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. March 3, 2024 | |
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On GPS, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET:
Should President Joe Biden go over the head of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and address Israelis directly?
Fareed argues that he should, noting that Washington's strategy on the Gaza war has failed. After Hamas's horrific massacres on Oct. 7, Biden seemed to want to hug Israel close, deepen trust, and use that leverage to rein in an Israeli military response that has cost many lives and has prompted a fierce backlash against the Jewish state. That hasn't worked, Fareed points out, as Israel has not heeded US warnings or preferences. What's more, Fareed argues, Israel can kill Hamas militants, but to truly defeat Hamas as a political idea, Israel needs a better one—a way to show Palestinians that a better outcome is possible through cooperation, not armed resistance. "President Biden should go to Israel and show the country his love for it by speaking these hard truths," Fareed says. "He would also show America and the world that he still has the energy, moral clarity, and wisdom to lead." After that: Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says Netanyahu's right-wing coalition has led Israel in a terrible direction—and that Palestinians must have the right to self-determination. Olmert joins Fareed to discuss the war, the state of Israeli politics, and what Biden can and should do about all of it. Celebrated "piano man" Billy Joel quit songwriting 30 years ago, seemingly for good—but a partnership with songwriter and film and music producer Freddy Wexler convinced him to return to it. Fareed talks with Joel and Wexler about Joel's first new song in decades and how AI allowed Joel to perform it in a music video while appearing in different stages of his life. Finally: how a recent "sick man of Europe" got cured. Greece defaulted on its debt in 2015 and has been beset by populist politics and fiscal ruin for much of the last 15 years. But today, it has recently legalized gay marriage and has discovered impressive stability. Fareed examines what changed. |
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India has taken an authoritarian, Hindu-nationalist turn under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Will that limit the country, now the world's most populous, as it seeks prominence on the world stage? In a Foreign Affairs essay, Ramachandra Guha traces the roots and elements of Modi's rise, arguing he ultimately will end hold India back. "(T)he future of the Indian republic looks considerably less rosy than the vision promised by Modi and his acolytes," Guha writes. "His government has not assuaged—indeed, it has actively worked to intensify—conflicts along lines of both religion and region, which will further fray the country's social fabric. … Far from becoming the Vishwa Guru, or 'teacher to the world'—as Modi's boosters claim—India is altogether more likely to remain what it is today: a middling power with a vibrant entrepreneurial culture and mostly fair elections alongside malfunctioning public institutions and persisting cleavages of religion, gender, caste, and region. The façade of triumph and power that Modi has erected obscures a more fundamental truth: that a principal source of India's survival as a democratic country, and of its recent economic success, has been its political and cultural pluralism, precisely those qualities that the prime minister and his party now seek to extinguish." While Modi towers over India's politics, that's due in part to a weak and fragmented opposition. The Economist writes that Modi's BJP party is not nearly as popular in India's south, where Islam gained ground more peacefully. To become more competitive there, the magazine writes, Modi's BJP likely will need to "moderate its Hindutva (Hindu-nationalist) message, restrain its promotion of Hindi, put more weight on economic development and advance more moderate successors to Mr Modi than his coterie of headbangers." |
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The Frightening German Right Wing |
In January, heads were turned by an investigative report about a "secret meeting" at a hotel in Potsdam, where activists on the German far right had discussed (among other things) a plan to deport ethnic non-Germans on a mass scale. A wave of protests against the far-right AfD party followed. The party denied backing any such plan, but the AfD's ethno-nationalism has been on display, openly, for some time. At Der Spiegel, a feature by Maik Baumgärtner, Ann-Katrin Müller, Sven Röbel and Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt details how the even-farther-right Identitarian Movement is seeking to make a comeback. "Germany's primary domestic security agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has categorized the Identitarian Movement, which counts around 500 activists in Germany, as 'definitely extremist,' its highest threat category," they note, tracking property the group has bought and noting a surprising apparent ally in a former center-right politician. More disconcertingly, another feature at the magazine by John Lemm (with photos by Sebastian Wells) profiles the eastern-German hamlet of Burg, a small town that generated big concerns after two local teachers wrote a letter decrying the spread of neo-Nazism. A photo of students showed several giving the Nazi salute. Lemm depicts townspeople reticent to speak out against Nazism, out of fear. It also can be difficult to distinguish between a new movement and something more endogenous to the political culture: Things like "Sieg Heil!" are chanted "on men's day, at the beer stand," the mayor tells Lemm. "It's just the booze. They don't even think. It doesn't matter what you do." |
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'As Iran Scares the Middle East, at Home Its Regime Rots' |
Clerical hardliners retain a firm grip on Iran's politics, as demonstrated by Friday's parliamentary elections, which were widely expected to be shambolic, among other reasons because of controls on who can run for office in Iran. Conservative candidates dominated amid all-time-low 40% estimated turnout, Maziar Motamedi writes for Al Jazeera. But The Economist writes, under the above headline, that Iran's political system is decaying. "Previously, the mullahs strove to get out the vote. Now they are so resigned to their unpopularity that they hardly bother," the magazine writes. Women widely ignore the legally required dress code, which was among the subjects of mass protests that began in fall 2022 after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after her arrest by Iran's "morality police," the Economist reports. "An Iranian visitor to Britain notes with surprise there are more veils on London's underground than Tehran's. So resolute is the unveiling that some draw comparisons with the last years of the shah, when women took the veil in defiance of his ban." Jockeying for what comes next—Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is 84 years old—already appears to be on the minds of some, the magazine suggests. "Ambitious (Revolutionary Guards) commanders aspire to the Pakistani model of a pseudo-democracy under the military's thumb. Democrats hope for a new constitution, which would vest sovereignty in parliament. Some seek a reform-minded strongman. They all seem to agree that Iran's wilayat al-faqih, or rule of the religious jurist, has run its course." |
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Will this year's Republican and Democratic nominating conventions both see historic floor drama? The New York Times' Ezra Klein, who has called for an "open" Democratic convention to pick a nominee other than President Joe Biden, heard on a recent episode of his "The Ezra Klein Show" podcast from Elaine Kamarck, author of "Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know About How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates," about the history of the Democratic primary system. Until the 1970s, it allowed for much more convention maneuvering. Today it remains complicated, with states' primary elections feeding subsequent local and state conventions to select the final delegates who will choose a presidential nominee. On the Republican side, Henry Olsen writes for Politico Magazine that Nikki Haley may be staying in the race for a little-talked-about reason: Securing a majority of delegates from five states would allow her to gum up the works at the Republican convention, procedurally, denying former President Donald Trump a smooth, multi-day informercial—and perhaps using that leverage to extract concessions from him. |
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About Those Well-Regulated Militias |
Is the Second Amendment really about slavery? Briefly reviewing Carl T. Bogus's "Madison's Militia: The Hidden History of the Second Amendment" in the current issue of The New England Quarterly, Andrew C. McKevitt writes that Bogus finds convincing evidence. Although the Second Amendment ensures gun rights so that Americans can maintain "well regulated Militia(s)" to guarantee "the security of a free State," militias were viewed as ineffective for military purposes, Bogus funds, per McKevitt. What they were good for was acting as slave patrols, Bogus argues, suggesting constitutional framer James Madison included the Amendment in the interest of fellow southerners wishing to maintain the institution of slavery by force. |
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Prepare for Solar Maximum? |
We're probably not ready for a major solar storm, the effects of which would be akin to those of the feared-but-imaginary Y2K bug, as Kathryn Sculz describes them in the current issue of The New Yorker. "Radio blackouts, communication disruptions, power-grid problems," Schulz writes: "to an uncanny degree, solar storms mimic malicious actors trying to sabotage technology that is central to our economy and safety." In 1989, "a (solar) coronal mass ejection struck the Earth" with the magnetic interference such solar events hurl outward from the sun. "(W)ithin ninety seconds, transformers on the Quebec power grid malfunctioned, dozens of safety mechanisms failed, and the entire grid shut down, leaving almost a quarter of the population of Canada in the dark." Major solar events are few and far between, Schulz writes. Most "do not hit the Earth, for the same reason that most baseballs don't hit one particular person in the stands." Still, their likelihood is cyclical, and we're facing an uptick in that likelihood, if not definitively in occurrences. "(S)unspots follow an eleven-year cycle, during which their activity goes from infrequent (solar minimum) to frequent (solar maximum)," Shulz writes. "We are currently headed toward solar maximum, with activity on the sun expected to peak sometime between now and 2025. That cycle is not wholly determinative; a solar maximum can pass by uneventfully, while a powerful storm can happen during solar minimum." |
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