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. August 8, 2024 |
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Jihadist Terrorism Threatens the West Again |
"What Austrian authorities have revealed about the alleged terror plot aimed at Taylor Swift's three Vienna concerts adheres to a chilling pattern familiar to European counterterrorism officials," CNN's Nick Paton Walsh writes after the stadium concerts were canceled.
"The 19 and 17-year-old suspects had been radicalized online, police said, adding the 19-year-old had sworn allegiance to ISIS' new leader last month," Walsh writes. "Police also alluded to the role of social media in both the radicalization of the suspects and alleged planning of the attacks."
The familiarity Walsh notes is a loud echo of the mid-2010s, when a series of actual and thwarted jihadist attacks in Europe were planned by radicalized young men. Western security experts became preoccupied with social marginalization, poverty, religious extremism, and the reach of online propaganda as ISIS inspired attacks from afar and drew new members to its caliphate in Syria and Iraq.
Others are comparing this moment to an even earlier one. In a Foreign Affairs essay in June, former US Assistant Secretary of Defense and current Harvard professor Graham Allison and former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell wrote that warnings about jihadist terrorism being made by senior US officials resemble those offered in the years before 9/11 by then-CIA chief George Tenet. "Put simply," they wrote, "the United States faces a serious threat of a terrorist attack in the months ahead." The threat has been higher since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and the subsequent war in Gaza, they quoted FBI Director Christopher Wray telling the Senate intelligence committee.
Fortunately, the US and other Western countries developed effective strategies after 9/11, including sharing information, coordinating responses, and identifying online threats. In another Foreign Affairs essay, however, Colin P. Clarke and Lucas Webber of The Soufan Center write that the new era of great-power competition has weakened international cooperation. Noting thwarted plots to attack sites in France and Sweden this year, they warn that ISIS-K, the South Asian branch of ISIS that operates in Afghanistan and Pakistan, looms as a considerable transnational threat. |
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"There's a sense that … a shoe is about to fall," Times of Israel senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur tells American commentator and Middle East specialist Dan Senor, on the latter's "Call Me Back" podcast.
After the recent assassinations of top leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, the region and the world are waiting to see how Iran and its network of proxies will respond. That network includes, most notably, the heavily armed Lebanese Islamist militia Hezbollah, which already has been trading cross-border fire with Israel since the Gaza war began. Citizens on both sides of the Israel–Lebanon border have been displaced.
Assessing the mood in Israel, Gur suggests that while the war in Gaza has become contentious, there appears to be broad support for confronting Hezbollah. Israelis view Iran and its allies as implacably bent on Israel's destruction, and they want an "exacting of costs" over the displacement of Israelis from the border region, Gur says.
One path to avoid a large, multi-party Middle East war involving Iran, its allies, Israel, and possibly the US is for Washington to intensify pressure on Israel and Hamas to reach a ceasefire in Gaza, International Crisis Group President and CEO Comfort Ero writes for Foreign Policy. Such efforts have ramped up, and Iran views a Gaza ceasefire as a priority, Al-Monitor reports. The Financial Times' editorial argues that a Gaza ceasefire "is the only way to prevent escalation." The paper adds, contrary to some of Gur's analysis of Israel: "The irony is that Israel, Iran and Hizbollah would all like to avoid a full-blown regional conflict. As the last months have shown, however, they are slowly and dangerously sliding into war." |
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Ukraine Is on the Back Foot, but for How Long? |
Despite having launched a notable incursion into Russian territory this week, Ukraine's forces are being driven back in the Donbas region, The Economist writes. "Beset by a shortage of weapons and men, Ukraine has steadily lost ground since falling back from Avdiivka in February: a village here, a bungled rotation there," the magazine writes. "It is now retreating by up to 1km a day. Fighting has intensified all along the front line."
The picture The Economist conjures is grim, featuring mobilization problems and in some cases deficient military command. Acknowledging such difficulties in a Foreign Affairs essay, retired Australian Army Maj. Gen. Mick Ryan suggests things aren't so bad for Kyiv: Russia's gains have come at a very high cost, Ryan writes, and Moscow's battlefield momentum appears likely to run out soon.
"All in all, the amount of territory seized by Russia since January 2024 adds up to around 360 square miles, an area roughly two-thirds the size of New York City," Ryan writes. "It is hard to describe these gains as a success when they came at the cost of more than 180,000 Russian casualties, according to Western intelligence estimates. … Now Moscow's window of maximum opportunity has almost passed. Over the coming months, as Russian momentum wanes, Ukraine will be preparing, reconstituting, and watching for chances. Success is never certain in war, but Ukraine will be better placed in 2025 than it has been this year to liberate territory and to convince Russia that the cost of the war is not worthwhile. But to prevail, Kyiv will have to rebuild its offensive capacity, carry out diplomatic efforts, influence operations, and come up with a new theory of how to win." |
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Did the Pandemic Revive HIV/AIDS Conspiracy Theories? |
In the MIT Technology Review, Anna Merlan notes "a small but unmistakable resurgence in AIDS denialism—a false collection of theories arguing either that HIV doesn't cause AIDS or that there's no such thing as HIV at all." Although they didn't espouse those particular views, Merlan notes comments by podcaster Joe Rogan, NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers, and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. about the viral transmission of HIV and/or then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief Dr. Anthony Fauci's handling of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
Skeptical theories about HIV/AIDS were first advanced in the 1980s and 1990s but had faded as evidence mounted against them, Merlan writes. "At least until the coronavirus arrived. Following the pandemic, a renewed suspicion of public health figures and agencies is giving new life to ideas that had long ago been pushed to the margins. And the impact is far from confined to the dark corners of the web." |
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