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

August 6, 2018

America Needs to Quit This Foreign Policy Addiction

The Trump administration is poised to resume sanctions against Iran on Tuesday. It's the latest example of a frequently self-defeating foreign policy addiction America needs to quit, suggest Neil Bhatiya and Edoardo Saravalle for The Atlantic.

"At their most effective, sanctions are the product of multilateral efforts to solve clearly articulated, shared global-security concerns. Now they are becoming strident expressions of displeasure from an isolated United States, often wielded in service of domestic partisan priorities—a careless approach that may well neutralize the effectiveness of these powerful tools," they write.

"America's new penchant for unilateral sanctions is now jeopardizing long-standing relationships with allies. When the Trump administration left the Iran deal, the EU responded by updating a law that prohibited European companies from complying with certain US sanctions. As a result, the United States did more than lose a helpful partner—it set back its own program."

With China, It's Not Just the Economy, Stupid

Coverage of the risks for the United States of a trade war with China typically focus on the tit-for-tat of tariffs. But if the two countries increasingly go their own way economically, there are real security risks, too, writes Ali Wyne for Foreign Affairs.

"Up until recently, the two nations' economic ties had served as an effective brake on escalating strategic distrust. A China less constrained by and invested in economic ties with the United States could pose a substantially greater challenge to US foreign policy. For all the Trump administration's frustrations with managing interdependence, the consequences of decoupling could mean even bigger headaches," Wyne writes.

"Beijing could steadily reduce its financial support for leading economic institutions such as the International Monetary Fund; prioritize the development of economic and security arrangements that presently leave out the United States… [and] more proactively attempt to drive wedges between the United States and long-standing allies by casting Washington as an inconsistent and unreliable steward of world order," Wyne writes.

More Bad News from Venezuela?

An apparent assassination attempt on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro utilizing drones could be a sign of things to come elsewhere. Unfortunately, right now, there isn't much that can be done to stop them, suggests Brian Barrett for Wired.

"In truth, most good drone defenses come with drawbacks and caveats. You can switch on a super-powered radio-frequency jammer, but risk disrupting mobile communications. You can shoot a drone down, but risk collateral damage. You can force geofencing on manufacturers, creating certain no-fly zones...but a savvy attacker can disable those protections with relative ease. Dutch police have tested training eagles to hunt down bad drones, but the impracticalities of that approach add up astonishingly fast," Barrett writes.

"In short, there are no good answers."

How the Nuclear Taboo Is Becoming Less Taboo

Today marks the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Michael Krepon writes for Vox that as memories of the bombing and Cold War close calls fade, the taboo of nuclear weapons use is fading among US strategists.

"A new generation of deterrence strategists believes in the utility of low-yield nuclear weapons for small forays across the nuclear threshold. The Trump administration is working on two new options to add to existing choices, which include B-61 'dial-a-yield' bombs that could be less than one kiloton. (The weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were 15 to 20 kilotons)," Krepon writes.

"The idea of limited nuclear options and low-yield weapons isn't new, but wiser people have always been skeptical, questioning whether escalation can be controlled once the nuclear threshold has been crossed — especially since Moscow has never shown much interest in escalation control."

Where Too Little Facebook and Instagram Is a Dangerous Thing

At first blush, some parents in the West might find it appealing: a country where kids grow up without Western social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. But Li Yuan suggests in The New York Times that the implications of a generation of Chinese that are doing just that, thanks to government censors, are actually troubling.

"Many young people in China have little idea what Google, Twitter or Facebook are, creating a gulf with the rest of the world. And, accustomed to the homegrown apps and online services, many appear uninterested in knowing what has been censored online, allowing Beijing to build an alternative value system that competes with Western liberal democracy," she writes.

"These trends are set to spread. China is now exporting its model of a censored internet to other countries, including Vietnam, Tanzania and Ethiopia.

"Such outcomes are the opposite of what many in the West anticipated would be the effect of the internet."

What to Watch This Week

Thursday sees the launch of high-level trade talks between the US and Japan, Noriyuki Suzuki writes for the Japan Times. Noah Smith suggests for Bloomberg that the talks come as the two countries are heading in different directions: America is retreating from the world, while Japan is going global. "On trade, Japan just closed a deal with the European Union to eliminate almost all tariffs between them…Meanwhile, Japan is still trying to negotiate a version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership — from which the US withdrew under President Donald Trump — as well as another huge trade agreement with China, India, South Korea and other nations."

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