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. March 6, 2022 On GPS, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET:
First, Fareed gives his take on how the West could deter Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There's one way to change his calculus, Fareed says: "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, sanctions have not touched that sector of Russia's economy. Shunning Russian energy would be painful, as Europe relies on it, but Fareed says the US can boost its own production and exports—and reenter the Iran nuclear deal and lift Trump-era sanctions on Venezuela—to make up for the shortfall.
Such a step, Fareed says, would be "a deadly weapon that strikes at Putin's real Achilles' heel."
Fareed then hears the latest from CNN's reporters covering Putin's war as it unfolds and discusses the situation with key Ukrainian and Russian voices.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba joins Fareed to discuss his country's efforts to outlast the Russian onslaught. Ekaterina Kotrikadze, news director and anchor at TV Rain—Russia's last independent TV broadcaster—discusses Putin's information war and what Russians think of the conflict.
Finally: As the West blankets Russia with sanctions, will they be enough? Fareed asks former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers if more can be done and how these sanctions will affect both Russia's economy and America's. As citizens arm themselves and crowd into underground areas to shelter, Der Spiegel's Christian Esch depicts the daily experience of wartime Kyiv.
"On Tuesday evening, a few colleagues and I do the same thing many Kyiv residents do every evening," Esch writes. "We pack up pillows, blankets and food and descend into the subway. The heavy metal doors that can seal off subway stations in Kyiv are almost completely closed, we have to slide through a gap to enter the station at Poshtova Square. It's 6 p.m. and an air-raid warning has sounded. ... When we leave the subway the next morning, chilled to the bone, the air-raid sirens go off again, but many passersby hardly react at all. Though the warnings have been a constant, Kyiv has experienced relatively little damage to civilian structures—in contrast to Kharkiv ... Many Kyiv residents have stopped spending their nights in the subway or in air-raid shelters." No-Fly-Zones and the Risk of a Wider War After NATO delivered a firm "no" to the idea of imposing a no-fly zone, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky laid partial responsibility for civilian deaths at their feet.
Still, the case against a no-fly zone is articulated by Mike Pietrucha and Mike Benitez at War on the Rocks. The term is political jargon that, to some degree, obscures what it requires: Entering the war. Establishing a "no-fly zone" would mean sending NATO jets to battle Russia's air force and to strike Russian anti-aircraft weapons. And NATO might not achieve air supremacy against Russia's modern forces, they write, given the difficulties encountered against Serbia's less-advanced defenses in 1999.
Point being: NATO seeks to avoid a direct war with nuclear-armed Russia—a wise preference, in the eyes of RAND's Samuel Charap, who recommends precautions to avoid ending up in one, even accidentally. While also opposing a hot war between NATO and Russia, The Economist warns nonetheless that it's important to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin, recommending military aid to Ukraine and continued sanctions (including an embargo on Russian oil and gas).
"If Mr Putin prevails today, his next fix will be in Georgia, Moldova or the Baltic states," the magazine cautions. "He will not stop until he is stopped." Is a Peace Deal Possible? As Ukrainian and Russian representatives negotiate in Belarus, what could the former offer their invaders, realistically?
At The Guardian, Anatol Lieven sketches the outlines of a potential compromise—including Ukraine renouncing its ambitions to join NATO, recognizing Russian control of Crimea, and somehow overcoming the likely unacceptable Russian call for its western neighbor to "demilitarize" and hazy insistence that Ukraine "denazify," despite having a Jewish President.
But analysts have wondered what Putin's war is really about—and if any kind of diplomacy can get him to stop. At Responsible Statecraft, Tom Pickering argues diplomacy is necessary, even if it's difficult. At Just Security last month, Maria Popova and Oxana Shevel echoed a case others had made: that for Putin, this isn't about NATO, but about recreating Russia's imperial sphere and fear that a democratic Ukraine will undermine his way of doing business.
To propose compromises centering on NATO and Crimea "is to misunderstand that the current crisis is not about NATO," Mariia Shynkarenko wrote last month for Public Seminar. "It is about the fact that Ukraine has become the unlucky hostage of a paranoid autocrat." The Other 'Finnish Model' Some have suggested (and others have criticized) the idea that Ukraine might emulate Finland, which committed to neutrality between the Soviet Union and the West, adopting a strategy that kept Helsinki out of the Cold War crossfire. At The Atlantic, Graeme Wood recommends something else: adopting Finland's strategy of training its citizenry as military reservists, equipped to harass and kill occupiers, before an invasion is underway.
Ukraine's much-praised efforts to arm citizens are too little too late, Wood suggests, but NATO countries like Poland and the Baltics might consider the Finnish approach.
"Free societies do not militarize their population casually. Conscription is an encroachment on freedom," Wood writes. "But the same could be said about an invasion by Vladimir Putin. And if I were in a country between Berlin and St. Petersburg right now, I would be considering which encroachment to fear more." |
