Tag: North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NATO Nations Grow More Receptive to U.S. Pleas to Confront China

Chin@Strategy

The discussion on China marked a shift toward a harder line on the challenges and threats it represents, especially among foreign ministers from previously more ambivalent countries, like Italy, Belgium, Spain and Portugal, some of whom called for less talk and more action to build a China strategy. Areas of concern included investment screening to protect key industries, infrastructure, cyber, technology and intellectual property, especially as countries are feeling the reach of China domestically and fear the West may be falling behind in important areas like artificial intelligence. The focus…

With Ukraine War, Europe’s Democratic Project Takes on New Urgency

Chin@Strategy

The Chinese Communist Party is principally concerned about control, but it does also care about good governance, she said, “which is why participatory practices are allowed.” Nevertheless, she cautioned, they are managed by the party and “at any time, the party can pull back.” Jaroslaw Kuisz, editor in chief of Kultura Liberalna, a centrist-liberal media organization in Poland, said that history explains the “nervous sovereignty” of countries on the edge of big empires — for instance, Taiwan, which lives under the threat of mainland China, as well as Poland, Finland…

Your Thursday Briefing: Turkey’s NATO Block

Chin@Strategy

Good morning. We’re covering Turkey’s move to stall NATO’s expansion, North Korea’s effort to follow China’s pandemic restrictions and China’s new tactic to censor online speech. Will Turkey block NATO’s expansion? Finland and Sweden formally asked to join NATO on Wednesday, heralding what could be the alliance’s biggest expansion in decades, and one that would increase its presence on Russia’s doorstep. But later in the day, Turkey, a NATO member, blocked an initial effort to move ahead quickly with the applications. Analysts said it was an attempt to squeeze out…

Your Tuesday Briefing: Russia’s Faltering Campaign

Chin@Strategy

Good morning. We’re covering Russia’s struggling military campaign, Australia’s halting recovery from bush fires and a Covid-19 protest at Peking University. Russia scales back its charge east After a series of military setbacks, Moscow now appears to be focusing on a narrow objective: widening its holdings in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas. But even there Russia may be forced to scale back its ambition to take most of eastern Ukraine, according to the Institute for the Study of War. Russia still controls the wide swath of southern Ukraine it seized…

Your Wednesday Briefing: Beijing’s Mass Testing Plan

Chin@Strategy

Good morning. We’re covering Beijing’s scramble to quash the Omicron variant, Germany’s pivot to supplying Ukraine with heavy weaponry and a brownface controversy roiling Hong Kong. Mass testing in Beijing Faced with a growing number of coronavirus infections across Beijing, city officials are trying to test most of the Chinese capital’s 22 million residents in the hope of avoiding the pain of imposing a citywide lockdown like in Shanghai. Beijing is ordering mass testing across the city more quickly than in Shanghai, where officials started testing on a similar scale…

Bristling Against the West, China Rallies Domestic Sympathy for Russia

Chin@Strategy

While Russian troops have battered Ukraine, officials in China have been meeting behind closed doors to study a Communist Party-produced documentary that extols President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as a hero. The humiliating collapse of the Soviet Union, the video says, was the result of efforts by the United States to destroy its legitimacy. With swelling music and sunny scenes of present-day Moscow, the documentary praises Mr. Putin for restoring Stalin’s standing as a great wartime leader and for renewing patriotic pride in Russia’s past. To the world, China…

How Will the Ukraine War End?

Chin@Strategy

U.S. officials have said that Russia appealed to China for military and economic support. Biden warned China’s leader, Xi Jinping, that granting that request would incur “consequences,” though the administration has not specified what those consequences might be. “The administration’s dilemma is that China is the world’s second-largest economy and the origin point of countless global supply chains,” wrote Phelim Kine of Politico. “Unlike Russia, whose relative unimportance to the function of Western economies made it relatively easier to sanction, China is a dominant player in everything from electrical appliances…

Diplomacy Quickens to Halt Ukraine War or Stop Its Expansion

Chin@Strategy

LONDON — Diplomatic activity quickened on multiple fronts Monday as Russia’s war on Ukraine entered an uncertain new phase, with President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces widening their bombardment of Kyiv and other cities, hundreds of civilians escaping the devastated port of Mariupol, and the United States warning China over its deepening alignment with an isolated Russia. There were no breakthroughs, either at the negotiating tables or on the battlefield. But as the human cost of the war continued to mount, the flurry of developments suggested that people were groping for…

Ukraine War Ushers In ‘New Era’ for Biden and U.S. Abroad

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — The war in Ukraine has prompted the biggest rethinking of American foreign policy since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, infusing the United States with a new sense of mission and changing its strategic calculus with allies and adversaries alike. The Russian invasion has bonded America to Europe more tightly than at any time since the Cold War and deepened U.S. ties with Asian allies, while forcing a reassessment of rivals like China, Iran and Venezuela. And it has re-energized Washington’s leadership role in the democratic world just months…

Fiona Hill on the War Putin Is Really Fighting

Chin@Strategy

ezra klein I’m Ezra Klein, and this is “The Ezra Klein Show.” [MUSIC PLAYING] If there is to be an off ramp in Ukraine, a deal, something to stop the fighting here, it’s going to need to be something that Putin, Zelensky, and the West can all agree on. And as hard as that kind of deal was to imagine a month ago, it is harder now, because — think about how all of the actors and factors here have changed. Vladimir Putin, he had a very optimistic view of…