China's Climate Change Shell Game

A worker examines sewage recycling at the coal liquefaction factory of CHN Energy in Ordos, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, April 11, 2019. (Xinhua/via Getty Images)

Biden has promised to re-enter the Paris Climate Agreement on his first day in office, that famous “Day One” when all presidents perform wondrous feats, writes Irwin Stelzer. While the Paris accord requires America and other countries to reduce their emissions, China plans to lower domestically generated emissions by exporting them to other countries. Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt, the Philippines, and other countries will host more than 300 coal plants currently being built or planned by China. Were Biden to postpone re-entry into the Paris accord, there would be time to persuade U.S. allies to amend the requirements for China’s continued membership and count emissions from Chinese-financed coal plants as China’s responsibility.

90's Nostalgia Grips the Biden Team

Yitzhak Rabin, Bill Clinton, Yasser Arafat and Warren Christopher pose September 13, 1993 in Washington, DC. The peace accord signed in Oslo and sealed at the White House allowed Palestinian self-rule in Israeli occupied Gaza and the West Bank region. (Dirck Halstead/Liaison)

The incoming Biden team is nostalgic for the golden 1990s when history was over, writes Walter Russell Mead in the Wall Street Journal. After the Cold War, world politics looked to be about global governance: developing a more open trade and financial system, addressing climate change, and promoting democracy and human rights. The global governance issues that many on Team Biden care most about cannot be addressed without the hard-nosed geopolitics that many Democrats reject. The president-elect’s foreign policy will stand or fall on his ability to manage that paradox.

A White Elephant Swap at the UN

Elephant and camel statues line the path to Ming Dynasty tombs, Beijing, China. (Getty Images)

On the UN’s 70th anniversary, General Secretary Xi Jinping announced that China would set up a $1 billion trust fund to “contribute more to world peace and development.” But that trust fund, one of Xi’s pet projects, has taken on a quietly invasive role, writes Claudia Rosett in the Spectator. The promised $1 billion never fully materialized, and Xi eventually downsized the gift to $200 million over 10 years. Yet it’s the UN who made the real gift, with a stronger UN commitment to the promotion of Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative, with its predatory lending practices, strong-arm diplomacy and trade practices, and potential military extension of China’s reach.

Congress Affirms Religious Minorities

Asia Bibi and French journalist Anne-Isabelle Tollet seen leaving Elysee Palace after a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, on February 28, 2020 in Paris, France. Bibi, a Christian mother of five, was sentenced to death for blasphemy in November 2010 after being accused by Muslim women in her village of insulting the Prophet Mohammed. She was acquitted in 2018. (Antoine Gyori/Corbis via Getty Images)

In Providence Magazine, Paul Marshall highlights a bright spot at the end of a dark year. Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution calling for the repeal of blasphemy laws by a 386-3 vote. While symbolic, the resolution recognizes that accusations and punishments for religiously offensive speech are often used as a tool for religious suppression around the world. Such accusations are used to punish Baha’is and Christians in Iran, Shi’a in Egypt, converts in India, religious minorities in Pakistan, the Ahmadiyya throughout the world, and to silence Muslim reformers.

Major League Competition

Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with General Secretary Xi Jinping during a meeting in Xiamen, China, September 3, 2017.  (Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)

After 30 years of facing off against “minor league” powers such as Iraq, Libya, and substate terrorist organizations in the Middle East, the U.S. military must now prepare for “major league” competition against China and Russia, writes Andrew Krepinevich in Foreign Affairs. With its economic lead over its rivals shrinking, the United States must spend its military budget wisely. The longer it takes to develop operational concepts for great-power competition, the longer U.S. program and budget priorities will be out of whack.

BEFORE YOU GO...

The keeping of the American Republic hasn’t been an easy or gentle task, writes Tod Lindberg in the latest Look Ahead essay. Americans shouldn't expect the rest of the world to conform anytime soon to principles of democratic, rights-regarding self-governance, but we can affirm that such a system is the best answer human beings have devised to the problem of politics. Or to tone that claim down a bit, we can put it in Churchillian terms: our system is the worst—except for all the others.