CNN - FAREED's Global Briefing - September 6, 2024 - Fareed: Right-Wing Populism Is Here to Stay

 

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.   September 6, 2024

Fareed: Right-Wing Populism Is Here to Stay Things are going relatively well in the US right now, Fareed notes in his latest Washington Post column. Under President Joe Biden the economy has beaten expectations, emerging from pandemic-era inflation without the “hard landing” of a recession.   But that success won’t be enough to stave off the momentum of right-leaning populists, Fareed writes. Resentment of elites persists. Recent state elections in Germany, which saw the far right perform very well, reminded us that the political mood in the Western world is still one of discontent. The issue of immigration continues to loom large.   “Many commentators argue that the Trump phenomenon is a fluke, fueled by his celebrity and almost cultlike following,” Fareed writes, noting the close race between former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris. “Some of that is true. But right-wing populism isn’t going anywhere. It is being fueled by a deep backlash against the economic, political and cultural openness of the past few decades—and the urban elites supporting those trends. Look beyond Europe. Look at countries such as Turkey and India, where leaders have allied themselves with those opposed to the liberal, cosmopolitan elites. Look at the Republican Party, which now has no home for people such as George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, Paul D. Ryan and even Mitch McConnell—leaders who once defined it. Trump could win. But even if he loses, right-wing populism is here to stay.”

Even With a New PM, France’s Crisis Continues France has a new prime minister. A month and a half after President Emmanuel Macron accepted the resignation of Gabriel Attal, viewed not long ago as a rising political star, Macron has appointed Michel Barnier of the center-right Les Républicains party.   What does it mean for France? Following this summer’s election mess, in which no party or coalition—neither Macron’s centrists, the left, nor the far right—secured an outright majority in France’s legislature, French politics are still in flux.   The right-leaning daily Le Figaro reports, notably, that Barnier plans to reopen the highly pressurized debate over government-pension reforms, a signature policy and landmark controversy during Macron’s tenure.   More importantly, France still doesn’t have a government. That usually happens a few days after the appointment of a PM, per William Audureau and Maxime Vaudano of the left-leaning paper Le Monde, but “it's not impossible that the time needed to form a government could be longer, due to the current political situation.” The appointment of ministers will follow no definite timeline and looks to be a delicate task, given a wealth of competing factions in the Assemblée Nationale. Barnier’s appointment “does not put an end to the political crisis,” Audureau and Vaudano write. “It paves the way for new questions, in a situation that remains highly uncertain.”

Outrage Simmers Over Kolkata Rape-Murder Thousands of Indian doctors went on strike last month to protest the rape and murder of a female doctor in Kolkata. If an Indian national uproar over femicide seems familiar, it is: The fatal 2012 gang rape of a young woman on a moving bus in Delhi stunned many and resulted in four executions in 2020.   At Reuters, Sakshi Dayal and Subrata Nag Choudhury write of an unfulfilled promise by authorities in West Bengal, the Indian state where the city of Kolkata sits, to protect female doctors. Veteran Indian journalist Barkha Dutt writes in the Hindustan Times: “The worst part? Wondering whether there is a single political party or politician that is actually, genuinely moved by the principle of equality, dignity, freedom and security for India’s women. … Even women politicians, from whom we expect more because they have all been at the receiving end of terrible misogyny (and many of us have stood in solidarity with them when this has happened), are woefully shackled and silenced by their party leadership and its impulse to protect its interests instead of protecting survivors and victims. It’s been crushingly disappointing to document. I am losing hope that the young doctor raped and killed in the RG Kar Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata will get justice.”

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The Nightmare in Sudan The Economist’s most recent issue detailed a war that has been overlooked by many: Sudan’s civil conflict, which has raged between the Sudanese Army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by two feuding generals, since April 2023. The consequences have been, and continue to be, disastrous.   The Economist wrote: “The war in Sudan has received a fraction of the attention given to Gaza and Ukraine. Yet it threatens to be deadlier than either conflict. Africa’s third-largest country is ablaze. Its capital city has been razed, perhaps 150,000 people have been slaughtered and bodies are piling up in makeshift cemeteries visible from space. More than 10m people, a fifth of the population, have been forced to flee from their homes. A famine looms that could be deadlier than Ethiopia’s in the 1980s: some estimate that 2.5m civilians could die by the end of the year. … The carnage will get worse. Our analysis of satellite data and thermal images shows a country covered in fires. Farms and crops have been burned. People are forced to eat grass and leaves. If the dearth of food continues, 6m-10m could die from starvation by 2027, according to a Dutch think-tank that is modelling the crisis.”   Foreseeing ramifications beyond Sudan, the magazine wrote: “Sudan is a chaos machine. The war sucks in malign forces from the surrounding region, then spews out instability—which unless the conflict is halted will only get worse. As the country disintegrates, it could upend regimes in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. It could become a haven for terrorists. It could send an exodus of refugees to Europe. And it could exacerbate the crisis in the Red Sea, where attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthis have already contorted global shipping. ‘This is a war that is impacting severely on three continents,’ says Endre Stiansen, Norway’s ambassador to Sudan.”

AI’s Leap Forward: Computers That Can See In last Sunday’s GPS special, “Reengineering Life: The Next Frontiers in Science,” Fareed heard from AI “godmother” and Stanford computer scientist Fei-Fei Li about her landmark work compiling a massive dataset of images to train AI engines in visual recognition. Li believes that’s a critical step toward true artificial intelligence.

The Harris Worldview How does Kamala Harris view the world?   We know, generally, what to expect from Donald Trump if he wins the White House again: transactional diplomacy, “America first” isolationism, and protectionist trade policies. But writing at Project Syndicate, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer seeks to predict Harris’ overarching approach US foreign policy.   “[H]ow do her worldview and policy preferences compare to Biden’s?” Bremmer asks. “There is plenty of overlap, but also significant daylight … Biden, now 81, came of age at the height of the Cold War … He is a strong believer in ‘American exceptionalism,’ and he views international relations in black-and-white terms—namely as a struggle between democracies and autocracies—where the United States is always a force for good. … By contrast, the 59-year-old Harris grew up in a post-Cold War world where the greatest challenge to American hegemony was a failure to uphold its ideals at home and abroad. Her inclination as a prosecutor is to judge countries by their adherence to the rule of law and international norms, rather than by their political system or leaders. Recognizing the necessity of US engagement with non-democratic countries and acknowledging America’s own democratic shortcomings, she views Biden’s ‘democracies vs. autocracies’ framework as reductive, hypocritical, and unrealistic.”