WORLD ROUNDUPWhy Biden’s China Reset Is a Bad Idea | Machine Learning & Nuclear Retaliation | Latin America & Continental Cooperation, and more
· America Cannot Compete with Russia and China for the Entirety of the Global South
The United States does not need and cannot afford to seek primacy everywhere
· Why Biden’s China Reset Is a Bad Idea
Signaling neediness to an adversary has never been effective
· South American Presidents Come to Lula’s Party, but Check His Leadership
In Brasília, leaders weighed how to make continental cooperation more durable after a past attempt sputtered
· North Korea Using Social Engineering to Enable Hacking of Think Tanks, Academia, and Media
North Korean government hackers employed computer network exploitation (CNE) globally against researchers, academics
· Germany to Probe Report of Chinese Pilot Training
A handful of former German Luftwaffe officers are employed as trainers in China for several years
· Prove It Before You Use It: Nuclear Retaliation Under Uncertainty
The U.S. is modernizing its early warning radar systems – but it relies more on machine learning and less on human judgment
America Cannot Compete with Russia and China for the Entirety of the Global South (Suzanne Loftus, National Interest)
The United States does not need to and cannot afford to seek primacy everywhere; and for geographical reasons alone, there are some regions where American influence will be inferior.
Why Biden’s China Reset Is a Bad Idea (A. Wess Mitchell, Foreign Policy)
Now is not the time for the United States to pursue détente with China, as the Biden administration has been trying to do for several weeks now. U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan held intensive talks with senior Chinese official Wang Yi in Vienna in mid-May, followed by a flurry of U.S. attempts at engagement in the military and commercial fields, as well as at the presidential level. Today, a secret visit by CIA Director William Burns to Beijing in May also became public.
The administration’s logic seems to be that if the United States pursues sustained, high-level outreach with Beijing, it will be able to find common ground on divisive issues in trade, climate, and security policy after a prolonged state of hostility between the two powers.
The general consensus in Washington seems to be that this is wise, not least because the United States needs Chinese goodwill to eventually bring Russia to the peace table in Ukraine. That’s what European allies have been telling the administration for many weeks. There also appears to be a political calculus: Going into an election year, U.S. President Joe Biden may reckon that he will need Chinese President Xi Jinping’s assistance with Russian President Vladimir Putin if, as some on his team appear to fear, Ukraine underperforms in its counteroffensive and American voters balk at the prospect of a protracted conflict. The prize for Biden could also be gains in trade or climate policy.
The problem is that Biden’s logic is all too transparent for Beijing. For more than two years this same U.S. administration has emphasized China as the top threat to U.S. national security. By suddenly shifting to diplomatic engagement a year from an election, the administration is signaling that it needs a diplomatic deal, even if it means chasing after China to get it.
