Category Archives: US foreign policy

Data, not arms, the key driver in emerging US-China cold war | Robert Reich

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Cybersecurity comes down to which side has access to more information about the other and can utilize it best

This week, shares in China’s giant ride-hailing app Didi crashed by more than 20%. A few days before, Didi had raised $4.4bn in a massive IPO in New York – the biggest initial public offering by a Chinese company since Alibaba’s debut in 2014.

The proximate cause of Didi’s crash was an announcement by China’s Cyberspace Administration that it suspected Didi of illegally collecting and using personal information. Pending an investigation, it had ordered Didi to stop registering new users and removed Didi’s app from China’s app stores.

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‘We expect them to act’: Biden presses Putin on ransomware groups, hints at retaliation

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Joe Biden’s hour-long phone call with the Russian leader suggests growing impatience over attacks disrupting US sectors

Joe Biden has increased pressure on Vladimir Putin to move against ransomware groups operating from Russia, warning the United States is prepared to respond if cyberhacks are not stopped.

The two leaders held an hour-long phone call on Friday, their first since they discussed ransomware attacks at a summit in Geneva on 16 June. Biden’s message to Putin in the call was direct, suggesting a growing impatience over attacks that have disrupted key US sectors.

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Haiti requests US troops to protect infrastructure after assassination

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• Elections minister calls for US help amid political instability

• Previous foreign interventions have proved controversial

Haiti’s government has requested that the United States send troops to protect key infrastructure following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse this week, the elections minister, Mathias Pierre, said on Friday.

Related: Why were Colombian guns for hire allegedly key to Haiti assassination plot?

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Taliban sweep through Herat province as Afghan advance continues

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Fears grow for Kabul government after militant group seizes two key border crossings

The Taliban has swept through western Herat province, seizing two key border crossings to Iran and Turkmenistan, and much of the countryside beyond city limits.

It was the latest part of Afghanistan to collapse in the face of a rapid militant advance, during which they have taken control of areas far beyond their original southern strongholds. Their speed has fuelled fears the government in Kabul could fall within months.

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Biden says ‘I will not send another generation of Americans to war in Afghanistan’ – live

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Michael Avenatti, the former lawyer to Stormy Daniels who repeatedly clashed with Donald Trump during his presidency, has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison for trying to extort Nike.

Reuters reports:

U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe in Manhattan said Avenatti, 50, ‘had become drunk on the power of his platform’ in betraying his client, a youth basketball coach, in order to obtain riches for himself.

The sentencing caps a precipitous downfall for a once-obscure lawyer who in 2018 became a cable news fixture, disparaging then-President Trump and even flirting with a White House run himself.

Joe Biden rejected comparisons between the end of the Vietnam War and the conclusion of the war in Afghanistan, insisting the two events are nothing alike.

However, some American veterans have said they feel the US military is leaving a job undone in Afghanistan, just as it did in Vietnam. Some also fear that Kabul will soon fall to the Taliban, as Saigon fell after US troops departed Vietnam.

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Afghan anger over US’s sudden, silent Bagram departure

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Military officials say troops turned off power and slipped away without notifying new commander

US forces plunged their main operating base in Afghanistan into darkness and abandoned it to looters when they slipped away in the middle of the night after two decades at the site without notifying their Afghan allies.

The furtive departure from Bagram airbase, which is vital to the security of Kabul and holds about 5,000 mostly Taliban prisoners, infuriated the Afghans. Many saw it as emblematic of a withdrawal they say is being carried out entirely to fit an American political schedule, with no heed for the collapsing security situation on the ground.

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Afghanistan: America’s ‘longest war’ ends amid accusations of betrayal

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Analysis: Washington did not learn the lessons of Vietnam and more death and suffering are inevitable

The US war in Afghanistan was not supposed to be another Vietnam. “I don’t do quagmires,” said Donald Rumsfeld, the architect of the original US invasion, who died last week. In the end the former US defence secretary did two quagmires, airily assuming Afghanistan was “won” in the spring of 2003 when he sent American troops to fight in Iraq.

US combat troops were in Vietnam for eight years, but they have been in Afghanistan for 20. It has been America’s longest war by far.

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US must guarantee it will not leave nuclear deal again, says Iran

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Tehran’s insistence signals that issue is still a serious obstacle after three months of talks in Vienna

A US guarantee that it will never unilaterally leave the Iran nuclear deal again is vital to a successful conclusion of talks in Vienna on the terms of Washington’s return to the agreement, the Iranian ambassador to the UN, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, has said.

His comments are the clearest official signal yet that disagreements between the US and Iran on how such a guarantee might be constructed remain a serious obstacle. Donald Trump took the US out of the nuclear deal in 2018, only three years afterhis predecessor, Barack Obama, had signed it.

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US plans to evacuate thousands of interpreters before Afghanistan pullout

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• Operation expected to include up to 50,000 people

• Interpreters and families fear reprisals from Taliban

The United States is planning to evacuate a group of vulnerable Afghan interpreters before the US military completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan so they can wrap up their visa applications from safety, according to officials.

The evacuation of the at-risk Afghans will include their family members for a total of as many as 50,000 people, a senior Republican lawmaker told Reuters.

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Kim Jong-un’s sister dismisses hopes of US-North Korea nuclear talks

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Kim Yo-jong’s intervention appears to have thwarted any prospects for early resumption of negotiations

Kim Jong-un’s influential sister appears to have dismissed hopes for a breakthrough on nuclear talks with the US, warning Washington that it faced “disappointment” if it believed engagement with North Korea was a possibility.

Kim Yo-jong, a senior figure in the ruling party who is considered one of the North Korean leader’s closest confidantes, said any US expectations for a resumption of talks were “wrong”, according to the state-run KCNA news agency.

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‘Forces for good will prevail’: Joy in Taiwan as US sends 2.5m Covid vaccine doses

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The US donation has more than doubled Taiwan’s available vaccine stocks as it battles a rise in coronavirus infections

Taiwan has reacted with an outpouring of thanks to the United States for shipping 2.5m Covid-19 vaccine doses to the island, more than doubling its arsenal as it deals with a rise in domestic infections.

Washington, competing with Beijing to deepen geopolitical clout through “vaccine diplomacy”, initially had promised to donate 750,000 doses but increased that number as President Joe Biden’s administration advances its pledge to send 80m US-made shots around the world.

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Kim Jong-un says North Korea preparing for ‘dialogue and confrontation’ with US

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Dictator tells ruling Workers’ party of the need to get ready for ‘fast-changing’ security situation

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has said his country needs to prepare for “both dialogue and confrontation” with the United States under Joe Biden, state media reported on Friday.

At a meeting of the central committee of the ruling Workers’ party on Thursday, Kim outlined his strategy for relations with Washington, and the “policy tendency of the newly emerged US administration”, the Korean Central News Agency said.

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Biden warns Russia over cyber attacks, says Putin doesn’t want cold war – video

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Joe Biden warned Russian president Vladimir Putin that the US has significant cyber capability as he looked to pressure his counterpart over cyberattacks. The US leader says Putin wasn't seeking to intensify confrontation with the west after the two held "good and positive" talks. "I think that the last thing he wants now is a Cold War,” Biden said

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Biden warns US will hit back if Russia continues with cyber strikes

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US president hails ‘good and positive’ talks but added ‘proof of the pudding is in the eating’

The US will retaliate if Russia continues to carry out malicious cyber-attacks against American targets, Joe Biden said on Wednesday, after holding “good and positive” talks in Geneva with Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin.

Speaking after their first face-to-face summit, Biden said he had made clear the Kremlin had to “abide by the rules of the road” or face unspecified consequences. Putin was aware the US possessed “unrivalled” cyber capacities, Biden stressed.

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Little left to chance in carefully-curated Geneva summit

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Meeting goes as well as could be expected as Biden and Putin speak language of diplomacy – but hardly one of affection

Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin hadn’t even sat down before tensions boiled over at the 18th-century Villa La Grange, a fine Swiss manor house besieged on Wednesday by a 21st-century press pool. The two men looked cordial enough as they shook hands for the first time as leaders. But the sun-struck journalists behind them pushed and shouted, some knocked to the floor, as they fought to get in to the leaders’ only joint appearance of the day.

“The media scuffle was the most chaotic your pooler has seen at a presidential event in nine years,” wrote a US reporter from inside the melee, which erupted as the press pack tried to follow the two leaders into the villa. “Russian security yelled at journalists to get out and began pushing journalists. Journalists and White House officials screamed back that the Russian security should stop touching us.”

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Five things we learned from the Biden-Putin summit in Geneva

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Cool normality helped exorcise ghost of 2018’s disastrous Helsinki summit but what else was achieved?

1) The weird and unpredictable Trump era is over. In 2018 Donald Trump held a disastrous summit with Putin in the Finnish capital Helsinki. The then US president said he believed Putin’s assurances that Moscow did not interfere in the 2016 US election with a joint press conference that was so humiliating for America that Trump’s senior adviser Fiona Hill considered bringing it to a close by whacking a fire alarm or faking a medical emergency.

In Geneva, by contrast, cool normality was on display. Biden was well prepared for the US-Russia summit. He cut a relaxed figure, telling Putin he wanted a “predictable” relationship after a period defined by rogue Kremlin behaviour. The summit flowed along conventional diplomatic lines: a handshake, several hours of intensive talks and separate press conferences afterwards. The ghost of Helsinki was exorcised. There will be an agreed record of what was discussed, unlike in 2018 when Trump met Putin alone, without aides or even Trump’s own interpreter. We don’t know what was said.

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Biden-Putin summit live: leaders reach second stage of tense talks

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Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin will talk for four-five hours before making separate press appearances

A Russian state-owned media agency has shared a photo of Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin’s expanded bilateral meeting, which started about an hour ago.

Первые кадры с расширенных переговоров Президентов России и США Владимира Путина и Джозефа Байдена

@rian_ru pic.twitter.com/y5nwV4Uu3s

Away from Geneva, the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports on the rise in threats against election officials:

One in three election officials feel unsafe in their jobs, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Brennan Center for Justice. One in five election workers said threats to their lives were a concern related to their job.

Related: How Republicans came to embrace the big lie of a stolen election

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Joe Biden meets Vladimir Putin at Geneva summit – video

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The meeting got off to a frosty start as Putin told Biden in front of a chaotic press pool jostling to put questions to the leaders that their two countries had 'a lot' of issues that required talks at the highest level. 'I think it's always better to meet face to face,' Biden said, adding that he hoped they could find 'predictable and rational ways to disagree'

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States lift Covid restrictions as US passes 600,000 deaths – live

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– Joan E Greve and Maanvi Singh

The chief executive of Morgan Stanley has become the latest US banking boss to call for an end to remote working, telling his New York staff that anyone who feels safe going out to a restaurant should return to the office.

James Gorman admitted that the bank would take a different approach in countries such as India or the UK – where fewer than 25% of its 5,000 London staff have been going to work in person – due to stricter Covid restrictions.

Related: Morgan Stanley boss tells US staff to be back in office in September

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Joe Biden meets Nato leaders and Turkish president Erdoğan – US politics live

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As expected, the newly released Nato summit communique indicates that leaders view China’s rising power as a security threat.

“China’s stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to Alliance security. We are concerned by those coercive policies which stand in contrast to the fundamental values enshrined in the Washington Treaty,” the Nato document says.

Related: Nato summit: leaders to agree that China presents security risk

As Joe Biden prepares for his meeting with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Brussels, Kamala Harris has just arrived in South Carolina for an event to promote coronavirus vaccinations.

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