The PLA has carefully studied the use of network-centric militaries such as the US Army and observed the reliance of those organisations upon information as a key element of their technological superiority. A theoretical representation of the centrality of information to western methods of warfare is provided by the Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loop as described by John Boyd.
Given the lack of joined up thinking by China’s geopolitical adversaries, the biggest threat to China’s growing economic and geopolitical dominance may actually be itself.
For a country considered by many to have been the source of a global health pandemic resulting in over 5.3 million deaths globally, it is noteworthy that COVID-19 appears to have done little to check China’s geostrategic standing. If anything, it can be argued that China’s geostrategic reach may actually have increased. This is particularly the case as Western governments have presided over a series of geostrategic errors allowing Beijing to extend its sphere of influence almost unchallenged.
On Jan. 13, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed alarm that millions of Afghans are on the “verge of death” thanks to a lethal brew of “freezing temperatures and frozen assets.” This was no idle warning. Notwithstanding the decline in fighting following the Taliban’s victory in August 2021, Afghanistan’s economy is in a deepening spiral of impoverishment and destitution.
Many in the West believe China’s economic ascendancy indicates that Beijing is covertly working to usher in a new world order in which the balance of power has shifted.
History shows that changes in the world order are inevitable, but they are not happening as quickly as some analysts think. For example, the rise of the US to the world’s primary geopolitical position took nearly half a century, from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. France’s rise to domination over western Europe in the 17th century was also a long and arduous process.
While Tehran is proceeding slowly when it comes to establishing official ties with the Taliban government, recent talks highlight Iran’s interest in expanding its role in Afghanistan.
On his first official visit to Iran, the Taliban government’s acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi arrived in Tehran Jan. 9 for talks with his counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. Having held a preliminary meeting with Iranian officials in Kabul, the high-level Taliban delegation had already finalized the agenda.
President Joe Biden took office with what was, in many ways, a soft-power vision of foreign policy. But China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin have been busy reminding the United States that today’s world is one of big-power competition.
Regional experts say one key objective of Mr. Putin’s recent actions regarding Ukraine is to convince the U.S. to deal with Russia as the great power he sees it to be. At the end of a week of inconclusive diplomacy addressing Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Friday that if nothing else, “they are taking us seriously now.”
The same inaction by Western leaders to hold China accountable for the global pandemic that infuriates Western citizens only emboldens the Communist Party leadership, which sees inaction as a license to do more.
China will be constantly assessing the political strength of its adversaries. European political leaders have never demonstrated the stomach to confront military threats. During my tenure as U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands, I observed Europeans always believed dialogue was more important than confrontation. Bad agreements were better than no agreements and being party to agreements that did not work was better than withdrawing.
High oil prices are a victory for Saudi Arabia, but a blow to the United States and China.
Oil prices reached their highest point since 2014 today.
The price of Brent crude opened above $87 a barrel. Brent crude is widely considered the benchmark for global oil prices.
The NATO alliance is ill suited to twenty-first-century Europe. This is not because Russian President Vladimir Putin says it is or because Putin is trying to use the threat of a wider war in Ukraine to force neutrality on that country and to halt the alliance’s expansion. Rather, it is because NATO suffers from a severe design flaw: extending deep into the cauldron of eastern European geopolitics, it is too large, too poorly defined, and too provocative for its own good.
The US and its allies are countering the re-emergence of China with a Sinophobic confection of new alliances, military threats, jingoism and false propaganda about a falsely claimed Uyghur Genocide in Xinjiang. However excellent health, infant mortality, maternal mortality, population growth and education outcomes in Xinjiang reported by China and confirmed by respected NGOs contradict Sinophobic US, UK and Australian claims of a Uyghur Genocide.