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

July 31, 2018

Trump's "All-About-Me" Iran Gambit Is a Bad Idea…

President Trump's offer Monday to talk with Iran's leadership made headlines, but it's hardly new, writes Aaron Miller for CNN Opinion. And it's still a bad idea.

"[T]he idea that Trump is doing with Iran what he did with North Korea—threatening to blow things up and then wanting to make a deal—misunderstands why Kim Jong Un came to the table. Unlike Iran, Kim came to the summit as the victor, not the vanquished. Unlike Iran, North Korea has a real nuclear deterrent and the capacity to nuke the US—something Trump could not ignore," Miller writes.

"Iran stands to gain little from a summit with Trump under these circumstances. And it's not at all clear what Trump could possibly offer."

…But There's One Country He Really Should Be Talking To

The Trump administration's tariffs aimed at China have made their (valid) point about unfair Chinese trade practices. It's time to start talking with Beijing before things get ugly for everyone, write Cliff Kupchan and Michael Hirson in The Wall Street Journal.

"Despite Beijing's denials, forced technology transfer is a frequent and unfair price US firms pay for access to China's massive market. The US should continue demanding that Beijing give unequivocal instructions to all players in China's system to end the practice," they write.

But, "the US needs to remember that the Chinese have domestic political considerations too. Overly moralistic American rhetoric, especially from trade adviser Peter Navarro, is making it easy for hawks in Beijing to call for a hard-line approach against the US. It's time to take a breath, split the difference on key issues, and avoid an outcome where both countries lose big-time."

Russia Should Be Careful What It Wishes For

The Kremlin seems determined to upend the US-led international order. But it should ask itself whether the alternative is really in Russia's best interests, writes Eugene Rumer for The Moscow Times.

"Are Russian interests better served by political paralysis in the United States and Germany, a divided European Union, and Poland and Hungary consumed by xenophobia and nationalism? Does it make Russia more secure? More prosperous? If not the West, who else would have come to Russia's rescue at the end of the Cold War with the magnanimity and the generosity displayed by governments striving for a long-term partnership with Russia—China?" Rumer writes.

"As China emerges as both the alternative to the West and Russia's preeminent partner, and the West is in disarray, Russian critics of the West should ask themselves what it would have been like had the West not been there in their country's hour of need, and what it will be like if China supplants the West as the global rule-maker."

America's Asia Plan Seems to Be Missing Some Zeros

China's some trillion-dollar Belt and Road trade and investment initiative has extended Beijing's influence across Asia and beyond. America's tepid response is unlikely to woo many countries away, suggests James Crabtree, following Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's announcement Monday of $113 million in new US investment.

Around "$26 trillion worth of infrastructure investment is needed across the continent by 2030, according to the Asian Development Bank. Without viable alternatives, Asia's politicians will have little option than to turn to China," Crabtree notes in the Nikkei Asian Review.

"The US cannot compete directly with [China's] largesse. Instead, it must play a subtler influence game, drawing on its many cultural and economic strengths, alongside its formal network of military alliances."

"Still, whether the US likes it or not, its initiatives are going to be compared with China's…if the US is to have any hope of challenging Beijing's expansion—and retaining its own position as Asia's dominant power."

What Team Trump Gets Right About Egypt

The criticism of the Trump administration's decision to resume military aid to Egypt is understandable—human rights have deteriorated under Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, notes Bruce Clingan for Reuters. That doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do. After all, "[r]eports of Islamic State's demise are premature."

"Further instability in Egypt would be disastrous for its nearly 100 million citizens, the region and the United States. Regardless of which might come first—the collapse of Egypt's economy or the spread of Islamist insurgency—the other would surely follow.

"The result would be new extremist safe havens, millions of desperate Egyptians seeking to flee to Europe, an existential threat to Israel, the disruption of the Suez Canal upon which global economic stability depends and the potential for the United States to get involved in yet another Middle East quagmire."

The Big Threat to China's Green Movement Isn't What You Think

China has set ambitious goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The biggest threat might not come from chimneys, but what Chinese are putting on the dinner table, argue Marcello Rossi and Undark magazine in The Atlantic.

"Fueled by rising incomes rather than urbanization, meat consumption in China grew sevenfold over the last three-and-a-half decades. In the early 1980s, when the population was still under 1 billion, the average Chinese person ate around 30 pounds of meat per year. Today, with an additional 380 million people, it's nearly 140 pounds. On the whole, the country consumes 28 percent of the world's meat—twice as much as the United States. And the figure is only set to increase," they write.

"But as the Chinese appetite for meat expands, the booming nation is faced with a quandary: How to satisfy the surging demand for meat without undermining the country's commitment to curbing greenhouse-gas emissions and combating global warming—goals that have been expressly incorporated into national economic and social development and long-term planning under the Xi Jinping administration."

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