Tuesday marks the formal opening of a high-stakes NATO summit in Washington, with Ukraine’s war against Russia — and eventual membership for Kyiv in the transatlantic alliance itself – at the top of a packed agenda.

Some NATO leaders seem eager for a return of former President Donald Trump to the White House, seeing him as the best path to an eventual cease-fire deal between Russia and Ukraine. On the eve of the summit, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban predicted that Mr. Trump would win the November election and said the change in leadership would be “good for the world.”

America’s leading 21st-century adversary, China, is trying to bolster its own global reputation by leading the charge on Ukraine-Russia peace. Though its actual proposal is short on detail, there are growing fears that Beijing is playing the long game and seeking greater influence across Eastern Europe and beyond.

National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz is tracking this story. He has all the details on a sweeping new report from Sen. James Risch, ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that calls on the U.S. and its NATO allies to reject Beijing’s efforts to broker a peace deal in Ukraine over concerns China will seek greater control there. The report also lays out the broader threat China poses to NATO, including Beijing’s manipulation of sub-national actors like state and local governments to undermine national government policy.

One more note on Ukraine and Russia: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blasted the meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday. In a post on X, Mr. Zelenskyy said it was “a devastating blow to peace efforts to see the leader of the world’s largest democracy hug the world’s most bloody criminal” on the same day that Russian missile strikes killed 37 people in Ukraine, including three children.

The high-profile NATO summit would seem to offer Mr. Biden a golden opportunity to show world leaders — and American voters — that he’s fit for another four years in office. But the White House says that Mr. Biden has nothing to prove, even as more and more members of his own party call on him to step aside and make room for a younger candidate to run against Mr. Trump in November.

Rep. Adam Smith, Washington Democrat, became the latest to issue such a call. That’s important because Mr. Smith is the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Armed Services Committee, and his stance could indicate that Democrats in the national security and foreign policy spheres are losing confidence in the commander in chief. Mr. Smith told CNN ;Monday that Mr. Biden is no longer the best person to present Democrats’ electoral case to the American people.

Sen. Mark R. Warner, Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has his own concerns.

“Now is the time for conversations about the strongest path forward,” Mr. Warner said in a statement Monday, though he reportedly called off plans to assemble a group of Democratic senators to go to the White House and urge Mr. Biden to drop out of the race.

With the world’s eyes on the U.S. presidential election, many foreign officials seem unimpressed. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has dubbed the contest a “pitiful” sight.

Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate performance did more than just damage his own political ambitions. Some say that the president deeply offended veterans of the war in Afghanistan with his false claim that no U.S. troops died during his watch. Among other service members’ deaths over the past three years, 13 Marines were killed by ISIS-K during America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. And the president’s comments, critics say, were offensive to those who died, their memories and their families.

“That is a dagger to the heart of not just those 13 families and the memories of those 13, but everybody who served there,” Tom Kilgannon, president of the Freedom Alliance, said during an appearance on the latest episode of the Threat Status Podcast.

The election of reformist Masoud Pezeshkian to be Iran’s next president sparked immediate questions about whether a new round of U.S.-Iran diplomacy could be on the horizon. But the White House quickly threw cold water on that notion Monday, with National Security Council spokesman John Kirby telling reporters that the election of Mr. Pezeshkian won’t change America’s position, despite the new president’s stated desire to renew the defunct 2015 nuclear accord.

And his election doesn’t seem like it will have much of an immediate impact on Iranian policy in the region, either. In a speech Monday, the incoming Iranian leader reaffirmed his country’s anti-Israel stance and voiced support for Hamas, Hezbollah and other Iranian proxy groups that threaten the Jewish state.

Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon is tracking a key development in the region: a new bilateral security deal between Japan and the Philippines.

The deal is expected to accelerate defense ties between the two nations, which have both clashed with China in maritime territorial disputes in recent years.

The Reciprocal Access Agreement, designed to promote the smooth bilateral transfer of manpower, equipment and arms, was signed in Manila. The Biden administration expressed its support for the agreement, as it is exactly the type of partnership between Asian democracies that Washington wants to see.

The White House doesn’t think Mr. Biden has anything to prove to other world leaders, but critics say otherwise. Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, writes in a piece for The Times that Mr. Biden “is simply not up to the task of confronting the myriad challenges our country faces today.”

“Mr. Biden’s poor performance is indicative of an administration without a firm grip on major policy issues, including U.S. support for our key ally Israel as it fights a war for its survival against Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north,” he wrote.

• July 9 — NATO Summit Defense Industry Forum, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

• July 10 — China-Taiwan Competition: Why It Matters for Peace and Stability in the Pacific, U.S. Institute of Peace

• July 11 — Supercharging the Development Finance Corporation: Opportunities and Pathways for Development, Infrastructure, and Investment, Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD)

• July 12 — Beyond the Summit: Outcomes and the path forward to Ukraine’s NATO membership, Atlantic Council

• July 12 — Europe’s Security After the Washington Summit: A Conversation with Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Radoslaw Sikorski, American Enterprise Institute