Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good
May 19, 2023
Fareed on Turkey and ‘the Next Innovation in Illiberal Democracy’
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan defied the expectations of pollsters and critics last Sunday, winning the most votes in a widely anticipated presidential election and sending Turkey to a runoff vote next weekend. How did he do it?
Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column that although Turks cast their ballots freely, Erdoğan nonetheless has stacked the electoral odds in his favor. “The state lavishes funds on his supporters, and the country’s media is slavishly pro-government,” Fareed writes. “Most of Turkey’s major media properties have been bought by business executives who are supporters” of Erdoğan, and Turkey imprisons the most journalists of any democracy in the world. Importantly, a prosecution sidelined Erdoğan’s most formidable potential rival, barring him from seeking the presidency, Fareed notes.
“This is the next innovation in illiberal democracy,” Fareed writes. “Elected presidents and prime ministers use their majorities to pass laws that give them sustained structural advantages over their opponents. … We need a new vocabulary to describe this phenomenon. Are such elections free? Technically, yes—but they are also profoundly unfair.”
Ukraine in NATO: Maybe Later?
As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky secures more promises of Western weaponry, The Economist notes the importance of such assistance. “All this will convey to (Russian President) Vladimir Putin that after this Ukrainian offensive there may be even better-equipped ones to come,” the magazine writes.
But what of Ukraine’s loftier goal of joining NATO? In a Project Syndicate op-ed, former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt writes that as NATO prepares for a July summit in Lithuania, “the question on everyone’s mind is how to avoid another debacle concerning Ukraine’s prospective membership in the alliance.” It will be important, Bildt writes, to avoid the confusion sowed by the 2008 Bucharest summit, at which NATO backed Ukrainian membership before declining to follow up with concrete steps toward that destination.
Bloomberg’s editors call Ukrainian NATO membership “a good idea at a terrible time. NATO members are rightly wary of discussing such an escalation while the war is raging. Yet Ukraine’s eventual membership should remain a strategic goal: It would safeguard the country’s independence, bolster the stability of Europe as a whole, and deter Vladimir Putin from ever again attempting to seize control of his neighbor.” In an American Purpose essay, Francis Fukuyama writes that admitting Ukraine into NATO is the only way a negotiated peace with Russia could last. But Fukuyama, too, considers this as an option for later, writing that it depends on Ukraine making specific battlefield gains this year in its south—enough to threaten Russia’s link to Crimea.
Can China Play Catch-Up on AI?
Who will win the global AI race?
Recently, much attention has been paid to the business competition over fast-developing artificial intelligence (AI)—since the arrival of ChatGPT, Microsoft, Google and smaller tech players are jockeying for AI pole position—but for years, geopolitical analysts have wondered which country will take the lead and ultimately win out, reaping AI’s benefits. China enters that contest as a top seed, thanks to a flourishing tech industry; government interest—and subsidies—in cutting-edge technologies; and a massive, monitorable citizenry that has led China to be dubbed the “Saudi Arabia of data.” (With so much available information, it is thought, Chinese AI models will have much more on which to train.)
But the arrival of ChatGPT—an AI leader produced by a US startup—has been a “wake-up call for China,” which so far has struggled to match it, NYU Shanghai’s Gabrielle Chou tells host George Miller on the most recent episode of Le Monde Diplomatique’s podcast. On the podcast, and in a recent Le Monde Diplomatique essay, Chou says China enjoys some AI advantages. Tech has taken off there, embedding itself in Chinese society (robots greet guests in hotel lobbies, e.g.); a large reservoir of mobile-phone users and facial-recognition cameras should supply reams upon reams of data. And yet China faces hurdles, too, Chou says: corruption in funding new advancements, losing scientists to the US, and Washington’s export controls that have curtailed China’s access to the world’s most advanced microchips and the machines that can make them.
“What is certain is that the emphasis on AI development will be maintained,” Chou writes. “Washington’s aggressive attitude will certainly delay, but probably not derail, these fresh efforts.”
As AI develops quickly, governments have taken different tacks on regulating it. In a Nikkei Asia op-ed, Angela Huyue Zhang notes a proposed Chinese regulation that would require AI-generated content to align with Communist Party values and to be truthful and accurate. Zhang expects that proposal to be weakened, noting that China “is eager to catch up” in AI development.
Here Comes the Heat
As the Northern Hemisphere enjoys springtime, heat is just around the corner—as is more heat, after that. This week, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) predicted that within the next five years, world temperatures will surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Such warming won’t technically put Earth in violation of the Paris Climate Agreement, The Economist writes—that “would require exceeding 1.5°C for several years”—but “the WMO thinks it is virtually certain that one of the coming five years will be the hottest in human history,” the current record having been set in 2016. Aside from human-made pollution, natural but “transient” causes are at play: For one, a volcanic eruption near Tonga last year spewed tons of water vapor into the stratosphere; the vapor will eventually fall, The Economist writes, but in the meantime it will compound warming. Perhaps more frightening, the Earth just experienced roughly two-and-a-half years of La Niña, a phase of cooling Pacific water that influences wind and weather and can last from as short as nine months to as long as multiple years. “It now seems almost certain that a warmer ‘El Niño’ phase will begin sometime later this year, setting up 2024 to be a scorcher,” The Economist writes.
What to make of all this? It’s easy to see the reasons for pessimism. “But the optimist’s take might be that the psychological impact of breaching the 1.5°C goal, even if only temporarily, could help focus minds,” The Economist offers.
What did you think of today’s newsletter? Send ideas, questions and feedback to globalbriefing@cnn.com
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