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. July 6, 2021 What Went Wrong in Afghanistan Concerning news continues to emanate from Afghanistan, as The Wall Street Journal reports the Taliban has seized control of a border crossing with Tajikistan and continues to gain territory ahead of America's self-imposed Sept. 11 withdrawal deadline.
Joining in the broad-strokes analysis prompted by the US exit from its longest war, at Foreign Affairs, British author and foreign correspondent Christina Lamb reviews a new history of the war and what went wrong with it: "The American War in Afghanistan" by Carter Malkasian, who recounts the distraction of Iraq and depicts a confused mission that alienated Afghans.
"Malkasian's book raises a disturbing question," writes Lamb in her review: "In the end, did the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan do more harm than good? 'The United States exposed Afghans to prolonged harm in order to defend America from another terrorist attack,' he writes. 'Villages were destroyed. Families disappeared. … The intervention did noble work for women, education, and free speech. But that good has to be weighed against tens of thousands of men, women, and children who died.'" The Delta variant of Covid-19 has produced mixed responses from governments, and now there is mixed scientific evidence about its effect. While a completed regimen of two Pfizer shots has been shown to be 96% effective against hospitalization and severe disease, when the Delta variant is predominant, the Israeli government puts that figure at 93% for vaccinated Israelis, with 64% effectiveness against any infection, according to the country's Health Ministry. Several laboratory studies have indicated Pfizer's vaccine should protect against the Delta variant.
Government officials have different views on how to react to Delta, and its emergence has slowed some reopenings. At Der Spiegel, a 12-bylined story notes that Germany has instituted a mandatory two-week quarantine for people traveling from Britain and Portugal, while German state officials disagree on whether to reinstate more restrictions and, if so, which ones. The uncertainty is likely to continue, the 12 authors predict: "No matter what happens in the coming weeks, the curse of the mutants is likely to continue. It's not enough to defeat delta. At any time, a new variant can emerge somewhere in the world that is even more contagious." Has the US Economy Peaked? Having shared key parts of his analysis with Fareed on Sunday's GPS, Morgan Stanley Investment Management Chief Global Strategist and Head of Emerging Markets Ruchir Sharma writes for the Financial Times that for all the post-lockdown enthusiasm about it, the US economy may be hitting a peak.
The US just enjoyed a "comeback decade" after beating expectations in the 10 years following the 2008-2009 financial crisis, Sharma writes, suggesting another surge is unlikely, as "booms that are potent are almost always followed by a long hangover. The US economy led the world in the 1960s, but in the 70s it worried about falling behind the oil-fuelled Soviet Union. In the 1980s it fretted over an ascendant Japan. The US came roaring back during the tech boom of the 1990s, but the 2000s were all about the rise of emerging markets led by China. … What is more likely is that the US will have a mediocre decade, weighed down by the excesses of its recent boom. Relative to other markets, US stocks are at a 100-year peak. Valuations that high reflect the new optimism: after a decade of unanticipated US success, many analysts now expect more of the same. Alas, this may be as good as it gets for America." The 'Trump Court' May Not Be So Trumpish Conservatives enjoy a solid, six-to-three majority on the US Supreme Court, following the appointments of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett by former President Donald Trump. But despite predictions that the court will veer to the right, Peter S. Canellos writes for Politico Magazine that these justices weren't made in Trump's image.
Interestingly, the court's conservatives share a hero with former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Canellos writes: turn-of-the-century Justice John Marshall Harlan, a fierce critic of the Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson decisions known for hewing closely to the original text of the Constitution and what its framers intended. For the current court, Canellos sees jurisprudential overlap between conservatives' originalism and the liberal impulse to defend minority rights, as Harlan exemplified it. The US and India might have more false claims circulating in their information-spheres, by volume, but Brazil hosts a unique brand of misinformation that has become ubiquitous, particularly where Covid-19 is concerned, Vanessa Barbara writes for The New York Times.
"In Brazil, some falsehoods have prevailed over common sense, and there's nothing we can do about it," Barbara writes. "Every time you enter a supermarket, a store or even a doctor's office, for example, someone will measure your temperature with a forehead thermometer—but will point it to your wrist. This is the crushing triumph of a fake news story that claimed infrared thermometers can damage the brain's pineal gland." The false theory that "vaccines make people magnetic" rates as Barbara's personal favorite; false beliefs about hydroxychloroquine persist, too. Abetting some of this is President Jair Bolsonaro, Barbara writes, noting his seeming "obsession" with unproven remedies. |
