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https://asiatimes.com/2021/01/two-faced-us-trade-policy-erodes-atlantic-alliance/

EU’s new investment pact with China calls Trump’s bluff on a tech war that gives cover to US side deals with Chinese companies

The US is peeved about EU’s new investment pact with China.

European distrust of American motives was behind EU leaders’ signing last week of a Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with China over the urgent objections of the Donald Trump administration and Joe Biden’s transition team.

Washington’s restrictions on trade and investment with China, Europeans believe, provide pretexts for dodgy deals that favor US companies at the expense of competitors on the other side of the Atlantic.

The Trump administration of course has long been in a trade war with Beijing, and there have been numerous news reports that Biden’s advisers had let European officials know they hoped for a delay that would give the new administration time to chime in before finalization of the pact.

Matt Pottinger, deputy national security adviser to Trump, issued a statement saying, “Leaders in both US political parties and across the US government are perplexed and stunned that the EU is moving towards a new investment treaty right on the eve of a new US administration.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16904/global-alliance-democracies

Under a Biden administration, many will be mindful of the Obama-era sell-out of America’s Middle East allies while accommodating the hostile Iranian ayatollahs.

Despite the optimistic indulgences by foreign policy experts and politicians over decades, China will not reform to allow normal coexistence within the world order but must instead be contained.

A modern alliance to resist today’s “attempted subjugation and outside pressures” should focus not only on China and the immediate challenges of 5G technology and supply chains, but also on the other major strategic threats to democratic states…. The object should not be… to lecture governments such as Hungary, Poland and Romania… While [Biden] may find their internal policies unpalatable, they pose no threat to any other country.

An interests-based, rather than ideological, alliance of strategically like-minded democracies should be built, each with the economic power and will to counter the authoritarian entities that oppose the Free World…. The alliance should work to push back the authoritarians and radicals across the economic, cultural, political, cyber and technological realms and deny them access to critical infrastructure and technology as well as opportunities for cultural subversion. It should also act to deter their further advances.

An important function of the proposed alliance would be to encourage member states, and their allies against authoritarian and extremist entities, to both provide adequate defence resources and where necessary adapt and modernise forces to ensure credible deterrence.

If a country lacks the confidence to stick up for its own values at home, how is it to robustly defend its virtues against those who wish to undermine them? This weakness in Western democracies has already allowed great strides across the world by China, Russia and jihadism and has helped create the situation that a D10 alliance is now urgently needed to repair.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/531794-joe-biden-risks-the-biggest-giveaway-ever-to-china-in-space

People on the NASA transition team of Joe Biden are urging the United States to start what could be the biggest transfer of technology to China. The giveaway could result in the Chinese military dominating space and, with it, world affairs. “Trying to exclude them, I think, is a failing strategy,” said Pam Melroy, a former astronaut and potential next administrator of NASA, referring to the Chinese. “It is very important that we engage.”

Important to engage? The Chinese space program is military at its core and, to the extent it is civilian, it serves as a conduit to the military. China has a policy of civil military fusion. This means the army has first call on anything and everything in civilian hands. Moreover, we should not forget the structure of the Chinese regime. The military is an operation of the Communist Party, which controls all the programs of the Chinese central government as well as every educational and research institution in the country. The space program is a party venture.

The Chinese military has major plans for the Moon, sometimes called the eighth continent. As military analyst Richard Fisher told me, “China wants to mine helium from the Moon to power its future fusion energy reactors and to use Moon resources to help build enormous solar energy collecting satellites to free it from foreign energy dependence.”

China also plans to colonize the Moon with military bases. “By controlling the Moon, China can control access to the Lagrangian Points and better control access to Mars and other planets,” Fisher, who is affiliated with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said. Stations floating at Lagrangian Points, orbital locations where gravitational forces balance and make it less expensive to maintain artificial objects in space, would allow China to dominate the new “interstates” to the heavens.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/japans-biden-jitters-11609197375?mod=opinion_lead_po

In a 2020 campaign with little foreign policy substance, the idea Joe Biden mentioned most was restoring alliances. Which alliances? With Mr. Biden’s inauguration less than four weeks away, some allies in the Asia-Pacific are apprehensive.

Last week Japan’s number-two civilian defense official told Reuters: “We are concerned China will expand its aggressive stance into areas other than Hong Kong. I think one of the next targets, or what everyone is worried about, is Taiwan.”

Yasuhide Nakayama added: “So far, I haven’t yet seen a clear policy or an announcement on Taiwan from Joe Biden. I would like to hear it quickly, then we can also prepare our response on Taiwan in accordance.” He also asked, according to Reuters, “How will Joe Biden in the White House react in any case if China crosses this red line?”

Hardliners in Beijing see democratic Taiwan as a separatist province and are determined to bring it under their control. They also want Taiwan’s advanced microchip technology. Meanwhile, opinion in Taiwan has moved against unification, especially as China reneges on its treaty obligations by arresting democracy supporters in Hong Kong. A Chinese military operation across the 110-mile Taiwan Strait during Mr. Biden’s term can’t be ruled out.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16900/germany-russia-nord-stream-pipeline

“We continue to call on Russia to cease using its energy resources for coercive purposes. Russia uses its energy export pipelines to create national and regional dependencies on Russian energy supplies, leveraging these dependencies to expand its political, economic, and military influence, weaken European security, and undermine U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. These pipelines also reduce European energy diversification, and hence weaken European energy security. — U.S. Department of State, “Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act,” October 20, 2020.

On December 24, the Kremlin admitted that U.S. sanctions may succeed in preventing completion of the pipeline. The U.S. government is now readying a fresh round of congressionally mandated sanctions that could deal a fatal blow to the project, according to the Reuters news agency.

A report by the Swedish Defense Research Agency found that Russia has threatened to cut energy supplies to Central and Eastern European more than 50 times. Even after some of those states joined the European Union, Russian threats continued.

The United States is ratcheting up the threat of sanctions against European companies in an effort to deal a death blow to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. The pipeline would double shipments of Russian natural gas to Germany by transporting the gas under the Baltic Sea. U.S. President Donald Trump, like his predecessor Barack Obama, has criticized the project because it would make Germany “captive” to Russia for its energy supplies.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16866/biden-trump-middle-east

It is worth remembering that, when President Trump took office, the region was still reeling from the dire consequences of former US President Barack Obama’s inept and naive handling of the region.

By early January 2017, when Mr Trump took office, Iran was squandering the tens of billions of dollars it received for signing the nuclear deal, which Mr Obama had helped broker in 2015, on expanding its malign influence across the landscape of the Middle East.

Mr Trump’s Middle East legacy… completely redefined the landscape of the region from the chaos and conflict that prevailed when Mr Obama left office. Nowadays, the momentum in the region is moving towards peace, not conflict….

[T]he challenge for the incoming Biden administration now will be to see how it can pursue a different foreign policy agenda without jeopardising the very significant achievements that have been accomplished during Mr Trump’s tenure.

Certainly, if the incoming Biden administration makes any serious attempt to undermine Mr Trump’s legacy in the Middle East, it will do so at its peril.

The incoming Biden administration has indicated that one of its top priorities will be to adopt a new approach in Washington’s dealings with the Middle East. In particular it wants to revive the flawed nuclear deal with Iran as well as re-establish a dialogue with the Palestinian leadership, which imposed a three-year boycott on the Trump administration.

Yet, while the new Biden team, the majority of whom are relics from the Obama administration, are keen to assert a new policy agenda for the region, they also need to take care that, in so doing, they do not squander the impressive legacy US President Donald Trump has built up in the region.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-tests-joe-biden-11608334532?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

No one should mistake what the jailing of Jimmy Lai and other Hong Kong champions of democracy signals: China is testing Joe Biden.

Mr. Lai is the founder of one of Hong Kong’s most popular newspapers, Apple Daily. Now he’s in jail facing several charges, including one from a new national security law that China bullied through. We know China was enraged when Mr. Lai met with American politicians on trips to Washington in 2019, including Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the basis of the national security charge is that he’s encouraged foreign governments to impose sanctions on Hong Kong and Beijing.

Mr. Lai has been denied bail and publicly exhibited in shackles. Ta Kung Pao, the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece in Hong Kong, says he should be extradited to the mainland for trial. Friends worry that would be a death sentence for the 72-year-old publisher.

President Xi Jinping is hoping to intimidate Hong Kongers into silence and testing whether Mr. Biden and his aides will look the other way at these and other abuses. So far Mr. Xi must be pleased at the lack of response.

One of the Trump Administration’s achievements was to recognize that China has become America’s primary adversary. It steals U.S. technology, monitors and intimidates critics on American university campuses, engages in massive spying, claims new territory in the South China Sea, and threatens U.S. allies in Taiwan and Australia. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has pushed back, from condemning China’s incarceration of the Uighurs to sanctioning officials responsible for the crackdown in Hong Kong.