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The Chinese Communist Party expects few policy changes from either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris as U.S. president.
… African warlords have a history of hiding in plain sight in the U.S., and Liberia’s president says he wants to put an end to it.
… Hamas and another Palestinian militant group claimed responsibility Monday for what appeared to be a failed bombing attack in Tel Aviv.
… Gaza is facing the prospect of a polio outbreak despite Israeli shipments of vaccines and the U.N. chief’s declaration of a “humanitarian freefall” in the besieged Palestinian enclave.
… U.S. and South Korean troops kicked off a large-scale joint military exercise Monday, sparking knee-jerk allegations from North Korea that Washington and Seoul are practicing for an invasion.
… Vietnam’s new president is on a visit to Beijing, where he and his Chinese counterparts pledged to further their economic ties and gave a nod to their shared communist ideology.
… And the chaotic problem of “overtourism” is real, with global travel in 2024 on pace to set records for the post-COVID era.
The United States provided safe harbor for decades for mass-murderer warlords who tortured, raped and cannibalized their countrymen in West Africa before settling in America alongside their victims’ relatives.
Upon ransacking Liberia in civil wars that left about 250,000 people dead in the 1990s and 2000s, the violent war criminals sought shelter in the U.S. and hid among refugees who had been forced to flee.
National Security Correspondent Ryan Lovelace has a deep dive examining how the warlords took advantage of Americans’ generosity and the federal government’s immigration policies and procedures to pursue the American Dream without, in many cases, even bothering to conceal their identities.
Liberian President Joseph Boakai tells Threat Status in an exclusive interview that his government now wants justice and is establishing a War and Economic Crimes Court. Mr. Boakai says there “will be no witch-hunting,” but that the court will enable his country to “put the whole thing behind us and make a move towards building our country.”
China’s communist leadership expects few policy changes from either Mr. Trump or Ms. Harris as U.S. president.
U.S. officials and analysts say the Chinese government insists that the November election is an internal matter for the United States and has sought to avoid showing a preference, but some suspect Beijing is quietly hoping Ms. Harris and her Democratic running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will win. Beijing thinks they would have more favorable policies and relations with China.
National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz takes a deeper look, examining reports that Chinese government censors reportedly have blocked social media posts on the U.S. presidential race to prevent outside critics from charging election meddling.
Three Chinese academics, meanwhile, have provided insight on Beijing’s official view of the U.S. candidates and the election. Wang Jisi, Hu Ran and Zhao Jianwei, all government-linked analysts at Peking University’s Institute of International and Strategic Studies, stated in a recent Foreign Affairs article that the election will not alter the “bipartisan consensus” of both major U.S. parties that casts China as a strategic competitor and adversary.
Vessels from China and the Philippines collided multiple times in pre-dawn clashes off disputed shoals in the tense South China Sea Monday. As is common in these clashes, both sides swiftly blamed the other, according to Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon, who reports from the region that no casualties were reported by either side.
Given the Manila-Washington mutual defense treaty, pundits and media worry that such clashes could escalate to war. Deadly island battles flared between China and Vietnam in the South China Sea in 1988. Since then, however, all sides have kept the conflict below the kinetic threshold.
The main actors in the current confrontation between the Philippines and China are coast guards, rather than navies. Chinese tactics include rammings and water cannoning by coast guard ships, flare drops by aircraft, and area domination by maritime militia or centrally controlled fishing fleets.
The push for a potential Israel-Hamas cease-fire and hostage deal is again at a pivotal stage. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is back in the region for a fresh round of shuttle diplomacy, said Monday that President Biden wants him to get a deal “over the line.”
U.S., Qatari and Egyptian negotiators are working with Hamas and Israeli mediators to strike a deal this week in Cairo. “This is a decisive moment – probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a cease-fire, and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security,” Mr. Blinken said.
“It is time for it to get done,” the secretary of state said. “It’s also time to make sure that no one takes any steps that could derail this process.”
Illegal immigration across the southern border tumbled to just a little more than 100,000 migrants encountered in July, the administration has announced, celebrating the numbers as proof that President Biden’s recent tougher approach is working.
Border Patrol agents reported nabbing about 56,000 illegal immigrants, the fewest since the fall of 2020. Those numbers were balanced out by a steady stream of illegal immigrants showing up for “catch and release” at official border crossings.
Customs and Border Protection said Friday it encountered 104,116 unauthorized migrants along the southern border in July. That’s down from about 130,000 in June and more than a record 300,000 in December.
Republican lawmakers remain skeptical. Rep. Mark Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the Biden administration is playing a “massive shell game” in converting border jumpers into “parole” migrants. He said no matter how they enter, they are still ending up in American communities.
This month’s anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan sparked discussion across the American national security community over what the world’s No. 1 superpower can and should be trying to achieve militarily in the 21st century.
National Security Correspondent Ben Wolfgang examines how, up and down the ranks of the American military, there is a simmering undercurrent of deep emotional turmoil tied to the war that — along with an even bloodier conflict in Iraq — defined a generation of service members.
To even a casual observer, it’s easy to see why the 2021 U.S. withdrawal, the way it was conducted and its aftermath may be fueling a wave of psychological trauma that veterans’ organizations, government agencies, the American medical community and veterans themselves will be dealing with for decades to come.
The war ended with the Taliban, the same radical Islamist group that the U.S. overthrew in its post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan, once again taking full control of the country.
Recent U.S. and United Nations assessments highlight the growing Islamic extremist presence in Afghanistan, including apparent al Qaeda training camps in some corners of the country, fueling questions about whether the Taliban could again be offering safe haven to terrorists intent on targeting the U.S. and its allies, just as it did in the years before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
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