Caracal ITK | Sep. 30
1. How Xi Jinping lost Australia: Politico reports that Australia thought it was on the cusp of a beautiful friendship with China nearly ten years ago. It opened up its economy to Beijing, wanted to teach Mandarin in schools, and invited the Chinese president to address parliament.
Now, that's all over.
These days, Australia is buying up nuclear-powered submarines to fend off Beijing, barring the country from key markets and bristling at its relentless attempts to coerce Australian politicians and media.
In part, the head-spinning shift reflects the rising global wariness of China's increasingly pugilistic behavior.
Xi's "Wolf Warrior" tactics pushed Australia right back into its traditional military nexus, with the US and UK, costing Beijing a potentially valuable partner in the region.
2. Xi Jinping's crackdown keeps growing: Nikkei reports billionaires banished. Celebrities canceled. Private businesses were wiped out overnight with the stroke of the ruling communist party's pen, along with a ban on the once-common practice of raising money offshore.
All of which has been prompting officials, investors, and indeed anyone with a stake in the future of the world's largest country to ask — what on earth is going on in Xi Jinping's China?
The new 'common prosperity' doctrine hearkens back to the Mao era.
3. No nation building for Americans: Six in 10 Americans now say the most critical lesson from Afghanistan is that the US shouldn't be involved in nation building. The poll, conducted by the Eurasia Group Foundation, also found that 76 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that "unless the country is under attack, the president of the United States should be required to seek approval from Congress before ordering military action overseas."
4. Borris Johnson to India to talk climate? Word on the street is that PM Johnson wants a diplomatic win leading into COP26. That could include a potential trip to New Delhi, which a UK official said the PM wants to visit before countries begin arriving in Glasgow in November. "He is keen to travel, hear different perspectives and see how countries can be helped to raise their ambition for COP," said the official. No. 10 wouldn't confirm the trip.
It makes sense as India is currently the fourth-largest carbon emitter and has not submitted an updated climate goal for this decade, one of the core tasks of COP26.
5. Biden's foreign policy is more similar to Trump's: Richard Haass opines: "Trump was supposed to be an aberration—a US president whose foreign policy marked a sharp but temporary break from an internationalism that had defined seven decades of US interactions with the world. He saw little value in alliances and spurned multilateral institutions. He eagerly withdrew from existing international agreements, such as the Paris climate accord and the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and backed away from new ones, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He coddled autocrats and trained his ire on the United States' democratic partners."
"At first glance, the foreign policy of US President Biden could hardly be more different… But the differences, meaningful as they are, obscure a deeper truth. There is far more continuity between the foreign policy of the current president and that of the former president than is typically recognized."
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