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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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January 15, 2022

Fareed: Economics Used to Come Before Politics. That's Changed.

"I'm not an economist, but as a student of history, I do wonder whether the return of inflation is part of a larger shift that has taken place across the world," Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column. "To put it simply, for decades in country after country, economics trumped politics. But now, from China to Turkey to the United States, politics is trumping economics."
 
As inflation ran rampant in the 20th century, Fareed writes, politicians ceded monetary policy to central banks (whose mission became containing inflation) and broadly abided by mainstream economic theory. That trend has reversed, as lowered interest rates (in Turkey, especially) and protectionist trade policies around the world now serve political agendas, sometimes at the expense of sound economics.

"The old obsession with economics over politics was overdone," Fareed writes. "It achieved great successes but created other problems, such as wage stagnation. But the current emphasis on politics over economics seems more dangerous. It allows politicians to engage in patronage policies, protectionism and short-term gimmicks to prevent ordinary people from feeling the pain of a crisis. In the long run, however, one wonders if it is these same ordinary people who will have to pay the price."

Russia and Post-Soviet Autocracy

Has President Vladimir Putin's Russia become the go-to defender of autocracies in its region? That's the characterization offered by Frida Ghitis in a World Politics Review column, after a Russia-led security alliance sent forces to quell unrest in Kazakhstan last week. 
 
The intervention signified a "new policy" for Russia, Ghitis writes: an effective "vow ... to protect autocratic rulers in former Soviet Republics when they face popular unrest." After aligning with Belarusian autocrat President Alexander Lukashenko against protesters last year, Ghitis writes, Putin's Russia is embracing the role.
 
Writing at Bloomberg, Hal Brands makes a similar observation: that along with China, Putin's Russia is willing "to test and improve the tools of illiberal stability" around the world.

Note to readers: On Sunday's GPS, Fareed will interview Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov about Moscow's intentions and goals, as some 100,000 Russian troops remain stationed near Ukraine and as Russian and Western representatives have ended a week of talks in Europe.

China Cares About Kazakhstan, Too

Russia has responded to it more directly, but China also has reason to eye Kazakhstan's unrest warily, the South China Morning Post wrote in an editorial this week—citing Kazakhstan's energy resources and its status as a key site for Belt and Road Initiative projects, which seek to link China to Eurasia.
 
At the same time, "Beijing is highly sensitized to the potential for foreign political and ideological influence in Xinjiang, and is likely alarmed at the speed with which antigovernment feelings have surged in Kazakhstan, political analysts said," Chao Deng writes for The Wall Street Journal. "Ethnic Kazakhs, among the minority groups targeted in the Xinjiang assimilation campaign, travel frequently across the border." That Russia leapt to defend Kazakhstan's ruling order shows it, not China, is the dominant Central Asian power, Yaroslav Trofimov adds in a separate Journal article.

A Second Try for the Third Way in France

France broke from tradition when it elected French President Emmanuel Macron in 2017, bucking the left-right divide that has defined the country's politics, Mathias Bernard writes for The Conversation. But Macron's centrism hasn't proven transformative through one presidential term, as he was met with massive gilets-jaunes protests and then the pandemic.

France will vote in April, and the future of Macron's presidency and project could depend on how his Covid-19 agenda fares, Ido Vock writes for The New Statesman. It could also depend on a simmering power struggle on the far right, Vock writes, as journalist-provocateur Éric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen (who faced Macron in 2017's runoff round) are seen as vying for the right-wing-nationalist mantle.

The Dilemma of Trying Syrian Regime Defectors

International headlines were made this week by the trial and conviction in Germany of Anwar Raslan, a former Syrian army colonel who headed the investigation unit at a notorious detention center. Chronicling the proceedings in Der Spiegel, Christoph Reuter and Hannah El-Hitami note a dilemma surrounding the case: Raslan defected in 2012, and some warn that trying defectors disincentivizes them from serving as witnesses and makes would-be defectors less inclined to leave.