While much of the world was focused on the recent climate summit in Scotland, China had its eye on a very different environmental issue. For the fifth year in a row, China, with Russian assistance, used an international forum to prevent the establishment of new marine protected areas along the coast of Antarctica. Beijing is increasingly interested in the southern continent, and for all the wrong reasons.
What precisely does the Biden administration want to accomplish in its diplomacy with Iran? With new talks over Iran's nuclear program now underway in Vienna, it’s a question worth asking.
In a much-publicized address in 2005, then-Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick laid out the prevailing wisdom in Washington regarding the proper way to approach the People's Republic of China (PRC). "Chinese leaders have decided that their success depends on being networked with the modern world," Zoellick argued before the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. As a result, he contended, the U.S. needed to make every effort to turn the PRC into a "responsible stakeholder" on the world stage.
China may well be America’s biggest global threat. Nevertheless, U.S. policymakers must remain prepared to confront a hostile leader in Moscow who, too, is committed to challenging America and the West whenever and however he can.
Today, the Egyptian state faces no shortage of strategic threats, ranging from instability emanating from the ongoing crisis next door in Libya to an escalating conflict with nearby Ethiopia over access to the Nile. Yet its biggest long-term challenge is a distinctly domestic one: the quickening pace of its own population.