Author: M Barbu

Biden Wants Talks While China’s Xi Prepares for War

The meeting, as crucial as everyone believes it will be, should not occur. It is long past time for America to stop talking with the Chinese regime and start imposing costs for dangerous and other unacceptable behavior.

Talking sounds as if it should work but in fact has produced horrible results, for more than three decades. In short, dialogue enables China to buy time and often run out the clock.

Ukraine FM: Moscow playing ‘hunger games’ with world

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba pressed Southeast Asian countries for political and material support in his county’s fight against Russia, while accusing Moscow on Saturday of playing “hunger games” with the world by holding up shipments of Ukrainian grain and other agricultural products.

As Biden and Xi meet, can their old connection avert a clash?

Joe Biden shook hands with Xi Jinping that day in 2011 and the two vice presidents walked up a red carpet to the strains of their countries’ national anthems, until Biden paused unexpectedly before a Chinese official with a full head of hair. “If I had hair like yours, I’d be president,” he cracked, breaking the atmosphere of stately diplomacy.

Russo-Ukraine War Assessment: Russians Withdraw Across the Dnipro River

Russia Says They Have Left Kherson

According to The Hill, the Russian Defense Ministry announced Friday that they had completed their withdrawal of forces from Kherson, Ukraine. In a report available on their Telegram page, the Ministry wrote, “In Kherson direction, today, at 05.00 am (Moscow time), units of the Russian forces finished their redeployment to the left bank of Dnepr river.” You have to admire their wordsmithing; they didn’t withdraw, per se; they simply deployed elsewhere.

Biden pledges US will work with Southeast Asian nations

President Joe Biden promised Saturday that the United States would work with a strategically vital coalition of southeast Asian nations, telling leaders that “we’re going to build a better future that we all want to see” in the region where U.S. rival China is also working to expand its influence.

A Cold Winter for Europe: Blame Strategic Blindness

In 2008, the “flawless democrat” Putin invaded Georgia. The West was shocked. Putin critics… were shocked that the West was shocked. In 2014, Putin invaded the Crimean Peninsula, sovereign Ukrainian territory. The West remained shocked. In February 2022, Putin invaded Ukraine and annexed parts of the sovereign state. Was the West still shocked? It should not have been.

The Syrian Oil: Time for New Approach?

In Syria, opponents found in oil a rare point of consensus to cooperate and pick clean the country’s wealth and revenues, according to Ibrahim Hamidi for Asharq al-Awsat.

With the war in Syria now in its twelfth year and with the US-Russian conflict still ongoing to control the oil sector and its potential, local belligerents and regional opponents have found in oil a rare point of consensus to cooperate and pick clean the country’s wealth and revenues.