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 25, 2021 On GPS, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET:
First, after US regulators recommended resuming the rollout of Johnson & Johnson vaccine shots, Fareed argues 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 thousands of times more dangerous than the risk of rare blood clotting that prompted the J&J pause, Fareed points out. The pandemic seems to have exposed a tendency toward over-caution, which also reared in officials' reluctance to reopen schools despite indications of low viral risk.
"The truth is that we live with risks all the time," Fareed says. "We need to think more closely, carefully and rationally about risk and remember to balance it with that other half of the equation: reward."
Next, after President Vladimir Putin warned ominously against crossing Russian "red lines," Fareed talks with former Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski about the threat, Russia's recent troop buildup on Ukraine's border, and worsening relations between Moscow and the West.
After President Biden on Saturday departed from past US policy by officially recognizing the Ottoman Empire's massacre of ethnic Armenians during World War I as a "genocide"—and as the US and other countries deem China's repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang to constitute the same—Fareed asks British-French lawyer Philippe Sands, a leading authority on the concept, if the term "genocide" truly applies in each case.
After that, Fareed talks with Conservation International CEO M. Sanjayan about President Biden's big climate promise—to halve US carbon emissions, compared with 2005 levels, by 2030—and whether it will make a difference if the developing world doesn't follow suit.
Until recently, India had avoided the worst of the pandemic. Now, the country faces a crushing Covid-19 wave—with hospital beds, oxygen supplies, and even crematory services all in short supply. Fareed asks Guardian South Asia correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen what's driving the onslaught.
Finally, Fareed looks at how nuclear energy will likely have to be a big part of the solution, if the world is to avoid a climate catastrophe. India's Covid-19 Problem Is Everyone's As India faces a devastating Covid-19 surge, The Economist points (as others have) to viral variants, the easing of restrictions, and a lax approach by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
It also notes that one "immediate consequence of India's second wave for the rest of the world is a disruption to vaccine supplies. India had hoped to be the world's pharmacy. But with case numbers exploding the government has restricted exports of vaccines. In the first half of April India shipped just 1.2m doses abroad, compared with 64m in the three prior months. The Serum Institute of India, a private company that manufactures the AstraZeneca vaccine, has defaulted on commitments to Britain, the European Union and COVAX, a scheme to supply more shots worldwide. African countries that had been counting on India to provide them with vaccines are looking on in dismay."
Arguing that India's government ordered too few doses and made it too difficult for foreign-developed vaccines to gain regulatory approval, the magazine notes "signs of improvement" in a fast-tracked approval process and a pledge to spend about $400 million to help the Serum Institute produce more doses. Still, the magazine urges Modi to use his powers to enact new pandemic restrictions. "Unless India's second wave is brought under control," it writes, "the entire world will suffer." Assessing the 'Genocide' Label in Xinjiang As Fareed will discuss with British-French lawyer Philippe Sands, the US, UK, Canada, and other countries have labeled China's repression of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang a "genocide"—but not everyone thinks the term fits.
At Project Syndicate, Jeffrey Sachs and William Schabas writes that a hallmark of "genocide" is killing, not just internment. The detention of Uyghurs in camps—as referred to by the US State Department and as indicated by CNN reporting based on interviews and leaks—would constitute a "gross violation of human rights," they write, but the US's evidence is lacking that China has killed Uyghurs on a wide scale and intends "to exterminate" them. "The charge of genocide should never be made lightly," Sachs and Schabas write. "Inappropriate use of the term may escalate geopolitical and military tensions and devalue the historical memory of genocides such as the Holocaust, thereby hindering the ability to prevent future genocides. It behooves the US government to make any charge of genocide responsibly, which it has failed to do here." Angela Merkel has towered over Germany since becoming the country's first female chancellor in 2005, when she provided a stark departure from "a line of hard-drinking, smoking, womanizing, and generally scenery-chewing Big Men of West German politics," Constanze Stelzenmüller writes for Foreign Affairs. "She has been in power longer than any of her peers in the major industrialized countries, with the sole exception of Vladimir Putin" and has earned renown beyond her borders. "For a while, some U.S. and British commentators, dismayed by their own leaders, even took to calling her 'the leader of the free world' (a title the chancellor is said to detest)," Stelzenmüller writes.
Now, Merkel is in the final months of her last term in office, which will end after elections on Sept. 26, leaving Germans to assess her legacy. Merkel has studied opinion polls assiduously during her time in power but has also bucked popular sentiment at critical junctures, as when she admitted roughly one million refugees to the country in 2015 and when she supported a bailout—and continued inclusion in the eurozone—for Greece during its post-2008 debt crisis. Merkel's tenure also witnessed the "meteoric rise of the far right," partly as a backlash to her refugee decision, and the main critique of Merkel's legacy is that "although she has been exquisitely adroit at riding out the currents of politics, she has been far too reluctant to shape them," Stelzenmüller writes.
With the country now in a "febrile" mood amid the pandemic, Merkel's centrist party, the CDU, has seen its standing slip; to Stelzenmüller, the lesson of Merkel's home stretch may be that despite a leader's unquestioned integrity, disasters can knock things off course. Lula Returns: An 'Earthquake' in Brazilian Politics Since Brazil's Supreme Court annulled the corruption convictions of former left-leaning president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (popularly known as Lula) last month, observers have gawked at a potential tectonic shift in the country's politics. Having been sent to prison as a result of the Lava Jato corruption scandal, a kickback scheme whose exposure reverberated across the continent, Lula's reemergence immediately prompted speculation that he would run for president in 2022.
At Foreign Policy, Beatriz Della Costa writes that Lula's return is indeed a political "earthquake," as he appears to be the one politician with enough sway to have forced President Jair Bolsonaro to change his tune on wearing masks amid Covid-19. Were Lula to win power again, he probably wouldn't meaningfully undo Brazil's current environmental practices, Della Costa suggests, citing an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour in which Lula defended a controversial dam project undertaken during his tenure. "Lula's normalcy harks back to 2010-era Brazilian political thinking: economic development based on oil and car factories," in Della Costa's view.
Still, Della Costa writes, a Lula victory in 2022 could turn the country away from "Bolsonarism, the retrograde, conservative anti-intellectualism that … has seeped into Brazilian society." With Bolsonaro facing "towering" disapproval ratings, Della Costa suggests it may come to pass. |
