb points out that "Squid Game" and "Parasite" offer not a positive portrayal of South Korea, but rather bleak pictures of life and economics there. Katrin Park writes for Foreign Policy that "Squid Game" caught on in its home country because it reflects a real social substrate of depression and economically abetted "despair," particularly among South Koreans in their 20s and 30s.
 
Then again, other countries probably shouldn't throw stones. "Squid Game" resonates widely because the problems it depicts are everywhere, The Economist writes: "[M]ost of all, [the series' popularity] shows that, like love and money, complaints about inequality have no language."