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The next era of global superpower competition: a conversation with the New York Times' David Sanger
Listen: In 2019, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin met at a summit and described their “friendship without limits.” But how close is that friendship, really? Should the US be worried about their growing military and economic cooperation? On the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer sits down with Pulitzer prize-winning national security correspondent for The New York Times David Sanger to talk about China, Russia, the US, and the 21st-century struggle for global dominance. Sanger’s newest book, “New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West,” looks at the new and increasingly unstable era of geopolitics where the US, China, and Russia are vying for power and influence like never before. Bremmer and Sanger discuss the US intelligence failures that led to the current geopolitical reality, what the US needs to do to combat the growing cooperation between our two biggest adversaries, and why semiconductor factories are more important to national security than aircraft carriers.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.- Podcast: Not infallible: Russia, China, and US democracy with Tom Nichols & Anne-Marie Slaughter ›
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Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
This is what we are watching in US Politics this week: Campus protests.
They're happening everywhere. Elite schools, state schools, the Northeast, the Midwest, Southern California, campus protests are a major story this week over the Israeli operation in Gaza and the Biden administration's support for it. These are leading to accusations of anti-Semitism on college campuses, and things like canceling college graduation ceremonies at several schools.
Will this be an issue of the November elections?
Really difficult to say. Everyone remembers in 1968, massive protest at the Democratic National Convention, contributing to President Nixon's message that he was the “law and order” candidate, and the Democrats didn't have control. That could easily be repeated this year if the protests continue and are sustained into August at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, where it also was in 1968. And then, if the protests continue on campus once again, when schools come back in in the fall, right before the November elections.
One thing we're watching is how Donald Trump tries to spin these things. A key campaign message that he's been pushing so far, this cycle, is that everything they're saying about him are the things they're actually doing. They thought he would get the US into a war with Iran, and now President Biden came right up to the verge of that last week. They say, “He's the chaos candidate,” and now you've got wars all over the globe, you've got campus protests, you've got a spike in crime, and you've got a massive immigration problem under President Biden.
So, that message is going to be one that Donald Trump continues to push and will definitely resonate with Republican voters and could potentially resonate with independent voters if the large-scale protests and clashes with police continue into the fall.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives at the Beijing Capital International Airport, in Beijing, China, April 25, 2024.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken brought up concerns over China's support for Russia with his counterpart Wang Yi in Beijing on Friday, before meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Blinken’s visit is largely meant to advance the mutual goal of stabilizing the relationship, and Xi said he wants to be "partners, not rivals" with the United States.
As Blinken landed in Shanghai for the first leg of his trip earlier this week, the Biden administration signed bills providing Taiwan with $8 billion in military aid and starting a process that could result in a ban of the popular video app TikTok in the US unless its Chinese owner, ByteDance, sells. The day before, the State Department released its annual human rights review, which criticized Chinese treatment of Muslim minorities.
Once he landed, Blinken pressed Shanghai Communist Party Secretary Chen Jining on treating US companies fairly. Meanwhile, he told students at NYU’s Shanghai campus that the cultural ties being built between both countries are of utmost importance.
Despite the many possible pratfalls during the first leg, China’s response has been fairly milquetoast. Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, “We hope that the US side will respect the principle of fair competition, abide by WTO rules, and work with China to create favorable [trade] conditions.” Hardly “Wolf Warrior” stuff, and Wang said Friday that ties are “beginning to stabilize.”
Officials attend the opening ceremony for the North Korean Embassy in Tehran, Iran in this undated photo released on August 5, 2017 by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang.
Pyongyang’s Minister of External Economic Relations Yun Jong Ho became the first North Korean official to visit Iran in half a decade on Tuesday. The trip is officially about economic ties, but the US State Department said it was “incredibly concerned” about possible missile and nuclear technology cooperation.
There’s precedent: Tehran has borrowed Pyongyang’s missile designs for its own weapons and admitted to using North Korean missiles during its 1980-1988 war with Iraq. Today, North Korea has intercontinental ballistic missiles that Tehran can’t yet field.
“Given Iran's preoccupation with its strategic position, searching for increased deterrence against both Israel and the United States, the fact that it would welcome a North Korean delegation right now is significant,” said Eurasia Group Iran analyst Greg Brew. “It's also significant that this visit is taking place while Iran's national security advisor is in Moscow,” he added, noting that Russia has been the glue in ties between all three countries.
Both Iran and North Korea have shipped Moscow weapons to use in Ukraine, which Eurasia Group labeled one of its Top Risks for 2024. There’s a political benefit for North Korea on top of the aid Moscow reciprocates: attention from China. Wary of losing influence over Pyongyang, China responded to the closer Russo-Korean ties by launching its own diplomatic press, including a visit to Pyongyang from politburo member Zhao Leji this month. Pyongyang may be trying to run the same play with Tehran.
“From North Korea’s perspective, if all they have to do is bat their eyelashes at another suitor for China to roll out the diplomatic red carpet, that seems like a well they can go back to with Iran,” says Eurasia Group North Korea expert Jeremy Chan.
"Xi has made it clear he plans to go solve the Taiwan problem while he's still in office." That's New York Times national security correspondent and New Cold Wars author David Sanger on why China's leader is setting his sights on the slender island off its eastern coast. Xi Jinping has made no secret of his belief that Taiwan belongs to China and that it is a national security imperative to bring it under Chinese sovereignty. But it's also an American national security imperative to prevent Xi from doing so, says Sanger. That's because the small island nation still manufactures the vast majority of the critical semiconductor microchips that power our modern world in both China and the United States.
"What Biden has done here in the semiconductor field of trying to choke the Chinese of the most advanced chips, but also the equipment to make those chips while trying to build up here, is the right step." At the same time, however, the Biden administration's push to manufacture more chips in the United States may also imperil the "silicon shield" that currently protects Taiwan from its Chinese neighbor. Nevertheless, Sanger argues that it's not just an industrial imperative for the United States to become self-sufficient in this area. It's a national defense imperative one as well."For our long-term security, it is much more important to build those [semiconductor factories] fabs than it is to build those aircraft carriers."
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
Hard Numbers: Argentina in the money, China-Libya drones plot in Canada, Recording Gaza’s casualties, Arms spending peaks
Javier Milei, the President of Argentina, speaks at the final day of the conservative conference on February 24, 2024.
0.2: Argentina is in the black for the first time since 2008. The South American country is starting Q2 with a 0.2% fiscal surplus in quarterly revenues. President Javier Milei took a victory lap and promised to continue his fiscal austerity program, causing bond valuations to jump.
2: Two former UN employees in Montreal were charged with participating in a conspiracy to sell Chinese military equipment to Libya, including large drones capable of carrying multiple missiles. The men are accused of violating sanctions related to the Libyan civil war (2014-2020) between 2018 and 2021. One of the suspects was arrested Tuesday, but the other remains at large.
80,000: The US State Department’s annual human rights assessment found that nearly 80,000 people in Gaza have been killed or injured during the Israeli offensive, amounting to some 3% of the population.
2.4 trillion: The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that global military expenditures reached an all-time high of $2.4 trillion, a year-over-year increase of 6.8%. The United States alone made up 37% of that spending, and with China spending another 12%, the two leading military powers cumulatively spent just under half of the world’s entire military budget.
Vice-Senior General Soe Win takes part in a military parade to mark the 74th Armed Forces Day in the capital Naypyitaw, Myanmar March 27, 2019.
Deputy Prime Minister Gen. Soe Win has not been seen in public since April 3, with unconfirmed reports alleging he was injured in a drone attack — or purged from leadership. Either explanation for his long absence comes down to the same root cause: six months of rebel victories and, as of April, daring air strikes on junta strongholds.
The rebel offensive: Starting in October, a loose coalition of ethnic minority militias backed by the People’s Democratic Forces (supporters of the overthrown democratic government) launched offensives that have seized almost all of Myanmar’s frontiers with India, China, and Thailand. With trade routes cut off, the junta is feeling pressure on its military supply chains and key sources of revenue.
Will the military fall? It’s hard to imagine. They may be on the back foot, but the feared Tatmadaw has a $2.7 billion budget while some rebels are building their own artisanal firearms (talk about scrappiness).
That said, the recent rebel drone strikes on the capital and other key junta sites reportedly caused tension among the cabinet (and possibly left Soe Win incommunicado). If it is true that the rebels are chipping away at the regime’s internal cohesion, that may be their most consequential victory yet.Latest
Blinken meets with Xi, but no breakthroughs
If North Korea and Iran hook up, will China be jealous?
Xi Jinping's solution to his "Taiwan problem"
Myanmar junta leader MIA as rebels make gains
