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 31, 2024 | |
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On GPS, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET: After the hubbub over former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel's hiring and firing as an NBC political analyst, Fareed says the saga points to a larger conundrum in this presidential-election year: the media, and the political mainstream writ large, will have to find a way to deal with former President Donald Trump and his supporters. It might be tempting to "cancel" voices like McDaniel's, Fareed argues, but it's wrong to defend liberalism—the belief in values like open societies, free speech, and the rule of law—with illiberal tactics. The best response, Fareed argues, is to engage those voices in open debate—and to win. After that: a low point in US–Israel relations. US President Joe Biden has feuded with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza, and on Monday the US declined to veto a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire. Fareed talks with the Council on Foreign Relations' Richard Haass about this watershed rift. Last week's terrorist attack in Moscow unleashed a barrage of conspiracy theories. Sorting fact from fiction, Fareed talks with The Atlantic's Graeme Wood about what happened—and why ISIS-K would target Russia. Polls show that public confidence in the US Supreme Court remains near record lows. How can it regain trust? Retired Justice Stephen Breyer—who served on the Court for 27 years and who has written a new book, "Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism"—shares some ideas about that and his issues with the Court's current jurisprudence. Financial sanctions have become one of America's favorite geopolitical weapons. Has Washington gone overboard? And will an overuse of sanctions end the US dollar's reign as the world's reserve currency? Fareed talks with Saleha Mohsin, senior Washington correspondent at Bloomberg News and author of the new book "Paper Soldiers: How the Weaponization of the Dollar Changed the World Order." |
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After ISIS-K launched a horrific attack this month in Russia, The Atlantic's Graeme Wood reminds us that country has had major problems with jihadist terrorism historically. On today's GPS, Wood joins Fareed to discuss the Moscow attack and the state of jihadist terrorism globally. On that topic, the current issue of the West Point counterterrorism journal CTC Sentinel assesses the present and future of the global jihadist movement. In the cover essay, Barak Mendelsohn notes some widely known facts: ISIS saw its territorial caliphate defeated, and recent years (and decades) have been hard on the top global jihadist brands, ISIS and al Qaeda, as Western military powers have successfully targeted their leadership. Today, jihadists' strengths are seen elsewhere: in the Taliban's rule of Afghanistan and in the Sahel region of Africa, where jihadist groups have interlaced themselves with local grievances. The war in Gaza could spur jihadist recruitment, Mendelsohn writes; at the same time, the arc of ISIS shows "that attempts to foist a caliph on Muslims will be poorly received." Mendelsohn surmises: "At the bottom line, though the jihadi movement is resilient, it is also weak. Although its end is not in sight, the movement's prospects of success are dim and the war in Gaza is highly unlikely to change that. In the West, the jihadi threat is real, but small. … In the Muslim world, the picture is more complex … the main jihadi threat is in the Muslim periphery, primarily in Africa. … The Sahel may also be the harbinger of a new jihadi strategy that is regionally focused, as different jihadi groups are gradually coalescing into one large arena encompassing Mali, Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Nigeria. … [J]ihadis of al-Qa`ida and Islamic State branches may slowly connect the different arenas and advance toward the Atlantic coast. But there is an important caveat: Such a regional model might work only in regions with low strategic significance for the great powers … Additionally, it is not clear to what extent jihadi organizations in Africa reflect jihadi beliefs and goals." |
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Are the Tories Out of Time? |
In the current issue of The New Yorker, Sam Knight argues Britain's Conservative Party, also known as the Tories, may see their 14-year run in power end this year, in an election that has yet to be called for a specific date. That impression is shared by others. At the center-right British magazine The Spectator, John Curtice notes Labour's strength in polls, suggesting they're almost certain to form Britain's next government. The magazine's political editor, Katy Balls, wrote recently: "There's an old Russian joke about the difference between an optimist and a pessimist in Moscow. The pessimist believes that things cannot get any worse. The optimist replies: 'Of course they could!' These days the same joke could be made about the Tory party." While suggesting today's Labour Party, under leader Sir Keir Starmer, doesn't stand for much of a distinct governing ideology, The New Yorker's Knight writes that Conservatives haven't stood for much, either—at least nothing empirically workable. The rise of former Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010 represented not a hardcore, small-government Thatcherism of true believers, Knight writes, but a kind of urbane cult of competency and liberalism that also happened to advance dogmatic fiscal austerity after the 2008 financial crash. That has left Britain worse off, Knight argues. "Last fall, hundreds of school buildings had to be closed for emergency repairs, because the country's school-construction budget had been cut by forty-six per cent between 2009 and 2022," Knight points out. "[S]tupid things happened" under the Tories' decade of budget-slashing. "Since 2010, forty-three per cent of the courts in England and Wales have closed." Knight tells of social-services centers in the North that focus on poverty and distress. Brexit, as Knight tells it, seemed motivated less by conservative ideology and more as a general alarm that things had not been going well enough in recent years. Knight focuses on Tory shortcomings without finding much of an answer as to what governing model, or political ideology, is likely to replace the Conservatives' free-market, small-government ethos. Labour "has nothing new to say about Brexit and equivocates about its own tax and spending plans, if it wins power," Knight writes. If the Conservative Party lose power, "[t]he question is what kind of haunted political realm it will leave behind." |
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