US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks on the Bund in Shanghai. (Instagram | @secblinken) | |
| The US might be deep into crises in the Middle East and Ukraine, but the most critical foreign policy challenge for the White House remains America's new superpower rival in the Asia-Pacific region. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in China taking his turn trying to stabilize the world's most important diplomatic relationship. Since President Joe Biden and President Xi Jinping met in San Francisco in November, new issues have emerged that threaten to upset their effort to avert the plunge in Sino-US relations.
Blinken said in an Instagram video he recorded against the spectacular Shanghai skyline that he'll ask China to do more to stem the export of precursor chemicals for fentanyl synthetic opioids, the leading killer of young Americans aged 18 to 49, following an agreement on the issue at the presidential summit. American officials have also made clear they'll ask China to crack down on banks that are helping finance Russia's military industrial complex and fueling the war in Ukraine. The possibility of sanctions on such entities would alarm China — but could also have unpredictable knock-on effects in the global economy during an election year, so Beijing might bet that it's unlikely that Biden will take serious action.
Blinken will travel on to Beijing at a delicate moment since the US Congress has finally passed a package of foreign aid bills, which includes $8.1 billion for the Indo-Pacific region meant to bolster allies, principally Taiwan, to counter China's growing power and increasingly aggressive territorial claims in the region. Taiwan will now be able to buy billions of dollars more in sophisticated US weapons.
One of the most dangerous aspects of US-China antagonism in recent years is the lack of communications. But that has changed, in one positive sign. Biden spoke by phone with Xi earlier this month. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was just in Beijing and national security adviser Jake Sullivan recently met his counterpart. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was finally able to get in touch with his opposite number in a video conference after months of silence. The idea — from the US side at least — is that the more the two sides talk, the greater the chances of avoiding miscalculations in places like the South China Sea that could lead to dangerous military confrontation.
But as the esteemed US China expert Elizabeth Economy points out in the new issue of Foreign Affairs journal, Xi is bent on changing the balance of power in the world. He "wants to dissolve Washington's network of allies and purge what he dismisses as 'Western' values from international bodies. He wants to knock the US dollar off its pedestal and eliminate Washington's chokehold over critical technology."
No amount of talking will fix that. | |
| 'The indignity of being shunted aside' | California lawmakers are looking to crack down on Clear, the paid service that lets people skip the security line at airports. State legislators voted 8-4 to move a bill out of the Senate Transportation Committee that would create a moratorium on Clear's expansion at California airports. Clear, a publicly-traded security company, lets members jump the line at airports, sports, concerts and other venues for $189 per year. Once a traveler's identity has been verified with a biometric scan, the traveler is escorted by a Clear employee right to the front of a TSA security line. But the process is unfair to travelers not enrolled in Clear, who are "subject to the indignity of being shunted aside to make way for those who do," state Sen. Josh Newman, a Democrat who introduced the bill, said in a statement to CNN. "This is inequitable, especially in light of the fact that it's their tax dollars which fund airport security services in the first place." The bill still has to be approved by the full California Senate and Assembly and signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom to become law. | |
| Two court hearings, one ex-president | For most people, sitting in court at their own criminal trial would represent a defining moment of their life. But Donald Trump's return to his hush money trial Thursday does not even represent the most critical courtroom drama of his day. The ex-president's attention is certain to stray from what he has twice complained is a "freezing" court in New York to the neoclassical splendor of the US Supreme Court. Justices will be hearing oral arguments in his sweeping immunity case that could have profound implications for his legal fate and poses never-before-resolved questions about the powers of the presidency. The double court date will represent yet another unfathomable twist in the saga of the presumptive Republican nominee who is again stretching America's judicial and constitutional systems to their limit as he runs to reclaim the White House. Trump has left no doubt he'd much rather be on the grander stage in Washington, watching Supreme Court justices — three of whom he appointed — debate his claim that as an ex-president he cannot be prosecuted for any actions he took in office. Trump the showman would surely relish holding a photo-op on the Supreme Court steps below an ornate marble facade that reads "Equal Justice Under Law." It would be a far more colorful spectacle for a presidential campaign that has morphed with his legal defenses than the increasingly repetitive press gaggles he holds in the dingy corridor outside the Manhattan courtroom hearing his first criminal trial. But since he's a criminal defendant, Trump has no choice but to listen to more testimony in New York from former tabloid publisher David Pecker, a key witness for prosecutors who allege the ex-president tried to mislead 2016 general election voters by covering up an affair that he denies. | |
| Thanks for reading. On Thursday, the US Supreme Court hears oral arguments in Trump v. United States. A UN Security Council meeting takes place on the situation in the Middle East. |
|
| ® © 2024 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All Rights Reserved. 1050 Techwood Drive NW, Atlanta, GA 30318 | |
|
| |
|
| |