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 26, 2022 Reasons to Calm Down About Ukraine Western officials, extra-governmental analysts, and journalists have raised alarms over Russia's military buildup near Ukraine, but Ukraine's leadership seems relatively unruffled, The New York Times' Michael Schwirtz writes.
"What's new?" Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked in a national address, Schwirtz notes. "Isn't this the reality for eight years?"
Some say Zelensky's calm is calculated to preserve his domestic political standing, but a New Lines Magazine essay by Owen Matthews suggests Russian President Vladimir Putin may simply be bluffing—i.e., that war isn't as likely as Western sirens suggest.
"There's no talk of imminent invasion plans in Moscow, not on state media, not among political journalists, not among the political class," Matthews writes. The Russian state-media message, rather, "is of dialing back NATO expansion and preventing NATO from positioning its missiles along Russia's long, soft border with Ukraine."
A new invasion may not benefit Russia, Matthews and others have reasoned: It could lead to a difficult occupation, would likely strengthen NATO resolve, and figures to prompt new sanctions. "So if Putin can't win a war in Ukraine, faces crippling economic consequences if he tries, and is doing nothing to prepare his people to fight one, what is he doing?" Matthews asks. "The simplest answer is that he appears to calculate that bluffing about war might win him some concessions from Washington and NATO. Actual war, by contrast, will not." Another Troubling Number for Biden As President Joe Biden confronts sagging approval ratings, some have predicted doom for Democrats—and Biden's agenda—in congressional elections this November. Another number may boost GOP hopes further: Gallup party-identification polling released this month shows Republicans enjoying a five-percentage-point lead over Democrats.
Other pollsters have found party ID more stable, but on Gallup's metric, it's a big improvement for Republicans: They've trailed Democrats by an average of four points on Gallup's measure since it began counting in 1991, The New York Times' Christopher Caldwell notes. Even when they win big in midterm elections, Republicans "tend to run roughly even with or behind Democrats" in party ID. Some say it's one more indicator that Democrats will suffer a "shellacking" at the polls this fall. Can a Tutoring Crackdown Help China Level the Playing Field? The US is often cited as a haven of economic inequality, but the problem has become pronounced in China, too. Its rich-poor income gap has outpaced those of many large economies, and China's central bank hopes to bring it down to America's level by 2025, as Mary Hui noted at Quartz in November.
In response, President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party have made "common prosperity" the new policy buzzword. The Economist's Chaguan columnist explores how that agenda is going. A point of complaint for middle-class parents has been the cost (and intense competition) of education, and China has reacted with strict controls on tutoring, banning private tutors from teaching elementary and middle-school syllabuses on weekends or holidays, and from doing so for profit.
"Mr Xi, a canny populist, has a knack of spotting when a bit of repression may be welcomed by a public that feels overwhelmed by rapid changes in society or unbearable competition, and will cheer a powerful state cracking down in the collective interest," The Economist writes. Results have been mixed, it finds: Some parents have welcomed the relief of pressure—but are still angling on ways to evade the rules and keep their children competitive, when it comes time for entrance exams—while a tutoring industry stocked with young graduates cuts jobs and plots next steps. Hariri's Retirement and Lebanon's Chaos Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who has held that position three times, announced his departure from politics on Monday, and at the Carnegie Middle East Center's Diwan blog, Michael Young writes that the Sunni leader was caught between Saudi pressure and the reality of the Iran-backed Shi'ite militia-party Hezbollah's power.
The commentary surrounding Hariri contains acknowledgement of Lebanon's failed and failing political system, under which the country's economy has collapsed. "Hariri was better than most of his colleagues," David Schenker writes for The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, noting the former prime minister kept his country out of civil war. "[B]ut he ultimately became part of that same failed coterie of elites." |
