HOT AIR BALLOON FLIGHT

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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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February 8, 2022

Solving the Post-Soviet Sphere

As French President Emmanuel Macron shuttles from Moscow to Kyiv, hoping to resolve the Russia–West standoff over Ukraine, opinions have varied as to what the West can and should offer in response to Moscow's demands.
 
At stake is the trajectory of NATO, with Russia requesting the alliance remove its forces to 1997 lines and stop expanding—especially that it not welcome Ukraine. In a recent Foreign Affairs essay, Eric S. Edelman and David J. Kramer argued against accepting any Russian-imposed limits, as NATO expansion has been a "demand-driven process": Countries in Russia's former sphere of influence joined NATO because it was attractive, not because they were forced, Edelman and Kramer pointed out. Others say the West was too triumphalist after the Cold War ended, with NATO expanding too aggressively into post-Soviet space without regard for Moscow's sentiment.
 
A recent think-tank proposal attempted to split the difference. In another Foreign Affairs essay, Samuel Charap writes of a suggestion, drafted by analysts from multiple countries including Russia and Ukraine, that post-Soviet states like Ukraine and Georgia could commit to non-aligned status, forgoing their Westward drift while maintaining political independence from their powerful neighbor. That would calm Moscow and, potentially, allow Ukraine to enjoy free trade with both the EU and Russia, posits Charap, who was one of the proposal's contributors.
 
"Until Russia, the United States, Europe, and the states stuck in between them reach a consensus on a revised regional order, post-Soviet Eurasia will remain a source of instability and conflict," Charap argues. "Our proposal shows that such consensus might yet be possible."

Afghanistan's Patchwork Life Under Taliban Rule

Since the Taliban's takeover last August, Afghanistan has suffered a stunning and well-chronicled collapse into economic dysfunction and near-famine on a massive scale. As for Afghans' daily experience of Taliban rule, Fazelminallah Qazizai writes for New Lines Magazine that it varies from place to place. 
 
For example: Qazizai recounts both a wedding celebration in Kandahar (for the brother of a deceased Taliban assassin, whose political views differed from his surviving sibling's) and the scene at a northeastern hospital "full of children pushed to the brink of starvation by the sanctions and asset freezes the U.S. has imposed on Afghanistan since the Taliban's victory. I had never seen anything like it in my country before; it took my breath away."

Dé-Taunt: Putin and Xi Get Closer, at the West's Expense

As The Financial Times' Gideon Rachman and The Spectator's Cindy Yu detailed to Fareed on Sunday's GPS, a burgeoning partnership between Russia and China has caught the West's attention. The Olympics have brought it into relief: When Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing last week, the product—a lengthy joint statement—read as a harsh rebuke of the US.
 
Heads were turned by it, Dmitri Simes, Jr. writes for Nikkei Asia, noting the difficulty America (and its military, in particular) could face in confronting two adversaries in two hemispheres—and arguments that Moscow and Beijing can now be considered as a bloc. Depending on how deep it were to run, a Russian–Chinese alliance would tower over the Euraisan landmass, The New Yorker's Robin Wright observes.

The Quest for a Variant-Proof Covid-19 Vaccine

As the Global Briefing has noted, there is some hope that scientists will be able to develop a catch-all Covid-19 vaccine—one that would work against current and future variants, doing away with the need to produce variant-specific shots. 
 
A Financial Times essay by Sarah Neville assesses the state of play. One study offers a promising indication, in that former SARS patients vaccinated against Covid-19 with the Pfizer-BioNTech shot were found to display "neutralising antibodies not only against Sars-Cov-1 and three [Covid-19] variants of concern (Alpha, Beta and Delta), but five other coronaviruses living in bats and pangolins," hinting that cross-coronavirus immunity can be generated, Neville writes. Researchers are exploring multiple avenues, including designing vaccines to prompt antibodies against non-mutating regions of the Covid-19 virus and attaching multiple identifying bits of SARS, MERS, and Covid-19 to a single, fake-virus particle, for injection.
 
"While most research teams are still at the proof-of-concept stage in the lab, a small number have progressed to human trials," Neville writes. Melanie Saville, who directs vaccine R&D at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) points to a 2024–2025 target "timeframe," describing the research to Neville as a "long haul."