United States of America eSeries: On Fareed Zakaria GPS

On Fareed Zakaria GPS

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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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May 16, 2021

On Today's Show

Australia: 'The New Hermit Kingdom'?

That's what Foreign Policy executive editor Amelia Lester calls her home country, noting strict pandemic border closures that have left thousands of citizens stranded overseas. Australia's claim of multiculturalism "rings hollow when 10,000 Australian citizens risk jail time if they try to escape coronavirus disaster in India, and tens of thousands more have no idea when they'll set foot in their homeland again," Lester writes, while "[t]he lack of public outrage is striking."

The government announced anyone seeking reentry from India could face $51,000 (USD) fines or jail time, has mandated quarantines that citizens must pay for, and has reduced the number of inbound flights as hotel rooms for those quarantines run short, the BBC notes. Lester writes that Australian public discussion has framed foreign travel as a luxury, overlooking the plight of those stranded.

What Covid-19 Exposed About Science

The pandemic coincided with a true scientific miracle—the timely arrival of RNA-based vaccines—but Helen Pearson writes for Nature that it has also exposed broad scientific shortcomings, as best practices fell by the wayside.

UK-based emergency-medicine doctor Simon Carley "compares the time before and after COVID-19 to a choice of meals," Pearson writes. "Before the pandemic, physicians wanted their [scientific] evidence like a gourmet plate from a Michelin-starred restaurant ... But after COVID-19 hit, standards slipped. It was, he says, as if doctors were staggering home from a club after ten pints of lager and would swallow any old evidence from the dodgy burger van on the street." (Anecdotal indications of potential benefit from hydroxychloroquine, for instance, led doctors to prescribe it.)

At The Lancet Global Health, a slew of authors identify similar breakdowns in research, which "has largely not been of high quality so far and many preprints, which are not peer-reviewed, were rushed to dissemination without sufficient oversight." Many trials were small, poorly designed, and duplicated each other.

The lesson both Pearson and the Lancet authors draw is that science should get better. Research can be coordinated to avoid redundancy, control groups can be shared, and the research community can exercise more discretion over what makes it into the public sphere.

'The Age of Impunity'

At Foreign Affairs, former UK foreign secretary and current International Rescue Committee President and CEO David Miliband writes that we are on the verge of living in an "age of impunity," where human rights can be violated without fear of accountability.

"Whether it is Saudi Arabia bombing a bus carrying Yemeni schoolchildren or President Bashar al-Assad and his allies targeting health facilities in Syria, governments and rebel groups increasingly violate international laws and norms without being punished or held to account," Miliband writes. "The missiles and rockets flying between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, with civilians on the receiving end, are just the most recent example."

Noting US President Joe Biden's signaled intent to bring human-rights advocacy back to the fore in America's foreign dealings, Miliband calls for an international push to bolster mechanisms of justice, including improving and expanding the UN's human rights investigative operations (which Miliband calls "halfhearted" in Syria) and convincing businesses to shun countries that perpetrate abuses.

To Understand Europe, Understand Mario Draghi

At the British magazine The Critic, Ben Judah deems Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central Bank, a central character in the Europe's trajectory. Having steered the ECB through the middle and end of the eurozone debt crisis, and having played an instrumental role in gathering consensus for Europe's banking union, Judah writes, Draghi exemplifies the interrelation of European politics and finance.

Now, Draghi is testing the compatibility of technocracy and raw politics—with a "ruthless" style Judah calls "Draghipolitik"—in his home country. "This is why Brussels and Paris are now watching Draghi," Judah writes. "Can he successfully invest Italy's €200 billion from the Covid fund? … Spending the money wisely is his route to make the fund that permanent backstop. … Today he sits on the zeitgeist: promising to begin Italy's exit from neoliberalism, his latest fiscal thinking lines up perfectly with Bidenomics. But it is not enough. He now needs to do the opposite of what he first set out to do: and foster a new generation of strong politicians to succeed him. Only that can break the cycle that is weakening Italy."