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Secretary of State Antony Blinken refuses to say whether he’ll testify at an upcoming House hearing on Afghanistan withdrawal.
…Sweden, Finland and Lithuania are increasingly wary of Russia’s apparent plan to revise its maritime border in the Baltic Sea.
…Taiwan has scrambled fighter jets and put missile, naval and land units on alert over Chinese military drills around the island democracy.
…Mike Pompeo, former CIA director and secretary of state under the Trump administration, called for the U.S. and the international community to recognize Taiwan as an independent nation during a speech in Taipei this week.
…Tension is expected to be thick when the leaders of U.S.-aligned South Korea and Japan hold trilateral talks with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Seoul on Monday.
…Tesla just broke ground on a major battery factory in Shanghai.
…And Russia is escalating its campaign in Kharkiv, pounding the Ukrainian city with S-300 missiles on Thursday.
Beyond the pomp of Kenyan President William Ruto’s state visit to Washington this week are serious issues linking the U.S. and Kenya at a critical moment, including an American counterterrorism campaign in Africa dependent on Nairobi’s help and potential U.S. investment that could help Kenya crawl out from underneath a mountain of debt, much of it owed to China.
One of the most important items on the agenda lies in America’s backyard. A multinational police force led by about 1,000 Kenyan personnel is set to arrive in Haiti to restore order to a country wracked by gang violence and political chaos. Separately, the Ruto visit offers President Biden a chance to say he’s making good on a promise to give more attention to Africa. Mr. Biden hosted nearly 50 leaders for the U.S.-Africa leaders summit in December 2022.
The U.S. is on the defensive in Africa. The Pentagon is racing to withdraw all American personnel from Niger, which had been home to a key U.S. drone base from which counterterrorism missions were launched across the Sahel. With analysts warning the region has become the world’s new epicenter of Islamic extremism, an expanding U.S. partnership with Kenya is even more vital.
China and the U.S. are engaged in a battle for dominance in satellite-based positioning, navigation and timing, known as PNT, and Beijing is catching up to America’s Global Positioning System with its BeiDou satellite PNT.
In 2020, China completed the deployment of its BeiDou 3 global navigation satellite system, which is similar to GPS, according to a report published by the China Aerospace Studies Institute, a U.S. Air Force think tank.
China’s government is vowing to “gain a competitive edge” in satellite-based PNT with greater accuracy. It regards BeiDou as a key instrument of national power and power projection capabilities, according to the report, which said the system is used to guide and target China’s vast array of missiles and drones, the report said.
China has imposed sanctions on former Rep. Mike Gallagher, the Wisconsin Republican who until recently was chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party that for the past two years has exposed nefarious Chinese activities and operations.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said this week that Mr. Gallagher, “driven by selfish interest and bias,” had “grossly interfered in China’s internal affairs.” His select committee activities “undermined China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, disrupted China-U.S. relations and harmed China’s interests as well as the common interests of China and the U.S.,” Mr. Wang said.
The sanctions bar the lawmaker from visiting China and bar organizations from cooperating with him. Mr. Gallagher, now with the Hudson Institute, says the sanctions are a failed attempt to silence criticism of the Chinese Communist Party.
The House Homeland Security Committee may host town hall meetings for lawmakers on artificial intelligence and could bring in tech experts to help lawmakers better understand the rapidly evolving technology before writing rules to govern it.
Some lawmakers say a town hall format may help them get their arms around a deeply complex set of issues. “What I may do is have a town hall type thing, where we’re the town hall and they’re on the [dais] and we’re just asking questions,” Rep. Mark Green, Homeland Security Committee chairman and Tennessee Republican, said during a committee hearing Wednesday.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer has already convened AI “insight forums.” The closed-door forums have attracted top tech minds such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai. But they’ve had their share of detractors. Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, says future town hall events on AI for Congress would be like a “giant cocktail party … for Big Tech.”
House lawmakers have renamed the National Defense Authorization Act to reflect the need to improve the quality of living conditions for U.S. service members. The annual Pentagon budget blueprint, known for years as the NDAA, is now the “Servicemember Quality of Life Improvement Act and National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025.”
“No service member should have to live in squalid conditions (and) no military family should have to rely on food stamps to feed their children,” Rep. Mike Rogers, Alabama Republican and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said during a mark-up for the legislation this week.
The $850 billion budget plan for next fiscal year includes a 4.5% pay raise for service members across the board, along with a 19.5% bump for the most junior military personnel. Lawmakers will work through about 700 amendments before the final bill moves forward.
The outburst of antisemitic activities and the hounding of Jews in many venues could actually redound to the advantage of the Jewish community, writes Gerard Leval, who argues that with all of the aggressive and downright nasty outpouring from the antisemitic left, Jews are appearing to be victims.
“Large anti-Israel and antisemitic demonstrations accompanied by cries of ‘Death to America’ may serve to reverse the momentum of the anti-Israel forces and the attendant antisemitism,” Mr. Leval writes. “In the United States, underdogs are always favored. Jews are beginning to look yet again like victims, like quintessential underdogs. If this perception continues, it remains a possibility that the ‘oppressor’ Jews will be converted into ‘oppressed’ victims. That evolution would suddenly reverse the current momentum against Israel and the Jewish community.”
“Tragically, the fate of Israel and the safety of the Jewish community could depend upon both being perceived as victims,” he writes. “Victimhood should not be the test of worth, but, increasingly and sadly, in our era, it has become the ultimate and saving virtue.”
• May 28 — Gender Based Violence in Mexican Politics, Wilson Center.
• May 29 — Lessons for an Unserious Superpower: The “Scoop” Jackson Legacy and U.S. Foreign Policy, American Enterprise Institute.
• June 4 — Supreme Allied Commanders on the Past, Present, and Future of NATO, Hudson Institute.
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