American foreign policy

Snap quiz: who was president when Vladimir Putin gobbled up Crimea? If you said Barack Obama, go to the head of the class. What countries did Putin invade while Donald Trump was president? If you said “None,” you get to stay at the head of the class. This is a harder one: who was president when Putin once again violated Ukraine’s borders, sending in Russian troops to two breakaway regions in Eastern Ukraine? I say that this is harder because the obvious answer — “Joe Biden” — is not really, or not wholly, correct. Joe Biden is an empty shell. On good days, he looks like a mannequin. Really, though, he is a puppet, a creature controlled by others. I have called those others “The Committee.

The world’s center of gravity is shifting to the Indo-Pacific. The new global order will be shaped by developments in a sprawling region where interstate rivalries and tensions are sharpening geopolitical risks. Building a stable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific has become more important than ever, but China’s territorial and maritime revisionism, and its heavy-handed use of economic and military power, are causing instability and undercutting international norms. Against this background, the expanding strategic partnership between the world’s most powerful and most populous democracies — the United States and India — has become pivotal to equilibrium in the Indo-Pacific.

Oil and gas prices have soared since Joe Biden took office and skyrocketed further as Russian troops surround Ukraine. Prices will get worse — much worse — if Putin invades. President Biden has promised “swift, sharp sanctions” on Russia and an end to the Nord Stream II pipeline, which will supply Germany with much-needed Russian natural gas when it’s completed. The German chancellor has said little about ending the pipeline but has not publicly contradicted Biden’s threat to stop it. European analysts are confident Germany will go along with American energy sanctions, including those on Nord Stream II. In any case, the US can stop the pipeline, if it chooses.

Vladimir Putin has been the most effective practitioner of Realpolitik for the past two decades. With an economy about the size of Italy’s, and just as corrupt, he has accomplished his most ambitious goal: returning Russia to the status of a Great Power. Now he’s thrown his chips on the table once more, launching a massive troop build-up on the border with Ukraine and sending still more into Belarus (for “joint exercises”), positioning them just north of Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv. Although the numbers don’t appear large enough to conquer all his neighbor’s territory, they are large enough to push through the eastern region (the one bordering Russia) and form a land bridge to Crimea, which Russia conquered in February 2014.

Kim Jong-un is focused first and foremost on managing his country’s lingering food crisis. But that doesn’t mean the thirty-seven-year-old dictator has any intention of siphoning off resources from North Korea’s weapons programs. He made that abundantly obvious this week, when Pyongyang conducted its second ballistic missile test using hypersonic technology in four months. According to North Korean media, the missile traveled 435 miles to the east, hitting the designated target. The response to the latest test was predictable. South Korea called an emergency meeting to discuss the launch. The US State Department quickly issued a statement to reporters reminding them that the tests are a violation of multiple UN Security Council Resolutions (as if North Korea cared).