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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December 2, 2021

The End of Roe?

After the US Supreme Court heard arguments over Mississippi's law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, keen court observers say America is on the cusp of overturning abortion's broad legality.
 
The landmark case Roe v. Wade enshrined that legality in 1973, but at Bloomberg, legal scholar Noah Feldman gives a detailed account of justices' questions and concludes Roe might be nearing its end. At The Washington Post, Ruth Marcus writes that it's clear the justices—including the conservatives who comprise the court's political center—are mulling how to roll back Roe, not whether to. Leaving abortion policy to the states, or allowing bans delimited by numbers of weeks without invalidating Roe entirely, loom as options.
 
It could come to a head in spring or early summer, when the court sits to announce decisions, but in a New York Times opinion essay, Amy Littlefield argues the current moment reflects decades of failures by the abortion-rights movement. Out-strategized by conservative opponents who focused on (and funded) state and local campaigns, groups like Planned Parenthood and NARAL have been unable to stop states from passing laws like Mississippi's—as well as others that have chipped away at clinics' operating capacities, by imposing new regulations on them, or the controversial Texas abortion ban enacted this year with a clever, difficult-to-challenge civil enforcement mechanism. 
 
As Littlefield points out, abortion-rights activists also failed to anticipate the election of Donald Trump, who as president stocked the Supreme Court with the justices who may now enact a monumental change.

How Much Should We Worry About Russia's Border Buildup?

With Ukraine estimating nearly 100,000 Russian troops near its border, Russia is giving the West cause for real concern about an invasion, David Ignatius writes for The Washington Post, as this latest troop buildup appears different from past threats. "The moment is more dangerous than most Americans realize, as [Russian President Vladimir] Putin sizes up the will of the new Administration and [US President Joe] Biden," writes The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, which recommends sending new weapons (and perhaps military advisers) to Ukraine and building up NATO troops in Poland.
 
Then again, does Putin really want a new war? Ignatius, the Journal, and others make a convincing case that he seeks revenge after communism's fall in Europe—and a recreation of Russia's historical sphere. At Bloomberg, Leonid Bershidsky acknowledges those aims but says Putin has a more pressing one that an invasion would upset: exporting Russian natural gas, including to Europe through the planned Nord Stream 2 pipeline. 

Will the Iran Talks Go Anywhere?

With the US, Iran, and other signatories of the 2015 nuclear pact convened this week in Vienna, speculation has swirled as to whether any real progress can be made toward reviving the deal. Aaron David Miller writes for CNN that "the game has just begun, and the outcome will be neither a quick accord nor a collapse. ... Instead, we're likely in for a prolonged game of maneuvering and pressure by each side to achieve what they want, or failing that, to ensure that, if talks do crater, the other side takes the lion's share of the blame."
 
The Economist points to well-known roadblocks (including sticking points over sanctions and the impossibility of guaranteeing that a future US administration won't renege again), while noting that water-related protests in Iran highlight the difficulties faced by the current regime—and the benefits it could gain from reentering a deal.

Omicron and Vaccine Equality

Since the advent of Covid-19 vaccines, experts have warned that unless the shots are spread evenly around the world, a new variant might emerge among unvaccinated, developing-world populations. Now that the Omicron variant has raised concerns after its discovery in South Africa, Heiner Hoffmann writes for Der Spiegel that those warnings were prescient.
 
Africa is still woefully under-vaccinated, Hoffmann writes—only about 7% of the continent's 1.3 billion people have been fully inoculated against Covid-19—and now that doses are more plentiful globally, a new problem has arisen in their sudden, uncoordinated shipments to the continent. "Frequently," Hoffmann writes, "these deliveries arrive with very little advance notice, and sometimes just a few weeks before the vaccine's expiration date. Wealthy northern countries are eager to get rid of surplus, and they also enjoy posing as generous donors." Meanwhile, countries like Kenya are considering vaccine requirements for entering certain public places, while critics say vaccine access is too lacking for such mandates to be workable.