The Deep Roots of the India-Canada Diplomatic Rift | The End of Nagorno-Karabakh | North Korea and China Aren’t the Allies You Think They Are, and more

America Prepares for a Pacific War with China It Doesn’t Want  (Zuri Linetsky, Foreign Policy)
Ensuring the Indo-Pacific region remains “free and open” is the primary strategic objective of the Biden administration. It seeks to protect the law of the sea, maintain open sea lanes and the free flow of seaborne trade, and resist coercion against Taiwan. To this end, the United States is working to ensure its military capacities can be intermingled with local allies and partners in “integrated deterrence.” This requires sustaining forces thousands of miles from the United States, sitting at the end of intricate supply chains that China has every interest in breaking.
It’s not just that the mission is far away; the theater itself is enormous. Nearly 6,000 miles lay between the U.S. military bases in San Diego and Iwakuni, Japan—more than twice the distance from Washington to Los Angeles. The United States and its allies need to minimize travel time and maximize the time their forces can remain deployed in forward areas.
This requires systems for moving and using fuel, weapons, and other critical supplies, for repairing equipment, and for setting up and maintaining bases. Moving U.S. military personnel and equipment from Australia toward the Chinese coast, for example, requires traveling more than 5,000 miles through Indonesia, the Philippines, and on toward the Taiwan Strait. It can require aerial refueling or airstrips to land on with prepositioned fuel, ordnance, and other supplies.
But these supply chains can be perceived as offensive provocations by China. The United States accumulating access to new airfields and military bases and building up partner military forces it can integrate with seamlessly feeds into Chinese narratives that China is being contained by the United States. I saw this firsthand.

What Does a Russia-Leaning Party Win in an E.U. Nation Mean for Ukraine?  (Andrew Higgins, New York Times)
A Russia-friendly populist party finished first in a crowded field on Sunday in Slovakia’s parliamentary elections, a vote that many in Europe have seen as a bellwether of support for the war in Ukraine.
The party led by Robert Fico, a pugnacious former prime minister who has vowed to stop aid to Kyiv, held almost 23 percent of the votes, with nearly all districts tallied, while a liberal party that wants to maintain robust support in the fight against Russia trailed with about 18 percent.
Neither of the top two finishers — Mr. Fico’s populist and nominally left-wing Smer and the liberal Progressive Slovakia — was close to winning a majority, leaving the shape of the next government and its policy toward Ukraine dependent on the performance of smaller parties with widely differing views on Russia and on the ability to form a coalition.
A far-right party even more hostile to helping Ukraine than Mr. Fico’s failed to make it into Parliament, making it difficult for anti-Ukraine forces to form a government.

Russia May Be Planning to Test a Nuclear-Powered Missile  (Riley Mellen, New York Times)
Satellite imagery and aviation data suggest that Russia may be preparing to test an experimental nuclear-powered cruise missile— or may have recently tested one — with a theoretical range of thousands of miles.
Movements of aircraft and vehicles at and near a base in Russia’s remote Arctic region are consistent with preparations that were made for tests of the missile, known as the Burevestnik or SSC-X-9 Skyfall, in 2017 and 2018, according to a New York Times analysis.
U.S. surveillance planes have also been tracked in the area over the last two weeks, and aviation alerts have warned pilots to avoid nearby airspace.
Russia previously conducted 13 known tests between 2017 and 2019, all of which were unsuccessful, according to a report from the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit group focused on arms control. And mishaps can be deadly. A missile launched in 2019 crashed and eventually exploded during a recovery attempt, killing seven people, according to U.S. officials.

South Korea Urges UK to Take Military Role in Pacific  (Richard Spencer, The Times)
South Korea has called on Britain to keep a military as well as a diplomatic presence in the Pacific as the region rearms in response to tension between China and the West.
The country’s foreign minister, Park Jin, told The Times that he welcomed the government’s decision to launch its new aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, with a tour of the Far East.
South Korea is building its first aircraft carrier with British assistance. On Thursday, Taiwan, another western ally, unveiled its own first home-built submarine, a response to the speed of growth of China’s navy in recent years.

North Korea and China Aren’t the Allies You Think They Are  (Bruce Bennet, 1945)
We have a habit of thinking of China and North Korea as allies. Indeed, China’s Mao Zedong once described the two as being “as close as lips and teeth.”
North Korea is the only country with which China has a mutual defense treaty. China demonstrated its support by committing massive Chinese military formations to assist North Korea during the Korean War, and as a result suffered half a million soldiers killed or wounded, including the death of Mao’s son and potential heir.
All these decades later, the China-North Korea relationship is a key element of the developing the Russia-China-North Korea imperialist partnership. 
Despite this history, however, there has been considerable friction between China and North Korea over the years. China did not provide North Korea the assistance Pyongyang wanted in developing nuclear weapons. Beijing feared that North Korean aggressiveness could lead to a war on the peninsula that would affect China. Beijing has restrained but nevertheless supported UN Security Council sanctions against North Korea’s nuclear weapon tests for the same reason — but also because it fears potential North Korean nuclear weapon threats against China itself.