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 9, 2024 | |
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Ukraine faces uncertainty on the battlefield this year, as Russia is expected to make an offensive push—but one historian reminds us that for all its heft, Russia indeed can lose. On the latest War on the Rocks podcast, military analyst Michael Kofman told host Ryan Evans that the $61 billion in US military aid passed by Congress last month will buy time for Ukraine—perhaps another year of it—at a critical moment. But manpower issues linger over Ukraine's forces, and the next few months of fighting could say a lot about how the rest of 2024 will unfold. (Kofman suggests watching closely between now and July, then again in the fall, to gauge whether Russia will make significant gains.) In a Politico Magazine essay, retired US Army Brigadier General Mark T. Kimmitt argues the West needs to do more, like loosen the rules of engagement attached to some of the weapons it is sending to Ukraine.
At CNN Opinion, however, historian Timothy Snyder points out that Russia's war record shows that it's capable of losing. Today, Russia celebrates Victory Day (its holiday to commemorate the victory over Nazi Germany), and Snyder writes that the Red Square parade is about promoting an air of invincibility around Russia's army—and, by extension, an air of inevitability on the battlefields of Ukraine. Calling that a fallacy, Snyder ultimately draws a hopeful lesson about Russia's future.
"The notion of an invincible Red Army is propaganda," Snyder writes. "The Red Army was formidable, but it was also beatable. Of its three most consequential foreign wars, the Red Army lost two. It was defeated by Poland in 1920. It defeated Nazi Germany in 1945, after nearly collapsing in 1941. … Soviet forces were in trouble in Afghanistan immediately after their 1979 invasion and had to withdraw a decade later. … It is normal for Russia to lose wars. And, in general, this led Russians to reflect and reform. Defeat in Crimea forced an autocracy to end serfdom. Russia's loss to Japan led to an experiment with elections. The Soviet failure in Afghanistan led to Gorbachev's reforms and thus the end of the cold war. … The peaceful Europe of today consists of powers that lost their last imperial wars and then chose democracy. It is not only possible to lose your last imperial war: it is also good, not only for the world, but for you." |
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Israel and Iran, 'Unnatural Adversaries' |
In a New York Times guest opinion essay, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace senior fellow Karim Sadjadpour writes that it's a bit strange for Iran and Israel to be such bitter enemies. It's not any natural competition for resources that accounts for the animosity, Sadjadpour writes, but rather the dogmatic anti-Israel, anti-US ideology of the post-1979 Iranian revolutionary regime—and the clear antisemitism of first Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
"In contrast to other modern conflicts—between Israel and Palestine, Russia and Ukraine, China and Taiwan—Iran and Israel have no bilateral land or resource disputes," Sadjadpour observes. "Their national strengths—Iran is an energy titan and Israel is a tech innovator—are more complementary than competitive. The nations also have a historical affinity dating back over 2,500 years, when the Persian King Cyrus the Great freed the Jews from the Babylonian Captivity. Iran was the second Muslim nation, after Turkey, to recognize Israel after its founding in 1948. Their modern animosity is best understood through the lens of ideology, not geopolitics." |
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Former Disguise Chief on Spy Secrets, Breaking the CIA's Glass Ceiling |
How can you sneak a person into or out of any building in the world? Or make a mask realistic enough to fool the US president? Or break the CIA's glass ceiling, well before the present era in which women now hold many of the agency's top jobs? On Sunday's GPS, Fareed heard answers to all of the above from Jonna Mendez, former CIA disguise chief and author of "In True Face: A Woman's Life in the CIA, Unmasked." |
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More Turmoil in Russia's Near Orbit |
Russia continues to exert political influence in its post-Soviet near orbit, particularly in countries that have not joined NATO. This month has seen more action on that front: Protests have returned to the streets of Tbilisi, Georgia, over the return of legislation to restrict foreign funding for NGOs. Demonstrators have railed against the populist, pro-Russia-leaning Georgian Dream party's "unexpected reintroduction in early April of a 'foreign agent' law that would require NGOs and media outlets which get more than 20% of their funding from abroad to enter themselves into a public registry," The Economist writes. "The party tried to pass the same law in 2023. Then, too, it spurred huge protests and sharp warnings from Georgia's American and European partners." The Economist notes that Georgian Dream's founder and chairman "accused the West of using Georgian ngos and opposition parties to organise a 'revolution' against his party, and promised retribution after elections this autumn." The proposed law mirrors one in Russia, where foreign NGOs have famously been driven out under government allegations of covert anti-state activity. At the European Council on Foreign Relations, Gosia Piaskowska writes that the legislation's reintroduction is rightly threatening Georgia's aspirations to join the EU—and that the drama "comes at a time when, in the face of Russian aggression, enlargement is a geopolitical necessity for both the European Union and Georgia." |
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The 2020 election and the Jan. 6 storming of the US Capitol produced an abundance of court cases. At The New Yorker, Charles Bethea writes of a nonprofit, Protect Democracy, that hopes it can fight disinformation—and perhaps prevent an authoritarian takeover—by representing plaintiffs in lawsuits. Bethea wonders if the strategy will work.
So far, the group has gotten some results. Protect Democracy represented two Georgia election workers who faced threats and harassment after allies of former President Donald Trump falsely accused them of tampering with boxes of ballots. One America News Network, a conservative outlet that aired some of those allegations, settled a lawsuit in May 2022, Bethea writes, "and the network aired an 'updated report from Georgia officials,' in which it told viewers, 'There was no widespread voter fraud by election workers.' In February of this year, Project Veritas settled its case, and offered a similar 'update' to the public … In June of last year, P.D. was part of a suit against Kari Lake, the right-wing Republican who narrowly lost her bid to become the governor of Arizona in 2022, and is currently running for Senate, after she accused an Arizona election official of tampering with printers and skewing the count on Election Day, in an effort to make Lake lose the race. (The official did not.) In March, Lake conceded her liability for defamation in the lawsuit, and is now awaiting a ruling on how much she should pay in damages. These settlements have taken place largely out of public view." |
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