CNN FAREED's Global Briefing - June o9, 2023 - Therest of the World Views China Differently and more ...

 

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.   June 9, 2023

Fareed: The Rest of the World Views China Differently While Washington takes an almost unanimously hard line on China, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column that the rest of the world sees things differently, particularly as trade with China looms large over the global economy.   Europeans are uneasy about US hawkishness toward Beijing, Fareed writes. The future of India’s massive economy depends on links to China; for the fast-growing economies of China’s Southeast Asian neighbors, their collective trade relationship with China is the largest in the world.   Fareed concludes: “America’s strategic genius has always been to offer the world not a Pax Americana—designed simply to secure U.S. power and weaken its competitors—but rather a global system that was open, free and fair. ‘We all need a well-functioning and expanding global trading system and multilateral institutions that work,’ (former UK Prime Minister Gordon) Brown noted. (Author and former Singaporean diplomat Kishore) Mahbubani recalled that President Bill Clinton often described the need for stronger global institutions by explaining that they would indeed constrain America but also constrain the new rising powers in the world. ‘We desperately need more of that enlightened self-interest from Washington these days,’ Mahbubani said.”

Trump’s Indictment—and Reaction to It—Foreshadow Partisan Fight Over US Justice System Here we go: Former President Donald Trump has been indicted by the Justice Department on criminal counts alleging he improperly kept classified documents after leaving the White House.   “Scores of boxes, many of which contained classified documents,” were allegedly transported to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and left in “various locations” around the club as it “hosted events for tens of thousands of members and guests,” according to the indictment. Trump showed classified documents to others on two occasions, prosecutors allege: “a classified map related to a military operation” and what Trump allegedly claimed, on an audio recording, were war plans.   Trump has denied the charges, saying in a video, “I am an innocent man. I did nothing wrong.” Predictably, he has also assailed the Justice Department as “corrupt” and politically motivated, saying in the same video statement: “It’s called election interference. They’re trying to destroy a reputation so they can win an election.” (Trump’s indictment stems from an investigation by a special counsel empaneled by President Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, a practice the Justice Dept. follows to avoid an appearance of conflict or politicization.)   As CNN media reporter Oliver Darcy writes, “(m)oments after” preliminary news of Trump’s indictment broke Thursday, “Fox News and the rest of the MAGA Media universe revved up into attack mode, denigrating the U.S. justice system and characterizing it as prejudiced against conservatives.”   As such, it appears Trump and his allies will campaign against the Justice Dept. as the prosecution hangs over the coming 2024 presidential election. A sharp critic of Trump, The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser wonders if a federal prosecution will help or hurt him politically: “If anything, since (2016), Trump has only perfected the art of using division to his own advantage. The New York (district attorney’s) indictment (of Trump in March alleging business fraud, which Trump has denied) caused his poll numbers to go up, not down. He likely anticipates the same thing happening now that federal charges have indeed been filed. And why shouldn’t he?”   While Republicans have opposed Trump’s prosecution, Washington Post columnist Aaron Blake writes that so far they aren’t defending him on the merits of the accusations; Blake also notes the irony of this case, after Hillary Clinton’s private email server was such fodder for Trump and his allies in 2016.

‘Ukraine’s Most Important Battle This Summer’ While Ukraine begins its highly anticipated counteroffensive, Dalibor Roháč argues at American Purpose that more important will be its push for NATO membership, as the alliance prepares to convene an important July summit in Lithuania.   Roháč nods to the war’s potential intractability barring a total battlefield victory for either side—and to potential Western concerns about a “forever war,” even if Ukrainians are the ones fighting it. “For Ukrainians, retaking the entirety of the country’s territory … has no viable alternative,” Roháč writes. “Until the Kremlin gives up its war objectives, Crimea and Ukraine’s south will be a launchpad for future attacks on Ukraine, putting all of Ukraine within range of Russian long-range artillery.”    But, Roháč writes, “a credible commitment by the alliance to bring Ukraine into NATO as soon as fighting stops—whether by ceasefire, a formal peace treaty, or just by freezing the conflict—would reduce the war’s stakes for Ukraine’s survival and prosperity. An outcome in which Ukraine does not recover all of its territory would be unjust and carry a humanitarian price tag … But, from a purely strategic standpoint, a Ukraine that joins NATO … can survive, exist securely, and even prosper, essentially regardless of how the currently occupied territory remains under Russian control.”   In a Foreign Affairs essay, Eric Ciaramella advocates something else: “Ukraine and its partners might find a useful template in the United States’ long-standing statutory commitment to Israel’s qualitative military edge.” Ukraine can’t and needn’t maintain military superiority to nuclear-armed Russia, Ciaramella writes, but until NATO and the EU are ready to seriously entertain Ukrainian membership, “A solution in the meantime would be the creation of interlocking multilateral agreements that can sustain a well-trained and well-equipped Ukrainian military.”

Australia’s Climate-Politics Lesson? As Canadian wildfire smoke drifted over the eastern US this week, Bloomberg columnist David Fickling wrote that Australia’s devastating 2019 wildfires changed its politics, sinking the right-leaning government of then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison and boosted the fortunes of climate-action supporters. Still, Fickling writes, this may have been more about a disaster harming incumbents, regardless of their party or climate politics, rather than shifting the electorate toward climate-activist parties and politicians.

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