Latest News Updated: Impeachment Starts. Where Will It End?

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

January 16, 2020

Impeachment Starts. Where Will It End?

As the Senate begins President Trump's impeachment trial, many have asked whether the chamber will hear from witnesses or consider new evidence not included in the House's report (as some Republicans have opposed). Witnesses aren't so important, Harry Litman argues in a Washington Post column: As the release of material from Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas shows, documents are what really matter. ("Documents, unlike witnesses, don't go south on you," he writes.)

If the Senate is unwilling to weigh new information, some see a quick dead end. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rushed proceedings and failed to make a thorough case, argues The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, and CNN's Paul Callan agrees, concluding it's too late for Democrats to build a stronger one. The Parnas details add a "dash of sleazy corroboration of information previously disclosed in the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committee hearings," he writes, but "Pelosi is unlikely to get any rave reviews for the thin Ukrainian stew her House managers' case will serve to the Senate in the days ahead."

After Putin's Shakeup, What's in Store for Russia and Its Neighbors?

No one will be too enthusiastic about President Vladimir Putin's recent power shakeup, Leon Aron writes for The Atlantic: Putin's popularity is nearly as low as it was before he seized Crimea, and his latest move—likely a sign he will retain power as prime minister, beyond a presidential term limit in 2024—will generate "at best a few yawns, while annoyance and sarcasm are far more plausible responses." The last time Putin took a break from overt leadership to return later, serving as prime minister from 2008-2012 before reassuming the presidency, he was regarded as a national "hero," Aron writes; not so today, given a lagging economy and poor government performance.

That said, Bloomberg's Leonid Bershidsky identifies one reason things could get better: Putin's choice of prime minister, after Dmitry Medvedev's resignation, bureaucratic wizard Mikhail Mishustin. The former software engineer with an economics doctorate is "as apolitical as they come" and has excelled at the helm of Russia's tax agency, Bershidsky writes, increasing revenues faster than Russia's economy (without tax hikes) while managing not to annoy small businesses. Putin's domestic reform agenda, which includes $400 billion in public spending over the next four years, has stalled, and Bershidsky suggests Mishustin might be well suited to implement it.

If things don't improve, Russia's neighbors should watch out, Aron warns, as Putin has chosen military campaigns as his favored method to gin up support. If his public approval stagnates, "[a]nother jolt of patriotic hysteria, even another Crimea, is still very much on the table."

The Soleimani Strike and Trump's Celebrity Obsession

It's been a struggle for the intelligence community to steer President Trump's focus away from "celebrity, headlines, and immediate gratification—versus substance, impact, and consequences," writes former CIA Officer Douglas London at Just Security, speculating that better options than killing Qasem Soleimani were likely discarded by the president.

Doubting the administration's portrayal of imminent attacks—"don't we always" have that intelligence about Iran? he asks—London writes that the strike "appears to have been more about Trump, and the potential for headlines, rather than the intelligence. It also seems that the president's preference for Soleimani's overtly targeted killing reflects the same resistance to Intelligence Community input as did his surprise and uncoordinated orders to withdraw the U.S. military from northern Syria and its resulting accommodation of Turkey's destabilizing and bloody invasion."

Brexit's 'Wakeup Call'

That's what German Chancellor Angela Merkel calls the UK's looming departure, in an interview with the Financial Times, suggesting Europe heed it by becoming more "attractive, innovative, creative, a good place for research and education." To that end, Merkel wants the EU to cross the finish line in creating a banking union and a digital single market, setting global data standards with its privacy regulations, and developing its own tech production: "I believe that chips should be manufactured in the European Union, that Europe should have its own hyperscalers and that it should be possible to produce battery cells," Merkel tells the paper.

The post-Brexit relationship is still up for debate, Stewart Patrick writes for the World Politics Review, calling the UK's Jan. 31 exit the "end of the beginning," as the two sides will have until the end of the year to conclude a new trade deal and figure out how closely they'll coordinate on the world stage.

Can Outside Powers Help the Sahel?

A recent attack that killed 71 Nigerien soldiers shows the danger of jihadist groups entrenched in West Africa, Andrew Lebovich writes for the European Council on Foreign Relations. A US plan to pull back troops has drawn criticism in Europe, Helene Cooper reports for The New York Times, and France has struggled to help, Lebovich writes, given the specter of colonialism and political opposition to its troops; wild rumors have flown about France's support for jihadists in the region, for instance.

But outside powers can only do so much, Lebovich argues. In some areas, jihadist inroads are so deep that military bases are consistent targets for attack, and when foreign powers pick and choose between local allies, things can get worse. The problem is "much more complicated than simply a lack of international coordination, or insufficient support from external allies," Lebovich writes. "Better coordination, training, and integration of local forces with external operations can help. But only by rethinking approaches to politics and governance within Sahelian states can we hope to improve the outlook for the region, and ensure that the Sahelian and international soldiers who died there did not do so in vain."