Fareed: The US Is Ignoring a Simple Way to Counter China

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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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September 24, 2021

Fareed: The US Is Ignoring a Simple Way to Counter China

If the US wants to respond meaningfully to China's rise, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column, it would do well to join the CPTPP—the successor to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) deal engineered by former President Obama to rein in China and abandoned by former President Trump.

Now that China itself has asked to join, Fareed writes that such a move would be a "remarkable move of jiu-jitsu" on Beijing's part. "A trade and investment pact designed to combat Chinese influence would end up becoming one more platform in which China's weight was paramount."

China's request highlights a strategic shortcoming for America, Fareed writes. Washington has announced a security partnership with the UK and Australia, including a deal to supply the latter with nuclear-powered submarines, in an attempt to refocus its attention on China's rise. "The submarine deal is a big and smart strategic move," Fareed writes. "It plays to U.S. strengths, which are military and political. But what if the China challenge is fundamentally economic and technological? For the United States, rejoining CPTPP is politically difficult, but it might be strategically more important than about eight Australian submarines that may not begin to be deployed until 19 years from now."

Booster Boondoggle

After signaling in August that all Americans should get Covid-19 booster shots eight months after full vaccination, starting Sept. 20, the Biden administration has backtracked, prompting what The Economist calls needless confusion and, perhaps, sowing doubt about how safe the fully vaccinated are from Covid-19's fast-spreading Delta variant.

Still, the CDC has recommended boosters for an array of at-risk Americans based on age, underlying conditions, and months since full vaccination—despite ongoing concerns about vaccine hoarding by rich countries.

What do the data say, when it comes to boosters? At The New Yorker, Helen Rosner asks Dr. Céline Gounder, a Bellevue Hospital and NYU epidemiologist and infectious-disease specialist, who sums up research indicating booster shots can prompt antibodies to resurge. "Memory" cells likely save a lasting imprint from the first round of vaccination, Gounder says, which means that for most fully vaccinated people, the body's defenses will continue to rally against later Covid-19 exposure without a booster, if a bit more slowly.

To Gounder, it's misguided to dole out boosters broadly in the US, as delivering first shots in low-income countries would supply a far greater net benefit to the world—and greater protection to rich-country residents wary of any future variants.

After Sunday's Election, What Kind of Ally Will Germany Be?

Germans will vote Sunday, and after the post-election process of forming a government, 16-year Chancellor Angela Merkel will step aside. At The Wall Street Journal, Josef Joffe writes that given Germany's centrist culture and parliamentary system, the election won't change the country's direction drastically.

Viewed from the US, Joffe writes, post-Merkel Germany is unlikely to carry too much water for Washington on the international stage. "Let's not grant, but dilute power, runs the silent motto" in Germany, Joffe writes. "No charismatic figures, please, but trusty party horses bridled by coalition discipline. Imperial overreach was yesterday; today, power politics isn't us. We will try to please Uncle Sam, our security lender of last resort, but won't alienate China and Russia. In the classic German understanding of foreign policy, we are a 'power of peace,' having profited nicely from our 'culture of strategic reticence.'"

El Salvador's Rocky Bitcoin Experiment

"El Salvador's historic adoption of bitcoin as legal tender on Tuesday was beset by teething problems, as an angry protest by mistrustful citizens, technological glitches and a dip in the cryptocurrency clouded the rollout," Nelson Renteria and Anthony Esposito report for Reuters.

The headline-grabbing move by President Nayib Bukele could be viewed as a way to help citizens without formal banking relationships, Jeffrey Frankel notes at Project Syndicate, while arguing that crypto still lacks a genuine portfolio of uses beyond facilitating crime. In Frankel's view, it's unlikely to take the US dollar's place in international transactions anytime soon.