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

July 16, 2018

America's "National Security Emergency" Is Now

President Trump's meeting with Vladimir Putin has underscored the grip the Russian president has on his US counterpart, writes David Frum in The Atlantic. We don't yet know why Trump is behaving this way, Frum says, but America is clearly facing a national security emergency.

"[D]enouncing the EU as a 'foe,' threatening to break up NATO, wrecking the US-led world trading system, intervening in both UK and German politics...it adds up to a political indictment whether or not it quite qualifies as a criminal one," Frum writes.

"America is a very legalistic society, in which public discussion often deteriorates into lawyers arguing whether any statutes have been violated. But confronting the country in the wake of Helsinki is this question: Can it afford to wait to ascertain why Trump has subordinated himself to Putin after the president has so abjectly demonstrated that he has subordinated himself?"

Trump's foreign policy revolution. Critics should not expect as much pushback from Republicans as they might hope for. After all, Trump is revolutionizing the party's foreign policy – right here at home, Fareed argued in Sunday's Take.

"Trump's political genius continues to be that he recognizes that the base of the Republican party is ripe for this ideological revolution, that while the old Reaganite formulas may still be subscribed to by Republican elites in Washington and New York, it is not embraced out there in the grass roots."

Watch the full Take here.

The Real Bombshell in the Russia Indictments

Friday's Justice Department indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence agents will have made for particularly uncomfortable reading for the Kremlin, writes Leonid Bershidsky for Bloomberg. Russia seems to have underestimated America's spies.

The real bombshell is "the investigators' apparent ability to link specific actions, such as searches and technical queries, to specific officers of the GRU, Russia's military intelligence service. By making these connections, Mueller's team has made an enormous leap from the US intelligence community's previous disclosures," Bershidsky writes.

"Russian military intelligence appears to have been seriously compromised. Regardless of where the knowledge leads Mueller, the GRU appears to have underestimated what it's up against in the US In this cyberwar, the US is not a powerless victim but a formidable rival."

Has America Stopped Fighting to Win?

Largely overlooked by the US public, America's military appears to have shifted strategies in some of the world's hotspots, suggests Paul Staniland for The Washington Post. Resolving conflicts is out, "violence management" is in.

Under the violence management approach, the "goal is disrupting militant organizations without trying to build new states, spur economic development, or invest heavily in post-conflict reconstruction," Staniland writes.

"But violence management does not offer a clear way out, either – it pushes hard questions about how to allocate political power and create durable institutions into the indefinite future."

"As long as the US government can limit the domestic costs of violence management overseas, few Americans will have incentives to pay attention to these low-level, far-flung wars."

How to Beat Team Trump at Trade: Do Nothing

The European Union and China might be tempted to respond to the Trump administration's tariffs in kind. If they do, they'll likely end up hurting themselves even more, writes Alan Beattie for the Financial Times. Better to work more closely with like-minded nations – and let the United States sink itself.

"In the classic 1980s cold war movie WarGames, a computer tasked with working out the optimal strategy for nuclear confrontation concludes that 'the only way to win is not to play.' This analogy is by no means precise: that outcome relies on an assumption that the other player is trying to avoid destroying themselves. But the message it arrives at is similar," Beattie writes.

"Matching Mr Trump tariff for tariff will at some point become counter-productive. If the US no longer wishes to anchor the world economy, it may be better for other governments to get on and supplant it rather than using trade restrictions to try to force it back to its former role."

The Irony of France's World Cup Victory

Emmanuel Macron was happy to lead his country's celebration of its World Cup triumph. But there's an irony in the win, writes Antony Blinken in The New York Times. Even as immigration helped fuel France's success in Russia, the country is failing dangerously to make it work at home.

"Macron will probably get an immediate and welcome bounce in public opinion polls, where he has taken a beating after ramming unpopular but necessary labor and tax reforms through parliament," Blinken writes.

"But the image also underscores the profound irony of the moment. That France now celebrates Les Bleus (as the national team is known) from the suburbs and the successful integration of immigrants into its soccer machinery cannot hide the fact that the country is in the midst of a larger integration crisis. The banlieues are rife with riots, drugs, crime and high youth unemployment. As in much of Europe, anti-immigrant sentiment is a driving force in French politics, feeding the success of the extreme right National Front party."

"The larger test for Mr. Macron is whether he can do for the banlieues what the banlieues have done for French soccer."

What to Watch This Week

EU leaders are expected to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on Tuesday to sign the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement. Such deals are the best way for the EU to show that there's multilateral life beyond Trump, suggests Paul Taylor for Politico EU. "The EU should build a web of free-trade agreements with like-minded nations and regional groupings, while working with China to open up investment and curb intellectual property theft through negotiation rather than punitive tariffs," Taylor says.

Turkey is on Wednesday expected to end the state of emergency imposed by the government after the failed 2016 coup. Meanwhile, per Reuters: The government "issued presidential decrees on Sunday reshaping key political, military and bureaucratic institutions as part of the transformation to a powerful executive presidency triggered by last month's election."

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