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. April 23, 2021 Fareed: On Vaccines and More, Governments Have Been Too Cautious As US health officials recommend resuming the paused rollout of Johnson & Johnson's vaccine, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column that politicians and governments have been "much too worried about the chance of something bad happening on their watch, no matter how unlikely."
Covid-19 is at least "thousands of times more dangerous" than the very rare blood clotting that halted the administration of J&J shots, Fareed points out. Aside from this vaccine pause, governmental over-caution has been a larger "pattern," Fareed argues: Several countries in Europe initiated (since-lifted) pauses of AstraZeneca shots over similar concerns, and US officials were reluctant to reopen schools despite indications that when precautions are in place, the risk of Covid-19 is low.
"The truth is that we live with risks all the time," Fareed writes. "Nearly 40,000 Americans die every year in car accidents. Would we agree to make the speed limit 25 miles per hour if it would save half of those deaths? … We need to think more closely, carefully and rationally about risk and remember to balance it with that other half of the equation: reward."
German Disarray Continues Lauded for its characteristically level-headed, organized, and science-based initial response to Covid-19, Germany has since suffered from discord over lockdown measures and discrepancies in the approaches taken by different state leaders, all set against the political pressure of an election year, as New York Times correspondent Melissa Eddy detailed recently on GPS. The strife continued this week, as police used pepper spray to break up a protest outside the Bundestag, where MPs approved an "emergency brake" policy that would let Chancellor Angela Merkel's government impose restrictions including curfews at state levels, when Covid-19 cases reach a seven-day average of 100 per 100,000 residents for three consecutive days, the BBC reports.
At Der Spiegel, 12 authors write that Merkel "is sticking to the plan despite the massive criticism," which has come not only from reluctant state leaders and lockdown opponents on the right, but from centrist and left-leaning MPs displeased that the "brake" measure doesn't go far enough or is based solely on Covid-19 case incidence, not on other factors like the availability of ICU beds. At American Purpose, Josef Joffe lumps Germany's problems in with the EU's. Germany is known for its efficiency and structure, but Covid-19 has highlighted the fact that much authority is devolved to the states; compared with the UK and US, Joffe argues, Germany and the European Union alike have suffered from their reluctance to embrace centralized control. Soft Power, Sharp Tongues Since the US, UK, Canada, and EU all sanctioned China over its repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Chinese diplomats have responded with an aggressive online-messaging "counterpunch," Lindsay Gorman of the German Marshall Fund writes for the Financial Times. "In just the last week of March, China's diplomatic and state media accounts tweeted about the province more than 2,000 times—an eight-fold spike in frequency, according to research complied by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, where we track authoritarian social media accounts."
Since well before the Xinjiang sanctions, harsh words by China's so-called "wolf warrior" diplomats have not sat well in Europe, Gorman notes. (Swedish and German officials, for instance, have pushed back against their combative tone.) Gorman suggests the aggressive posture may be geared toward domestic Chinese politicians "who want to see an emboldened China going punch for punch with the west," but the approach has not won Beijing many friends in Europe. A new report by the European Think-tank Network on China examines the trend and finds that China's soft power in Europe is flailing. Beijing enjoys good relationships with some governments, like Hungary's, but in Italy and Greece, it's now doing "damage control," while "in Czechia, Denmark, France, and Sweden, China's soft power is clearly in a state of free fall." Compiling analysis authored by experts in 17 countries, the report cites China's actions in Xinjiang and Hong Kong—and its aggressive messaging, including on social media—as playing a role. Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny said Friday he is ending a hunger strike he has lodged to demand medical treatment from an independent doctor, CNN's Zahra Ullah reports. Maria Pevchikh, who runs the investigative unit at Navalny's nonprofit Anti-Corruption Foundationm, wrote recently for the Guardian that Navanly was "dying" in prison, as his hunger strike passed 20 days: "His health is deteriorating quicker than world leaders can express concern, as he loses at least 2lbs a day. ... He needs urgent treatment in an ICU, starting yesterday." It's not the first time Navalny has approached death for the sake of his cause, Pevchikh wrote.
At The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum meditates on Navalny's mission and Russian President Vladimir Putin's determination to squash any challenge to his authority, writing that Navalny has sought to show Russians—and the world—that this "is what courage looks like," while Putin is attempting to show "that courage is useless." What Putin Wants With Ukraine As for the intentions behind Russia's military buildup on Ukraine's border, which Russia's defense minister said Thursday will be withdrawn, Applebaum writes that one "possibility is that Putin himself doesn't yet know what he wants, or that he will decide as events unfold." Applebaum also suggests Putin's regional ambitions and Navalny's fate could be intertwined.
"If Navalny dies, and if Russians launch mass protests—a spontaneous one was staged in Moscow this week—Putin may need a war to distract them," Applebaum writes. "If Navalny dies, and the U.S. reaction is tougher than he expects, Putin might want a war in Ukraine to prove to the Russian public how little he cares what Americans think. Alternatively, he might just want to test President Joe Biden, regardless of what happens to Navalny. Whereas Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump all believed they could get along better with Russian leadership than their predecessors, Biden is the first president since the Cold War who did not arrive in office planning to 'reset' relations with Russia. Biden has already described Putin as a 'killer.' Putin, ever mindful of the home audience, may want to see how much Biden really intends to push back." According to US Intelligence, the Future Will Be Chaos At the World Politics Review, Stewart M. Patrick writes that a report released this month by the US National Intelligence Council, projecting the state of the world in 2040, anticipates massive disruptions.
"Rising temperatures and extreme weather will exacerbate water, food, health and energy insecurity, which in turn will increase political instability and mass migration, particularly in the developing world," Patrick writes, summing it up. Demographics will also contribute to migration and instability, according to the assessment: Population growth will slow, but "the planet will add another 1.4 billion people, mostly in Africa and South Asia, to reach 9.2 billion in 2040," Patrick writes. "Humanity will also age rapidly, particularly in East Asia and Europe … These trends will strain the capacity of developing countries' governments to deliver infrastructure and services; test public finances in aging nations; and generate even larger flows of migrant labor—with attendant political tensions." Sovereign debt will rise, adding to economic precarity.
Technology will advance to science-fiction levels, the report predicts: "Over the next 20 years," Patrick writes, "miraculous innovations in artificial intelligence, network computing, machine learning, virtual reality, robotics, nanotechnology, additive manufacturing, space technology, smart materials, biotechnology and other fields will transform human life"—even, potentially, posing risks to its survival. |
