United States of America Scoping: On Fareed Zakaria GPS

On Fareed Zakaria GPS

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Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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September 26, 2021

On Today's Show

On GPS, at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET:

First, Fareed gives his take on a missed opportunity to counter China.

After the US announced a security partnership with the UK and Australia, including a deal to provide submarines to the latter, Fareed suggests America's Indo-Pacific attention may be misplaced.

"The submarine deal is a big and smart strategic move. It plays to American strengths, which are military-political," Fareed says. "But what if the China challenge is fundamentally economic and technological?" For the US, rejoining the Pacific trade pact engineered by President Obama and abandoned by President Trump "might be more important than eight Australian submarines deployed 19 years from now."

After that: French Ambassador to the US Philippe Etienne will return to Washington next week, after being recalled to Paris over the announcement of a US security partnership with the UK and Australia. How did this startling US–France rift unfold, and where do America and its oldest ally go from here? Etienne joins Fareed to discuss.

Next: How did America's departure from Afghanistan look to Iraqis? Fareed talks with Iraqi President Barham Salih about trusting US commitments and the encouragement jihadis took from the Taliban's victory.

Sweden's no-lockdown approach to Covid-19 intrigued the world, but the results have not been encouraging. Fareed asks Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven if he agrees with Sweden's king that the strategy failed.

Finally: At the UN General Assembly this week, there has been much talk about climate change. But what's preventing action, and how can concerned citizens talk about it with deniers or those on the fence? Fareed asks Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, whose new book, "Saving Us," explores the nuances of climate communication.

Poking the Rooster

France is smarting from the snub of America, Australia, and the UK announcing a security partnership without giving much heads-up to Paris—and The Economist advises this is more significant than a temporary ruffling of French feathers. Already a critic of NATO's "brain death" and a champion of European "strategic autonomy," President Emmanuel Macron might now be even more inclined to go his own way—and to keep pushing the rest of Europe to join France in that endeavor.

"The geopolitical conclusion that he will probably draw from all this … is that he was right," The Economist writes. "That America is an unreliable ally for continental Europeans at a time of a rising China; that this is not a fleeting trend; and that Europe needs greater self-reliance. … Few share France's willingness to splurge on defence, or its expeditionary military culture. (Germany, especially, does not.) Nobody agrees what 'strategic autonomy' actually means. Low odds, however, seldom deter Mr Macron. After the latest snub, the ... French president will doubtless conclude that he has little choice but to keep trying."

Thanks to Private Satellites, Everyone's a Spy

Others have noted that open-source intelligence, including satellite imagery readily viewable to the public, could be the next big thing in international security. At Foreign Affairs, Erik-Lin Greenberg and Theo Milonopoulos detail how commercial satellites have revealed US drone activities in West Africa, hidden North Korean missile bases, and more.

As armchair spies and news organizations avail themselves of this glut of information, they write, "governments will find it increasingly hard to hide their activities from the growing number of private eyes in the sky."

Why Russia and Iran Succeed, Where the US Fails

Fresh off the failure of its 20-year war effort in Afghanistan, the US faces a spotty record in modern-era wars. In the current issue of The Washington Quarterly, Dominic Tierney writes that Russia and Iran, in particular, have secured military successes where America hasn't. Case in point: Russia's seemingly decisive—and victorious—role in Syria, where it tipped the scales in favor of its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, at a fraction of the daily cost of America's campaign against ISIS.

It comes down to culture, Tierney writes: The US is accustomed to state warfare, in which countries square off against each other in conventional fashion, while Moscow and Tehran are prepared to manage involvement in complicated, civil conflicts, picking sides and supporting proxies. The US, meanwhile, is idealistic and seeks to project its ideals of democracy and freedom, and it has failed to recognize local political cultures and their complexities. America's advantage—raw military strength—can in fact be a weakness, Tierney writes, as it can "temp[t] Washington into unwise adventures."

Germany, Anti-Maskers, and Fears of Violence

Since the pandemic began, the need to wear masks to protect each other has been accompanied by social tension between those who adopt, and those who buck, that practice. In Germany, that tension turned deadly last week when a 20-year-old gas-station cashier was killed after asking a 49-year-old customer to comply with the rules and wear a face covering, according to prosecutors.

German authorities are worried that Covid-19 denialism is becoming more radicalized, according to a Der Spiegel article by Maik Baumgärtner, Jörg Diehl, Tobias Großekemper, Roman Höfner, Max Hoppenstedt, Roman Lehberger and Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt. A conspiracy-theory movement known as "Querdenker"—which translates to "lateral thinker"—opposes efforts to stop Covid-19 and can entail a false belief that many have been killed by Covid-19 vaccines. The suspect followed extreme right-wing accounts and liked posts "from users who suspect there are sinister forces behind the coronavirus measures," they write.