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 9, 2021

What Lies Ahead

After two of the most disruptive years in human history, what's next on the global agenda? The Economist's just-published "The World Ahead" makes a few predictions.
 
In an introductory essay, "World Ahead" editor in chief Tom Standage lays out 10 trends to watch in 2022 and beyond. US midterm elections and China's party congress will showcase a global struggle between democracy and autocracy as governing models, Standage writes; as demand for durable goods stays high, supplies of energy and labor low, and supply chains tangled, inflation will remain an open question; employers will struggle with the shift to flexible-work models and the inequality it could engender; tech regulation in the US, Europe, and China will seek to rein in giant companies, hopefully without discouraging innovation; cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance will continue to mature after gaining market share; politicians will start to face reality on climate change, but to consumers' dismay, pricier energy bills will have to be part of the solution; countries that became largely-Covid-19-free fortresses will have to adapt as international travel resumes; private space flight will continue apace; and the Winter Olympics in Beijing and the World Cup in Qatar will highlight the intersection of sport and politics.
 
Not all news is good on the Covid-19 front, but The Economist's topline pandemic prediction may be the its hopeful: "[O]ver the coming years, as COVID settles into its fate as an endemic disease, like flu or the common cold, life in most of the world is likely to return to normal—at least, the post-pandemic normal."

Freedom's Voice

As the Global Briefing has noted many times, freedom is in recession around the world, with autocracies and illiberal democracies increasingly curtailing citizens' rights. In light of that, CNN has launched "Voices of Freedom," a series of opinion essays and videos by dissidents around the world, as CNN's Yaffa Fredrick lays out in an introduction. They include a Guatemalan judge's reflection on rejecting a bribe from a congressional leader; a religious-freedom advocate, born in a Uyghur reeducation camp in China, on that country's repression of Muslims in its west; an Egyptian activist on spending 22 months in prison after the massive 2013 protests in Cairo; a Zimbabwean pastor's warning that democracy requires participation; and more.

Will Ethiopia Break Apart?

As momentum shifts in Ethiopia's civil war, some wonder if the country will break apart: The Financial Times editorial board, for instance, warns that East Africa's most populous country "risks becoming a new Yugoslavia."
 
History points that way, according to Nic Cheeseman and Yohannes Woldemariam, who write for Foreign Affairs that despite its imperial past, Ethiopia has never truly been unified; even leaders Menelik II and Haile Selassie were loathed by parts of the population. "At no point in history have Ethiopians agreed on who their legitimate leaders are or how they should share power between different ethnic groups," Cheeseman and Woldemariam write. "Every government for the last hundred years has sought to build a viable state and a unifying national identity. So far, none have found a formula that has worked for more than a couple of decades." Today, they write, a loose federation of states could be a workable model for Ethiopia, but when it comes to the current war, a military victory by either side wouldn't solve the country's underlying fractiousness.

How to Circumvent China's Economic Pressure

Beijing has earned a reputation for sharp-tongued diplomacy, but the heft of China's economy undergirds almost all of its international disputes. Australia is a prime example: After Canberra backed an international investigation into the origins of Covid-19 in 2020, China slapped a series of tariffs and restrictions on Australian imports, a move seen by many as political retaliation, despite the unrelated reasons given.
 
At Foreign Policy, Jeffrey Wilson writes that Australia's industries successfully maneuvered around the pressure, offering a potential playbook for others: "Barley was redirected to Saudi Arabia and Southeast Asia, copper to Europe and Japan, and cotton to Bangladesh and Vietnam. … The beef industry sent cattle to be processed at abattoirs that still had export licenses, while lobster farmers used gray routes—for example via Hong Kong—to enter the mainland. These successful diversion tactics greatly cushioned the blow for industries whose trade with China was suspended."

Are Vaccine Reinforcements on the Way?

Global vaccination efforts have been dogged by two problems: hesitancy to get the shots, by skeptical or worried citizens in the wealthy world, and stark inequality that has left developing countries short on doses. At Nature, Elie Dolgin writes that a new wave of vaccines could help on both fronts, as Novavax and other firms have gained ground in developing vaccines based on older technology: "purified proteins," used "for decades" to make inoculations against other viruses like hepatitis and shingles. That stands in contrast to newfangled mRNA technology or the "viral vector" method of delivering bits of the Covid-19 virus using repurposed adenoviruses, as the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson shots do. 
 
For protein-based vaccines, cold-storage requirements wouldn't be as demanding, and there may be less cause to worry about serious side effects, Dolgin reports.