Fareed: In a Crisis, Trump’s Populism Is Laid Bare
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Apr 24, 2020, 7:06 PM (1 day ago)
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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
April 24, 2020
Fareed: In a Crisis, Trump’s Populism Is Laid Bare
'Poor Brian Kemp,' Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column—'he obviously didn’t get the memo.' The Republican governor of Georgia decided to reopen businesses in his state after President Trump had spent weeks agitating for lockdowns to lift. Then, Trump criticized him for doing so.
“Welcome to Donald Trump’s reelection strategy,” Fareed writes, “where he is both the government and the opposition to that government.” A populist even in a crisis, Trump has stood by as his administration’s experts have offered seasoned advice, then has intermittently contradicted it, in a “complicated dance” that can be difficult for politicians like Kemp to follow. Meanwhile, the president has returned to favorite topics: China and immigration.
The Covid-19 pandemic has boosted the approval ratings of leaders around the world, Fareed writes, as they’ve provided calm leadership, while Trump’s own numbers have remained static. Trump could have followed their lead, but as Fareed writes, “it turns out that Donald Trump knows only one dance—the populism hustle—and seems uninterested in learning any other.”
Pandemic Power-Grabs
As they are wont to do, The Economist writes, authoritarians are turning the Covid-19 crisis to their advantage: “Everywhere people are scared. Many wish to be led to safety. Wannabe strongmen are grabbing coercive tools they have always craved—in order, they say, to protect public health. Large gatherings can be sources of infection; even the most liberal governments are restricting them. Autocrats are delighted to have such a respectable excuse for banning mass protests, which over the past year have rocked India, Russia and whole swathes of Africa and Latin America. The pandemic gives a reason to postpone elections, as in Bolivia, or to press ahead with a vote while the opposition cannot campaign, as in Guinea. Lockdown rules can be selectively enforced. Azerbaijan’s president openly threatens to use them to ‘isolate’ the opposition. Relief cash can be selectively distributed. In Togo you need a voter id, which opposition supporters who boycotted a recent election tend to lack. Minorities can be scapegoated. India’s ruling party is firing up Hindu support by portraying Muslims as covid-19 vectors.”
Surveillance and laws against “fake news” are particularly fertile territory, the magazine writes. While established democracies are unlikely to abuse the power of Covid-19 contact-tracing through apps or phone data, governments “like China’s and Russia’s are eagerly deploying high-tech kit to snoop on practically everyone, and they are not alone. Cambodia’s new emergency law places no limits on such surveillance.” Meanwhile, those who spread “‘falsehood’ in Zimbabwe now face 20 years in prison. … Jordan, Oman, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates have banned print newspapers, claiming that they might transmit the virus.”
Covid, Poverty, and Conflict in Africa
Der Spiegel convened a panel of policy experts to discuss the various ramifications of Covid-19, and assessing its potential impact on Africa, Institute for Security Studies board chairman Jakkie Cilliers says that while it’s too early to make accurate forecasts, Africa “will see a more rapid increase in absolute poverty this year and next year. And a decrease in income. If growth in South Africa declines by 5 percent, there will be an additional 2.1 million people living in absolute poverty here alone. But even here I see the danger of unrest when the poor reach a certain level of despair. And it’s no less likely in other African countries, which do not offer even this rudimentary safety net.”
Slower global growth will mean fewer commodity exports from the continent, and “the result could be greater dependence on China,” which figures to be “an even more important trading partner in the future than it already is.” At the same time, Cilliers says, “the virus will also threaten the stability of states,” potentially scaling down UN peacekeeping missions in Central African Republic, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, endangering their slow progress. “The impact could be to reignite regional instability as increased instability again spreads to neighboring countries. … The virus will also weaken governments in their fight against organized crime, rebels and terrorists. The capacity of the armies involved will be tied up in the fight against the pandemic. They will have to leave the field, in part, to terrorist groups, who will engage even more robustly than we've seen to date.”
China’s War to Control the Covid-19 Story
Amid Covid-19, China seems to be getting more aggressive. As The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board notes, Beijing is escalating its naval activities in contested waters in the South China Sea. Calling it the “most brazen effort yet to destroy Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement,” Frida Ghitis writes in the World Politics Review that activists have been arrested, and Beijing’s relatively new liaison has called for a law barring treason against the mainland government. In a recent statement, Beijing’s representatives declared their ability to meddle in Hong Kong’s politics, Stephen Vines writes in a Hong Kong Free Press column, wondering if “one country, two systems” is dead.
The same is true outside of China’s backyard. As Yun Jiang and Adam Ni wrote this week in China Neican, “Chinese diplomats, once known for their conservative manners, have now become more assertive and combative,” criticizing other countries’ Covid-19 responses and boosting conspiracy theories. The Global Times, a subsidiary of the party-run People’s Daily, last week touted China’s newfound “wolf warrior diplomacy,” a reference to a 2015 Chinese action film and its 2017 sequel.
While it has spread supplies and good will, China has also adopted Russian tactics to control the story of Covid-19 online, disinformation watcher Laura Rosenberger of the German Marshall Fund writes in a Foreign Affairs essay. As Chinese officials push Covid-19 criticism of the West and tout China’s governance model, “state media outlets have paid to promote these stories to U.S. audiences, in undisclosed political ads on Facebook and Instagram. … Chinese operatives have also engaged in covert efforts to manipulate information and sow chaos—even amplifying false text messages that went viral in the United States in mid-March warning in panicked tones that Trump was about to order a two-week national quarantine.”
UK’s NHS Proves Itself Amid the Crisis
Funding for the UK’s National Health Service has been a highly political issue—an image of a child on the floor of an NHS hospital caused an outcry during last year’s campaign—but amid the Covid-19 crisis, Camilla Cavendish writes for the Financial Times that Britain’s health system has acquitted itself admirably. “The NHS has discovered that it can move with astonishing speed to build new hospitals, reduce bureaucracy, redeploy staff into different roles and forge partnerships which must be preserved after the crisis,” Cavendish writes. “It is impossible to overstate what has happened in the past two months. Dentists have retrained as respiratory nurses. Healthcare assistants have stepped up to do the work of senior nurses. Local councils have redeployed administrative staff to care homes.”
Cavendish suggests this will boost the NHS (and its funding) going forward: “It would be naive to ignore the fact that some progress has been achieved by the Treasury’s blank cheque. The public will be ready to pay higher taxes for the NHS after this crisis: that money must also extend to social care. But progress has also been made by unleashing ingenuity and co-operation.”
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