How Adversaries Size Up Biden's Foreign Policy

U.S. President Joe Biden (L) and Russian President Vladimir Putin met during the U.S.-Russia summit at Villa La Grange in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 16, 2021. (Getty Images)

Last week Russian troops fanned out across Kazakhstan; the Myanmar junta sentenced Aung San Suu Kyi to four more years in prison; and China transferred a senior official from Xinjiang to lead the People’s Liberation Army’s garrison in Hong Kong. These worrying developments make two things clear, Walter Russell Mead writes in The Wall Street Journal. First, America’s geopolitical adversaries aren’t impressed by the Biden administration. Second, the administration’s attempts to prioritize human rights and democracy have so far failed to reverse or even to slow the retreat of democracy around the world.

Is the US Military Actually Ready for a War?

The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz steams ahead of the guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton during the Malabar 2020 exercises in the north Arabian Sea, November 17, 2020. (US Navy)

The United States faces the immediate threat of great-power competition and the prospect of great-power war. Yet there is no sign that the armed services, or the defense establishment more broadly, are intellectually prepared for this, Seth Cropsey and Harry Halem argue in National Review. Too much rides on the question of the U.S. military’s preparedness to be swallowed by intellectual laxity, to disappear into Byzantine bureaucracy, or to continue to be distracted by social desiderata.

Virtual Event | China's Coercive Missile Strategy and the US Response

A formation of Dongfeng-17 conventional missiles at a military parade during the celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China in Beijing, China, Oct. 1, 2019. (Getty Images)

The People’s Republic of China is making aggressive advances in both conventional and nuclear military weapons technology, and recently surprised analysts with a globe-spanning hypersonic weapon. How should the U.S. respond to this threat? Join Hudson Senior Fellow Rebeccah L. Heinrichs for a discussion today at noon with Dr. Mark Lewis, Dr. Christopher Yeaw, and Hudson Fellow Timothy A. Walton on China’s coercive missile strategy and what they hope to see in the forthcoming National Defense Strategy.

🎙Making a Killing | Ep. 32 China's Serial Censorship

On the latest episode of Making a Killing, Hudson Adjunct Fellow Paul Massaro and Dr. Andreas Fulda discuss how the Chinese Communist Party leverages its economic power to silence academics and other critics. Hudson’s weekly podcast Making a Killing explores how corruption reshapes global politics and fuels some of the deadliest security threats facing the world today. Tune in to new episodes every Thursday and be sure to subscribe.

China's Emerging Middle Eastern Kingdom

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian attends a press conference on October 27, 2021 in Tehran, Iran. (Getty Images)

Iran’s foreign minister is set to travel to China this week to cement ties with Beijing—a worrying development that underscores the determination of both regimes to join forces and undermine American influence in the region. Michael Doran and Peter Rough sounded the alarm in a prescient piece published in Tablet Magazine in 2020, warning that America’s foreign policy community would pay the price for refusing to recognize China’s emerging Middle Eastern kingdom. 

BEFORE YOU GO...

Is China headed for an economic crisis? Hudson Institute Senior Fellows Thomas J. Duesterberg and Nadia Schadlow joined China Beige Book CEO Leland Miller earlier this week to discuss China’s economic slowdown and implications for the country’s political stability, and weighed in on Dr. Duesterberg’s recent report, Economic Cracks in the Great Wall of China.