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This view in the Economist shows that president Trump actually represented the instincts of the Republican party base by 2018- anti-immigrant, anti-elitist, and to the right on social issues. As a result it says it is no surprise that he has taken over the Republican party. As the elections for Congress get closer most candidates are trying to get Trump's support and many of the older senators and Congressman from the earlier period of the party are retiring. It cites polls showing Trump has support of 85% of the Republican party base. In 2018 Mr. Trump appointed new members of his cabinet who more closely represented his views on China, Iran, NATO, and business issues. Remaining party leaders such as Mr. Romney running for Senate seat from Utah are now seeking and getting Trump's endorsement. The Republican National Committee is also run by Trump supporters. On issues of foreign affairs Trump has combined alternate shifts between demands and pragmatism in relations with China, Iran, and other countries on trade, politics, coming up with a new way international relations are tackled. Part of the reason for their appeal is the nature of the intractable problems such as the imbalances in trade, nuclear weapons, and the idea that an alternative approach might work when other approaches have failed.  On social issues such as issues facing workers in globalization and free trade the parties to the left in the U.S. and countries in western Europe have failed to deliver, leading to the appeal of Mr. Trump, Brexiters, National Front in France.  The immigration issue has also worked against the socialist parties.  In Britain dissatisfaction with Theresa May and hard core Brexiters is growing, leading to Labor Party getting 40% of the vote in the recent election. Suggesting that the changes induced by the Brexiters and the Trump administration may lead to other changes in the future that may shift the focus back to basic issues and delivery on infrastructure, health and education which are fundamental for the future.   ...

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The US has expanded access to products from China and other countries gradually leading to a loss of US manufacturing over 2 decades. Today both Republicans and Democrats see the dangers of such economic policies for American workers and families. Mr. Trump first raised this issue that has been raised for a decade or more. Mr. Biden realizes what this means for the future of the Democratic party with the loss of manufacturing communities in the US. For this reason the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and new economic alliances in Asia are being built in a different way. This may not seem much today but as the US shifts its investment, and the European Union shifts its investment, to home countries and countries in Asia and Latin America, Africa, till 2030- 2040 over two decades this will create huge opportunities for the US, Europe, India and other partners in the free world. It is a mistake to think that a better life for the people of the free world can be built on the mistaken idea that the loss of American manufacturing communities was somehow acceptable. The sudden failure of the trade policy with China after the loss of so many American manufacturing communities shows that in the long run only policies that benefit both American workers and foreign workers will work and deserve support. The return of US manufacturing and European manufacturing to US and Europe must therefore be the very foundation of our effort and with it can evolve the building of manufacturing communities in friends in the free world such as India and other Asian, Latin American and African countries.  For India this is the kind of policy that Mohandas Gandhi would have chosen because of his broad and deep knowledge of the world and how it works best, he would have seen policies that benefit American manufacturing communities needed as much as building manufacturing communities in India. The ripping up of manufacturing communities in the US and Europe and what it has done to American and European workers and families, as has happened with globalization, would have been abhorrent to Mohandas Gandhi. This is why the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework and economic alliance in Asia starts with the right principle even in its basic form, with the hard work of all and creative ideas creating the right solution for the Free World as it evolves to 2040. With respect for all, opportunity for all, confidence of all, efforts of all. ...

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The WSJ responds to president Biden ramping up renewable energy plans and linking Republicans with Senator Rick Scott's plan for sunset provisions on federal legislation every 5 years that Biden says would include Medicare and Social Security. WSJ is critical of Biden's renewable energy plans and calls for increasing production of oil and gas to meet energy shortages and price increases. It is also against a wealth tax, Biden's $2 trillion Workers and Families Plan, and Biden's plan for Medicare to negotiate drug prices. WSJ says real disposable personal income increased $4205 under the Trump presidency 2017-2020, and has since declined by $374 with high inflation depressing purchasing power. The impact of climate change requiring brave choices and strong action is missing in the Republican plan as Republicans focus on attacking Democrats controlling the presidency and Congress on the issue of inflation. The issue of remaking supply chains are on both the Republican and Democratic agendas with president Trump giving more rhetoric against China's role in dominance of supply chains and Mr. Biden taking stronger action in Theodore Roosevelt's style of carrying a big stick and quiet posture in restoring America as a manufacturing powerhouse. The impact of climate change is short term rather than long term as seen by the heat wave in South Asia today, the fires in North America and Europe. Republicans are losing sight of the importance of making the shift on renewable energy quickly with some short term pain, as they push for oil and gas solutions and a less effective program for renewable energy. Mr. Biden is taking on bigger risks in the short term in the midterms and beyond but following a sound policy of aggressively pushing renewable energy. This can also be seen in the importance renewable energy is being given even in countries with a need for coal and natural gas such as India. Modi's plans in India are to buildup renewable energy capacity with aggressive targets for 2030. ...

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Questions may relate more to how these situations affected the role of Gates and similar individuals in protecting the interests of the US, Europe, India, Latin America and Africa in health organizations such as the World Health Organization. As globalization spread governments in the West surrendered some of the essential role they played in world health organizations to individuals and NGO's, and countries lacking experience needed for such an important task. The mishandling of the pandemic is partly a result of this retreat by western governments from the role that they have played during the nineteenth and twentieth century. In the US letter to the WHO by president Trump the role of Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway was shown in handling an earlier virus epidemic that originated in Asia so that it would not spread and could be controlled. This is the H1N1 crisis in 2003 cited in Mr. Trump's letter to the World Health Organization. Brundtland took strong action that was missing during this pandemic after the US and western nations surrendered the essential role they have played for centuries based on role in medical science discovery for maintaining public health. Surrendering this role or seeing it erode is one of the biggest mistakes of our time and a mistaken form of globalized behaviour. It is only now being corrected as the realization dawns on major nations such as US, UK, France, Japan, Russia, India and other countries about the essential stability provided by western nations knowledge, experience and resources to this task of maintaining global health. Even a nation like India has to base its role on hundred or more years of work in medical science and commitment to public health that transcends political preferences or national interest to take on and be a worthy participant with the advanced nations that have played so great and beneficial role for the world in public health. What to speak of transient interest of nations in the developing world or countries where national interest or political preferences play a part in public health of the peoples of the world. This responsibility for world's public health can never be delegated to individuals, foundations or any one country, or small countries, or a combination of these, only to the collective experience of the last 300 years in medical science discovery and the role of Europe including Russia, and the US in leading the way.  The Biden administration has the same underlying concerns as the Trump administration about this mishandling of the pandemic and the disasters that followed bringing so much death and suffering This excerpt on Brundtland of Norway is from the letter the US sent to the World Health Organization- "In 2003, in response to the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in China, Director-General Harlem Brundtland boldly declared the World Health Organization’s first emergency travel advisory in 55 years, recommending against travel to and from the disease epicenter in southern China. She also did not hesitate to criticize China for endangering global health by attempting to cover up the outbreak through its usual playbook of arresting whistleblowers and censoring media. Many lives could have been saved had you followed Dr. Brundtland’s example." ...

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This editorial opinion in Economist magazine says the dangers of cutural illiberalism are very real as the candidacy of Donald Trump and the National Front's popularity in France's 2016 first round of regional elections have shown. This is the result of increasing economic anxieties of the white working class in America, and the working class in Europe. Only by increasing economic growth, and improving the economic prospects for broad sections of society can this be addressed, says Economist magazine. It says also needed is a robust foreign policy to address the terrorist threats as the Obama foreign policy lacks credibility with the public, giving rise to anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S. and Europe.

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Many of the 255 Comments on this article in the NYT say it is misleading or grossly misleading title. Michael Crowley of NYT quotes Wertheim for his conclusion that there seems to be a sense that the world is out of control, there is chaos under president Biden. This is subtly presented and clearly wrong. Wertheim is the author of a book that questions America's exceptionalism, and says "isolationism" was somehow concocted by policy makers such as Eisenhower and Dulles, both Republicans for a postwar world built on American supremacy. What Crowley and Wertheim do is put their very idea of asking questions about policy which is a part of the discussion into misrepresenting through misinformation about what happened. Biden has acted with courage to close wars no other president not Reagan/ Rumsfeld who started the conflict with Iran by arming Iraq's unprovoked war on Iran, not Bush who initiated the war in Afghanistan, not Obama and Trump who did not close the war in the mountains around Kabul that is a "graveyard for Empires" - the Maratha Empire in India in the 1700's that opened the door to British rule in India, not the British Empire wisely staying out of it, the Soviet Union beginning its decline there, and the US mired in it similar to the Soviets. Crowley/Wertheim are only making things worse- Netanyahu was emboldened by the former president and made a major security failure. Putin miscalculated in Ukraine, Biden simply acted in the way any wise American president would -strengthened NATO with Finland and Sweden, providing reasons for Russian restraint yet without escalating the conflict. To say this is chaos is to misinform and misrepresent, and favor the very Supremacy that former president Trump proposes as policy based on US power. By contrast Biden' approach is peace through strength from building close relations between partners in Europe and Asia, not provocation or supremacy. Wertheim is only one voice in a larger discussion not the authority he is presented as. For Wertheim to say "isolationism" was a bogey and point to 1950 as the point when it was created is simply wrong. It existed in some form from the early days of the Republic. Washington was an advocate of not involving the fledgling Republic in foreign entanglements of France even though it was an ally. It is not that response to isolationism is the cause of America embracing the role of leading the Free World as it is now. It is simply the situation leaders faced. Truman faced it when Soviets planned insurgencies in Turkey and Greece which would not exist as democracies today without Truman. And across Eastern Europe Hungary 1956 Ike acted cautiously. Czechoslovakia 1968 LBJ Johnson acted cautiously already in the wrong war with Vietnamese nationalism.  ...

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See the adjoining report in DW.com that covers the planned meeting between Japanese PM Kishida and Kim of North Korea to reduce tensions in the region. Kishida is taking a proactive approach as the ideological positions have failed and talking directly to North Korea as Junichiro Koizumi had done in 2004 (with a visit to Pyongyang when Kim's father was president) is now the right course. It is now twenty years that this was not tried. Former president Trump met Kim of North Korea at the Demilitarized Zone DMZ near Seoul in 2019. Not much changed after that meeting. North Korea has increased missile testing with ICBM missiles and increased its nuclear missiles with improvement in technology since then. One aspect of the Reagan/Weinberger era policy was its sense that America would keep investing in defense and at some point everyone else would fall behind. This has not happened. After a slowdown in its economy in the early 1990's opportunities to build Russia relations were left to business interests and opportunities were lost. The memory of that period of Russia's economic collapse lingers and feeds a sense that somehow Russia was diminsished by waht happened after the abrupt collapse of the Russian position in Eastern Europe.  In fact the only nuclear missile tests conducted in this 21st century were conducted by North Korea.  ...

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Adam Taylor explains what Brexit is about. What should be added is that Brexit is a child of the time in 2015-2016 when Angela Merkel was ill prepared to tackle the sudden wave of migrants from North Africa from wars and population growth outstripping what little progress was made, making decisions to let in close to a million migrants. Migrants are now being returned back to their home countries and the issue has faded. The austerity policies in the EU with Greece, Spain and Portugal as bad poster childs for the EU are also largely over, with economic recovery in Europe.  As a result confidence is growing in the future of the European Union. What pessimists including Mr. Trump saw as a breakup of the European Union is no longer the case. Britain's long negotiations and divisions for Brexit are now reinforcing an opposite conclusion- that it is beneficial to stay in the European Union. Fully 68% in a Eurobarometer Survey of 27 EU countries by the European Commission in March 2019 think so, only 17% think it is not beneficial. In Britain also a majority now support membership in the EU. The European Union and Britain have a lot to learn from this experience and the divisions generated, which is likely to be part of the acquired experience of a new generation of leaders.  ...

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The European Union goes forward with $39 billion for Ukraine aid. The aid is backed by interest from the $300 billion in Russian assets in Europe frozen when war began. Another $15-20 billon is expected from the US when legal questions about frozen Russian assets are resolved- the US asking for a 36 month review of sanctions to replace 6 months in place in 2024. The European Union offices in Brussels have done a poor job of communicating how the EU is  aiding Ukraine with its own resources. Lyrarc.com had to point out that Ukraine aid from EU was about twice that of the US at about $200 billion compared to about $95 billion for the US. Former president Trump stated that this was just the opposite the US spending twice what the US was spending. Media in today's world means little or nothing because it operates highly fragmented and organically outside the control of any particular source online, television or print. And established sources apart from bias are spread so thin many important matters for the betterment of people's lives or giving a true picture from which to make observations, are left to wither or distort. The highly formal  corporate environments of the EU are impervious to the outside so that institutions such as the ECB, European Union headquarters are out of touch with the people worldwide.  ...

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Karishma Vaswani of the BBC points out that the Trump administration tariffs and the response from China with tariffs of its own, are not the beginning of a trade war but negotiating tactics of both sides. Behind the scenes and behind the declarations and position statements both sides are talking to each other and considering the options open to each. The U.S. position is that China has emerged with a bigger share of the global economy by dumping products, subsidizing its industries from solar panels to high tech ventures, and stealing American technology by forcing U.S. firms into joint ventures that increase pass through of advanced technology. U.S. firms seeking access to the Chinese market or using China as a manufacturing base such as Boeing, Apple, GE and other high tech companies are in ventures or manufacturing arrangements where China has access to advanced American technology. Nathaniel Taplin in his article in the WSJ also sees this as a negotiating position set out in the U.S. for talks with China. Taplin says the U.S. is in a stronger position in this negotiation because of the huge surplus of about $300 billion that China now has with the U.S., and which is increasing in 2018 with the strength of the dollar. The Trump administration is looking to correct the trade imbalance in the future by focussing on China's access to advanced U.S. technologies in the next phase of competition between the U.S., Europe and China. This limited objective is more likely to lead to concessions by China Taplin argues, because of two reasons. China needs the dynamism of U.S. firms and technology advances because these firms and Chinese firms that are getting foreign investment are the most productive part of the Chinese economy with jobs generated, rate of return about twice that of inefficient state run firms. China also needs access to advanced U.S. and European technologies even in a limited form as it pursues further modernization.   ...

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Ines Pohl of DW.com reflects on the U.S. Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. It turns out he says to be a sort of Trump Festival, with the candidate and his family everywhere, not much discussion of the platform or policy issues- he says it offered the world a spectacle never seen at such a convention- 15,000 journalists from all over the world covering 2500 delegates, all the delegates mere onlookers at this entertainment extravaganza. John McCain, Mitt Romney, former presidential candidates not present, and president Bush and family not present, all staying away because of derogatory remarks. Not the kind of display of unity to bring together different segments of the party. The lone dissenter at the convention turned out to be rival Ted Cruz who made a speech without supporting Trump, and is booed off the stage. Cruz won in some important primaries including Texas, Oklahoma, and in votes cast on voting day in Louisiana, in addition to Wisconsin, appealing to evangelical voters in a section of the South, and in western states such as Nebraska and Idaho, typical Republican territory. Ohio's John Kasich is called "petulant" by campaign manager, and stays away- Kasich won in his home state of Ohio, a state president George Bush needed to win over Kerry, especially with its evangelical voters. Pohl adds humor in his coverage by referring to the traitors Bush, Kasich and especially Cruz, who are dispensed with, as the Republican delegates rally behind Trump on the last day of the convention.  ...

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Landler and Barry say in this report in the NYT that the situation of government paralysis in the U.S. parallels the one in the UK with no-deal Brexit around the corner. President Trump wants a border wall (steel or other kind) on the border with Mexico as a campaign pledge. In the UK Conservative party faction supporting Leave from the European Union, including supporters of Boris Johnson, seek Leave at all cost. Johnson called the shortage of Mars bars a small inconvenience, as the Theresa May government prepares to push its own Brexit deal through Britain's parliament. In a separate report the NYT tries to show that over 80% of the drugs come in through entry ports and the border crossings are largely families or unaccompanied children. For the first time -since the 1950's and the segregation struggles in the U.S. -populists battle the elites in the large cities, say Barry and Landler. The rural urban divide, is seen in both sides of the Atlantic, in Europe and the U.S. ...

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Indian foreign minister Jaishankar describes the highly eccentric situation of lack of US India close economic and defense cooperation for over 50 years, when the natural flow of cooperation one would expect between the land of Washington and Lincoln and the land of Vivekananda and Gandhi was interrupted. The current form of cooperation has existed for about 14 years and accelerated after prime minister Modi was elected in 2016. This was a turning point in the US India relationship and in India US economic partnership. After president Trump was elected Mr. Modi and Mr. Trump held a huge public gathering in stadiums at Houston and Ahmedabad, in a way that was never seen before between an Asian country and America. What changed? For one thing India had a great weight lifted from its shoulders with the removal of the erratic Nehru policies of post independence India of forming a non aligned bloc with countries like Egypt and Yugoslavia. These were policies that had no connection to India and its history as the civilization where the East has its roots in Vedanta and Buddhism. It also resulted in alienating the Dwight Eisenhower administration and administrations that followed after John F. Kennedy, as the Cold War intensified and most of Eastern Europe came under Soviet domination. India never gauged the effect this had on America after the Berlin crisis in 1948, the Hungarian revolution of 1956 and similar uprisings in East Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Britain was no help even with the British Commonwealth, as the British perpetuated the idea that India was too divided to make up one country, having failed to grasp India's ancient civilization and  culture, and having built the Empire in India by using the division in the country. Mohandas Gandhi described this in Hind Swaraj in 1910 and told Indians that it was they who had invited the British into India, with rulers using military garrisons of the British commercial East India Company for help in their internal wars. Americans still unfamiliar with India till after 2000 simply accepted British colonial ideas about India. The new administrations in the US, the Trump and Biden administration, and the Modi administration in India have shaken this up and changed perceptions all around. Biden recently during the Modi visit to Washington DC said India US relations as he sees it would be "the closest on earth." So that today we have an ancient civilization roused to its depths in its youth for modernization, that extends from India to Indonesia all the way to Japan rooted in India's ancient civilization of Vedanta and Buddhism, with a population of about 2 billion people. That faces the US on its Pacific coast, united in its determination to build a new and common future with ideas of parliamentary democracy, participation of the people, and of modernization with science and technology, contributing to the betterment of all peoples. ...

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Robert Kaiser, former managing editor of The Washington Post, reviewed this book on Joe McCathy in The Washington Post on August 7, 2020. It shows the link with today of Senator Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn, the then 27 year old lawyer chief counsel of the senate subcommittee on investigation when Joe McCarthy became chairman in Jan. 1953. The book is-  Demagogue The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy by Larry Tye. Roy Cohn passed on some of the methods used at that time to Mr. Trump. Kaiser points out that the senator Joe McCarthy assembled "a coalition of the aggrieved." Tye shows that it started with the junior senator from Wisconsin making a speech in West Virginia for Lincon Day dinner to the Republican ladies of Wheeling, W. Va. The senator used it to talk about threat of communists working in the State Department. He claimed there were 205 Communists. Today we know that this was just made up by McCarthy, at a time when Winston Churchill made the speech about the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and a sense of shock in America at the People's Republic of China being formed in 1949 under CCP chairman Mao tse tung. McCarthy saw this as an opportunity to gain prominence and a Senate career. What is seen from this carefully researched book is that for a while it succeeded in putting many of the Nation's best leaders on the defense. This includes Harry Truman, Eisenhower himself who disdained McCarthy's and Cohn's methods, Gen George Marshall who was a mentor to Dwight EIsenhower, Joe Stilwell, and other military leaders who ran the 1940's war effort under Marshall in Europe against the Nazis and in China against the Japanese imperialists. On the domestic side it included the head of TVA and the new Atomic Agency setup by president Truman. Gallup said at that time of McCarthy's 38% support in the US following his censure in US Senate by 67-22  -even if it was known that McCarthy killed five innocent children they would still go along with him. Tye writes that in that atmosphere similar to the sense of shock at China's rise and America's loss of manufacturing and falling behind in infrastructure by 2016, in that atmosphere if one told a small lie or big lie it made not much difference in public's penalty or censure, then why not tell a whopper of a lie. This became the ethic for a while in 2016-2024 similar to the period till the collapse of McCarthyism in America by 1957 with McCarthy's death in 1957 and in 1960 the election of John F. Kennedy. What is forgotten is that Richard Nixon a young senator from California was part of the group in Congress, so that in some shape or form it existed and remained part of the Reagan efforts to push back against the Soviets that led to wars in Afghanistan and then Iraq sapping the Nation's energies and resources and with faulty economic theory allowed China to dominate key industries and outspend America in infrastructure investment, creating the kind of shock that led to the second McCarthyist decade under Mr. Trump. ...

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Sanger and Broad report on the move by the Trump administration to go ahead with the overhaul of the U.S. nuclear deterrent,  with programs that were started in the Obama administration. With the more aggressive posture of Russia in Europe, the Trump administration is left with little scope for further advances in nuclear arms negotiations. A new technology based cruise missile system is now being built for $25 billion with contracts given to Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. Experts at Harvard's Belfer Center say that with the North Korean nuclear threat these programs to modernize the nuclear deterrent are getting the go ahead with little resistance. Another program modernizing the land based deterrent and replacing the Minuteman missile system is also expected to push forward at a cost of $100 billion. The Pentagon under Obama had pushed for these systems, yet there was discussion about ways to limit these programs in the hope that nuclear arms control talks could take place. The North Korean missile tests and Russia's posture have changed the discussion. By the end of the Obama's second term, a president who came into office in 2008 with hopes of nuclear weapons reduction had already lost much of the momentum he had in 2008. The situation changed with Russian intervention in Ukraine in 2015, and the North Korean long range missile test in 2017, to where the modernization of the nuclear deterrent was quietly accepted, without alternatives through negotiations. ...

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The knowledge that the virus  caused human to human transmission and that it spreads to wide parts of the population very quickly were critical pieces of information that remained with Chinese epidemiologists, doctors and medical researchers, and were suppressed by local authorites in Wuhan.  Yet China's version of the U.S. CDC, China's Centre of Disease Control and Prevention, modeled on the U.S. control efforts worked effectively to identify the problem. Virologist Gao Fu, heads China's CDC. This report in Germany's Der Spiegel says Mr. Fu made it a habit to scan China's internet before bedtime for any signs of possible disease outbreaks. On the night of December 30 he came across rumors of an internal memo from the Wuhan Health Commission of an outbreak of a vaguely worded lung disease. When he called the Wuhan health authority he found their answers to be evasive which alarmed him. The next morning December 31 Mr. Fu sent the first of three teams to Wuhan which is how China was able to identify the problem, in the sense that Chinese authorites in Beijing were to rely on Dr Gao Fu to overcome the problem of Wuhan provincial authorites. He informed the World Health Organization Beijing office on that day. The Der Spiegel report says "shortly afterward," the Seattle Times in its report says this was about New Years Day 2020- Mr Fu made a call to Dr. Redfield, head of the U.S. Centre for Disease Control, who was on vacation. Redfield is deeply disturbed on hearing this from Fu and they have conversations over the next few days to the point that Dr. Gao Fu is in tears about what has happened. On January 1 Taiwanese public health authorites shared the information with WHO that the cornonavirus was a human to human transmission, would the Taiwanese authorites not have shared it with the U.S. the same week during calls from the U.S. CDC or other public health authorites alarmed about the situation. (The WHO was proving useless by Jan 14 when it contradicted Taiwan's more reliable assessment  on Jan 14 going by the letter from president Trump to WHO). On January 6 a few days later Dr Redfield and Dr. Azar head of Health and Human Services ask China for permission to send a team of CDC U.S. experts to China. This is cited in the U.S. letter to the World Health organization- the lack of human to human transmission information being given to the U.S. officially early by China. A risk that could have been a topic of conversation between the U.S. and China heads of CDC. That letter from president Trump also points out that the team of experts the U.S. planned to send was not accepted by China till Feb 16, one and half months after that series of conversations between Dr. Gao Fu of China CDC and Dr. Redfield of U.S. CDC in an alert message.  In effect removing one of the key defences for the U.S. and Europe in making their own defensive actions and plans, laying the basis of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic affecting millions of people. Dr Redfield is a AIDS researcher at the University of Maryland who spent most of his life trying to control spread of HIV and was appointed by president Trump to head CDC agency in 2018. He set a goal of eliminating AIDS by 2030 and is more comfortable with aids patients and research than the bureaucratic nature of agencies- CDC has about 11,000 employees. Once it was clear that a team of U.S. experts was not given permission to make its own assessment in Wuhan in the few days after January 6 offer to sent the team to China by Redfield of U.S. CDC and Dr. Azar, would it have alerted the U.S. that something was seriously heading the wrong way for a epidemic risk. That letter of president Trump cites how the head of WHO during the first SARS crisis in 2003, Dr. Harlem Brundtland acted when she faced China's lack of cooperation during that crisis by saying openly that this was a danger to world public health and millions. Could CDC in the U.S. and the other connected health authorites have taken the responsibility and filled Dr Brundtland's role in this crisis, that the WHO failed to perform?    ...

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The Labour leader and prime minister of Britain met Donald Trump during a trip to speak at the UN General Assembly in New York on September 26, 2024 Starmer has misgivings that Trump may withhold support for the United Nations and its framework for maintaining peace in the world, and tackling issues of development and climate change. Britain's leader Starmer told the UN General Assembly- "People talk about an age of polarization, impunity, instability and an unraveling of the U.N. charter. And I feel a sense of fatalism has taken hold.” “But our task is to say no … This is the moment to reassert fundamental principles and our willingness to defend them. To recommit to the U.N., to internationalism, to the rule of law.” With Macron's shaky coalition government in France, and a coalition government in Germany with less popular Greens, FDP and Social Democrats, Russia engaged in a conflict with NATO in Ukraine, Starmer speaks for Europe at an important time to recommit to the UN Charter and uphold the principles of the UN for the betterment of mankind. ...

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China's GDP declines by 6.8% in the first quarter 2020 year over year, and 9.8% from the previous quarter, the first such decline since 1992, even going as far back as 1976 with the passing of the Mao era. It is not power production or coal consumption which have returned to prior levels. It is the demand from the U.S. and Europe, other countries which are in lockdowns. Estimates are that 80 million people in a population of 900 million working age people lost their jobs, with another 10 million expected to be lost, about 10% of the total. Global trade companies are hardest hit.  Consumers inside China are reducing spending. Some are using only the small government issued vouchers designed to get people to go out and spend.  The Trump administration plans to bring back some of the production lost to China in essential areas such as public health and security back to the U.S. The supply chains are already shifting to other countries from U.S. tariffs. As a result some estimates show zero growth in 2020 for China. Financial instability and prior leveraging concerns remain to prevent any serious stimulus. By contrast the U.S. is cushioning the impact with $2 trillion aid package benefitting from a strong dollar and healthy economy before the virus. ...

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What a change DJT's first 100 Days and actions on immigration and tariffs , Ukraine and Russia, have made in China's and World relations in Asia, and in Europe - all for the better, significantly better relations worldwide.  China has worked out a peace settlement in Ladakh frontier with India. It has come together in Tokyo with Japanese prime minister Ishiba and China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi holding hands, and South Korea joining, all three nations vowing to remember history and work together. In Europe Russia is being brought back into the community of nations for big power cooperation with the US after 3 years of war in Ukraine. And Germany has removed its constitutional brake on spending that frees up $1 trillion in funding for infrastructure to replace much of its rail and other infrastructure built in 1900. One would not know this reading the NYT on democracy or the WSJ on tariffs or the Washington Post on assault on federal workforce, or the Atlantic, Politico, DW.com or FR24, Der Spiegel, nor Le Monde, much of the world media slanted on way or another. One does not hear about military exercises so often as the world realizes that so called large economies China, Germany, Japan and India all depend on American goodwill and willingness to give rather than take for most of the post war period since 1950. For the last 6 years in the latter half of the Trump administration and the 4 years of the Biden administration during the pandemic relations between China and the US deteriorated and China first retreated into its own then opened up a bit. The initial idea that it could manage the DJT trade actions evaporated as Biden continued the DJT first round of tariffs. Now Navarro, Lighhizer, and his deputy Jamieson are all back advising DJT for anew round of reciprocal tariffs and tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China for not stopping fentanyl flows.  In 2022 in eastern Ladakh China's PLA had a big standoff with Indian forces in eastern Ladakh at Galwan and Pangong Lake. The Quad was active with Australia India and the US in Indo Pacific and China conducted military exercises close to Taiwan.      ...

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Chief of TechMet a company in mineral resource development says that it will take years to dislodge China's dominance in rare metals mining and development for metals critical to technologies in car batteries, wind turbines, cellphones. This includes nickel and cobalt for car batteries.Last week president Trump signed an executive order declaring a national emergency and authorizing use of the Defense Production Act to speed development of mines. The U.S. imports 80% of its rare earth elements from China, with further supply coming indirectly from the country. For 14 of 35 critical types of minerals the U.S. has no domestic production. Gallium for light emitting diodes in cell phones is one of these metals. Half of Barite a metal used in hydraulic fracturing for shale oil is imported from China. To get some idea of the neglect in U.S.policy in these area under three administrations, the U.S. in the 1980's was the largest producer of rare earth metals and the technology to process them. Today there is only one mine the Mountain Pass mine in California, and no processing plants. It takes about 10 years to develop a mine. Just as in health care products essential to tackle the virus the U.S has found its manufacturing and technology base left in woeful shape after manufacturing and mining were neglected in a failed policy. Under the guise of globalization corporations transferred essential manufacturing from the U.S. and Europe to China, without understanding the importance these products played in the life of countries, and governments neglected to help local manufacturers and mining companies. Governments play a critical role as China has done by providing loans and grants to develop the national industrial base. Tariffs and quotas are also used to promote local development of the manufacturing base and mining base. Another factor is that investors are more able to invest in these companies when the government take some of the risk with its help and active support. With the Trump executive order comes a new awareness in Canada, Australia, and European Union which are now taking active steps to nurture and develop the local resources. ...

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This editorial in the WSJ says Europe should plan for expanding its role in defense, because the U.S voters in the primaries for both political parties appear to be calling for less U.S. engagement in the world. It says Trump, Sanders, and Clinton voters are moving towards less engagement, and calling for the U.S. to spend less in overseas engagements, more at home. It points out that only Britain, Estonia, Greece, Poland and the U.S. spend the 2% of GDP on defense that is considered a requirement for NATO membership.

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The Blinken Wang Yi meeting at the G-2- in Indonesia is the first high level meeting between US and China since March when the Ukraine war started. In the press briefing after the meeting Blinken said "more than four months into this brutal invasion the PRC stands by Russia." He pointed to Beijing support of Russia at the United Nations, dissemination of Russian talking points through Chinese state media and joint military exercizes with Moscow. One aspect of the relations that is beyond the control or good intentions of the two countries top diplomats is the tit for tat response that began with the presidency of Donald Trump. Trump may have seen this as a way to talk to the voter base fed up with two decades of one sided trade with China with manufacturing shipped out to China and local communities of families and workers in regions across the US losing jobs and in decline. Much of this shift was done by US companies during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations over two decades. The strident tone adopted by Trump was met by tit for tat responses in Chinese media till the pandemic when it assumed a new aspect of Chinese origins of the coronavirus. The result is that Sinophobia in the US is met by a response in Chinese media and in the thinking of the Chinese leadership under Jinping that now sees the relationship as having already shifted during the pandemic. The paradox in this is that the US in its effort to get other countries on its side is only beginning to make an effort of get America's own companies and large business investors on its side. Most American companies are still continuing trade and business with China as before.  The same situation exists with the shift of manufacturing from Japan and the European Union to China, with the loss of jobs and decline of local communities that depended on manufacturing. Japanese and European companies are acting in ways that are similar to American companies. Having managed the shift of manufacturing from European Union and Japan to China these companies have done little to change this business situation in 2022 carrying on as before. This is the paradox of the current situation that business both in the US and EU, and Japan is not on the side of their governments, even as their governments attitude to China, particularly now after the pandemic and the Ukraine war has shifted drastically. Alongside this is the popular opinion that has shifted gradually over the last 10 years in the US and EU, first in these very local communities that lost manufacturing to China, and then across broader sections of the public, and now across whole regions of America, Britain, the EU and Japan. This shift in popular opinion has little interest in the way business conducts business overseas or governments conduct diplomacy in nuanced statements. As a result neither the governments of the US, EU and Japan or the business of the US, EU and Japan are in control of this shifting situation that has its momentum and pace operating quite independently of governments and business. And public opinion across America, Europe, Japan, and also in India is moving in an entirely new direction.     ...

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U.S. senior Republican Senators Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona, are getting ready to launch a wide ranging probe of Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 presidential election through cyber attacks. The probe is not limited to DNC hacking and the concern is not just that any one candidate was targeted but for the integrity of the American election process. Even though it is not mentioned in this report in the Washington Post by Demirjian, Senators and Congressmen from the Republican Party in charge of key committees of oversight on foreign policy and defense now see it as their responsibility to prevent an enlargement of cyberattacks as Germany and France face elections. Mr. Trump has said in an interview with Time magazine that Russia was not responsible for cyber attacks, that it "could have been China, it could have been some guy in New Jersey." Senator McCain is readying a probe into cyber attacks into U.S. weapons systems, and U.S. military, as the issue widens in its scope and significance for the West and for the U.S. and its allies in Europe and Asia. Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (N.C.) will be working closely with McCain, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, on this particular issue and Senator Mitch McConnell has been apprised of the discussions, according to this report in WP. Senator Graham said- "They'll keep doing more here until they pay a price." Graham will hold a series of investigative hearings in 2017 about Russian meddling and "misadventures throughout the world."  This will include new legislation.  Graham told CNN on Dec. 7, 2016 in strong language- "I am going after Russia in every way you can go after Russia. I think they are one of the most destabilizing influences on the world stage. I think they did interfere with our election, and I want Putin personally to pay the price." During the debates Governor Pence of Indiana, the Vice President elect took a strong position on Russia, and the Vice President's positions on foreign policy and defense are similar to that of the Republican leaders in Congress.  It is hard to remember a time in the post war period when there was such a distinct difference in foreign policy and defense as it relates to Russia between a Republican president and both a Republican Congress and almost all Republican governors. Senator Corker from Tennessee, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is on the short list to be Secretary of State. A related story in the WSJ shows the selection of military leaders for key intelligence, defense and homeland security, and Gen. Petraeus considered for foreign policy, as diverging from historical practice of keeping civilian oversight preeminent in the U.S.. Rep. Peter King, an early supporter of Trump, who is on committees for intelligence and counterterrorism told MSNBC, that he is confident that Trump will not be "taken in by Putin." The U.S. Republican dominated Congress has taken a strong position on Russian interference in Syria and Ukraine. In the House of Representatives Republican Rep. Devin Nunes from California and Rep. Mac Thornberry from Texas are leading efforts on cyber and intelligence as heads of their committees. ...

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Former Texas Senator Kay Hutchinson, America's new ambassador to NATO, offers this spirited defense of NATO in an NYT op-ed. She points out that when it comes to European defense and need to revitalize NATO there is no difference between president Trump, Rex Tillerson, Gen. Jim Mattis at the Defense Department, and senators of the Republican and Democratic parties. Rex Tillerson, U.S. Secretary of State, made a similar statement by visiting a war memorial in Italy recently. Chancellor Merkel has made similar statements in her visit to the Baltic Republics. Behind the revitalization of NATO remains another goal to spread the burden of defense evenly so that the U.S. is not bearing a disproportionate responsibility.  Here Hutchinson reminds readers that if all 29 NATO members met the 2014 defense spending pledge - to spend 2% of GDP on defense and 20% of each defense budget on modernizing capabilities- $100 billion in defense funding would have been created for 2016. Hutchinson says the European Defense Initiative will be funded with $4.8 billion for strengthening defenses in Eastern Europe. NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg is taking the lead in ensuring NATO funding goals are met. ...