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 28, 2023 | |
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Will Support for Ukraine Hold? |
Ukraine is settling in for a long fight, war commentators seem to agree. Noting Western complaints that Ukrainian troops have failed to more effectively employ tactics of "combined arms maneuver"—the use of multiple kinds of troops and weapons in concert—US Army Maj. Robert Rose writes for War on the Rocks that critics "should observe an American brigade training rotation … Any of the failings found in Ukraine's attack … I have personally observed with nearly every brigade training at the 30 rotations I have participated in at the National Training Center and Joint Readiness Training Center."
In Rose's view, Ukraine is appropriately pursuing the alternative: "attritional" tactics to wear down Russian forces. But to fight such a grinding—and, importantly, protracted—kind of war requires weapons, ammunition and sustained political support among Ukraine's allies to keep supplying them. On that front, The Economist suggests Western backing could erode in the coming year as critical voices emerge: "Some hard-right parties, such as France's National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen, and Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD), cast the conflict as a waste of European resources. 'The German public is paying three times over for this war,' complains Gunnar Lindemann, an AfD member of Berlin's regional assembly, 'supporting 1m refugees, carrying huge energy bills and sending weapons to Ukraine.' Both parties are rising in the polls, but both remain far from power." Slovakia will hold parliamentary elections this week, and former US ambassador to the country Adam H. Sterling writes for the Wilson Center that the likely outcome will be victory for a "Russia-favoring" coalition of populists. That would make a small but meaningful dent in Western solidarity in support of Ukraine, Sterling writes.
In the US, much could depend on the 2024 election. President Joe Biden has staunchly backed Kyiv, while former President Donald Trump and other voices on the populist right, including in Congress, have raised questions about Biden's approach. In a CNN op-ed, Lanhee J. Chen writes that several GOP candidates, by contrast, solidly support Ukraine: former UN ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. "All three have gone after Trump, the front-runner in the GOP nominating contest, for his skepticism of continued US assistance," Chen writes. |
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India Is Just One of Trudeau's Problems |
After Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this month accused India of assassinating a Sikh leader (and Canadian citizen) on Canadian soil (which India has denied), commentary has focused on the implications vis-à-vis India, if the allegations are true. "No doubt Indian leaders are betting (Western) countries, which continue to work closely with Saudi Arabia despite the gruesome murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, are unlikely to do more than express 'concern' over Trudeau's claims," Bloomberg wrote in an editorial. "The question is whether that's the kind of relationship India should want with the West."
But it's a headache for Trudeau—and only one of several. In a CNN op-ed, Michael Bociurkiw notes Canadian criticism that the PM made his allegation while an investigation was still ongoing, calling the spat a "potentially costly diplomatic dog fight." The Economist writes that Trudeau faces low approval ratings as he hopes to secure a historic fourth consecutive term sometime in the next two years; per the magazine, Trudeau's domestic political liabilities include inflation (among the lowest in G20 economies, but recently on the rise again), immigration and a "creaking" universal health-care system. |
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Will Captagon Cause the Next Drug Epidemic? |
It's "the drug fuelling the Gulf party scene—and Syria's finances," per a Reuters headline in May. Observers have cited wartime Syria as a global font of Captagon, a synthetic amphetamine that CNN's Celine Alkhaldi cited in April as a bargaining chip in Syria's attempts to rejoin the international diplomatic fold, given concerns about its export.
At the science publication UnDark, former US Drug Enforcement Agency Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Crotty worries that Captagon will become the next widespread, drug-related health crisis in the US. Crotty writes: "Often referred to as 'poor man's cocaine,' Captagon is already wildly popular in the Middle East where it sells for as little as $3 per pill … Substance abuse tends to move in cycles. Periods with high rates of depressant drug use (like opioids) are almost always followed by ones with high rates of stimulant drug use (like methamphetamine and cocaine), and vice versa. The heroin crisis of the 1960s and 1970s was followed by the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, which gave way to the current opioid epidemic. … The difference now is the primacy of synthetic drugs—that is, illicit substances created in a lab that are designed to mimic the effects of naturally occurring drugs." |
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Seafaring Drones: The New Wave in Unmanned Warfare |
As Fareed explored in an interview in Kyiv this month with Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian government minister who has spearheaded his country's use of drones against Russia's invading army, drones have played an important part in Ukraine's defenses, allowing troops to conduct reconnaissance and carry out attacks. At the Atlantic Council, Mykola Bielieskov writes that Ukrainian drones have taken the fight to Russia—both aerial drones flying into Russian territory and maritime drones that have been credited with attacks on Russia's naval fleet in the Black Sea.
Those maritime drones have caught the attention of navies around the world, Jonathan Bentham writes for the International Institute for Strategic Studies: "Although uninhabited maritime vehicles (UMVs) are not exactly new, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine is emerging as the same kind of catalyst for their adoption that the war in Afghanistan was for uninhabited aerial vehicles (UAVs). Ukraine has shown the asymmetric advantage a smaller navy can gain from innovative use of UMVs to fend off larger, more conventional platforms. While such technology is proving positive for Ukraine in menacing Russia's navy, the tactics Kyiv is employing also illustrate the headache such systems pose for top-tier navies in regions such as the Gulf, where the potential for UMVs to act as loitering torpedoes or overwhelm a ship's defences via a swarm attack pose a threat to both commercial shipping and military vessels. … The US Navy's Task Force 59 in the Gulf and the Red Sea … is showing the synthesis between uninhabited vehicles and crewed ships in delivering on operations." |
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