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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 28, 2021

Why the US Must Be Careful With China

With all the recent talk of a Cold War redux, played out this time between the US and China, there are comforting reasons to believe things won't get too hostile.
 
China isn't the USSR, as Fareed and others have noted. It doesn't seek to promulgate a Marxist-Leninist ideology around the world or to control near-orbit satellite states. It's simply a rising power looking to make room for itself. The US and China are far more intertwined, economically, than the US and the Soviet Union were. All of which makes an actual war unlikely.
 
In Foreign Affairs, noted realist international-relations theorist John J. Mearsheimer argues the counterpoint. "This rivalry will test U.S. policymakers more than the original Cold War did, as China is likely to be a more powerful competitor than the Soviet Union was in its prime," Mearsheimer writes. "And this cold war is more likely to turn hot."
 
China may not be as ideological about its communism as the Soviets were—but it is more nationalist, Mearsheimer writes, arguing that's more dangerous. "In Asia, there is no clear dividing line like the Iron Curtain to anchor stability," Mearsheimer observes. "Instead, there are a handful of potential conflicts that would be limited and would involve conventional arms, which makes war thinkable."
 
As for what to do, opinions differ. Also at Foreign Affairs, Van Jackson writes that Washington has taken an "overly militarized" approach to the Asia-Pacific region, calling for more diplomacy. For now, US–China competition is mostly channeled into diplomatic jockeying over international rules and norms, Ben Scott writes for Nikkei Asia, hoping it can stay that way.

In Lengthy Fashion, Senate Report Condemns Bolsonaro

A Brazilian congressional committee recommended this week that President Jair Bolsonaro be tried for crimes against humanity, for his government's "reckless" handling of Covid-19. At The New York Times, Vanessa Barbara writes, "It was about time someone documented Mr. Bolsonaro's catastrophic stewardship of the country through the pandemic, and the 1,288-page report does just that."
 
The report mostly provides evidence for what's been obvious, Barbara writes, and it "certainly won't rein in Mr. Bolsonaro's behavior." It's also unlikely to provoke legal action, as Brazil's prosecutor general was appointed by Bolsonaro and is seen as an ally.

Who Are Today's Taliban?

Profiling the new Taliban chancellor of Kabul University at New Lines Magazine, Fazelminallah Qazizai sizes up the crop of Taliban officials now running Afghanistan.

"Throughout the decades of fighting they continued to believe that victory over the U.S. and its Afghan allies would come, but they were still not prepared when it did," Qazizai writes. "Now, two months on from the fall of Kabul, we are starting to learn who these Taliban really are. It is a complex, contradictory picture. Routinely portrayed as archaic and extreme by critics and opponents, the new generation of Taliban are in fact a product of their times: more open to the prospect of gradual social change than their forebears yet politically more militant; English-speaking but mistrustful of the West; well-read yet wary of free expression; keen to help their country move forward but defined by its past. Many of them played important roles in a war that killed tens of thousands of Afghans but, as they point out, they too lost friends and family along the way."

As the Taliban establish their rule, a flurry of analysis has dissected where the country is heading. Most recently, at Der Spiegel, Christoph Reuter reported serious concerns about the Taliban's economic management; at The Political Quarterly, Weeda Mehran wrote that religious extremism is widespread enough in Afghanistan that the country won't liberalize; and at Foreign Policy, Haley Swedlund, Romain Malejacq, and Malte Lierl doubted that foreign-aid donors can influence Taliban policies.

What More Can Germany Do to Counter Right-Wing Extremism?

"No European country does more than Germany to confront right-wing extremism," Paul Hockenos writes for the World Politics Review, noting myriad methods: "using the security apparatus, democracy promotion, educational campaigns and even bans on extremist parties and organizations." And yet, it's still a problem.
 
In the US, Fareed has argued that the Republican Party is partly to blame: that America's mainstream conservative movement must countenance the danger of extremism within its loose ranks, before extremist right-wing politics and, in some cases, violence can be eradicated. Hockenos draws a similar conclusion for Germany, where conservatives tend to "equate" right-wing extremism "with left-wing violence" and think "both kinds of extremism can be fought with ever-more repressive measures" that haven't worked. Others have sought to build up democratic institutions, Hockenos writes, but a consensus approach is lacking.