Should the U.S. Pledge to Defend Taiwan? | Who Owns “Conservative Statecraft”? | Old Terrorist Dies, and more

Until now. During the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) last month, Chinese leader Xi Jinping brought the Deng era of Chinese politics to a definitive close. In many respects, it was clear that “reform and opening” was on its way out at the 19th Party Congress in 2017, when Xi proclaimed “a new era” in which the party would rectify the ideological, political, and policy “imbalances” left over from his predecessors. But it was the 20th Party Congress that gave Xi an unprecedented third term as leader and removed pro-market officials from the CCP’s leadership. It even removed Xi’s predecessor from the proceedings. After nearly 44 years, history will record that it was this congress that administered the last rites to Deng’s reformist era. The brave new statist world of Xi Jinping is now in full force.
That means foreigners must set aside the comfortable analytical frameworks many of them have used to analyze China for the last two generations. Most countries, including many in the West, are predisposed to think that when China’s leaders speak in ideological terms, it is not to be taken seriously (or that if it is, the ideology purely applies to the party’s domestic politics). But that is no longer the case. As I wrote in Foreign Affairs shortly before the party congress, “Under Xi, ideology drives policy more often than the other way around.” He is a true believer in Marxism-Leninism; his rise represents the return to the world stage of Ideological Man. This Marxist-Nationalist ideological framework drives Beijing’s return to party control over politics and society with contracting space for private dissent and personal freedoms. It also drives Beijing’s born-again statist approach to economic management, and its increasingly assertive foreign and security policies aimed at changing the international status quo.

The Battle for Who Owns “Conservative Statecraft”  (Daniel Larison, Responsible Statecraft)
hat is conservative statecraft? It should be an approach to international affairs that prizes prudence, caution, and an inclination to mind our own business, but that is very different from the “conservative statecraft” outlined in a recent Foreign Policy article by Nadia Schadlow, who worked for the neoconservative Smith Richardson Foundation during the George W. Bush Administration and later in President Trump’s National Security Council.
The article is an exercise in wrapping up standard Republican hawkishness in the mantle of traditional conservative principles. That’s not surprising, but it isn’t persuasive because it isn’t true. 

China vs the West: A Contest That Will Hurt Africa’s Future  (Jakkie Cilliers, ISS)
Africa’s development depends on global rapprochement and overcoming its own lowest-common-denominator politics.

Teenager Accused of London Terror Attack Plot Was Obsessed with Call of Duty, Court Hears  (Duncan Gardham, Sky News)
A teenager accused of plotting a terrorist attack on central London with a drill rapper he met online became obsessed with the violent video game, Call of Duty, he has told a court. The 15-year-old, from Roundhay, Leeds, who cannot be named, is accused of helping Al-Arfat Hassan, 19, from Enfield, North London, prepare for a knife and bomb attack. Hassan, who used the stage name TS, gathered hundreds of thousands of fans on YouTube, Spotify and the radio station Kiss FM. He is accused of planning an attack in central London after viewing an ISIS video tutorial, buying bomb-making chemicals and purchasing knives. The pair met online after the teenager helped promote Hassan’s Islamist drill rap on TikTok, and they started talking about religion and playing PlayStation computer games like Fortnite, Assassin’s Creed and Call of Duty, he said. “Sometime in 2021, I started to spend a lot more time in my room and played a lot more PlayStation and Call of Duty and that is where a lot of the combat gear came from,” he told the court, giving evidence in his defense. “The more I played it, the more I thought, this looks cool.” Hinduja family feud leaves patriarch Srichand Hinduja without right dementia care and needing public nursing home, judge says Comedian Peter Kay (center) as he launches the Coulam Wheelyboat V17, a purpose-built fully wheelchair accessible powerboat at the Anderton Centre located on the banks of the Lower Rivington Reservoir near Bolton in Lancashire. Picture date: Saturday April 23, 2022.

Former German Extremist Klein Dies in France  (AFP / Barron’s)
Hans-Joachim Klein, an ex-member of Germany’s defunct extreme-left movement Revolutionary Cells, has died in France where he was buried on Monday, funeral services said. In 1975, Klein took part in an attack orchestrated by Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as Carlos the Jackal, on the OPEC headquarters in Vienna. An Iraqi bodyguard, an Austrian policeman and an OPEC member of staff were killed, and 70 people taken hostage by six armed attackers. He went into hiding, including in France where he spent much of the 1990s until his arrest in 1998 by French anti-terror police. Klein was sent back to Germany where he was sentenced to nine years in jail in 2001 for his role in the Vienna attack. Klein had already admitted publicly in 1977 that he had taken part in the attack, during which he was seriously injured, and said that he had renounced political violence. He was released from prison in 2003 and returned to his former hiding place, Sainte-Honorine-la-Guillaume in Normandy, where local press reports said he resided until his death on November 9. Ramirez Sanchez is currently serving three life sentences in a French prison for his attacks.

Should the United States Pledge to Defend Taiwan?  (Foreign Affairs)
We at Foreign Affairs have recently published a number of pieces on the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, U.S. policy regarding the island, and the risk of a U.S.-Chinese conflict over the Taiwan strait. To complement these articles, we decided to ask a broad pool of experts for their take. As with previous surveys, we approached dozens of authorities with specialized expertise relevant to the question at hand, together with leading generalists in the field. Participants were asked to state whether they agreed or disagreed with a proposition and to rate their confidence level in their opinion. Read their answers.