Fareed's Global Briefing

 Oct 8 2020

A Health-Care Election?

Health care is always near the top of American voters’ minds, if not at it: Tracking which issues are most important to them, Pew found health care (at varying points in the election years) to be tied for third in 2008, third in 2012, and statistically tied for third again in 2016. In August of this year, it had climbed to second, though recent CNN polling rates it third once again, behind only Supreme Court nominations and the pandemic.

Covid-19, clearly, has put health at the center of national politics, opening the door to vigorous policy debates. The New England Journal of Medicine has issued a scathing critique of President Trump’s handling of the pandemic, breaking with its apolitical tradition. (As The New York Times’ Gina Kolata notes, the journal has been known for nonpartisanship for 208 years). Without mentioning Trump, its editors write that America’s “current leadership” has not only failed to organize testing and tracing, or to promote “even simple measures” like mask-wearing—it has undermined experts, politicized masks, and made things worse. “Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences … this election gives us the power to render judgment,” the editors write.

Judging Trump and Joe Biden on health policy, The Lancet this week published a report on where each stands on Covid-19, women’s health, gun violence, and the opioid epidemic. Beyond opposing stances on abortion and gun control, one big difference seems to be that Biden has issued policy proposals, while Trump has not. “Trump has not articulated a vision for public health in his second term other than eliminating the Affordable Care Act and women's right to abortion, said Georges Benjamin, a physician and executive director of the American Public Health Association” who notes that on Covid-19, Trump seems to be relying on a yet-unproven vaccine. Biden, meanwhile, “has released a total of 51 policy proposals outlining how he will accomplish his goals if he wins in November,” the journal writes.

What an International Election Observer Would Say About the US

Having worked as an election monitor overseas, Wilson Center fellow Nina Jankowicz writes for The Atlantic that President Trump’s approach to Election Day would raise red flags for anyone monitoring the integrity of the vote in a more fragile democracy.

Trump has urged supporters to observe voting on Election Day, raising concerns about intimidation by telling his backers to “go into the polls and watch very carefully.” America has well-established processes for a member of each party, often trained in voting procedures, to serve as observers at polling places without interfering, Jankowicz writes. “But the president’s call to his supporters … seems like an invitation to voter harassment,” Jankowicz writes. In any country, “[c]onfrontations between unorganized, self-appointed poll watchers and individual voters are a recipe for trouble—and a threat to a fair election.”

Report Details Eastern Germany’s Far-Right Problem

As The New York Times’ Katrin Bennhold reported recently, Germany’s far-right fringe is thriving, even if its main political party, the Alternative für Deutschland, has seen its popularity flag amid Covid-19. This week, a 200-page report by the Göttingen Institute for Democracy Studies, commissioned by the German Economy Ministry, found that right-wing extremism and xenophobia are acute problems, particularly in the country’s east, Jefferson Chase writes for German public outlet Deutsche Welle.

“[A]nyone expecting that the researchers would identify economic factors as the primary causes of right-wing radicalism was mistaken,” Chase writes. “In a nutshell, [they] found that attitudes carried over from communist East Germany make today's eastern Germans far more likely to be virulently xenophobic.” Exploring the geographical disparity, the Times’ Bennhold writes that Germany’s post-Cold War reunification allowed neo-Nazis to consolidate and mix ideologies from West to East. At The Washington Post, Loveday Morris and Luisa Beck note the report found “more than 370 suspected cases of right-wing extremism in Germany's police and security agencies,” ranging “from right-wing chat groups sharing neo-Nazi content to a group of extremist doomsday preppers who hoarded ammunition ahead of ‘Day X.’”

Sizing Up the ‘New Cold War’

The Financial Times has launched a series of essays on the “New Cold War” some see emerging between the US and China. In one, Gideon Rachman draws historical parallels, noting the ideological divide and technological competition reminiscent of the US-Soviet Cold War of the 20th century.

As in the 20th century Cold War, the winner may be determined by the internal strength of America’s and China’s political and economic systems, Rachman writes, while also identifying an alternative comparison. “Margaret Macmillan, who has written a history of the origins of the first world war, thinks the ‘more important parallel is the UK and Germany before 1914’. This was a classic great power rivalry between an established and a rising power. At the time, some argued that the extent of economic integration between Germany and Britain made war both irrational and unlikely. But that did not prevent the two nations sliding into hostilities,” Rachman writes.

In another essay, Kathrin Hille details the “great uncoupling” underway between the two economies, writing that production is already moving away from mainland China amid US restrictions and concerns about cybersecurity. “At a time when tensions between Washington and Beijing are increasingly beginning to resemble a new cold war,” Hille writes, “products ranging from computer servers to the Apple iPhone could end up having two separate supply chains—one for the Chinese market and one for much of the rest of the world.”