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. February 9, 2022 'Putin the Rational' vs. 'Vlad the Mad' Is Russian President Vladimir Putin crazy enough to invade Ukraine again?
To some, that's the question. Analysts have predicted Russia would struggle to seize Ukraine whole, if it tried. The latter's military is much improved since 2014, and were Russia to pursue the grandiose aim of holding and controlling the entire country, it could face a deadly and morale-draining insurgency.
As Fareed has argued, Putin may appear to be "engaging in reckless adventurism" by massing a huge number of troops near Ukraine's borders while issuing bold demands to the West, but history suggests he is, in fact, cautious. Putin takes risks, but they're calculated: Even his incursions into Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 were "reactions to events rather than grand initiatives of his own," Fareed noted. This year, with the US hoping to turn its attention to China and with Europe dependent on Russia's natural gas, Putin may have simply counted favorable odds for winning concessions without a real war.
At the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman questions Putin's logicality and restraint, writing that analysts are divided between two visions of the Russian President: one as "Putin the Rational" and another as "Vlad the Mad." Those who see the latter worry Putin has grown "paranoid," listens to too small a circle of advisers, and "may increasingly be driven by emotion and eccentric theories," Rachman writes. They wonder about Putin's lengthy essay last summer arguing Ukraine is, historically speaking, part of Russia.
Then again, Rachman floats another possibility: "that Putin the Rational may be pretending to be Vlad the Mad. It was Richard Nixon who outlined the 'madman theory', when the US president told aides that it could be helpful if America's enemies thought he was crazy enough to use nuclear weapons," Rachman writes. "Putin is said to be planning high-profile nuclear weapons exercises in the coming weeks—which would be a move straight from the 'madman' playbook. But the line between acting like a madman and being a madman is disconcertingly thin." Is the International Community 'Legitimizing' the Taliban? As Afghanistan spirals further into economic collapse and near-famine, humanitarian activists have called on world powers to ease punishing sanctions and unfreeze Afghan central-bank assets. But at Maclean's, Adnan R. Khan rails against a different phenomenon: diplomatic engagement with the Taliban that, Khan warns, is legitimizing the group and its rule.
It's possible to recognize a state without recognizing its government, under international legal precedent, Maryam Jami reminds us at The Diplomat. Khan, however, argues things have going too far, warning that "the Taliban's arc over the past five-and-a-half months—from internationally-sanctioned terrorist organization ... to jet-setting into Europe for face-to-face meetings with American and European leaders—suggests they are on the path to de facto legitimation." What's on Display in Beijing Much has changed in and for China since 2008, when Beijing last hosted the Olympics. The latest observer to reflect on that is former New York Times Shanghai bureau chief Howard French, who writes for The World Politics Review that the opening ceremony carried a "staleness" for him.
"China long ago proved that its evermore authoritarian system is capable of marshaling huge amounts of national savings to produce engineering feats that beg comparison to the pharaohs," French writes. "Where the country seems stalled, though, and may indeed be regressing, is in achieving what most societies do when they have created a surge of national wealth and built broad middle classes—and that is relaxing controls over people's lives." French concludes: "The surest sign of China's greatness will ultimately be when it accepts the global rubbing of shoulders and exchange with others confidently and tranquilly, knowing that a civilization as truly grand as this needn't go about its every endeavor with tests of purity or as if it had something to prove."
Internationally, China has alienated other countries in the last 14 years, with its aggressive posture and "wolf-warrior" diplomacy. In a similar Olympic-prompted reflection, Orville Schell writes for Foreign Affairs that President Xi Jinping faces an "unsolvable dilemma: he wants the outside world to accept his dynamic version of Chinese autocracy"—buoyed, one might say, by the Olympics' kumbaya atmosphere—but "also to fear it and respect it." Fusion Energy Breaks Through Unlike the fission (atom-splitting) process that powers today's nuclear reactors, fusion has eluded scientists. This week saw a breakthrough at an experimental reactor, when a European team based in the UK managed to sustain superheated plasma for five seconds, considered a major achievement in fusion-reaction stability.
"The design, pioneered by Soviet scientists in the 1950s, uses powerful magnets to hold a plasma of two hydrogen isotopes— deuterium and tritium—in place as it is heated to temperatures hotter than the sun so that the atomic nuclei fuse, releasing energy," Tom Wilson writes for the Financial Times, describing the process that "does not produce significant radioactive waste."
The environmental implications could be major, Elizabeth Gibney writes for Nature: "If researchers can harness nuclear fusion—the process that powers the Sun—it promises to provide a near-limitless source of clean energy. But so far no experiment has generated more energy out than it puts in." The UK-based team's "results do not change that, but they suggest that a follow-up fusion reactor project that uses the same technology and fuel mix"—a $22 billion effort in France backed by 35 countries and slated to begin experimental fusion reactions in 2025—"should eventually be able to achieve this goal." |
