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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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October 29, 2021

Fareed: This Is Not a 'Sputnik Moment'

Was China's recent reported test of a hypersonic missile—which Beijing insists was a spacecraft—a "Sputnik moment," as some have said?
 
No, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column. Missiles moving at hypersonic speeds have been around for decades; what's more, whatever China tested missed its mark. And when the USSR launched its first rocket into orbit, it was indeed beating the US in the space race, prompting legitimate concern.
 
Beyond that ahistorical comparison, the tone of discussion around the unfolding US–China rivalry is unproductive, Fareed warns, siding against the argument that the two superpowers can only compete via a struggle for raw power. 
 
"The task of U.S. foreign policy is to recognize that traditional power politics can indeed deter Chinese expansionism while also recognizing the ways in which interdependence might also constrain it," Fareed writes. "The United States should make an effort to deploy both tools. This approach will certainly prove far more complicated to implement than scaremongering and chest-thumping, but it is precisely the one that is likely to keep the world at peace and prosperity."

The Uncertain Future of Facebook

After the recent series of leaks, congressional hearings, and renewed criticism of Facebook, a Financial Times essay by Hannah Murphy, Dave Lee, and Madhumita Murgia encapsulates an uncertain moment for the company. 
 
Questions about leadership, internal discontent, the prospect that fewer young people will want to use the platform, and the risk of being seen by them "desperately uncool" have all plagued the social-media giant, they write. It's an open question whether lawmakers or regulators will step in meaningfully, they suggest; it's also unclear if controversy will shift the company's priorities at all, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg has seemed to insist that the recent bad press is symptomatic of thorny public issues exogenous to Facebook—free speech, for one—not of the decisions it makes.

Is Erdoğan Looking For a Distraction?

What was behind President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's recent comment that Turkey would expel ambassadors from the US and other Western countries? At The New Statesman, Megan Gibson writes that while it was ostensibly offered as a response to their joint call for the release of an imprisoned businessman, Erdoğan is likely repeating an established autocratic set piece, picking a foreign fight to distract from troubles at home. Notably, the Turkish lira has fluctuated and recently hit an all-time low, as Turkey's central bank slashes interest rates and struggles with inflation.

Scandinavia Isn't the Socialist Paradise Some Think It Is

Scandinavian countries are often held up as examples that socialism—including heavily regulated economies and generous safety nets—can work. But at Foreign Policy, Nima Sanandaji says the region's governing ethos is misperceived: Broadly speaking, Scandinavian welfare states came into being circa 1970, but in more recent decades, top tax rates have been lowered and the weight of the state on the economy has been lifted. Having liberalized since socialist heydays, Scandinavian economies have found more economic success with toned-down approaches to taxes and regulation, Sanandaji writes.

Study: Yes, Lockdowns Led to Repression

As Covid-19 necessitated heavy-handed responses, commentators worried that governments around the world would seize the moment to clamp down on freedoms—unraveling democracy and suppressing dissent, not just restricting restaurant capacities.

Those fears were well founded, according to a paper in the current issue of the MIT journal International Security by Donald Grasse, Melissa Pavlik, Hilary Matfess, and Travis B. Curtice. Examining a database of instances of state repression across Africa—with those defined as incidents of state violence against people who weren't participating in any mass demonstration or riot—the authors find that such instances spiked once lockdowns were implemented in various countries, even more so in areas supportive of a country's political opposition.

Notably, some of those instances could include violent lockdown enforcements; the authors note anecdotes of police beatings of curfew violators, for example. The authors do "not argue that states always enact lockdown measures with the intention of repressing civilians"; rather, their theory is that governments use shocks like the pandemic to clamp down "opportunistically."