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.

January 25, 2022

How Likely Is Another European War?

Another Russian offensive against Ukraine may be a "very bad idea" for all involved, as CNN's Nick Paton Walsh put it recently, but at Foreign Affairs Alexander Vindman and Dominic Cruz Bustillos argue a catastrophic full-scale invasion is the current standoff's likeliest outcome. The reason: Neither a diplomatic resolution nor seizing territory in Ukraine's east would achieve Russian President Vladimir Putin's goal, as they see it, "of rendering Ukraine a failed state."
 
The upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing, meanwhile, could slow things down, Alberto Nardelli and Evgenia Pismennaya write for Bloomberg. Putin may be reluctant to irk Chinese President Xi Jinping by starting a war during the games, they reason, and China has called for a global truce starting a week before and ending a week after. "That's a window spanning from Jan. 28 to March 20, when eastern Ukraine's frozen winter landscape begins to turn to cloying mud in spring thaws that military analysts in Moscow and the West believe would hinder a rapid Russian incursion," Nardelli and Pismennaya write.
 

Others, like Slate's Fred Kaplan, say a diplomatic agreement is within reach, while Foreign Policy's Caroline de Gruyter argues Putin has already benefited from high-profile negotiations in which Russia looks like a genuine superpower.

Author and Wilson Center fellow Nina Jankowicz injects humanism, reminding us in a Twitter thread that this isn't just about global power politics or international-relations theory—it's about Ukrainians and their lives.

How Powerful Is Russia's Gas Tap?

As a major natural-gas supplier to Europe, Russia is seen as enjoying great leverage in the Ukraine standoff: With the flip of a switch, as some characterize it, President Vladimir Putin can inflict a continent-wide energy crisis.

That's not quite right, The Economist suggests. Some experts estimate Europe's gas reserves, and its capacity for regasifying imported liquified natural gas, could cover a potential shortage of Russian supplies for a few months (at a monetary cost, but not one of winter suffering). If Russia turns off the tap, the magazine adds, that could lead Europe to break its reliance on Russian gas more durably.

Odd Circumstances for a Prime Minister

With London's Metropolitan Police now investigating potential lockdown-era parties at 10 Downing Street, the "Partygate" scandal has taken UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson into new territory, David Allen Green writes for the Financial Times.
 
Past police investigations of UK prime ministers have involved allegations of political patronage. "What is different with this one is that it is in respect of the general criminal law," Green writes. "The prohibitions under the Covid-19 laws were those that everyone was supposed to know and with which everyone was supposed to comply. So this new investigation is squarely about the rule of law and whether there is one law for ministers and their advisers and another for the public."

Despite International Consensus, Afghanistan Remains in Crisis

"It's rare these days to find an issue where the U.S., the European Union, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, China and India largely see eye-to-eye," Erica Gaston writes for the World Politics Review. "But on Afghanistan, there is a fair amount of consensus" on the goal: for the Taliban "to take a more inclusive approach to governance, curb migration and illicit trafficking flows, and prevent Afghanistan from becoming a new haven for terrorism."
 
And yet, as International Rescue Committee President and CEO and former UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband pointed out on Sunday's GPS, Afghan Central Bank money remains frozen, and sanctions remain in place (with humanitarian carveouts), as Afghanistan's economy collapses. 
 
To Gaston, the problem is that world powers have turned away from diplomacy, having lost their appetite for "slow-burning and long-term crisis management," and toward military posturing. Afghanistan's future could hinge on whether the international community can revive multilateral diplomacy and find a way to engage with the Taliban productively, Gaston argues.