Tag: U.S

China’s new foreign minister slams U.S. ‘malicious confrontation’

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“If the United States does not hit the brake, but continues to speed down the wrong path … there will surely be conflict and confrontation and who will bear the catastrophic consequences?” Qin said.
Qin hinted at the potential for nuclear conflict between the two countries by saying that those policies could risk “the future of humanity.” And he implicitly referenced Biden’s comments in his State of the Union speech last month that the United States seeks “competition, not conflict” with China by accusing the U.S. of “not fair competition, but malicious confrontation.”

Journalists prepare for a press conference by Foreign Minister Qin Gang held on the sideline of the annual meeting of China’s National People’s Congress in Beijing on March 7, 2023.
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AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein
Qin’s uncompromising tone echoes that of his patron, Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping.
On Monday, Xi accused the U.S. and other Western countries of “all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing Chinese state media. That rhetoric also casts doubt on the sustainability of Xi and President Joe Biden’s agreement in their meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in November to try to stem the slide in U.S.-China ties.
Bilateral ties have been battered by the discovery and subsequent destruction of a Chinese spy balloon over the continental U.S. in February. Biden administration warnings last month that the Chinese government is considering providing lethal weaponry to Russia in its war against Ukraine have further roiled relations. And the conclusion of a Department of Energy report published last week that concluded (albeit with low confidence) that a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China, sparked the Covid-19 pandemic has renewed congressional anger toward China’s role in a pandemic that has killed more than a million Americans.
Qin insisted the balloon was a civilian air ship that an “unexpected accident” blew over the continental United States. Biden’s move to destroy the balloon “abused force and dramatized the accident, creating a diplomatic crisis that could have been avoided,” Qin said.
The perennial hot button issue of U.S. support for Taiwan also was front and center in Qin’s press conference.
Qin warned that Beijing will take “all necessary measures” to enforce its claim of sovereignty over the self-governing island. And he floated a bizarre conspiracy theory for the Biden administration’s policy of continuing to provide defense weaponry to the island. “Why does the U.S. keep on professing the maintenance of regional peace and stability while covertly formulating a plan for the destruction of Taiwan?” Qin said, without elaborating.

Qin also touted Beijing’s Ukraine peace proposal unveiled last month as a vehicle “to promote talks for peace.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan have both dismissed the proposal as a distraction that fails to challenge Russia’s aggression. Qin likewise avoided mention of that and instead implicitly blamed the U.S. for the conflict.
“There seems to be an invisible hand, pushing for the protraction and escalation of the conflict and using the Ukraine crisis to serve certain geopolitical agenda,” Qin said, without providing any additional details.
Beijing’s concerns about the Biden’s ability to rally allies and partners to counter what Blinken calls China’s threat to the rules-based international order also emerged in Qin’s remarks. Qin slammed the Indo-Pacific Strategy as a plot “to encircle China.” And he denounced Japan — which announced a dramatic expansion of its military forces in December — of taking part in “a new Cold War to contain China.”
And Qin flexed his familiarity with U.S. political fault lines with comments that appeared to target Donald Trump’s tough language on China at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday.
“If the United States has the ambition to make itself great again … containment and suppression will not make America great, and it will not stop the rejuvenation of China,” Qin said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 7, 2023
2 Ukrainian pilots are in U.S. to determine fighter jet skills

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“The program involves watching how Ukrainian pilots conduct their mission planning and execution in flight simulators in order to determine how we can better advise the Ukrainian Air Force,” the U.S. official said.
A Defense Department official and another person familiar with the program said the aim is to evaluate how long it will take Ukrainian pilots to learn to fly modern fighter aircraft, including F-16s. The program was supposed to begin late last year, but was delayed, the people said.
The pilots have been at the base for a week and will stay for at least one more week. A Defense Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The news, first reported by NBC News, comes as top Biden administration officials repeatedly bat down the idea of sending the jets anytime soon.
“F-16s are a question for a later time,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said during a recent interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And that’s why President Biden said that, for now, he’s not moving forward with those.”
Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s top policy official, told the House Armed Services Committee last week that the U.S. has not started training Ukrainians on F-16s, and that the timeline for delivering the aircraft is estimated at 18 months.
“Since we haven’t made the decision to provide F-16s and neither have our allies and partners, it doesn’t make sense to start to train them on a system they may never get,” Kahl said.
The decision to bring Ukrainian pilots over to the U.S. for an assessment does not change the thinking on whether to provide F-16s to Kyiv, the U.S. official said.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 6, 2023
Mexican president: My nation has more democracy than U.S.

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The Mexican president responded “there is more democracy in Mexico than could exist in the United States.”
“If they want to have a debate on this issue, let’s do it,” López Obrador said pugnaciously. “I have evidence to prove there is more liberty and democracy in our country.”
The Mexican president is notoriously touchy about criticism, whether it comes from human rights groups, non-governmental organizations, the press, or Mexican regulatory or oversight agencies.
Price said in a statement that “Today, in Mexico, we see a great debate on electoral reforms on the independence of electoral and judicial institutions that illustrates Mexico’s vibrant democracy.”
“We respect Mexico’s sovereignty. We believe that a well-resourced, independent electoral system and respect for judicial independence support healthy democracy.”
At the root of the conflict are plans by López Obrador, which were approved last week by Mexico’s Senate, to cut salaries and funding for local election offices, and scale back training for citizens who operate and oversee polling stations. The changes would also reduce sanctions for candidates who fail to report campaign spending.
López Obrador denies the reforms are a threat to democracy and says criticism is elitist. He argues that the funds would be better spent on the poor.
Tens of thousands of people demonstrated over the weekend in Mexico City’s main plaza, calling the cuts a threat to democracy.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 1, 2023
White House scales back plans to regulate U.S. investments in China

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The White House and National Security Council declined to comment.
An order along those lines would be far more modest than some of the investment restrictions Biden and Congress considered last year. Then, policymakers proposed setting up a government review board that could deny U.S. deals in a wide swath of Chinese industries — including microchips, AI, quantum computing, clean energy and biotechnology — when they felt national security was at risk.
Backing away from those plans would represent a setback for China hawks in the White House, who have led a campaign to undermine Beijing’s high-tech industries, and could slow the momentum toward strategic separation — or “decoupling” — between American and Chinese industries. And it would underscore how even as diplomatic relations between Washington and Beijing nosedive, strong economic interests continue to bind the U.S. and China together.
Officials in the administration and Congress who have advocated a tougher line with China will be “very disappointed” if the eventual order “falls short of having the authority to reject deals” between U.S. and Chinese firms, said Eric Sayers, a former staffer for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command during the Trump administration.
But even a scaled back executive order would represent a new chapter for federal oversight of American business overseas. Until recently, the U.S. government largely allowed American business free rein in the world’s second largest economy. But China’s use of U.S. technology and funding to develop its advanced microchips, weapons systems and other defense industries has pushed national security officials to argue for more oversight in recent years. Executive action scrutinizing so-called “outbound investments” represents the next step of that campaign to curtail Chinese technological development, even if it is less aggressive than earlier plans.
“While this [executive order] is the first official step, we shouldn’t expect it to be the last,” said Sayers, now managing director at D.C. consulting firm Beacon Global Strategies. He noted that past investment screening policies, like the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, took decades to be fully established. “This will likely be an additive process that grows over time through both executive powers and legislative action,” he said.
Though the final order is still in flux, the administration is likely to set up a pilot program under which U.S. firms doing new deals with Chinese artificial intelligence and quantum computing firms would have to disclose details to government authorities. Biotech and clean energy deals are now likely to be left out of the initial executive order, the people with knowledge said, though regulatory efforts could be extended after the pilot program and opportunities for comment from industry and outside groups.
Such an order would represent a setback for national security leaders in the White House, led by the National Security Council, who have advocated for a more aggressive approach. Last September, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a speech that the administration would aim to undermine Chinese development across a numbers of sectors — AI, quantum, chips, biotech and clean energy — that were subject to the original executive order discussions.

But despite continued tensions over Taiwan and the recent surveillance balloon debacle, the administration has since narrowed its approach at the request of the Treasury Department, which has long opposed an aggressive approach to outbound investments and has been meeting with U.S. financial firms since last fall. Momentum for the NSC’s more aggressive approach also slowed after the departure last fall of one of Sullivan’s key deputies, Peter Harrell, who had helped lead the economic campaign against Beijing.
Momentum in Congress also appears to have slowed. Over the past two years, lawmakers have debated bipartisan legislation that would have set up a new federal review panel headed by the U.S. Trade Representative with broad authority to review and deny American investments across a wide swath of the Chinese economy. But they were ultimately unsuccessful in attaching the bill to Congress’ CHIPS Act last year or the yearly defense spending bill.
Now, some Republicans in the House are advocating a narrower approach, with leaders of the House Financial Services Committee pushing legislation that would expand the federal government’s ability to blacklist Chinese firms, but not set up new federal oversight authority. “For the U.S. to compete with China, we cannot become more like the Chinese Communist Party,” Chair Patrick McHenry said at a hearing earlier this month.
The debate will now turn to the Senate, where the Banking Committee will hold a hearing Tuesday on sanctions, export controls and “other tools” like outbound investment screening. While Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has been generally supportive of efforts to increase oversight of U.S. firms in China, it is still unclear what changes he and ranking member Tim Scott (R-S.C.) will seek to the bipartisan bill debated last year.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 28, 2023
Crypto firms brace for ‘carpet-bombing moment’ in U.S. as Europe beckons

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“We will have the best framework in the world in which companies can develop,” said Stefan Berger, the conservative German lawmaker who shepherded the EU crypto rulebook that will come into force in the second half of 2024. “We will have everything that you need for a workable market.”
It’s an argument that no U.S. policymaker is in a position to make, with American politicians at odds over whether to embrace or discourage the growth of crypto and regulators taking matters into their own hands. The collapse of the digital asset exchange FTX only complicated matters, revealing widespread industry mismanagement and taking down its former chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried, once a major crypto player in Washington. Lobbyists and sympathetic lawmakers stateside are trying to keep pressure on Congress by warning that the U.S. is falling behind the rest of the world without a clearer set of rules.
At stake is America’s reputation as a promoter of innovation and a global hub for finance. While the crypto world has lost political clout in recent months, the advancement of the EU is providing fresh motivation for industry allies in Congress to press ahead with their agenda.
“The European Union’s ahead of us. Switzerland’s ahead of us. Australia’s ahead of us,” said Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, a Republican Bitcoin advocate who has drafted a comprehensive crypto regulation bill. “England’s ahead of us. So it’s not just second- and third-world countries.”
The contrast with the EU is clear because the U.S. regulation of the industry rests on a melange of state-level rules and licensing that operates alongside federal financial safeguards designed for old-school banks, traditional stock trading and commodity exchanges.
Despite the inconsistencies, crypto has flourished for years in the U.S. system — thanks to friendly state-level approaches and little intervention from Washington.
But the sector is beginning to face a sweeping crackdown by federal agencies that have lost patience with what they see as flagrant flaunting of traditional financial regulations on investments and lending.
“We’re feeling a crypto carpet-bombing moment, where they seem to be trying to throw whatever they can within their authority — or potentially exceeding their authority — and we think that’s shortsighted,” said Kristin Smith, CEO of the Washington-based Blockchain Association. “We think it’s bad for U.S. competitiveness.”

The EU’s openness toward crypto is a striking turnaround: the Europeans crafted their new rules after essentially freezing out the industry when Facebook, now known as Meta, announced its Libra digital currency in 2019.
European officials — prompted by fears of big tech minting private money — effectively stopped the project from launching.
That episode prompted lawmakers to draft industry-specific regulations before similar crypto products could take hold on the continent.
The Markets in Crypto-Assets law that EU policymakers came up with, dubbed MiCA, sets strict rules for stablecoins, a type of digital asset like the now-defunct Libra that’s anchored to a national currency or other established financial product. It also creates investor safeguards, capital requirements and corporate governance rules for the broader crypto market. Aides to U.S. lawmakers were in Brussels in recent days to talk with EU officials about the new law.
“Europe is clearly outpacing the U.S. by establishing holistic regulatory frameworks for the cryptoasset industry,” said Susan Friedman, international policy counsel at Ripple, a digital currency firm that’s mounting a legal challenge against an enforcement action brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission “We fully expect Europe to become a natural hub for responsible participants going forward.”
To be sure, some European officials are concerned that the new law isn’t sufficient to head off another debacle at a global crypto company like FTX. They want to layer on additional safeguards.
“MiCA is a positive step in the right direction, but it is certainly not perfect or complete,” said Ernest Urtasun, Spain’s left-leaning Green parliamentarian who helped write the rulebook. “More work needs to be done to respond to the regulatory and supervisory challenges we are seeing today.”
Mark Hays, a senior policy analyst at Americans for Financial Reform, said parts of the EU regime may be more permissive in the eyes of the crypto industry compared to “the straightforward effort underway in the United States to simply apply the rules that exist.”
“The tension between the European Commission, the Council and the parliament means that EU rules are especially complicated, and that’s an environment in which industry lobbyists thrive,” Hays said.
In the U.S., the pressure from the crypto industry is falling flat with its skeptics in Congress, who are unfazed by the prospect of Europe taking market share. And some top crypto firm players say the EU still isn’t a welcoming place to operate.
“Crypto, it’s not like it provides that many jobs,” Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a digital currency critic, said in an interview. “Companies always threaten to offshore when they’re gaming the system.”
Dante Disparte, chief strategy officer and head of global policy at stablecoin issuer Circle, said he would take the U.S. regulatory ambiguity “over the near five years of hurry up and wait the Europeans have embarked on” while drafting and implementing their new law.
Disparte speaks from experience. He was one of the leaders of Facebook’s Libra project, which EU officials stopped from getting off the ground.
“You might not like that America is stuck in a fintech constitutional crisis that protects and preserves the states as the laboratories of fintech innovation in the country,” he said. “But that’s a powerful feature and not a bug.”
Eleanor Mueller contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 26, 2023
How the U.S. is trying to close a backdoor for Russia’s military

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“We’re seeing Russia increasingly use dual-use goods to further their military industrial complex, tearing out semiconductors from everything to fridges to microwaves in order to put them in military equipment,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in remarks on Tuesday that provided a broad preview of this week’s action.
“What we’re going to do is further tighten our exports controls and sanctions to go after these dual-use goods we know are furthering their war effort,” he added.
At the start of the war, the U.S. rallied a group of 36 countries to coordinate so-called export controls that prevented Moscow from procuring advanced microchips and software that could feed its war machine. Russia, however, continues to supply its military through unconventional means, which is testing the limits of the coalition’s export restrictions. The experience has forced a rethink of how the U.S. applies the Cold War-era regulations not only to Russia but also long-term adversaries like China and Iran.
The Commerce Department on Friday added hundreds of items — from kitchen appliances to auto parts — to a list that now requires a special license to export to Russia, which in most cases will be denied. It also expanded export controls aimed at Iran, which has continued to provision Russia’s military, and slapped 86 entities on a trade blacklist due to their ongoing support of the war effort.
The export control measures were part of broader enforcement actions taken by the U.S. and G-7 countries on Friday. The Treasury Department separately imposed sanctions on 200 people and entities in finance, defense, mining and other sectors critical to Russia’s economy. And the administration raised tariffs on 100 Russian metals, minerals and chemical products.
“They’re doing what I think sanctions experts knew was going to happen sooner or later, which is they’re plugging holes,” said William Reinsch, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former undersecretary of Commerce for export administration during the Clinton administration. “Anytime you impose sanctions there’s going to be leakage.”
Even as the Biden administration has worked to block the sale of critical items to Russia, other countries have gladly stepped into the breach. Exports to Russia from China, Belarus, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Uzbekistan are now above pre-war levels, according to a report from Silverado Policy Accelerator, a non-profit organization.
That could happen with the latest round of restrictions, as well, unless the U.S. convinces more countries to adopt similar trade restrictions, experts say. The U.S. must also keep cracking down on companies that it discovers are selling prohibited technology to the Russian military.

“The irony here is the U.S. doesn’t make too many refrigerators,” said Doug Jacobson, an export control attorney.
“This is kind of the best you can do, keep identifying the people that are cheating and keep sanctioning them,” Reinsch added. “But there’s always another move in this game, on both sides.”
While there’s certainly evidence global export controls and sanctions have debased Russia’s economy, it’s also clear they have not crippled it completely.
Russian exports grew by 15.6 percent in value in 2022 because of oil, gas and fertilizer prices spiking — a perverse effect of the war and sanctions tightening global markets and pushing prices up, according to a new report from the World Trade Organization. Its trade with several countries, including China, India and Turkey, increased last year.
Still, there are signs Russia is struggling. The Russian economy dipped 2.2 percent in 2022 as global sanctions took effect, according to the International Monetary Fund. Export controls have especially hampered the country’s automobile, aerospace and manufacturing sectors, while energy sanctions and price caps have taken a bite out of Moscow’s lucrative oil income.
Adeyemo asserted the efforts up to now have prevented Russia from being able to replace more than 9,000 pieces of military equipment. He also emphasized in his speech that China cannot provide the advanced semiconductors Russia needs for its war effort and nearly 40 percent of the less advanced microchips China is providing Russia are defective.
The multinational cooperation on sanctions since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year has been something of a test for how allied countries can use economic penalties to punish aggressive regimes. Some trade experts say that the coalition-building strategy is working, albeit slowly.
“What the evidence would show is that the export controls have had a significant impact,” said Michael Smart, the managing director at Rock Creek Global Advisors. “It’s not immediate. It’s not like flipping a switch. It’s more of a strangulation. And it’s something that you see over time.”
The Biden administration’s ability to quickly align foreign allies against Russia was likely facilitated by the international coalition that the Obama administration built in 2014 to push back against Putin’s invasion of Crimea, notes Edward Fishman, a State Department official during the Obama years who is now a senior researcher at Columbia University’s Center for Global Energy Policy.
Hatching new export control coalitions could become key to economic warfare with another major power: China.
“The administration is now trying to build a similar coalition for China, for the export controls it has been putting in place on the Chinese high-end semiconductors, for instance,” Fishman said. “And I think that’s why, because it’s much better to forge that coalition before a crisis breaks out than it is to scramble to build it after a crisis is already underway.”
“What we’re seeing is the embryonic version of alliances like NATO, but built for economic war not military war,” he continued.
But the challenges posed by China are distinctly different, and not only because China is a much more intimidating economic power. While alignment against China has been growing, the U.S. has had to actively persuade allies to join measures like the ban on telecom giant Huawei and export controls on microchip equipment.
“A lot of our allies have basically made the point that China is not Russia, which isn’t to say China isn’t a threat, they would agree that it is, but just that the circumstances are not the same,” said Smart, who served on former President George W. Bush’s National Security Council.
“You don’t automatically get the same quick, unified approach that you had in response to the brutal invasion of Ukraine,” he continued.
Gavin Bade and Adam Behsudi contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 25, 2023
U.S. dismisses China’s Ukraine peace proposal as an attempt to distract

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“China’s been trying to have it both ways — it’s on the one hand trying to present itself publicly as neutral and seeking peace, while at the same time it is talking up Russia’s false narrative about the war,” Blinken said. “There are 12 points in the Chinese plan. If they were serious about the first one, sovereignty, then this war could end tomorrow.”
Those comments echoed remarks from President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, the day before. “My first reaction to it is that it could stop at point one, which is to respect the sovereignty of all nations … this was a war of choice waged by Putin,” Sullivan told CNN on Thursday.
The proposal itself falls short of what Beijing had promised. China’s top diplomat Wang Yi touted last week that the plan would include “important propositions” from Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping “conducive to a peaceful resolution of the conflict.” Instead it mostly restates Beijing’s existing positions on the war by linking it to the Kremlin’s “legitimate security concerns.”
The timing, however, is significant. The proposal comes after Blinken warned this week that China is considering providing lethal weaponry to Moscow to use against Ukraine.
And world leaders are coming out en masse to counter China’s messaging. Beijing’s peace proposal “doesn’t have much credibility because they have not been able to condemn the illegal invasion of Ukraine,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday. The EU would consider China’s proposals “against the backdrop that China has taken sides,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Beijing helped earn that distrust by abstaining from a United Nations’ resolution on Thursday demanding that Russia immediately withdraw from Ukraine.
Beijing’s proposal doesn’t reference Russia as the conflict’s aggressor or demand that Putin stop the war. Instead it calls for Kyiv and Moscow to “exercise restraint” and says it supports “promoting talks for peace.” The Chinese government also distances itself from leading such efforts by limiting its participation to a hands-off “constructive role.”
“The Chinese are running up against the problem that their buddy Russia has a maximalist position [on Ukraine] and is not going to budge,” said Daniel Fried, former assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs and now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. “But instead of pushing the Russians, they’re coming up with mush.”
That rhetoric could have impact in other parts of the globe, said Alexander Gabuev, senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. He argued that the U.S. and European officials lashing out at the proposal may not be its intended audience.

China can now market the plan in the global south as proof of Beijing’s dedication to peace and tell the U.S. and its allies “It’s your job to convince the Ukrainians [to stop fighting] — our mission here is accomplished,” Gabuev said.
The document’s publication means “China gets a PR victory upfront without doing anything,” Gabuev said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 25, 2023
U.S. diplomatic counter-offensive targets China’s ‘false information’

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The new details about Washington’s messaging strategy, including the extent to which the administration is pushing back on Beijing behind the scenes through diplomatic outreach to allies and partners, illuminates the lengths to which Washington feels it needs to go to counter China.
Those efforts also underscore the Biden administration’s resolve to hold Beijing accountable for the incident and to use it as an exemplar of the long international reach of China’s malign activities, even as China tries to woo Europe and other regional blocs.
The Biden administration has reacted strongly “because it’s so clearly a case where the Chinese should just have admitted that they took an action that they should not have taken,” said Zack Cooper, former assistant to the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism at the National Security Council.
“And rather than just owning up to what was pretty obvious for all to see, [Beijing] launched into a whole propaganda campaign that was pretty frustrating for the administration, especially given that they were heading into what would have been [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken’s first trip to Beijing.”
The National Security Council declined to comment on the record for this story.
China has continued to push back against the U.S. allegations, deflecting questions about its surveillance activities and the extent to which it is planning on supporting Russia in Ukraine. Now, the two countries are engaged in an intense public standoff, and neither side is indicating that it’s ready to back down anytime soon.
It started with the spy balloon. On Feb. 5 — the day after the U.S. shot down the Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina — the Biden administration sent out an “action request” to U.S. diplomatic posts across the globe telling them to push the message that China “is attempting to change the narrative by providing false information.”
The cable included 28 concise talking points for U.S. representatives from Brussels to Grenada and Frankfurt to Busan to share with foreign government officials “in private diplomatic engagements.” The U.S. had several key demands for Beijing, according to the cable, including that the airship “cease operations” and “immediately” leave U.S. airspace.

The State Department pushed its diplomats to move fast. Beijing was mobilizing state media to accuse the U.S. of overreacting in its decision to destroy the balloon in a bid to paint the Chinese government as “the responsible actor in the dispute.” Diplomats were directed to emphasize that the U.S. “is not looking to escalate the situation.”
“We thought it was the responsible thing to do on our part to share as much as we could. Our presentations have been fact-based. This is not an effort to engage in a messaging exercise or to put spin on the ball,” said a State Department official who was granted anonymity because the individual was not authorized to speak on the record.
The U.S. was just as persistent with China. Officials from the top tiers of the Biden administration down to the embassy level of the State Department have engaged with their counterparts in China in more than a dozen meetings since the balloon was first detected in late January, according to two of the U.S. officials. The officials, and others, were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic discussions.
There’s been little to show for that outreach, however. Beijing rejected an offer to get on the phone with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Feb. 4, the day the balloon was shot down. It wasn’t until several days later that the Chinese embassy called to lay out the country’s official response, one it had already given publicly: The balloon had merely been dispatched to monitor the weather, one of the U.S. officials said.
Then, when Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference this weekend, both had sharp words for their counterparts. And Blinken didn’t limit himself to the balloon. He also directly warned the Chinese about taking the step to send weapons to Russia to aid its Ukraine war effort — a prospect the U.S. is increasingly worried about.
“I was able to share with [Wang], as President Biden had shared with President Xi, the serious consequences that would have for our relationship,” Blinken said in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation.
Beijing has responded with provocations of its own.
“It’s the U.S. side, not the Chinese side, that’s providing an endless flow of weapons,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters Monday. “The U.S. side isn’t qualified to point fingers at China or order China around.”
U.S. officials say they’re trying to force Beijing to back down, in part, by detailing the intelligence they have against them.
Over the last several weeks, administration officials have downgraded the classification level on certain intelligence regarding the balloon and China’s plans regarding support for Russia in order to share that information with their Chinese counterparts, two of the officials said.
The officials said that though the U.S. has long been concerned about China and Russia’s alliance, new details about their economic and military partnership have emerged in recent days, putting the administration on edge.
The U.S. has also briefed allies about that intelligence and is requesting diplomats across the world push back against both Beijing’s false narrative about the balloon and its consideration of sending lethal weapons to Russia, two of the officials said.
If messages coming from Europe this week are any indication, the outreach to allies, at least, is creating a united front.
On Monday, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said it would be a “red line” for the European Union if China sends arms to Russia. Top diplomats from Sweden and Lithuania voiced similar sentiments. And NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg followed suit on Tuesday.
China’s Wang Yi, meanwhile, arrived in Russia Wednesday where he met with President Vladimir Putin and the head of Russia’s National Security Council. Putin declared that Russia-China ties had reached “new frontiers” and announced that Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping is expected to visit Russia later this year.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 23, 2023
Biden asserts U.S. support for Ukraine ‘will not waver’

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The moment also reflected just how much had changed since the last time Biden spoke in that same palace complex in Poland, almost exactly 12 months ago and just days after Putin ordered his forces to cross the Ukrainian border and plunge Europe into war. Though the war shows no signs of abating, with months of carnage likely ahead, Biden stressed that Putin has already failed in his objective to seize Ukraine.
“One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kyiv,” Biden said, “and I can report that Kyiv stands strong, it stands proud and it stands free.”
Nearly a year ago, Biden used his speech to convince European allies that helping Kyiv was not a futile exercise, imploring democracies to rally together and stand up to Putin’s militant authoritarianism. His message then was somber and grim, reflecting the uncertainty about Ukraine’s ability to repel a much larger foe. Though Putin’s initial lunge at Kyiv had failed, there was a sense among military experts on both sides of the Atlantic that Russia would, soon enough, simply overwhelm Ukraine.
That is no longer the case. Ukraine has held, having pushed the front back to the eastern and southern edges of the country. Led by Washington, the West has stayed in lockstep and funneled weapons and money to Kyiv, dealing one humiliating military setback after another to Moscow.
“When Russia invaded, it wasn’t just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages,” Biden said. “Europe was being tested. America was being tested. NATO’s is being tested. All democracies are being tested. And the questions we face are as simple as they re profound: Would we respond, or would we look the other way?”
“One year later, we know the answer,” he said. “We did respond. We would be strong, we would be united, and the world would not look the other way.”
The atmosphere in Kubicki Arcades, part of Warsaw’s Royal Castle complex, reflected the change. In a moment that would have been unthinkable a year ago, the speech environment felt similar to a NATO pep rally. Flags from Ukraine, Poland and the U.S. lined the venue. Blue and yellow lights projected on the surroundings and an upbeat soundtrack — including Bruce Springsteen and Twisted Sister — blared in the hours before Biden spoke.
A year ago, Biden spoke in Poland at the palace in an almost-funereal atmosphere after he held a somber meeting with Ukrainian refugees. This time, Biden arrived on the heels of his surprise visit to Kyiv. There, the president — wearing his trademark aviators — defiantly strutted with his Ukrainian counterpart through downtown in broad daylight, underscoring Putin’s inability to reach the capital.

Putin had thought he would capture Kyiv in days. Instead, he spent Tuesday offering a split screen — delivering a major speech in Moscow just hours before Biden spoke in Poland. The Russian leader offered his usual bluster about his war and again falsely claimed that NATO had been the aggressor, but his power seemed diminished, his threats hollow.
Putin spoke in front of a bored-looking audience of Russian elites while Biden spoke in front of thousands, who cheered loudly at mentions of NATO. Though Putin was widely expected to use the one-year mark of the war, which is this week, to announce a major escalation of the fight, all he did Tuesday was announce that Russia would suspend its participation in a nuclear treat that it largely already ignored.
Biden returned to Poland, a nation that knows all too well the fight for democracy against larger oppressors, to declare that the conflict’s “principles and the stakes are eternal.” He thanked Poland for supporting the war effort and opening their arms to scores of Ukrainian refugees who streamed across the border seeking shelter and safety.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 21, 2023
‘Irresponsible’: Blinken raps Putin decision to suspend nuclear treaty with U.S.

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The treaty is the last remaining nonproliferation agreement between the pair after another key nuclear accord, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, expired in 2019.
On Tuesday, Putin announced that he’s suspending Moscow’s participation after accusing the U.S. of being involved in attempting to strike bases in Russia. He stopped short of a complete withdrawal, however.
Putin made the remarks the same day Biden was in Poland to give a speech marking the one-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and one day after he made a surprise visit to Kyiv.
The U.S. in January accused Russia of not complying with the treaty by not allowing the United States and NATO to inspect its nuclear facilities. The pact includes limits on systems such as intercontinental ballistic missiles and deployed nuclear warheads.
“When the administration started, we extended New START because it was clearly in the security interest in our country and actually in the security interests of Russia,” Blinken said. “And that only underscores what an irresponsible action this is.”
“Of course, we remain ready to talk about strategic arms limitations at any time with Russia,” Blinken added, “irrespective of anything else going on in the world.”
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#Irresponsible #Blinken #raps #Putin #decision #suspend #nuclear #treaty #U.S
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 21, 2023