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? Sign up here. January 30, 2024 |
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After Strike on US Forces, What Happens Next? |
US President Joe Biden has walked a carefully drawn line in the Middle East, seeking to project strength and deter enemies while avoiding a larger war. After three US Army soldiers were killed and more than 30 injured in a weekend drone attack on a US base in Jordan—said by US officials to have been perpetrated by an Iran-backed militia—can Biden keep it up?
Biden may have few (if any) good options, as hawkish voices in Washington call for a forceful response. In a written statement, the president said the US "will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner (of) our choosing."
In a Bloomberg op-ed, retired US Navy Admiral and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis outlines some of Biden's options, suggesting among other steps "5-7 days of continuous strikes against (Iranian) proxy targets in Syria and Yemen" and a cyberattack "going after Iranian command and control, severing Tehran's connectivity to its proxy forces, penetrating its oil and gas infrastructure, and reducing its armament production."
The Economist writes: "A military response appears inevitable; the only question is how far it will go. Another round of limited strikes against Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria will neither placate domestic critics nor do much to deter Iran from further attacks. Mr Biden could choose to strike more prominent or valuable (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of Iran's armed forces) targets in those countries. He could also strike Iran directly, but America has not conducted an overt military operation on Iranian soil since a botched hostage rescue in 1980 and has not hit Iranian forces outside Iraq and Syria since a large-scale strike on IRGC naval forces in 1988. America's response 'will be on a level far above [the] action we've seen thus far,' noted Gregory Brew, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group. 'This could signal a period of much more intense exchanges, with more damage and higher casualties.'"
That, of course, could produce the escalation Biden has sought to avoid: the much-feared expansion of the Israel–Hamas war into a much bigger regional conflict between the US and Israel, on one side, and Iran and its allied militias around the region on the other. At Newsweek, Daniel R. DePetris argues Biden should not consider striking Iran directly. "That a military response is in the offing isn't surprising," DePetris writes. "The scope of it, however, is extremely important. Calls for going above and beyond proportional retaliation, to targets inside Iran itself, will simply create more problems and compel the Iranians to respond directly."
As The Economist points out, the weekend strike on US forces was particularly problematic as it happened just as the US and other intermediaries reportedly have been working on a deal to free Israeli hostages held in Gaza and suspend fighting between Israel and Hamas. At the Middle East Institute, Paul Salem urges Washington to think strategically, rather than reactively, as it plots its next moves: "Diplomatic progress toward prisoner exchanges and ending the Israel-Hamas war will be a strategic win for the US and its friends in the region, and it will be a blow to Iran and its allies, which have been making great headway as long as the conflict continues." |
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Staying on the topic of war and terror: Hal Brands writes in a Foreign Affairs essay that, today, the world looks disturbingly like it did in the run-up to World War II.
For Americans, the beginning of World War II was cataclysmic: The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, followed four days later by Hitler's declaration of war on the US, immediately globalized the conflict. But the Axis powers had their differences beforehand, and a world war took a while to coalesce. (The acceleration toward it was spurred on by three factors, Brands writes: the closeness between fascist powers Germany and Italy, a "perverse form of interdependence" in which "instability in one region exacerbated instability in another," and "programs of extreme aggression" that "polarized the world and divided it into rival camps.")
To Brands, today's loose geopolitical alignments—the US and Europe on one side, the authoritarian powers China, Russia, and Iran on the other—look ominous as wars unfold in Gaza and Ukraine. Brands writes: "The United States isn't facing a formalized alliance of adversaries, as it once did during World War II. It probably won't see a replay of a scenario in which autocratic powers conquer giant swaths of Eurasia and its littoral regions. Yet with wars in eastern Europe and the Middle East already raging, and ties between revisionist states becoming more pronounced, all it would take is a clash in the contested western Pacific to bring about another awful scenario—one in which intense, interrelated regional struggles overwhelm the international system and create a crisis of global security unlike anything since 1945. A world at risk could become a world at war. And the United States isn't remotely ready for the challenge." |
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In a world of conflict, Fareed noted on Sunday's GPS, perhaps the most dangerous potential flashpoint looks encouragingly calm. The US–China relationship—which has been tense in recent years, producing fears of a global superpower war—is trending in a positive direction as both Beijing and Washington appear to have realized the danger and moved to lower the temperature.
"A crucial attribute of America's age of hegemony, which began 80 years ago, was that Washington created a security system in which other countries could grow and prosper," Fareed said. "As long as they did not try to disrupt the international order, they could thrive economically, politically, socially, and culturally. … If China plays by these rules, Washington should give it some space. As America's economy powers ahead, the country would do well to maintain confidence in itself and design a foreign policy based on that accurate premise rather than one that is forged on doom and despair." |
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After Sweden submitted its application to join NATO in May 2022, Turkey and Hungary signaled they would withhold approval. Last week, Turkey's parliament and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan approved Sweden's membership, after a long drama involving American F-16 sales to Ankara and Turkish complaints about Sweden's relationship with Kurdish militants deemed by Turkey to be terrorists. (Hungary remains as a holdout.)
As for what took Turkey so long, and why Sweden's accession became a materially oriented negotiation, Reuben Silverman writes for Foreign Policy that Turkey has always had a give-and-take relationship with NATO's major Western powers. "Turkey did not gain firm U.S. support for its NATO membership until after 1950 and 1951, when Ankara sent thousands of Turkish soldiers to fight alongside the United States in some of the most brutal months of the Korean War," Silverman writes. "Washington proposed Turkey's accession in May 1951, and support from and the whole NATO Council followed. Turkey was admitted in 1952, along with Greece. From the beginning, Turkey's relationship with NATO was transactional." |
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Is Donald Trump's nomination inevitable? Maybe, maybe not: As Heather Cox Richardson wrote in her Letters from an American newsletter, the former president's New Hampshire Republican primary win was commanding in one sense but not at all in another, as "more than 45% of Republican primary voters—those most fervent about the party—chose someone other than Trump."
Still, Trump's takeover of the Republican establishment has been something to marvel at. At The New York Times, Lakshua Jain and Armin Thomas note that in 2016, almost no Republican elected officials endorsed Trump's presidential bid. Today, almost all of them have. "The former president now controls the Republican Party by virtually every conceivable measure," they write. "He has a commanding lead in fund-raising and polling. His policies are a beacon to which most conservative lawmakers orient themselves in affairs both foreign and domestic. His endorsement remains the single most coveted asset that any Republican could hope to brandish in a primary race, and he has already received support from an overwhelming majority of prominent elected Republicans." |
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