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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is headed to Kyiv, a month after holding a chummy visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
… Ukrainian military commanders say some poorly trained recruits refuse to fire at the enemy and struggle to assemble weapons or to coordinate basic combat movements.
… Palestinian officials claim a fresh wave of Israeli airstrikes has killed at least 10 people in Gaza.
… Historian Philip Zelikow tells Threat Status in an exclusive video interview that humanity is teetering dangerously close to global war.
… Refugees International goes inside the crisis in Sudan with a new report highlighting on-the-ground interviews with people who had fled to Sudan’s Nuba mountains region, one of the most bombed areas under former dictator Omar al-Bashir.
… And Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Ben Cardin has sent a letter calling on U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to lead an immediate response to the spiraling humanitarian situation in Sudan.
A month after holding a chummy meeting with Mr. Putin in Moscow, Mr. Modi is headed to Kyiv for a high-level diplomatic visit with Ukrainian leaders.
Mr. Modi held talks Thursday with his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk in Warsaw en route to Kyiv, where his visit will coincide with speculation that the recent seizure of Russian territory by Ukrainian military forces gives Ukraine leverage in any potential peace negotiations with Moscow.
Threat Status is closely tracking the situation. While India is a neutral democracy, it is widely considered to be a strategic partner of Russia. The Associated Press reports that Mr. Modi and Mr. Tusk held talks Thursday on security, the war on Ukraine and invigorating bilateral ties. Mr. Modi has described Poland as India’s key economic partner in Central Europe.
Mr. Zelikow, a historian and former diplomat, asserts in an exclusive “Threat Status Influencers” video interview that humanity is teetering dangerously close to global war amid conflicts raging in the Mideast, Europe and Africa, rising tensions in Asia, and a tightening anti-U.S. power alignment among authoritarian China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Mr. Zelikow, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, says in the interview that “there are only three occasions in the whole history of the United States where we have confronted a purposeful group of global adversaries short of all out war.”
“The first … between 1937 and the end of 1941, which then resolved into total war,” he says. “The second occasion, between 1948 and the end of 1962, and then the threat of worldwide war was significantly diffused, by the combination crisis that concluded in 1962.
“We now are in the third such period,” Mr. Zelikow says.
Air and missile defense forces from the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Italy, Netherlands and Denmark took part in the Pacific Dragon 2024 joint military exercises that finished Sunday in Hawaii. The exercises included both live-fire and simulated intercepts of ballistic missiles. Multinational tracking of target missiles and sharing of data also was practiced.
In the live fire portion of the drills, the combined forces worked together to shoot down an SM-3 Block IA “high reward target” with an interceptor missile, according to statements by the U.S. Navy and Missile Defense Agency.
The exercises, hosted by the Navy’s 3rd Fleet, marked the first time U.S. and allied forces used a new and improved target missile called the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Target. The missile is a semi-guided target designed to trigger and engage terminal ship defenses such as the SM-2 and SM-6 anti-missile interceptors.
Freedom of religion is the “orphaned” human right, as Western democracies instead furiously debate gender rights, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. That was a core message at the recent International Freedom of Religion Summit Asia, held in Tokyo.
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te told the summit in a video address that “we are now at a time when democratic backsliding and aggression is becoming more widespread and people face persecution due to their religious beliefs.”
Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon, who was at the summit, reports that, despite deep political polarization in the U.S., there is convergence on the issue. “It is deeply telling that you have two different political parties and thought processes but each believes deeply in the criticality of international religious freedoms,” former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the gathering. “It is not partisan in the U.S., it is something that is intrinsic to human dignity.”
IRF Summit Co-Chair Katrina Lantos Swett added: ”There is a voluminous amount of research showing that countries that protect freedom of religion, conscience and belief get the other stuff right — democracy, pluralism … [and] they are less likely to be incubators of social tension, and women have a higher socio-economic status.”
The Chinese government, reflecting the hard-line communist policies of President Xi Jinping, is engaged in an aggressive anti-spy campaign that is affecting public diplomacy by the U.S. Embassy and consulates in the country.
National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz highlights the issue in his latest “Inside the Ring” column. “For example,” writes Mr. Gertz, “the State Department has been working to arrange for Chinese students to study in the U.S. and in 2023 issued 105,000 student visas.”
“More than that will be issued this year, with around 300,000 Chinese students expected to be studying at American universities by the end of the year,” he writes. “Behind the scenes, however, the Chinese Communist Party’s security services, including agents of the Ministry of Public Security, have been blocking U.S. efforts to encourage Chinese students to go to America.”
Lyle Goldstein of the Defense Priorities — a Washington-based foreign policy think tank — argues that Donald Trump has been correct to question U.S. policy toward Taiwan.
Mr. Goldstein notes how, on the “delicate matter of Taiwan’s defense, the former president [has] said: ‘I think Taiwan should pay us for defense. … I don’t think we’re any different from an insurance policy. Why? Why are we doing this?’”
“Mr. Trump’s statements on this vital national security issue are welcome and timely,” argues Mr. Goldstein. “Hard questions about Taiwan need to be asked of Washington’s myriad, well-compensated Taiwan advocates… Why should American lives be sacrificed to defend the ‘Republic of China’ — an entity that the U.S. government does not even recognize as an actual sovereign state? Are we not just walking blindly into yet another Asian civil war, as has been our atrocious habit since 1945?”
• Sept. 4 — The American Dream Lecture Series: Walter Russell Mead on American Foreign Policy in the Next Presidency, American Enterprise Institute
• Sept. 9 — The Role of China in Africa’s Just Energy Transition, Wilson Center
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