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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

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May 16, 2024

Assassination Attempt Puts Slovakia’s Polarization in Spotlight

An assassination attempt on Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, described as “politically motivated” and a “lone wolf” attack, has put the country’s political divisions in the spotlight.
 
Fico reportedly remains in serious but stable condition. In a shocking episode caught on video, Fico was shot five times at relatively close range in broad daylight, while approaching a small crowd of people after an off-site government meeting in the town of Handlova. Police apprehended the 71-year-old suspected gunman. Deputy Prime Minister Tomáš Taraba said he believed Fico would survive.

The prime minister himself is controversial. As The Washington Post’s Emily Rauhala, Lodeday Morris, Ladka Baerova and Niha Masih write, Fico has been “a polarizing figure in his country and within the European Union.” Fico announced in October that Slovakia would halt weapons shipments to Ukraine. His “rhetoric in recent years has been laced with fringe conspiracy theories,” and he has pushed to replace Slovakia’s public broadcaster “with a new channel under greater government control,” the Post authors note. Warning that confusion and pro-Russian disinformation could follow the assassination attempt, Michael Toomey writes for The Conversation that “Fico is considered one of the most pro-Russian political leaders in Europe.”
 
It’s Slovakia’s overall climate of political division, however—not any specific controversy involving Fico—that is drawing the most attention. Political economist and central-Europe expert Soňa Muzikárová writes in an Atlantic Council roundup: “Slovakia’s politics and society are unprecedentedly polarized, which to some extent is the result of a pervasively uncivil political culture, amplified by social media, as well as citizens’ digital and civic illiteracy. What happened is a testament to the worrisome state of Slovakia’s democracy.” At Brussels Signal, Peter Caddle writes: “While the gunman’s motives remain unclear, many allies of the Slovak PM have opted to blame the media and the ruling left-nationalist Government’s opposition for the attack.”

How Russia Might Advance This Year

“Residents of Kharkiv have been monitoring reports with increasing urgency for the past five days as a new Russian offensive edges closer to the city,” Maria Avdeeva writes for the Atlantic Council.

It’s the latest sign of Russia’s plodding advance. Kyiv’s defenses have suffered seriously under two major problems—a lack of manpower and the long delay of additional US military aid, which congressional Republicans blocked before approving—as The New York Times’ David Sanger, Julian Barnes and Kim Barker write. They note some Western worries about the war: “Some veterans of dealing with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s serial confrontations are unsurprised at this turn in events. ‘Russia oftentimes starts its wars poorly and finishes strong,’ Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser under President George W. Bush, said at a Harvard conference on Friday. Now, he said, Russia has ‘brought its mass’—a far larger population to draw troops from, and a ‘huge military infrastructure’—to mount a comeback.”
 
As for what might happen during the rest of the year, keen war observer Jack Watling of the UK-based think tank Royal United Services Institute writes that Russia has stretched Ukrainian forces thin across a long front. Depleted Ukrainian air defenses have allowed Russia to fly glide bombs and reconnaissance drones deeper into Ukrainian territory.
 
“Having stretched the Ukrainians out, the contours of the Russian summer offensive are easy to discern,” Watling writes. “First, there will be the push against Kharkiv. Ukraine must commit troops to defend its second largest city, and given the size of the Russian group of forces in the area, this will draw in reserves of critical materiel, from air defences to artillery. Second, Russia will apply pressure on the other end of the line, initially threatening to reverse Ukraine’s gains from its 2023 offensive, and secondly putting at risk the city of Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine should be able to blunt this attack, but this will require the commitment of reserve units.”

Did US Diplomacy Prevent a Wider Middle East War?

Last month, Israel and Iran appeared dangerously close to sliding into a catastrophic all-out war. A strike on an Iranian consular building in Damascus, which had killed Iranian military commanders, was followed by a large Iranian drone-and-missile assault on Israel directly—a disturbing development, as it set a new precedent in a long-simmering, previously covert conflict between the two enemies.

In a Foreign Affairs essay, Vali Nasr of the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies writes that US diplomacy was key to avoiding the fearee escalatory spiral. To Nasr, that means US diplomacy still has a vital role to play in the region. Nasr writes: “After Iran retaliated, Washington and its allies redirected their efforts, this time leaning on Israel to temper its response. The diplomatic surge succeeded in keeping the crisis contained. It also made clear that the United States’ highest priority is to prevent the war in Gaza from igniting a regional conflagration and dragging the United States into another costly war in the Middle East. A fact working in Washington’s favor is that neither Iran nor Israel is keen on direct conflict, their recent show of force notwithstanding. … The silver lining to the crisis in April was that Washington and Tehran talked behind the scenes throughout the two weeks. Their communication was key to averting catastrophe.”

Did We Learn the Right Lessons From Covid?

A large avian-flu outbreak among animals is raising fears that disease-mitigation lessons went unlearned during the Covid-19 pandemic, or that the wrong lessons will be applied. In a New York Times guest opinion essay, disease historian John M. Barry writes that public-health officials “must be cautious about the lessons they might think Covid-19 left behind. We need to be prepared to fight the next war, not the last one. Two assumptions based on our Covid experience would be especially dangerous and could cause tremendous damage, even if policymakers realized their mistake and adjusted quickly. The first involves who is most likely to die from a pandemic virus. Covid primarily killed people 65 years and older, but Covid was an anomaly. … The second dangerous assumption is that public health measures like school and business closings and masking had little impact. That is incorrect.”
 
Noting that the “cornerstone of infectious disease preparedness” consists of surveillance, testing, vaccines, and antiviral treatments, University of Edinburgh global public-health professor and Guardian columnist Devi Sridhar writes: “With post Covid-19 fatigue, the bigger problem is bringing the public along and communicating the facts so that they are trusted and believed. With so much—often understandable—mistrust in our current political leadership, authorities like chief medical officers and independent government advisers become crucial.”