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. May 8, 2024 | |
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Are the US and China locked in a new cold war? It's a matter of serious debate these days.
First, the case for "yes": In a recent Foreign Affairs essay, former top Trump China hand Matt Pottinger and now-former GOP Rep. Mike Gallagher argued China is already waging a cold war against the US. Washington, in their view, should acknowledge this and try to win. "[Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping], who has vilified [dovish former Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev and fashioned his own leadership style after that of Joseph Stalin, has proved time and again that he is not a leader with whom Americans can solve problems," they wrote. "He is an agent of chaos," the leader of a country that helps Russia as it besieges Ukraine and propagandizes against the US online. Pottinger made the case to Fareed on GPS, arguing the US should reopen its Cold War playbook and seek to contain China until it collapses under its own weight as the USSR did. In another Foreign Affairs essay, keen China watcher and now-former Biden-administration official Elizabeth Economy writes that it is "undeniable" Xi wants "to remake the world" on terms more favorable to China. "He wants to dissolve Washington's network of alliances" and remove "Western" values from international bodies like the UN, Economy writes. "In his new multipolar order, global institutions and norms will be underpinned by Chinese notions of common security and economic development, Chinese values of state-determined political rights, and Chinese technology."
Fareed has argued the contrary. Today's China isn't like the USSR, Fareed pointed out on Sunday's GPS. Where the Soviet Union saw its economic model sputter well before it collapsed, its lifespan extended by the 1970s' oil-price surge, China today has a diversified economy with a booming tech sector. Where the USSR was walled off from the West, China is deeply intertwined with it thanks to massive volumes of trade. Hoping China's party-state will collapse, Fareed argued, sounds a bit like calls for regime change in Iraq in 2003—and thus merits extreme caution. As Wang Jisi noted in a Foreign Affairs essay last fall, China also seems uninterested in converting other countries to its political system as the USSR sought to.
At Foreign Policy, a substantive review essay by columnist Michael Hirsh touches on the above points and more. As a "balanced and farsighted" middle-ground, Hirsh nods to New York Times correspondent and recent GPS guest David Sanger's book "New Cold Wars," which notes for instance that the iPhones Americans carry are still largely made in China, and that may not change soon. Hirsh's own assessment: We're not in a "cold war," which involves a zero-sum clash for total dominance, but a "cold peace" (a term Fareed has used): a nonlethal competition for influence with "no winner and no finish line." In other words, today's superpower politics aren't nearly as stark or as deadly as in the 20th century. "China is doing little to displace the international system that the United States and other Western powers created," Hirsh argues. "Instead, China seems mainly intent on beating the United States at its own game within that system. Beijing really has no other choice if it wants to sustain its economy, many experts say." |
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This week, an announcement by Hamas that it had accepted a ceasefire-for-hostages deal was quickly followed by Israeli pushback—and an incremental Israeli military advance on the Gazan border city of Rafah. (To hear The Times of Israel's David Horovitz characterize what Hamas has agreed to, for instance, it's merely a "sinister alternate proposal" offered up by the militant group.)
Confused? The Atlantic's Yair Rosenberg writes that this kind of whiplash has been a feature of the Israel–Hamas war. Rosenberg notes a similarly tantalizing inkling of a ceasefire deal in March, the "breathless" news coverage of Israel's momentarily open conflict with Iran, and the fact that despite these supposedly game-changing moments the fighting in Gaza continues. To understand the oscillating direction of headlines, Rosenberg recommends keeping four things in mind: "As they negotiate, both [Israel and Hamas] are attempting to shape international media coverage—and their statements should be read with this in mind. … Israel and Hamas aren't the only ones negotiating—and this makes things very complicated. … Several core sticking points still need to be resolved. … There is no agreement, but there are negotiations and they are at a pivotal point." |
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What will artificial intelligence change about warfare? On Sunday's GPS, Fareed asked James Stavridis, the retired US Navy admiral, former NATO supreme allied commander Europe, and coauthor of the near-futuristic war novel "2054." To Stavridis, three things will be salient: AI's potential ability to manage logistics and maintenance for battalions and fleets; to offer tactical and strategic input to battlefield commanders; and to operate unilaterally on the battlefield in the form of autonomous, unmanned drone swarms—which Stavridis predicts will be the top military threat by the middle of this century |
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West Africa's cocoa loss is Latin America's gain, as a global market shift underpins the rising price of chocolate.
Cocoa production has plummeted in West Africa this 2023–2024 harvest season, sending global cocoa prices skyrocketing as Maxwell Akalaare Adombila and Joe Bavier wrote for Reuters in March: "Long the world's undisputed cocoa powerhouses accounting for over 60% of global supply, Ghana and its West African neighbour Ivory Coast are both facing catastrophic harvests this season. Expectations of shortages … have seen New York cocoa futures more than double this year alone. … More than 20 farmers, experts and industry insiders told Reuters that a perfect storm of rampant illegal gold mining, climate change, sector mismanagement, and rapidly spreading disease is to blame." As Ken Opalo noted in his An Africanist Perspective newsletter last month, Ghanaian and Ivoirian cocoa farmers are hurting especially, as government authorities set prices in those countries, leaving farmers unable to fetch higher global market prices.
Latin American producers, meanwhile, are profiting, and this disruptive crop cycle is not only pushing up chocolate prices but could also reshape the global cocoa trade. The Economist writes: "The areas [in Latin America] where cocoa is grown, such as the coastal provinces in Ecuador and north-eastern Brazil, escaped the worst of the weather" that a recent El Niño (Pacific heating weather cycle) caused for Latin American farmers broadly. And they sell at global market rates: around $10,000 per metric ton, where Ghanaian and Ivoirian farmers are getting $2,460, the magazine writes. "Tempting though it may be to bank the windfall cash, many farmers spy an opportunity to invest in order to produce more. Many are buying high-yielding seedlings, expanding their growing areas and planting cocoa instead of less profitable crops. … The hope is to return Latin America's cocoa industry to its former glory." |
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