Fareed: ‘Phase One’ Reveals China’s Power
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Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good
January 17, 2020
Fareed: ‘Phase One’ Reveals China’s Power
President Trump “folded” in signing the “phase one” trade deal with China, Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column, getting little of what he had demanded before the trade war and choosing instead to calm the US economy ahead of the 2020 election. (As Zachary Karabell wrote in Politico Magazine, the deal didn’t amount to much, but the trade war has cost plenty, and the “only clear winner from the past two years is China.”)
“From a broader perspective, however, this trade deal reflects something new on the international landscape, something the United States is going to have to grapple with for decades,” Fareed writes. “As I argue in Foreign Affairs, China is the first real peer competitor that the United States has faced in the modern era. (Even the Soviet Union was never really an economic peer.)” It’s the world’s second-largest economy, the largest trading partner of most Asian countries, and (unlike other world powers) doesn’t rely on American military protection.
The deal also reveals something about strategy. As Washington jockeys with Beijing for most of the century, it will need to enlist allies and use the international system to its advantage; Trump didn’t, and a meager “phase one” was the result. “With China,” Fareed writes, “the challenge is not how tough you can be but how smart.”
For the US, Is the Middle East No Longer ‘Worth It’?
In a Wall Street Journal essay, longtime US diplomat in the Middle East Martin Indyk argues the region simply isn’t worth it for America anymore. For decades, the US has stayed involved to protect two vital interests—the free export of Gulf oil (and thus the stability of world oil prices), and the survival of Israel—but today, those concerns have evaporated.
After the shale revolution, the US no longer relies on Middle East oil, and world markets are less vulnerable to shocks; when Iranian strikes took 50% of Saudi capacity offline in September, oil prices saw a mere blip. At the same time, Israel’s survival is no longer in doubt: It has a superior military, nuclear weapons, treaties with Arab neighbors, and “stronger strategic relations with the leading Sunni Arab states—Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others—than they maintain with one another.” Israeli-Palestinian peace has hit a dead end, Indyk writes, and US involvement won’t help.
Which leaves the US little reason to be there. “It is time to eschew never-ending wars and grandiose objectives—like pushing Iran out of Syria, overthrowing Iran’s ayatollahs or resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—in favor of more limited goals that can be achieved with more modest means,” he concludes.
Taiwan as a Test Case for Handling Chinese Pressure
As Chinese pressure abounds (the NBA has felt its sting, as has Prague), two recent columns pose Taiwan as a barometer of how the world is handling it. Recognizing Taiwan’s independence is a red line for Beijing, and at Foreign Policy, Salvatore Babones writes that while it’s no one else’s problem, “Taiwan deserves to be a normal country,” and a gradual opening of diplomatic recognition might be a good way to push back against China; an effort in that vein “may find the rest of Asia bandwagoning on its side.”
Newly reelected, pro-independence President Tsai Ing-wen offers a potential roadmap for democracies weighing acquiescence against candidness, in the face of Beijing’s refusal to suffer criticism, writes The Atlantic’s Thomas Wright. Tsai has chosen the latter, according to Wright, who spoke with her along with other journalists: “‘If we are vague, Beijing may misjudge the situation. In the past, people have gotten concerned when we are direct, but the situation has changed. We need to be direct to prevent misjudgment.’ Tsai reminded me of Angela Merkel. A 63-year-old academic, she is both principled and cautious. ‘We must be clear, but not provocative; loud, but careful,’ she said.”
The Real Geopolitical Implications of Iran’s Retaliation
American and Iranian attacks have stoked fears of all-out war, but that may not be the most important thing about them. Iran’s retaliation after the killing of Qasem Soleimani revealed a stunning degree of accuracy in its ballistic missiles, The Economist writes: “The accuracy revolution is real and no longer a monopoly of the United States,” MIT Professor Vipin Narang tells the magazine. “This has huge implications for modern conflict.”
Iranian missiles were thought to have accuracy radii of 100 or 500 meters, depending on their type and range (calculated as the radius within which half of missiles will fall, relative to a target), Victor Abramowicz writes for the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter blog. Not so, apparently: Dead-center hits on buildings at Iraq’s Al-Asad airbase indicate “an accuracy of about 10 metres – 10 times and 50 times better than expected for the Fateh and Qiam missiles, respectively.”
That’s nearly in line with the accuracy of US and Russian guided missiles, and such missiles change how wars are fought. (If Saddam Hussein had possessed them in 1991, The Economist writes, he could’ve threatened Israel more seriously and blocked the US troop buildup.) Ballistic missiles (unlike cruise missiles or rockets) are both accurate and fast, meaning they’re hard to shoot down, and even the US Patriot missile-defense system likely misses 75% of the time, Abramowicz writes. If Iran has the technology, other countries could get it—and when super-accurate, defense-busting missiles are injected into a conflict (like, for instance, the one between India and Pakistan), it’s more likely one side could get nervous, strike first, and see things spiral out of control.
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