United States of America eSeries: Fareed: What If Afghanistan Falls to the Taliban?

Fareed: What If Afghanistan Falls to the Taliban?

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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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July 9, 2021

Fareed: What If Afghanistan Falls to the Taliban?

As the US prepares to finalize its departure from Afghanistan, "[m]any voices warn that what follows will be instability and eventually a Taliban takeover," Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column. "The country will once again become a base for terrorism, they argue, and so we must stay to keep it stable and in friendly hands."

But history offers relevant lessons regarding empires, overreach, and the limits to what powerful countries can achieve in far-flung places, Fareed writes. "[T]he mentality that drove the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq was an imperial aversion to any instability," reminiscent of the British occupation of Sudan (out of fear that it could lose its hold on the Suez Canal) and the Soviet Union's own costly occupation of Afghanistan. Each misdirected its resources in an overly risk-averse approach to instability elsewhere, Fareed argues.

While a Taliban takeover would be unfortunate, and while the US should work with Afghanistan's neighbors to promote peace, Fareed writes, "Washington must also keep in mind … that U.S. forces … have done what could be done, successfully degrading al-Qaeda and killing Osama bin Laden. Ultimately, Afghanistan is not central to the United States' position as a global power."

Chaos in Haiti

After the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, Catherine Osborn writes for Foreign Policy's Latin America Brief that the country is in a state of political chaos, amid a dispute over who will take charge (the current Prime Minister or the one appointed by Moïse but not yet sworn in). Moïse's murder was a blow to a country already in turmoil, Osborn writes, noting that gang violence has forced more than 13,000 people to flee their homes since June 1, according to a recent UN report.

"Haiti's situation can be described as beyond anarchy now. Right now no one is in charge except the gangs that are terrorizing everyone," Florida International University Latin American politics professor Eduardo Gamarra tells Americas Quarterly.

China Brings the Hammer Down on Didi

China's top ride-sharing app, Didi, raised $4.4 billion in an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange last week, only to see its shares crash 20% as Chinese regulators placed it under investigation over data-security concerns, as Lucas Niewenhuis details for SupChina.

At Nikkei Asia, Angela Huyue Zhang observes intersecting trends: China seems to want to rein in its tech champions, and it's also growing more concerned about cross-border data flows, amid political conflict with the US. (Zhang cites Chinese fears that tech companies could be forced to hand over customer data to the US government.) Chinese firms raising IPO cash overseas already loomed as a sensitive matter, Huang writes, concluding that "Didi's failure to heed clear warnings forced the regulators' hand, triggering a chain of actions that is rewriting the rule book for the listing of Chinese tech companies."

A Concise Takedown of Trump's Social-Media Lawsuit

Former President Donald Trump is suing Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube parent Google for kicking him off their platforms for varying durations. Making his case in The Wall Street Journal, Trump writes that "[t]hrough these lawsuits, I intend to restore free speech for all Americans—Democrats, Republicans and independents."

At The New York Times, tech journalist Kara Swisher begs to differ, dismissing the suits as an attention-grabbing stunt and writing that "[o]nly public squares are public squares. Like it or not, private companies can do whatever they want when it comes to making rules and tossing off incorrigible miscreants."

Who's Ready for 5G?

Much, but not all, of the world is, according to a new report by The Economist Intelligence Unit rating readiness for 5G rollout.

South America and Africa are likelier to focus on continued 4G deployment, the EIU finds, while East Asian governments rate highest in 5G tech development, availability of the most highly prized bandwidth, and progress toward auctioning it off. South Korea ranks tops on all metrics, with mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan trailing it.

Western Europe broadly rates well in 5G trials and in the robustness of its 5G policies and is expected to focus on industrial applications; the US earns high technological and deployment marks but suffers from a confused policy environment, due to overlapping regulatory authorities, the report finds.