Climate Changes & US Foreign Policy

View this email in your browser Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by the GPS team.   December 4, 2018 Climate Change & US Foreign Policy   "The direct consequences of climate change will be harmful enough," writes Stephen M. Walt for Foreign Policy, "but I believe it will also have profound effects on US foreign policy."  "Why? Because adapting to a warmer planet is going to be really expensive." "The condition of the planet will be determined by the laws of physics and chemistry, not by Trump's tweets, denials, bluster, or relentlessly head-in-the-sand approach to a rapidly warming planet." From rising sea levels jeopardizing US military bases, to national infrastructure repairs and investments, the National Climate Assessment said the costs could "reduce U.S. GDP by as much as 10 percent by the end of the century," Walt notes, adding that this would be "roughly twice the impact of the 2008 recession." US hegemony will hang in the balance, argues Walt, as "maintaining a defense budget and a national security establishment that dwarfs those of all other states is going to be increasingly difficult if not politically impossible. Persuading the American people to fund wars of choice, to protect distant allies of questionable strategic value, or even to wage far-flung counterterrorism operations is going to be a hard sell." French Protests and Macron's Facebook Problem In response to massive protests that have "left France charred, smashed, defaced, and generally stunned," the French government has suspended the planned gas tax and promised to keep electricity prices down this winter, writes Lauren Collins for The New Yorker. But it's not at all clear that these moves will restore national unity. "[French President Emmanuel] Macron had vowed to 'stay the course without ceding to demagogy,'" but the protesters "have provoked a surprise crisis that will likely define his Presidency. As they persist, he is increasingly desperate to appease them, even at a loss of revenues and face." "The European Parliamentary elections are coming up in May. Macron knows that they are [a] referendum not only on him but also on the values of globalism, centrism, and environmentalism, of which he has positioned himself as an international defender."  Collins writes that Facebook is the "incubator" to a "diffuse" and "volatile" movement – the gilets jaunes– which "confound traditional political divisions and have appeared seemingly out of nowhere." Posting on the social network, the movement adjusts its "tone and content" depending on the page's administrator.  "One of the garbled but loud messages of the gilets-jaunes movement may be that it isn't the street that Macron has to master, it's the information highway. Macron successfully fended off hackers' attempts to discredit his campaign on the eve of the Presidential election, but it's hard not to wonder whether Facebook populism is finally coming for France." US to exit Nuclear Treaty unless Russia complies At a NATO meeting in Belgium on Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the US has determined that Russia is in "material breach" of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and that the US will "suspend" its obligations within 60 days "unless Russia returns to full and verifiable compliance." (CNN) In addition to Russia's actions, Pompeo said, "many other states – including China, North Korea, and Iran – are not parties to the INF Treaty. This leaves them free to build all the intermediate range missiles that they would like. There is no reason the United States should continue to cede this crucial military advantage to revisionist powers like China." "European countries have been the primary beneficiaries of the INF treaty given the range of weapons that it abolished," David M. Herszenhorn writes for Politico, "and EU leaders have been particularly unsettled by US President Donald Trump's threats to withdraw from the accord, rather than continue to press Russia for compliance." "Macron recently issued a renewed call for stronger European military cooperation, including development of an EU army, citing… Europe's inability to rely on American for security guarantees," writes Herszenhorn, adding that "Macron specifically noted Trump's intent to withdraw from the INF treaty as a concern. Trump responded on Twitter by calling Macron's remarks 'very insulting.'" Saudi Arabia and the Rebirth of Democratic Foreign Policy The divide between the Senate and the White House over whether or not Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi "grew into a chasm" on Tuesday after CIA Director Gina Haspel's "closed-door testimony" to Senate leaders, write Krishnadev Calamur and Kathy Gilsinan for The Atlantic. "[W]ith Trump and top aides coalescing to emphasize the overriding importance of the US-Saudi relationship… the Senate is looking for ways to censure the kingdom... An upcoming vote on US support for the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen will provide a test." The conflict in Yemen has become "what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis" and Saudi Arabia's involvement "relies in part on US intelligence support," write Calamur and Gilsinan. It now looks to be the battleground between the White House and Congress.  Last week's vote in the Senate to move forward a resolution to end the US' involvement in the Yemen war signals something else, too, argues Peter Beinart, also in The Atlantic: "It signals the birth of a post-Obama Democratic foreign policy." "Remember that America's participation in Saudi Arabia's military campaign in Yemen did not begin under Donald Trump. It began under Barack Obama."  The war in Yemen erupted with the rise of rebels with ties to Iran, after which "the Saudis asked the Obama administration for military help," claiming that this was a threat to Riyadh. The "Obama administration concluded 42 separate arms deals with Riyadh totaling more than $115 billion, a higher sum than during any previous administration," Beinart writes. "Once Obama left office, however, and the horror in Yemen grew worse, Democrats began to shift. One reason was partisanship: They were less inclined to give a Republican president the benefit of the doubt, especially one so brazenly uninterested in constraining Saudi abuses."  The move to curb both the presidency and the Saudis in the Yemen war, Beinart argues, "represent the rebirth of a spirit—suspicious of military entanglements and the unchecked presidential power that enables them—that marked Democratic foreign policy from the last years of Vietnam through the struggle over the Reagan administration's proxy wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1980s. Turning that spirit into a coherent post-Obama foreign-policy vision will be the task of those Democrats who seek the presidency over the next two years." Share Tweet Fwd unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences  Copyright © 2018 Cable News Network, Inc. A WarnerMedia Company., All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you subscribed to CNN newsletters. 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