Over the past decade, global economic prospects have been penalized by the fall of world trade, investment and migration, coupled with the unwarranted suffering of over 100 million globally displaced. It’s a prologue to an untenable future.
While Europe becomes increasingly dependent on the US in its own backyard, the alliance puts Beijing on notice.
Russia and Ukraine are at war, Europe’s failure to take its defense seriously is evident to all, and the allies finally feel pressure to spend and do more militarily. Why, then, did they treat China as an adversary and invite several Asia-Pacific governments to last week’s NATO summit?
At the G7 Summit in Germany, on June 26, 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden made a pledge to raise $200 billion within the United States for global infrastructure spending. It was made clear that this new G7 project—the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII)—was intended to counter the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Given Biden’s failure to pass the Build Back Better bill (with its scope being almost halved from $3.5 trillion to $2.2 trillion), it is unlikely that he will get the U.S. Congress to go along with this new endeavor.
In May 2022, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko signed a law making any attempt to commit a terrorist attack punishable by death — and terrorism is exactly the charge being brought against a number of Belarusians who stand accused of damaging the country’s railroads. Belarus’s “railroad war” began before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when the Russian and Belarusian armies began conducting joint exercises; since then, there have been dozens of attacks. At Meduza’s request, Belarusian journalist Anya Perova reports on Belarus’s railroad guerrilla fighters.
The month of May-June 2022 has been the global calendar of important global multilateral interactions. Member States of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the United States gathered for the first-ever Special Summit held in Washington, D.C., on 12-13 May 2022. The Quad Security Dialogue a group made of four nations, India, Japan, the US, and Australia held its Quad leader summit on the 24th of May in Tokyo to discuss the development of the Indo-Pacific economically and threats rising across the Indo-Pacific region. 9th Summit of the Americas held in the United States in first week June for the first time playing host since the inaugural meeting in 1994. Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Summit (SCO-RATS) 2022 anti-terror body Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure was held between May 16-19 in Delhi. 14th BRICS Summit, convened under the Chairship of President Xi Jinping of China on 23-24 June 2022, in a virtual format. Group of Seven (G-7) Summit, Krün, Germany from June 26–28. 2022 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit, Madrid from June 29 to 30. NATO leaders will also take the decision to invite Finland and Sweden to become members of NATO.
Rebuilding an International System That Works
There they were, meeting in Beijing on February 4: Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Shortly before the start of the 2022 Winter Olympics, the two leaders released a remarkable 5,300-word joint statement about how the partnership between China and Russia would have “no limits.” The document went on at length about the two nations’ commitment to democracy. It called for a universalist and open world order, with the United Nations at the center. It stressed a commitment to international law, inclusiveness, and common values. It did all this even though Russia, as Xi and Putin both knew, was sending tanks and missile launchers to the Ukrainian border.
In remarks at the NATO Summit in Madrid, Spain, US President Joe Biden announced a sweeping increase in US troop deployments to Europe as part of a plan by NATO to militarize the continent for its ongoing war with Russia and escalating conflict with China.
If you have ever wondered what hell might feel like, ask an Afghan refugee. While you may not personally know any, there is a good chance that if you live near a major urban center in Europe, Canada or the United States, you’ve unknowingly passed someone on the street or stood in line behind someone at the grocery store who has recently fled Afghanistan.
In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a once-hesitant Germany was shocked into reorienting its national security posture. In response to Moscow’s aggression, Chancellor Olaf Scholz proceeded to announce the creation of a 100-billion-euro supplemental fund for the German military, halt the approval of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline and support international sanctions and energy embargoes against Russia.
From his first days in office, Joe Biden and his national security advisers seemed determined to revive America’s fading global leadership via the strategy they knew best — challenging the “revisionist powers” Russia and China with a Cold War-style aggressiveness. When it came to Beijing, the president combined the policy initiatives of his predecessors, pursuing Barack Obama’s “strategic pivot” from the Middle East to Asia, while continuing Donald Trump’s trade war with China. In the process, Biden revived the kind of bipartisan foreign policy not seen in Washington since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.