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. February 2, 2024 |
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Fareed: In the Middle East, the US Is Michael Corleone |
"It's perhaps fitting," Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column, "that the line that best describes U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East over the past 15 years comes from the Godfather movies. In the third part of the series, the aging Michael Corleone has been trying to distance himself from his old mafia businesses and ties. But inevitably crises flare up that demand his attention. 'Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,' he cries."
President Joe Biden may well be thinking the same today, Fareed writes. Since George W. Bush's second term, successive US presidential administrations have sought to disengage from the Middle East.
As was the case for Michael Corleone, the US has been drawn back in—this time by a drone strike that killed three US soldiers and injured more than 30 on a US base in Jordan last weekend. US officials have blamed an Iran-backed militia in Iraq. Today, the US launched retaliatory strikes on Iranian-linked militia targets in Iraq and Syria. Hawkish voices in Washington have urged Biden to respond forcefully—including by striking Iran directly—but Fareed advises heeding the Godfather's words. "The most effective response to this broader Iran-backed push against U.S. interests in the region would be to show not that Washington can escalate militarily … but that it can de-escalate politically," Fareed writes. "That means using the crisis in Gaza to create conditions for longer-term stability by addressing Israel's need for security and Palestinian aspirations for a state. … That kind of political and diplomatic response would not appease the war hawks in Washington, but it would be the most effective counter to America's foes. As Michael Corleone says in that same movie, 'Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.'" |
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Does the UN's Palestinian Agency Have a Future? |
A major scandal has shaken global funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, known as UNRWA (pronounced "un-ruh"). Israel alleges 13 UNRWA employees were associated with Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians; as a result, countries including the US have suspended funding for the agency.
At The New York Times, columnist Bret Stephens, a former editor in chief of The Jerusalem Post, writes that UNRWA "may be the only agency in the U.N. system whose central purpose is to perpetuate grievance and conflict. It should be abolished." (UNRWA has long faced allegations that hateful and inciting content is taught to Palestinian children in schools it runs.)
At CNN Opinion, Michael Bociurkiw, a former spokesperson for UNICEF in Gaza and the West Bank, points out that UNRWA functions as "an omnipresent municipal service provider" in the Palestinian territories, performing tasks like sanitation and managing refugee camps. As Israel has waged war on Hamas, it has distributed vital food and medical aid. In short, through UNRWA's controversial history, no one has found an alternative solution for serving Palestinians' needs. It may be time for one, Bociurkiw writes—perhaps with wealthy Gulf states chipping in to fund an expanded UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to carry out UNRWA's myriad tasks. |
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Has Germany 'Finally Woken Up'? |
It has, according to a New York Times guest opinion essay by German journalist Anna Sauerbrey.
In recent years, the main political story in Germany has been the rise of the far-right, nativist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Surging in polls and performing well in elections, the AfD has stoked and ridden anti-immigration sentiment to become a force in Germany, just as far-right populists have elsewhere in Europe and in the US.
Last month, that story took a turn, with a report by the investigative media outlet Correctiv of a "secret meeting" (held in the German city of Potstdam, outside Berlin) at which AfD representatives reportedly met with "radical right-wing activists and neo-Nazis" and entertained plans to deport immigrants and "non-assimilated" German citizens because of their ethnic backgrounds. The AfD denies having any such plans.
After Correctiv published its report, protests against the AfD arose across Germany. At the Times, Sauerbrey writes: "The strange thing was that the Correctiv report told us nothing we couldn't have guessed already. The far right, we know, is built on racist fantasies of ethnic homogeneity, and the AfD has long been deemed extreme. Yet for years, many Germans viewed the rise of the far right with something like wary detachment: Even as the AfD climbed to around 20 percent in the polls, there remained some complacency about the threat it posed. Not anymore. Germany, at last, has woken up."
At Der Spiegel, a 17-bylined feature casts mainstream, pro-democracy Germans as having stirred from passivity in the face of the extreme right: "The revelations about the Potsdam meeting made many people realize just how radical the purity fantasies of the extreme right have become. And how concrete. At that moment, they apparently realized just who the AfD and their like-minded comrades would like to drive out of the country. It could be their neighbors or their work colleagues. Their friends. Or they themselves." The question now, the Der Spiegel authors suggest, is whether this anti-far-right energy can be maintained, organized, and directed. |
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Far-right politics are largely a male impulse, Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace writes for Persuasion, noting that "(i)n the past fifteen years, men across the globe have voted for radical right-wing parties at much higher rates."
As for why, Kleinfeld argues: "The problem is not that men are natural crusaders for authoritarian populists. In fact, American men are much more likely to be politically apathetic, and most young men are better characterized as confused and drifting. The problem is that anti-democratic and violent forces are trying to weaponize that aimlessness. Politics is coming into most men's lives subtly. They look for belonging, purpose, and advice, and find a mix of grifters, political hacks, and violent extremists who lead them down an ugly road. And few people are fighting back. ... Americans spent decades building a path for empowered women and girls, without any accompanying effort to craft a broader and more secure sense of masculinity for the men who needed to stand alongside them. Now we are reaping the backlash." |
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