As President Joe Biden takes on a pair of foreign policy challenges that have bedeviled the United States for two decades – Afghanistan and North Korea – he is adopting a policy with a long history: realpolitik.
Not the 19th-century German version, which came to imply hard-nosed pursuit of national interests regardless of moral concerns. But a new iteration, being realistic about the limits to Washington’s unilateral power in today’s world.
Why We Wrote This
The Biden administration is updating the old foreign policy doctrine of
realpolitik by acknowledging the reality of limits on U.S. power today. But it is trying to give the new version a decidedly moral twist.
MATTHEW LEE
WASHINGTON A flurry of diplomatic contacts and reports of major progress suggest that indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran may be nearing an agreement. That’s despite efforts by U.S. officials to play down chances of an imminent deal that would bring Washington and Tehran back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.
With the negotiations in Vienna on hiatus, the U.S. and Britain denied Iranian reports that any agreement was at hand with Iran for a swap of American and British prisoners. Such an exchange could be a confidence-building measure to revive the nuclear deal.
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China topped the agenda as the G7 foreign ministers met in London on Tuesday with the world’s major democracies trying to reaffirm their global leadership in the face of Beijing’s increasing assertiveness.
The coronavirus pandemic and its geopolitical fallout meant the event took place in a different world compared with the last such Group of 7 meeting in 2019, with China’s role in that world a key concern.
Accordingly, it was the first item on Tuesday morning’s agenda and – in a sign of the importance the world’s leading economies attach to the issue – it was allotted two hours compared with 30 minutes for Myanmar and Syria and 90 minutes for Russia.
A year in pandemic: How COVID-19 changed the world
January 31, 2020National Institutes of Health official Dr. Anthony Fauci (C) speaks about the coronavirus during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, D.C. Health and Human Services Secretary Alexander Azar (L) announced that the United States is declaring the virus a public health emergency and issued a federal quarantine order of 14 days for 195 Americans. Photo by Leigh Vogel/UPI | License Photo
February 6A subway carriage is nearly empty during a normally busy rush hour as the deadly coronavirus continues to threaten Beijing. Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo
US takes subtle moves to rope in G7 allies against China
Zhang Hui Published: May 06, 2021 12:09 AM
Britain s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab (R) welcomes US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the G7 foreign ministers meeting in London on Wednesday. Photo: AFP
With China topping the agenda of the Group of Seven (G7) meeting as foreign ministers of member states have been urged to coordinate and form a common stance in addressing the challenges posed by China, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected claims of a Cold War between the US and China, signaling that rather than making all-out efforts to form an anti-China choir, the Biden administration is making subtle moves to align its allies, Chinese experts said, noting that in return, EU officials mixed signals on the ratification of its most promising investment deal appear to be a gesture of echoing the alignment sentiment in the face of growing domestic pressure.