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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March 4, 2022

Fareed: One Thing Would Change Putin's Calculus

As Western allies send arms to Ukraine and slap sanctions on Russian banks, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column that there's a more meaningful step the world can take.
 
"There is one path to changing Russian President Vladimir Putin's calculus," Fareed writes: "sanctioning Russia's oil and gas industry. This is Putin's golden goose, the source of the state's wealth and the reason he might believe that he can weather any storm. So far, not only have these been left untouched, but the financial sanctions have been carefully designed to allow Russia room to continue to sell energy to the world."
 
Europe depends on Russian gas, Fareed notes, but the US can boost its own production and work to export more to Europe. It can also reenter the nuclear deal with Iran and lift Trump-era sanctions on Venezuela, bringing more energy onto the global market to offset a shunning of Russia's supplies. 
 
Such a plan, Fareed writes, would "become a deadly weapon that strikes at Putin's real Achilles' heel."

Putin vs. the International Order

On the latest episode of The New York Times' "The Ezra Klein Show" podcast, Fareed tells host Ezra Klein that the US is being forced (for the first time in decades) to choose between its global priorities; that a better relationship with China—and a wedge between China and Russia—would be wise to pursue; and that Putin is seeking to upend the current world order. 
 
"That, to my mind, is the part that is deeply troubling and why I'm in favor of the most robust response to counter this invasion," Fareed says. "Because Putin is trying to break the international system. And if he succeeds, there is a good chance you will have broken it. I don't want to say irreparably. And things can be fixed. But that's why this is such a big deal."

Sanctions Bite—and Set a New Bar

"(T)hose who imagined that sanctions would cripple Russia's economy overnight are likely to be disappointed," The Economist wrote last month, "if only because much of the world still wants its oil and gas."
 
And yet, sanctions are having an effect, decimating the ruble's exchange value and sending Russians to ATMs. As a result of microchip-export restrictions, Russians may soon find "a broad range of goods, from smartphones to automobiles" in short supply, Peter Rutland adds at The Conversation.
 
"Sanctions have never hit such a large financial system so quickly and so hard before," Russian economist Konstantin Sonin tells Der Spiegel's Claus Hecking, citing as especially damaging the limitations on Russia's Central Bank. "At best, I expect the economy to stagnate for years," Sonin says. "A recession is more likely, along with massive inflation. This year it could quickly be 30 or 40 percent."
 
A Rubicon has been crossed, The Economist writes, suggesting the world has entered a "new age of economic conflict"—one that will make autocracies "nervous" and entail the prospect of overreach. "The West has deployed an economic weapon that was until recently unthinkable," the magazine writes. "It must be used wisely."

Will Putin's War Backfire?

Russia's battlefield advantages have been noted widely, but maintaining control of a hostile country is different from winning the early stage of a war, and some analysts have seen folly in Putin's project. At The Wall Street Journal, for instance, Mark Hannah argues Putin is committing such a strategic blunder that the West—rather than clashing with Russia's air force to impose a no-fly zone, or supplying a Ukrainian guerrilla resistance—should stand aside and let him.

 
"The analogy of Algeria's 1954–62 war against France comes to mind," Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage write for Foreign Affairs. "France was the superior military power. Yet the Algerians found ways to grind down the French army and to sap support in Paris for the war. Perhaps Putin can cobble together a puppet government with Kyiv as its capital, a Vichy Ukraine. Perhaps he can muster the support required from the secret police to subdue the population of this Russian colony. … But it could never work in practice, owing to Ukraine's sheer size and to the country's recent history."
 
As for how Putin's war is playing at home, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova writes for the Russia-analysis outlet Riddle that opinions are still forming, but "(i)t is pretty clear that invading Ukraine was not a decision relying on what ordinary Russians wanted."

What This War Means for the World Economy

While Der Spiegel's Heiner Hoffmann and Asha Jaffar chronicle  "exploding" global grain prices, The Economist Intelligence Unit makes a suite of predictions including supply-chain disruptions, at least a 50% increase in natural-gas prices, inflation above 6% globally this year, and a drag on worldwide economic growth.