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 19, 2022 Is America Stretched Too Thin? Once a global hegemon, the US now has more enemies and rivals than it can handle capably, Hal Brands warns in a Foreign Affairs essay.
The problem has become evident lately as Washington's attention is pulled toward Russia's troop buildup near Ukraine and nuclear negotiations with Iran, when it would prefer to focus on a bigger challenge: China.
In past decades, the US military planned to fight multiple wars against lesser foes at the same time, if need be, Brands writes; as the global landscape evolved, under the Trump administration the Pentagon began planning instead to defeat one opponent that could nearly match America's military might, while stalemating or deterring another. Currently, Brands writes, the US can't confront multiple problems in multiple regions at the same time effectively, particularly when enemies know Washington may lack the resources to fight and win multiple wars at once. In "situations short of war," Brands writes, that can make diplomacy less effective.
The US is "overstretched," Brands argues, with foreign-policy goals more ambitious than its military power. Joe Biden's first year as President "has already shown how hard it is to manage an unruly world when Washington has more responsibilities—and more enemies—than it has coercive means. Over the longer term, a superpower that fails to keep its commitments in line with its capabilities may pay an even heavier price." The Case for a Military Deterrent Against Russia The US and other Western powers seem intent on finding a diplomatic solution with Moscow, as more than 100,000 Russian troops sit waiting near Ukraine. At Carnegie Europe, some experts doubt diplomacy can succeed at rewriting Europe's security arrangement; other analysts, meanwhile, want the West to take a harder line.
At The Wall Street Journal, Walter Russell Mead argues that "only one option ... would stop [another] Russian invasion": "dispatching an American and coalition force to defend Ukraine." Washington overestimates the coercive power of financial sanctions, Mead suggests, suggesting a dispatchment of troops combined with "[q]uiet conversations between senior people on both sides" would be more effective than summitry at avoiding war. As a dangerous situation unfolds on Europe's eastern flank, some note that Germany's position on it remains up in the air.
At Der Spiegel, Mathieu von Rohr writes of a trend (particularly on Germany's far left) to dismiss tough opposition to Russian aggression as "warmonger[ing]," while it's not clear if Chancellor Olaf Scholz's government would cooperate with potential Western-imposed penalties on Russia if it invades Ukraine again, for instance abandoning the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that links Germany to Russian natural gas. Yemen War Comes to Abu Dhabi A drone attack this week on fuel trucks near Abu Dhabi's airport, claimed by Yemen's Houthi rebel group, threatens to upset the United Arab Emirates' reputation as an oasis of stability, Elana DeLozier writes for The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
It also reflects an escalation of the war in Yemen: After the UAE withdrew from the Saudi-led war effort there in 2019, DeLozier writes, reportedly UAE-backed forces have made gains in Yemen of late, and the Houthis posed the Abu Dhabi attack as a response. That presents a conundrum for the US, DeLozier writes: whether to "protect its Gulf allies from Houthi projectiles" while also "opposing [those allies'] offensive operations in Yemen. The Biden administration has been carefully threading this needle with Saudi Arabia for some time, and it may now have to do the same with the UAE." What's Next in the Pandemic The pandemic is indeed heading in a less-dangerous direction, sociologist and astute synthesizer of Covid-19 science Zeynep Tufekci tells The New York Times' Ezra Klein in his latest podcast. Vaccines are hindering transmission and making infections less severe, Tufekci says, while studies suggest Omicron endangers individual patients less than earlier variants. A plausible future scenario involves updated, yearly vaccine boosters, Tufekci suggests.
Still, it's worth examining what's gone right and wrong before now. In the US, Tufekci says, the Biden administration has "left on the table" opportunities to expand masking and testing, while schools and other institutions have been slow to adopt ventilation and air filtration to mitigate risk, Tufekci argues. |
