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TOPIC: geopolitics

Geopolitics

South Korea And Japan: Burying An Ugly Past To Counter China's Rise

South Korean President, Yoon Suk-yeol, made a gesture of reconciliation towards Japan, the country's former colonizer. It gives Washington hope that its two key Asian allies can overcome differences as they face an emboldened China and North Korea.

-Analysis-

South Korea's leader President Yoon took advantage of the commemoration of a key date in the Japanese occupation of South Korea, March 1, 1919, to make an unequivocal statement: "Today, more than a century after the March 1 movement, Japan has transformed from a militaristic aggressor of the past into a partner with whom we share the same universal values."

It was an outstretched hand with no conditions attached.

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Big Business, No Red Phone: Why U.S. v. China Is A Different Kind Of Cold War

To some, tensions between the U.S. and China look like a remake of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. Yet the West's nemesis this time is more sophisticated and tied to us commercially in ways Moscow never was. There are, however, also new kinds of danger.

-Analysis-

PARIS If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ... And yet. The relationship between China and the United States looks more and more like the Cold War of the past between the United States and the USSR, but it is something wholly different.

That difference of course begins with economic co-dependency. Bilateral trade between the two countries reached $690 billion in 2022 — a record — with a deficit that increased by $30 billion, to the detriment of the United States. The world, and even more its Asian neighbors, may be afraid of Chinese ambitions, but it is increasingly dependent on China economically — just as the Middle Kingdom depends, for its growth, on its foreign exchanges.

No, we are far from the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The destruction of the Chinese spy balloon may evoke the aerial incidents that preceded the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. And it is legitimate to wonder whether Taiwan will be a new Cuba. But, for the sake of historical rigor and geopolitical understanding – one must point out the significant differences between the “real” Cold War of yesterday and the “strange” Cold War of today.

First, Americans understood the USSR much better than they understand China. George Kennan's 1947 essay "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," published in Foreign Affairs, formulated the basis for the strategy of "containment." Today, in the United States (or elsewhere), there is no comparable analysis of China — no equivalent of this foundational text.

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Russia, U.S. And China All Know: Ukraine's Fate Will Define The World Of Tomorrow

One year since Russia's invasion, the global stakes of the war in Ukraine have come more fully into focus. It's a battle over fundamental questions of sovereignty and democracy, but also the very meaning of power.

-Analysis-

PARIS — When we talk about the state of the world during the time of war in Ukraine, the word that comes up most often is "fragmented." This is of course a euphemism, as we have seen in the deep divisions on display this past week.

As if they had consulted each other, Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden have doubled down on their rivalry: Putin, by brutally attacking the West, the root of all evil – and Biden, by showing his total commitment to Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.

But the world is not as bipolar as it was during the Cold War. China has burst onto the scene this anniversary week, with the visit of head Chinese diplomat Wang Yi to Munich and Moscow. On Wednesday, standing beside Putin, he spoke of a “rock solid” relationship between the two countries, without crossing the line into support of the Russian war.

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Modi Is Wrong: Russia's War Also Creates Real Risks For India

By shrugging aside Russia’s aggression, India has shown indifference to fears that China could follow Russia’s example.

-OpEd-

NEW DELHI — India is wrong to dismiss Russia’s war in Ukraine as Europe’s problem. The illegality and destructiveness of the invasion, and consequential food and energy crises, have global ramifications.

Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.

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This explains why 143 out of the 193 member-states of the UN General Assembly voted against recognizing Russia’s illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions after holding sham referenda there. Ninety-three voted in favor of expelling Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.

India has abstained from every vote in the UN condemning Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. The reason? Moscow is India’s top arms supplier and some 70% of India’s military platforms are of Russian origin.

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Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

Davos, The Slow Melt Into Irrelevance

The Davos Forum was once a true shaper of our collective future in a globalized world. Today it is beyond its expiry date, even if global solutions to global problems are needed more than ever.

-Analysis-

PARIS — For almost three decades now, perched in the Swiss Alps, has been the sunny face of a globalization that works.

It was the place, in the 1990s, where I understood for the first time the impact of the digital revolution. Davos was a place where one could meet Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk or Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres, up close, and far away from South Africa or the Middle East.

It was also there that the new democracies of Eastern Europe took their first steps into the free-market economy and where emerging countries could be paired up with international investors.

This era, we must say, is now truly over. The dream-like world of Davos, the world of the free flow of goods and capital, the world of globally integrated supply chains, and technology designed for the common good, has run into perils it did not or could not predict.

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Russia

This Happened—December 31: The Path Is Cleared For Putin

After a referendum held in March 1991, the creation of the post of president of Russia was created. Boris Yeltsin was elected Russia's first president in an election of that kind. On this day in 1999, he resigned and was succeeded by Vladimir Putin.

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This Happened

This Happened—December 27: Brutal End For A Woman Political Icon

Benazir Bhutto, twice Prime Minister of Pakistan, and then leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party, had been campaigning ahead of elections scheduled for January 2008 when she was shot, in a suicide terrorist attack.

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Ideas
Édouard Tétreau

Strange And Cruel As It Sounds, 2022 Was A Year Of Hope

Many lives have been lost, rights trampled and dreams crushed. But through the haze, the world took the right turn on many fronts this past year, from Ukraine to Iran to China. Trying to take stock amid the suffering.

The starting premise is a bit daring: to associate 2022 with good news seems naïve at best.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused the death, rape and torture of thousands of people.

In China, the iron-fisted 69-year-old Communist leader Xi Jinping strengthened his control over the Chinese population and looks set to stay in power for life. Meanwhile, in Iran, clerics continue to brutally suppress women’s protests for equal rights; in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to invade Greece.

Of course, it’s hard to speak of a “triumph” of Western democracies, many of which are stuck in sluggish, inconclusive elections: a French executive that lacks a clear majority, Liz Truss in the UK and the probably transient Giorgia Meloni in Italy. And yet...

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China
Dominique Moisi

Why Xi Jinping Can't Escape His Failures On COVID

Like unpopular leaders in democracies, Chinese President Xi Jinping has decided recently to increase his trips abroad to project an image of power and distract from the ills at home. But the debacle of the country's strategy on the pandemic is not going away, and there may be real long-term consequences.

-Analysis-

At the end of 2022, building new alliances around the world seems easier to the Chinese government than convincing its own population that Chinese vaccines will prevent a new surge in COVID cases.

Or put another way: the Middle East and Africa seem to trust China more than Chinese people themselves. It looks like trust toward China increases only with distance. So, it's reasonable to ask if the Chinese leaders themselves are aware of this dual evolution.

It wouldn’t hurt Chinese leaders to give a read to that essay entitled “Foreign Policy Begins at Home”, written in 2013 by the Council on Foreign Relations’ President in New York, Richard Haas. The book’s thesis is summed up in its title.

Haas is convinced that making the necessary reforms at home, economically and socially, is a crucial objective in any foreign policy. Without those structural reforms, he explains, the United States won’t be able to face the world’s new challenges.

But now, can we also apply this thesis to China?

After more than two years of self-imposed confinement, President Xi Jinping has started to travel more around the world. But his own freedom of movement deeply contrasts with the common fate of the Chinese people today.

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This Happened

This Happened—December 20: A Devastating Car Bomb In Madrid

On this day in 1973, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, the prime minister of Spain was killed in Madrid after a massive bomb exploded under his car.

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This Happened

This Happened — December 19: Assassination In An Art Gallery

The Russian diplomat Andrei Karlov served as an ambassador to North Korea, and then Turkey. On this day in 2016, he was assassinated while giving a speech in Turkey. The moment was captured by an Associated Press photographer who had been assigned to cover the speech.

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This Happened

This Happened—December 18: An Arab Monarchy Samples Democracy

The United Arab Emirates, a monarchy, had not allowed elections in its political system. On this day in 2006, that changed.

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