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"One example of free trade is the agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada, known as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA was established January 1, 1994, between the United States, Mexico, and Canada."

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What is Free Trade? - Definition, Pros, Cons & Examples - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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There are advantages and disadvantages to free trade, which refers to the importing and exporting of goods between countries without restrictions....

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This is about the UAE sending delegation to Iran, and engaging with Iran on Saudi Energy Infrastructure.

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PARIS (Reuters) - A senior Emirati official said on Tuesday the United Arab Emirates would soon send a delegation to Iran as part of efforts to improve ties with rival Tehran.

"I hope that it is the sooner the better and all our friends are aware of it," Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, told reporters when asked when a UAE delegation would hold talks in Tehran.

The idea was to "turn over a new page" in relations, he said.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Bagheri Kani, met Gargash and other Emirati officials on Nov. 24 in a rare visit.

Political Cartoons on World Leaders

The UAE started engaging with Iran in 2019 following attacks on tankers off Gulf waters and on Saudi energy infrastructure. Sunni Muslim power Saudi Arabia began direct talks with Iran in April, with Riyadh describing the talks as "cordial" but largely exploratory.

"There is a recognition by the Iranians that they need to rebuild bridges with the Gulf. We are picking that up positively" he said.

Abu Dhabi still shared concerns about Iran's regional activities but it wanted to work hard on improving ties, he said.

Asked whether the UAE was coordinating with Saudi Arabia on its moves on Iran, he said they were keeping its regional allies "in the picture"

The warmer ties comes as indirect talks between Iran and the United States, and other world powers in Vienna to try to revive a 2015 nuclear pact, which Gulf states have criticised for not addressing Tehran's missile programme and regional proxies.

He said the UAE shared Saudi Arabia's concern about Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi movement's rocket attacks on Saudi cities. Riyadh and its allies accuse Iran of supplying the group with arms, a charge both deny.

The UAE is a member of the Saudi-led coalition engaged in Yemen but largely ended its military presence on the ground in 2019.

(Reporting by John Irish; editing by Ghaida Ghantous and Angus MacSwan)

Copyright 2021 Thomson Reuters.

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UAE to Send Delegation to Iran Soon, Senior Emirati Official Says

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PARIS (Reuters) - A senior Emirati official said on Tuesday the United Arab Emirates would soon send a delegation to Iran as part of efforts to improve ties with rival Tehran. "I hope that it is the sooner the better and all our friends are aware of it," Anwar Gargash, diplomatic adviser to the UAE president, told reporters when asked when a UAE delegation would hold talks in Tehran.

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This article talks about the goal of supporting democratic governments which is embracing democratic values. It also gives insight to how democracy makes a country stronger vs other forms of government. It also talks about how it supports other democratic countries.

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Securing a Democratic World

A general view of the NATO official tribune is pictured, July 2018. (Getty/Ludovic Marin)

Introduction and summary

Reviving America's strategic position in the world in the wake of President Donald Trump will require a foreign policy that both firmly embraces democratic values and systematically pushes back against authoritarian competitors such as Russia and China. The Trump presidency has already severely undercut the United States' global standing, causing immense harm to the nation's strategic position, credibility, and moral authority. Allies are losing faith in American leadership while illiberal regimes are growing in number, stature, and audacity. Trump's rise reflects a pre-existing deterioration in the vitality of democratic systems, a global phenomenon which his presidency has now turned into a crisis. The damage cannot be reversed simply by electing a different president or reverting to previous foreign policy approaches. Instead, the United States must adopt bold new policies to regain the advantage in great power competition and help vulnerable democracies, including its own, resist authoritarian influence and strengthen a growing global democratic community. This report explains why a democratic values-based foreign policy is the right choice for the United States on both a strategic and moral level. It also offers specific policy recommendations as a roadmap for how the next administration could pursue a democratic values-based foreign policy.

Today, democracy is under strain in America and threatened across the globe. The spread of democratic governance, which for decades seemed all but inevitable, has stalled and now faces serious setbacks. Across the democratic world, ordinary people have lost trust in their institutions of government and delivered stunning rebukes to their political establishments. These setbacks have also emboldened authoritarian regimes. Russia, China, and other illiberal states have sought to exploit the openness of democratic societies for their geopolitical advantage and have put forward an alternative autocratic model for politics and economic development that undermines liberal democratic values.

America's enduring security, prosperity, and strength depend on the survival and success of democracy-both at home and abroad-as well as on the resilience of institutions, rules, and norms that protect the liberal democratic values on which the United States' global standing is built. Yet at the very moment when liberal democracy faces its greatest ideological challenge since the Cold War, President Trump has chosen to reject America's historic role as leader of the world's democracies. He has treated democratic allies as ideological foes and murderous dictators as respected friends and equals while stoking nativist and isolationist impulses among the American people. President Trump has also systematically denigrated democratic values and norms at home through unprecedented attacks on the press, the independent judiciary, and law enforcement, as well as political purges of civil servants.¹ While U.S. democratic institutions have shown resilience in the face of his challenges, it is already clear that some of the damage Trump does will outlast his presidency. The critical question today is whether the United States after Trump will summon the resolve to lead, protect, and expand the world's democracies or stand by and suffer the consequences as autocracy and illiberalism crack the foundations of the American-led global system.

Advancing a values-based foreign policy after Trump will inevitably invite a vigorous debate over how-or even whether-values should factor into U.S. foreign policy. Critics will likely point to America's prior foreign policy errors and shortcomings, for example, the use of democracy promotion aims to justify misguided foreign policies such as the invasion of Iraq; the broader U.S. failure to promote democracy in the Middle East in the wake of the Arab Spring; and Cold War-era support for dictators who sided against the Soviet Union. Critics may also point to the urgency of domestic challenges relative to foreign policy ones or fear of U.S. overextension abroad to argue that a values-based foreign policy is unwise or simply not possible. This report takes these critiques seriously. However, in reflecting on the stakes for U.S. leadership, present and future, it arrives at the conclusion that an American foreign policy shorn of American values would ultimately deliver less security and prosperity at home, while making U.S. leadership in the world less sustainable and impactful.

This report asserts that an approach that embraces America's core democratic values will allow the United States to compete more effectively with authoritarian powers such as China and Russia and will deliver better results for the country in the long haul. To address setbacks abroad, the United States will need to pursue a new foreign policy that systematically puts liberal democratic values at the center of its engagement with the world. This will require more than just lip service. It will entail a meaningful, sustained shift in how the United States conducts its foreign relations, launched with quick and decisive action and sustained with persistence and strategic vision.

A democratic values-based foreign policy strategy is rooted in faith in democratic self-government, not just as being better than all the alternatives but also as a value in and of itself. Such a foreign policy will also advance U.S. national interests. America's presence as a prosperous, multi-ethnic, free democratic society poses a challenge to autocrats through the model it sets. Instead of taking this power for granted, it is time for America to cultivate it.

At the heart of such an effort should be a realignment of American foreign policy to meet the challenge posed by resurgent illiberalism. This can be done by forging stronger cooperation among democratic states, including in the defense of democracies under assault and the expansion of the global democratic space. In both the short- and long-term, the United States will need to take the following steps:

Restore democratic values and norms at home.

Work with democratic allies to design and implement a counter-authoritarian playbook to push back against the encroachment on and abuse of the open systems of democratic states.

Build stronger international networks of democracies to create a global democratic bulwark.

Privilege U.S. relationships with democracies, and reflect this in U.S. policy decisions and spending.

Strengthen international support mechanisms for populations nonviolently mobilizing for democracy around the world, while more systematically pressuring countries to uphold human rights and adhere to international law.

Reorienting U.S. foreign policy toward a values-based approach will require policymakers to take the long view, recognize the intrinsic strength of democratic governance, and acknowledge that the best way to advance democracy worldwide is through the example set by successful democracies. Critically, it will also require U.S. leaders to heed the lessons of history by recognizing that the most effective way to promote and sustain democracy is supporting and encouraging democratic institutions and movements, rather than employing coercive measures. The United States has numerous tools to vigorously defend its values and advance democracy without seeking to impose it using force.

Some may fear that a values-based foreign policy would come at the expense of traditional U.S. interests. But that critique misdiagnoses and underestimates the geopolitical challenge to U.S. interests that a rising illiberal tide presents. American interests will be far more difficult to secure if liberal democracy is supplanted as the pre-eminent and most sought-after political system. There will inevitably be times when U.S. interests will necessitate partnering with nondemocratic regimes. Still, a principled but pragmatic approach can do both: cooperate selectively with such regimes on matters of vital national interest while also recognizing that the greatest strategic gains to U.S. security and prosperity will rest on the success of other democracies and that America's staying power and strategic resilience will depend on investing in them.

The challenge: A democracy crisis at home and abroad

The ascendance of democracy globally and the emergence of an increasingly robust set of international rules and institutions fostered a prevailing assumption that a more democratic world was here to stay: Democratic states would prosper and more autocratic states would transition to democracy. But this optimism about democracy has waned due to a number of varying and reinforcing trends.

First, democracies have experienced setbacks. Many countries once held up as examples of democratic progress-such as Poland, Turkey, and Venezuela-have experienced a deterioration in rule of law and electoral competitiveness.⁵ In other countries, such as Thailand and Egypt, democratically elected governments were overthrown by force. Meanwhile, across the Middle East, the democratic promise of the Arab Spring faltered in the face of violent repression. During this same period, illiberal and insular populist movements became resurgent in many established democracies, weakening international cooperation among democratic states and imperiling many of the achievements of the postwar era. These movements occurred most notably in the European Union, where a Center for American Progress and American Enterprise Institute study found that "in the past decade, such parties have moved from the margins of Europe's political landscape to its core."⁶

A key feature of this illiberal resurgence has been elected leaders' use of strongman tactics to undermine democratic institutions and norms. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has gained increasing control over the political, economic, and military aspects of the Turkish state.⁷ In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has used xenophobic rhetoric and crony capitalism to erode political checks and balances and consolidate power.⁸ Poland's current leaders and others have followed Orbán's playbook, attacking the independence of the country's media and judiciary and campaigning on an exclusionary vison of Polish society.⁹ President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, meanwhile, has flaunted his disdain for the rule of law and human rights as he pursues a campaign of mass violence against drug users and dealers, which has included state sponsorship of extrajudicial killings.¹⁰ In all of these cases, attacks on democratic institutions and norms have been carried out by democratically elected leaders themselves.¹¹

Even in the United States, President Donald Trump is showing signs of authoritarian envy, regularly criticizing the media, the judiciary, and law enforcement, while openly admiring some of the world's most brutal dictators. As Trump said of Kim Jong Un, who rules over a totalitarian dictatorship where people are thrown into labor camps for criticizing the government: "He's the head of the country, and I mean he's the strong head. ... Don't let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same."¹²

These trends do not mean in any way that democracy is a lost cause or that the global tilt toward illiberalism is irreversible. Demand for democratic change and greater civil and political rights remains a potent force that transcends culture and geography, as recent events in countries as diverse as Burkina Faso, Armenia, and Malaysia illustrate.¹³ But these positive developments do not negate the democratic backsliding that has occurred elsewhere. Across the world, democracy faces an uncertain future.

The United States has not been immune to this democratic malaise. Americans today distrust their government in greater numbers than at any point in modern U.S. history, including the height of the Vietnam War and during the Watergate scandal.¹⁷ Two of the most significant drivers of distrust have been the rise of unfettered special interest spending to distort U.S. politics and the political paralysis that has arisen from the growth of counter-majoritarian practices such as gerrymandering and abuse of the legislative filibuster.¹⁸ These problems have fed a widespread perception that the U.S. political system no longer represents the interests of ordinary Americans nor does it address grave challenges such as inequality, racial injustice, and opioid addiction. Such failures, compounded by foreign policy failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, have contributed to a profound loss of faith in American institutions that Donald Trump effectively channeled in his bid for the presidency.

If Russia has been the boldest challenger, the most serious long-term external threat to democratic governance comes from China. Beijing has been-and will almost certainly remain-an essential partner of the United States in solving major global challenges, from climate change to nonproliferation. But as China amasses power, too often it has put its newfound capabilities and immense resources behind a model of political and economic development and interstate cooperation that neither requires nor encourages liberal democratic values.²² In fact, China's full-throated assertion of narrow national interests in areas such as internet governance, free speech, trade, and human rights often actively undermines democratic values.²³ China has also sought to use economic coercion to undermine U.S. security alliances and partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region and erode cohesion among EU member states.²⁴ Meanwhile, Beijing has used its economic and growing military might to immunize itself from the consequences of flouting long-standing international principles such as freedom of navigation.²⁵ Tragically, these developments coincide with President Trump's abandonment of America's commitments to global leadership, including the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate agreement, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Fourth, the institutions, rules, and norms that underpin the liberal international order have not lived up to expectations, providing space for illiberal and undemocratic states to seize the advantage. The global and regional organizations established since World War II were built to protect and encourage liberal values, including universal human rights and rules-based international conduct. But these institutions largely reflect the world of 1945 and have not been adequately updated to recognize the massive shifts in global economic and political power. Today, many of these institutions are losing the capacity to perform their basic missions because of inherent structural flaws, outdated mechanisms, and deliberate efforts by world powers to undermine or circumvent them. The U.N. Security Council is rarely able to meaningfully respond to gross abuses of human rights or even outright aggression.²⁶ The United States and other democracies face growing challenges in upholding international rules or solving big problems such as chemical weapons use in Syria, ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, China's violations of international law in the South China Sea, and Russia's use of gray-zone tactics in Ukraine. The World Trade Organization has likewise struggled to address abuses of its trade rules by states such as China.²⁷ Without more effective and coordinated efforts to push back against these abuses and transgressions, authoritarian governments will continue to probe the boundaries of international rules and norms in ways contrary to both U.S. values and interests.

Fifth, economic globalization has exposed autocratic systems to democratic values, but it has also exposed democratic systems to autocratic influence. As the globalization of the world economy accelerated in the 1990s, experts assumed that integration would result in a more liberal future.²⁸ Authoritarian states, once closed, would be opened up and exposed to the practices and values of liberal democratic states. Gradually, these autocratic states would begin to take on more liberal characteristics, accelerating the trend toward greater democratization. But globalization has proved to be a two-way street. Liberal states have also been exposed to the influence of authoritarian states. Foreign investment from autocratic regimes has served as a vehicle to influence their recipients, most notably in the form of Russian cultivation of political actors across Eastern Europe.²⁹ The corrupt and uncompetitive inducements of autocrats have at times proved a more attractive path than more transparent business and investment practices favored by democracies.³⁰ The immense wealth concentration in autocratic states-and liberal ones as well-has spawned a complex transnational network of illicit finance that has distorted both developed and developing economies.³¹

The answer: A democratic values-based foreign policy

Donald Trump is hardly the only skeptic of a democratic values-based foreign policy. A range of policymakers and scholars of foreign policy, including some progressives, have argued that the United States should de-prioritize the promotion of democratic values in its foreign policy. Some make the argument that the United States needs to take a more hardheaded and transactional approach to advance its security and economic interests. However, this report argues that not only are these false choices but that the United States should see democratic values as a U.S. comparative advantage-and not a weakness-in global competition. America's liberal democratic values have been key to building, enhancing, and sustaining America's geopolitical power. With the global backsliding of democracy and the rise of alternative authoritarian models, it is ever more urgent to rediscover the power of core American values to secure U.S. interests in the long term.

A democratic values-based foreign policy is worth pursuing for three key reasons.

First, it will advance long-term U.S. economic and security interests abroad and create a safer and more prosperous world. Compared with authoritarian regimes, democracies are less likely to go to war against each other, less likely to ally against the United States, less likely to sponsor terrorism, less likely to experience famine or produce refugees, and more likely to adopt market economies and form economic partnerships with other democracies.³⁵ Since liberal democracies tend to share values rooted in rule of law, fair competition, and transparency, they are natural partners in promoting the stable, prosperous, open, and peaceful international environment that the United States ought to cultivate through its foreign policy.

It is true that the process of democratization can be long and uneven and can sometimes produce destabilizing and aggressive state behavior. However, mature and established democracies are more stable, peaceful, and prosperous, and more full-fledged democracies mean more economic and security benefits for the United States.³⁶ Furthermore, the global system of democratic alliances, institutions, and norms the United States helped create and lead after World War II has improved material conditions and brought peace and prosperity to hundreds of millions of people across the world. Bolstering that democratic system and the democratic values that underpin it will ensure that future generations can also enjoy the fruits of democracy and a liberal world.

Second, this kind of foreign policy will help secure an American advantage in great power competition by advancing a compelling alternative and strengthening the global democratic bulwark. Although the challenge posed by illiberal regimes today has evolved since the Cold War, there are still lessons to be drawn from that era. One of the most significant factors in the collapse of the Soviet Union was the powerful example and contrast set by flourishing democratic societies in the United States and Europe. Today, one of America's greatest strategic assets is its global network of democratic allies and partners. The power of that democratic network, even underutilized as it is today, stands in stark contrast to what today's illiberal and authoritarian regimes can offer: namely, political order purchased at the cost of extreme corruption, xenophobia, oligarchy, and arbitrary use of state power. To succeed, any approach to countering the authoritarian playbook must present a compelling alternative. This means that the United States, alongside its democratic allies and partners, must demonstrate that liberal democracy represents the best path to deliver inclusive prosperity, rule of law, and a just and equal society to a country's citizens.

Third, it is the right thing to do. For more than a century, U.S. support for global democracy promotion has rested in part on the sincere conviction that all people deserve to have a say in how they are governed and enjoy the freedoms afforded people in liberal democracies. Although the United States has at many junctures acted in ways that undermined the expansion of democracy and democratic freedoms, that failure does not make democracy promotion any less worthy a goal for U.S. foreign policy. Put simply, there is intrinsic moral value in using the immense influence and capabilities of the United States to empower ordinary people across the globe.

The way forward: A democracy-rebalance agenda for the next administration

To achieve these aims, the United States should implement a "democracy rebalance" designed to defend the existing liberal international order, motivate and empower global democracies to work together, and stem the rising tide of illiberalism. This effort would need to be more than a rhetorical shift. It would require Washington to undertake a strategic prioritization of effort to make protecting and advancing democracy a central pillar of the U.S. national security strategy. This strategic shift should be guided by the following principles:

First, the incentives must be significant. The United States and its democratic allies must generate enough of a pull factor through economic, political, and security benefits to incentivize transitional democracies to continue along the democratic path and to help consolidate democratic gains in both new and established democracies.

Second, there is strength in numbers. When providing incentives-and pushing back against illiberalism-the United States and its democratic partners need to lock arms to maximize effectiveness in an increasingly competitive global environment.

Third, this must be a strategic priority that reorients and draws on all the tools of American statecraft. The focus of U.S. foreign policy often is pulled in various directions, but this democracy rebalance would require vigorous strategic prioritization.

Fourth, democracy should not be spread through use of force. Military force should always be the last resort and only employed to address severe or acute security crises-not to advance a preferred political system. Resilient democratic governance is only possible through patient and sustained commitment to building effective democratic institutions. Military force will never be a substitute for this tried and tested approach.

Fifth, the United States should seek to avoid acting unilaterally. Rather, it should practice humility and seek to work with and learn from countries that have pushed back successfully against the authoritarian playbook.

Sixth, the most powerful force for global democracy will always be the aspirations of ordinary people. While it is natural for policymakers to focus on incentives and pressure points for foreign governments, the most durable and profound democratic change has historically come from grassroots, bottom-up movements. To that end, the United States and its partners should be prepared to support and defend the rights of people around the world to mobilize nonviolently in support of greater civil and political freedoms.

How should the United States define democracy?
This report considers the term democracy to encompass the consent of the governed and basic freedoms such as freedom of speech and assembly, a free press, equality before the law, free and fair elections, checks and balances, and protection of basic human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, among other international agreements and conventions. But assessing which countries qualify as democratic for the purposes of U.S. foreign policy will inevitably require judgment calls. Fortunately, there are already several sets of criteria available for determining the strength of a country's democracy, such as the Polity IV Project index and the V-Dem Institute's Liberal Democracy Index.³⁷ Some of these criteria are already incorporated into how the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a U.S. foreign aid agency, determines which countries are eligible to receive its assistance. Other U.S. assistance programs may wish to do the same.

Policy recommendations

Revitalizing global democracy is an immense and complex task that will take many years. But in the short term, the threat presented by opportunist authoritarian regimes urgently requires a rapid response. That is why America's democracy rebalance needs both an immediate defensive line of effort to protect democratic values at home and around the world from creeping authoritarianism and a sustained long-term effort to expand the global democratic community and address the drivers of democratic retrenchment.

Strengthen democracy at home

American foreign policy starts at home with the strength of our own democratic model. None of the initiatives proposed in this report is likely to succeed if the United States does not embrace its own democratic values and norms and lead by example. The next administration will need to simultaneously re-establish international credibility and strengthen the democratic compact with its own citizens. For the United States to compete effectively in the global battle of ideas, it must continue to perfect its own democracy and leverage its own comparative strengths: rule of law, strong institutions, the ability to self-correct as a nation, and the innovation and perseverance of the American people. While domestic policy is not the focus of this report, the authors felt it was essential to draw the connection between the health of American democracy and the strategic impact that the United States can drive globally in the context of rising competition.

Restore democratic values and norms

The next administration will need to emphasize its adherence to democratic norms, including reaffirming and embracing the role of a free press, respecting the independence of the judiciary and law enforcement, valuing its civil servants, rejecting racial and religious antagonism, and separating the interests of the public from the private interests of those in power. A series of strong and clear measures in this direction in the early days of the next administration will be a necessary predicate to restoring American credibility abroad.

Build trust in science and facts

With the assault on science and facts by the Trump administration and its allies-removing publicly available information on climate change from government agency websites, for instance, and certain conservative media outlets pushing baseless claims-it will be imperative for the U.S. government to ensure that policy decisions are driven by data and science and that information about policies are communicated objectively and clearly.³⁸

Address drivers of declining public trust

The next administration will need to demonstrate that it can deliver for all Americans and restore the basic compact between the governed and the governing. That means mounting an effective response to entrenched economic inequality, structural racism, gun violence, poor health outcomes, the dominance of special interests, and persistent poverty and the challenges that accompany it, including rising drug addiction. Without confronting these scourges head-on, America cannot effectively advocate for and support liberal democracy abroad.³⁹

Ensure a free and fair democratic process

For the United States to advance democracy abroad, it is essential that its democratic processes serve as a model, not as a cautionary tale. Currently, U.S. democratic processes are plagued by gerrymandering, a campaign finance system that strongly favors wealthy private interests, and weak transparency rules that distort democratic outcomes. The next administration, in conjunction with Congress, must seek to make meaningful headway against these counter-majoritarian practices.

Counter authoritarianism and vigorously defend the democratic community of nations

The United States and its democratic allies are on the front end of a long-term fight to defend their democratic processes as well as their free and open societies from foreign interference and political influence at the hand of authoritarian states. Democracies are not operating on a level playing field: Russia and China have a structural advantage of being closed societies where democratic ideas struggle to compete due to censorship, but neither Russia nor China shy away from engaging in efforts to exploit the open systems of the United States and other democratic countries.⁴⁰ For these reasons, it is essential that the United States design a more coherent, aggressive, and coordinated response to authoritarian encroachment.
To stem the authoritarian tide and defend democratic processes and institutions, democratic governments will also need the tools and knowledge to push back against the favorite tactics of illiberal regimes seeking to weaken and divide democratic societies. The United States should plan accordingly and lead a collaborative multilateral effort to counter the authoritarian playbook. This plan should involve several lines of effort, including:

Insulating democratic processes from outside interference and closing vulnerabilities that authoritarian adversaries exploit, for example: outdated and vulnerable electoral infrastructure, porous campaign finance regimes, cybersecurity vulnerabilities in electoral bodies and political campaigns, and weak regulatory frameworks for addressing false or misleading information online⁴¹

Encouraging digital media platforms, social networks, and data firms-the vast majority of which have lacked effective policies for identifying and deterring malign influence operations-to serve as a force for openness, not a tool to be abused by autocrats

Addressing gaps in the international financial system and domestic laws that enable corruption, money laundering, and illegal campaign finance

Identifying and sanctioning criminal actors that subvert democratic outcomes by advancing the interests of foreign powers in politics, media, and strategically important economic sectors

Modernizing U.S. public diplomacy and increasing support to free and independent international broadcast media to better address and rebut the anti-democratic narratives offered by authoritarian regimes

These efforts will only succeed if executed in tandem with other democracies. Some of these lines of effort are likely to advance quickly, while others will take substantial time and investment.

Build global democratic solidarity

Facing an illiberal challenge to the foundations of democratic society, the United States should endeavor to build a liberal bulwark. The first step in this project would be to catalyze deeper cooperation among democratic states. This will require a multipronged diplomatic effort that strengthens a variety of different multilateral and ad hoc networks of democratic states.

Network security alliances

From Europe to Asia and beyond, the United States has formal alliances with a wide range of democracies that constitute some of the world's most advanced and powerful defense capabilities. The United States should knit together these countries into a broader security architecture to enable better collaboration on regional and global security issues. An increase in security dialogues, technology sharing, and even exercises and interoperability amongst U.S. treaty allies could help bolster the power that democratic countries can project when confronted with global security challenges, from peacekeeping to deterrence to maritime security.

Transform the Community of Democracies into an action-oriented Summit of Democracies

The next administration should seek to transform the existing Community of Democracies (CD) into an annual Summit of Democracies that drives action on key challenges. Currently, the CD is an informal organization that gathers democracies to discuss challenges to democratic governance and to provide technical support to one another on building democratic institutions. Transforming the CD into a more effective institution would require two steps: First, reorient the organization to focus not only on shared threats to democratic societies-corruption, information warfare, and foreign interference in elections-but also shared strategic challenges, such as maritime security and interstate aggression; and second, convene the CD at the head-of-state level annually to endow it with the necessary political and bureaucratic buy-in and follow-through that it currently lacks. Like the idea of a "League of Democracies"⁴² championed in the past by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), this organization would be action-oriented-not as a replacement for existing international institutions but to provide an additional, exclusive venue through which leaders of new and transitioning democracies could build relationships with each other and their peers in established democracies. As President Barack Obama's nuclear security summits demonstrated, the constructive use of the bully pulpit of an American president can be a potent tool in marshaling complex international action.

Promote informal collaboration among democracies to solve key global challenges

The future of international cooperation on major global challenges is likely to be driven primarily by flexible, ad hoc arrangements of like-minded states. Many of these challenges would benefit from the specific cooperation of democracies, as well as regional organizations that make democracy a defining criteria of membership, such as the Organization of American States, the African Union, NATO, and the European Union. The United States should embrace this format of democratic cooperation and form new groupings, especially to act on challenges where democratic principles make a qualitative difference, such as corruption, development, humanitarian crises, and cybersecurity. Such arrangements can play a crucial role in demonstrating that democracies can act effectively and decisively to effect positive change and address pressing problems.

Upgrade the tools of U.S. statecraft to privilege U.S. policy toward democracies

The historic challenge of U.S. democracy promotion efforts is twofold: First, policies that advance democracy can be easily subordinated to near-term security and economic imperatives, and second, democracy promotion efforts are usually under-resourced and not well integrated into broader national security objectives. In a competitive world where the battle of ideas is becoming more intense and the value of the democratic model more contested, the next administration will need to recalibrate and upgrade the tools of U.S. democratic statecraft with the objective of privileging U.S. relationships with democracies and reversing the global democratic slide.

Elevate democracy as a national security priority

Previous U.S. administrations have treated democracy promotion as a noble aspiration but not a key security interest and have accordingly subordinated it to a range of other foreign policy objectives such as counterterrorism, nonproliferation, and economic relations. Going forward, the United States must treat support for democracies as a strategic priority and seek to integrate it with other national security goals. This would translate into a shift from how the United States has traditionally conducted its foreign policy and deployed its powerful tools of statecraft to a new approach that confers special benefits on democracies. While the United States spends significant assistance on democracies-mostly through the MCC and specific economic and democracy assistance programs run by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department-these efforts are diffuse and do not include coordinated whole-of-government efforts to combine economic assistance with security assistance, trade incentives, and other tools.

Launch a Democratic Strategic Advantage initiative

The next U.S. administration should present a multiyear, multibillion-dollar proposal to Congress to create and fund a Democratic Strategic Advantage initiative-akin to past large-scale U.S. government efforts to fight AIDS worldwide-to help established democracies and emerging democratic states sustain progress and to give them a strategic advantage over authoritarian competitors. This initiative would authorize the U.S. government to amplify and better synchronize U.S. economic and security assistance and commercial investment packages. For example, in addition to increased economic assistance, the United States should coordinate its current tools for security cooperation-from arms sales to military training to technology transfer-to give democracies a strategic edge over authoritarian adversaries.

Increase funding for bipartisan democracy organizations

To amplify impact, the United States should ensure that all tools of democracy promotion abroad are running at full speed and able to operate with maximum effectiveness. Congress should accordingly expand funding for the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute, all of which invest in and work to strengthen democracy worldwide .

Support and defend democratic voices

Most of the successful democratic transitions of the past two decades-such as those in Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), Nepal (2006), Tunisia (2011), and Ukraine (2014)-had their origins in grassroots movements advocating for peaceful democratic change. Nonviolent resistance can be a powerful tool in pushing back against democratic backsliding, as recent anti-government protests in Armenia and Slovakia illustrate.⁴³ Yet the United States and its democratic partners do not yet have a strategy for engaging, supporting, and defending the rising number of nonviolent pro-democracy movements around the world, in part because of their diffuse, grassroots nature and in part out of concern that external assistance could undermine the legitimacy of such movements. These are valid concerns, but they should not stand in the way of a deliberate and thoughtful approach to peaceful protest. At a minimum, the United States should seek to work with international partners to strengthen international norms regarding the rights of citizens to mobilize peacefully for greater political and civil rights and engage in nonviolent protest against their respective governments.

A key component of this strategy must include significantly ramping up support for civil society in U.S. government programs and policies. In addition to the measure mentioned above, the United States must also make clear that support for nonviolent democracy movements is not about regime change or picking political winners; it is about supporting the universal rights of people to engage in peaceful political expression. Lastly, the United States should seek to deter and punish states that violently crack down on their own people. The United States should make clear that violent repression will trigger strong U.S. economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation.

Challenges
If the United States is to effectively pursue a democratic-values based foreign policy, it must anticipate and proactively address several obstacles to its implementation.

Challenge no. 1
Many will view a U.S. initiative aimed at strengthening democratic values with skepticism. The selling of the Iraq War as an act of democracy promotion and America's lamentable Cold War history of supporting the overthrow of democratically elected governments fuel suspicion of U.S. foreign policy to this day. For some, the contradictions in America supporting democratic change while working with authoritarian regimes such as that of Saudi Arabia will constitute insurmountable hypocrisy. U.S. shortcomings cannot be papered over but must be considered alongside a larger record of nurturing and protecting democracy in Western and Eastern Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, and elsewhere. The contradictions in U.S. policy are an inevitable byproduct of a pragmatic approach; although they can be mitigated, they cannot be avoided entirely. While the United States must learn from past mistakes and reckon with present contradictions, neither should prohibit a pragmatic pivot toward the protection of democratic values.

Challenge no. 2
The United States cannot-and should not-avoid all cooperation with nondemocratic regimes. National security threats such as climate change, transnational crime, nonproliferation, and terrorism cannot be solved by democracies alone. They require a truly global response. The United States must maintain security, economic, and political cooperation with nondemocratic states, especially China, whose economy and growing influence loom large over the century ahead. America will need nondemocracies to respect and help sustain the global system of rules and norms under which democracies have taken root in every region and to which democratic states appeal for protection against larger authoritarian neighbors. Even as the United States elevates the role of democratic values in its foreign policy, for instance, it should continue to work with countries such as Vietnam to defend freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and Jordan on Middle East peace and security. Concerns over human rights in many cases should not prohibit the United States from engaging in vital cooperation, but nor should that cooperation prevent America from pressing its partners to uphold human rights.

Challenge no. 3
How can America champion democratic values abroad when its own democracy is in trouble at home? Trump is indeed a threat to democracy and has engaged in many of the behaviors-from petty corruption to bullying of law enforcement-that previous U.S. presidents have condemned in other nations. But history teaches us that ideological challenges at home and abroad are in many cases interlinked, and the United States must show it can grapple simultaneously with the need for democratic progress in both the domestic and foreign policy contexts. Today, if American democracy retreats from the global battle of ideas, what fills the void will leave people everywhere less free.
Challenge no. 4
What if America can no longer effectively champion democracy overseas? Democracy is a choice that countries must make for themselves. The United States cannot impose democracy on others, nor should it use military action or subversion to dictate other countries' politics. But the United States can make clear that it actively supports people's universal aspiration to govern themselves and that aspiring democracies will enjoy U.S. political support and can expect the United States to enlist other democratic nations to close ranks and do the same. Of course, as the recent backsliding of Hungary and Poland make clear, even robust inducements are rarely determinative. In such cases, the United States must be willing to coordinate closely with other democracies to impose consequences, including imposing penalties on regressive governments. However, the measure of success of a democratic values-based foreign policy should not be perfection but greater progress than under the alternatives-built on the recognition that what matters most is what people on the ground do to shape their own political realities. U.S. support exists not to dictate an outcome but to tilt the balance where possible to favor local aspirations for democratic rights and freedoms.

Conclusion

For more than 70 years, the United States' ability to do good in the world and secure its international interests has been inseparable from its commitment to democracy at home and abroad. Today, just as democracies around the world face new challenges from without and within, President Trump is chipping away day by day at America's standing as a force for good in the world.

The present age is not the first time that the United States has seen global democracy in retreat or presided over the decline of its own influence. History has proven more than once that the United States is capable of renewing its own democratic compacts while fighting for its values abroad. While America has not always lived up to its ideals, the truth remains that many people around the world still look to American democracy for inspiration and support. This unique role can and must outlast President Trump. America's future security and prosperity will in turn depend in large part on whether the United States can continue to defend and lead the world's democratic community. To prevail over the current illiberal challenge and preserve its place as the world's leading nation, America needs to revive and harness the power of democratic values.

About the authors

Kelly Magsamen is the vice president for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Max Bergmann and Michael Fuchs are senior fellows at the Center.

Trevor Sutton is a fellow at the Center.

The positions of American Progress, and our policy experts, are independent, and the findings and conclusions presented are those of American Progress alone. A full list of supporters is available here. American Progress would like to acknowledge the many generous supporters who make our work possible.

Kelly Magsamen

Vice President, National Security and International Policy

Michael Fuchs

Senior Fellow

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Securing a Democratic World Introduction and summary Reviving America's strategic position in the world in the wake of President Donald Trump will require a foreign policy that both firmly embraces democratic values and systematically pushes back against authoritarian competitors such as Russia and China.

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In this article, it talks about how the writer refers to the first international court of arbitration at the palace of peace, and that peace comes from stable exchange, sound currency, unhampered trade. The magnificent Palace of Peace, a monument to man’s dream of preventing for all time war and its bloody sacrifice of human life.

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“Every civilized man wants peace.” What peace does the world so earnestly desire? The peace that comes from ...

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World-Peace

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The article is talking about how humanity is to protect itself against a recurrence of the war, or a ocurrance like it. as well as seeking a solution of it, Like " you have peace at any price."

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Willis Fletcher Johnson, America and World Peace, The North American Review, Vol. 204, No. 732 (Nov., 1916), pp. 673-680

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This article says to build peace,we must dislodge the economic and political foundations of war.IPS belives that just foreign policy is bade on human rights,international law,and diplomacy over military intervention.

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To build peace, we must dislodge the economic and political foundations of war. IPS believes that a just foreign policy is based on human rights, international law, and diplomacy over military intervention.

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Peace and Foreign Policy - Institute for Policy Studies

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To build peace, we must dislodge the economic and political foundations of war. IPS believes that a just foreign policy is based on human rights, international law, and diplomacy over military intervention.

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This talks about the different trade agreements the U.S is doing or in the process of doing. Even who they do it and what they are trading.

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Trade Agreements can create opportunities for Americans and help to grow the U.S. economy.

USTR has principal responsibility for administering U.S. trade agreements. This involves monitoring our trading partners' implementation of trade agreements with the United States, enforcing America's rights under those agreements, and negotiating and signing trade agreements that advance the President's trade policy.

The United States is Member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization (WTO Agreement) sets out rules governing trade among the WTO's 154 members. The United States and other WTO Members are currently engaged in Doha Development Round of world trade talks, and a strong, market-opening Doha agreement for both goods and services would be an important contribution to addressing the global economic crisis and helping to restore trade's role in leading economic growth and development.

The United States has free trade agreements (FTAs) in effect with 20 countries. These FTAs build on the foundation of the WTO Agreement, with more comprehensive and stronger disciplines than the WTO Agreement. Many of our FTAs are bilateral agreements between two governments. But some, like the North American Free Trade Agreement and the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement, are multilateral agreements among several parties.

Another important type of trade agreement is the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement. TIFAs provide frameworks for governments to discuss and resolve trade and investment issues at an early stage. These agreements are also a means to identify and work on capacity-building where appropriate.

The United States also has a series of Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) help protect private investment, develop market-oriented policies in partner countries, and promote U.S. exports.

Detailed descriptions and the texts of many U.S. trade agreements can be accessed through the Resource Center on the left.

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Trade Agreements can create opportunities for Americans and help to grow the U.S. economy. USTR has principal responsibility for administering U.S. trade agreements. This involves monitoring our trading partners' implementation of trade agreements with the United States, enforcing America's rights under those agreements, and negotiating and signing trade agreements that advance the President's trade policy.

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This article talks about how president Biden and the Biden administration have recently talked about arrangements for Taiwan’s participation in the Summit for Democracy.

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The Biden administration recently announced arrangements for Taiwan's participation in the Summit for Democracy, which will be held virtually December 9-10. This was not an easy call. The issue was not whether Taiwan has a genuine democracy; it does. The island's leaders and much of its public wanted very much to participate and share Taiwan's experiences as a thriving democracy. The problem was the government of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which has long sought to exclude Taiwan from the international system and multilateral events like the summit. The Biden administration appears to have threaded the needle just right, affording Taiwan the dignity it deserves in the process.

TAIWAN'S DEMOCRATIC EVOLUTION

In the late 1940s, the Republic of China government led by Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist Party (KMT) relocated to Taiwan after being defeated by Mao Zedong's communists in a civil war. For the next four decades, the Taiwan population lived under a tough, authoritarian system that suspended civil and political rights, allowed elections mostly at the local level only, and maintained a monopoly of power. Although Taiwan became an economic success story, its political development was stunted.

That changed in the late 1980s, for a variety of reasons. The leader at that time, Chiang Ching-kuo (Chiang Kai-shek's son) made a firm decision to bring democracy to Taiwan. The PRC had begun its program of economic reform and Chiang wanted to keep ahead by doing political reform. He also probably realized democratization was his best way of sustaining American support and protection.

But there were other reasons. A political opposition had grown up, which in difficult circumstances exerted pressure on the government to undertake reform. A middle class had emerged that sought more political freedoms. And there was some pressure from the U.S. Congress.

Chiang Ching-kuo began the democratic transition in 1986, two years before he died. His successor, Lee Teng-hui, completed the process. The first popular elections for the entire legislature were held in 1992. The first popular election for president occurred in 1996.

As one of us (Bush) described in his recent book, " Difficult Choices," several factors made this transition remarkable. First, it was basically peaceful. Second, it occurred gradually. Third, under Lee's leadership, an ad hoc, centrist coalition of moderates of the ruling party, the KMT, and the primary opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), in effect negotiated the scope and pace of change. Taiwan thus became the poster child of the " third wave " of democratization, all the more impressive because it occurred at the same time as the tragedy of Tiananmen Square and its repressive aftermath was unfolding in the PRC.

China was relevant to Taiwan's democratization in a couple of different ways. On the one hand, the PRC government asserts that Taiwan is a part of China and that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should unify. In 1981, it proposed a formula for doing that, known as "one country, two systems," the same approach that was applied to Hong Kong. Beijing's offer was unappealing, in part because many on Taiwan were anti-communist by ideology. In addition, "one country, two systems" offered partial democracy at best, and Taiwan was quickly moving to full democracy. One result of Taiwan's democratic transition was that the island's public would have a say in whether to accept any agreement that might be negotiated between leaders in Beijing and leaders in Taipei.

Democratization also affected Taiwan's relationship with the PRC because it unleashed a flood of ideas about Taiwan's future. Most disturbing to Beijing was the dream of some in the DPP that Taiwan should be an independent country with no legal or political ties to China. President Lee (1988-2000) and his successor Chen Shui-bian (2000-2008), the island's first DPP president, certainly played up Taiwan nationalism for political purposes, which PRC leaders perceived to be covert moves to independence. The rising cross-Strait tensions that arose as a result were of concern to the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, who each worked to limit risks of an unwanted conflict.

Taiwan politics stabilized in 2008 with the election of the KMT's Ma Ying-jeou, who believed that engaging China was better than provoking it. Both Ma and his successor, Tsai Ing-wen of the DPP, who was first elected in 2016, seem to have adjusted the positions of their political parties to the status quo preferences of the Taiwan population. Neither independence nor unification has much appeal with voters. China has alleged that Tsai is another closet independence advocate, but her record does not lend serious credence to such assertions. She was easily reelected in 2020.

MEASURING TAIWAN'S DEMOCRATIC PERFORMANCE TODAY

In some respects, Taiwan's democracy deserves all the admiration it receives. Political rights are protected and vigorously exercised. Policy issues are intensely debated. Civil society is lively. Trust in election integrity is high. There have been three rotations of power between the KMT and the DPP.

On the other hand, there are problems: political corruption, polarization between the two political camps, the emergence of an occasionally destabilizing protest culture, and an increasing reliance on referendums to challenge government policy. In short, political forces have become very good at blocking what they do not like, but they find it difficult to forge compromises to enact what society needs.

Another challenge confronting Taiwan's political system is Beijing's multi-pronged campaign to influence decisions on Taiwan toward the mainland's preference for peaceful integration. Such efforts often fall in the grey zone between peaceful exchange and actions that could invite conflict. Efforts that fall within this realm of coercion without violence include cyber campaigns, misinformation and disinformation efforts, illicit cash flows to political actors sympathetic to Beijing's aims, military intimidation, preferential policies to attract Taiwan's innovators and companies to relocate to the mainland, and attempts to isolate Taiwan diplomatically.

Viewed holistically, such efforts are intended to weaken the will of the Taiwan people. Beijing would prefer for Taiwan society to be divided. It seeks to compel the people of Taiwan to lose confidence in their ability to provide peace and prosperity for future generations. They also would like to call into question whether the United States remains committed to supporting Taiwan's democratic development, i.e., whether Washington is willing to pay costs and accept risks in relations with Beijing to keep open a path to peaceful resolution of cross-Strait differences in a manner that reflects the will of the people in Taiwan.

THE BIDEN TEAM MAKES THE RIGHT CALL

These were the circumstances under which the Biden administration decided to include Taiwan in the Summit for Democracy. The administration faced a choice of whether to exclude Taiwan from the summit in service of seeking to stabilize relations with Beijing, or to invite Taipei's participation, recognizing that Taiwan has meaningful contributions to offer.

At a more fundamental level, the Biden administration likely also concluded that its calls for Taiwan's meaningful participation in the international community would ring hollow if it boxed Taiwan out of its own summit. Its decision to include Digital Minister Audrey Tang and Taiwan Representative to Washington Bi-Khim Hsiao builds on past precedent of Taiwan's involvement in U.S.-organized coalition efforts. Taiwan officials previously have played active roles in U.S.-led coalitions to protect religious freedom and counter the Islamic State group, to name but two examples.

The combination of Tang and Hsiao to represent Taiwan is a smart choice. Tang is a subject-matter celebrity in the democratic world, given her innovative track-record leading Taiwan's efforts to counter disinformation and misinformation. She and her team have built a rapid-response system to counter Beijing's attempts to manipulate public discourse in Taiwan, often employing humor to expose the sources of malicious information. Hsiao is a longtime trusted advisor to President Tsai who has built strong relationships across the political spectrum in the United States. Together, they will be able to speak authoritatively on Taiwan's behalf and offer meaningful contributions to the summit's objectives of defending against authoritarianism, fighting corruption, and promoting respect for human rights.

Even as Beijing can be counted on to object to Taiwan's participation in the summit and cry foul at America's emboldening of "Taiwan independence forces," Chinese officials likely will frame their opposition to the summit in broader terms than just Taiwan's participation. For example, in a joint op-ed, the Chinese and Russian ambassadors to the United States cast the summit as an attempt by Washington to split the world into blocs. They argued that the U.S. had no standing to judge other countries' governance systems and asserted that effective governance should be measured by whether it "brings about economic development, social stability and progress, and better lives for the people."

There is a fair debate to be had over whether America's hosting of the summit and its choices on whom to invite and exclude will do more to aid or undermine its broader global objectives. Leaving aside broader questions, the Biden administration made a sound decision to include Taiwan and to invite Minister Tang and Representative Hsiao to speak to Taiwan's experiences.

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The Biden administration is right to include Taiwan in the Summit for Democracy

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The Biden administration recently announced arrangements for Taiwan's participation in the Summit for Democracy, which will be held virtually December 9-10. This was not an easy call. The issue was not whether Taiwan has a genuine democracy; it does. The island's leaders and much of its public wanted very much to participate and share Taiwan's experiences as a thriving democracy.

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This News article talks about how the united states took a big step into fighting climate change. In total the U.S. has a 2.2 trillion spending bill and they are going to use 555 billion to give to some programs that could significantly curb the fossil fuel emissions that have been heating the atmosphere.

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House Passes the Largest Expenditure on Climate in U.S. History

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The $555 billion package is designed to lure the country away from fossil fuels. It faces an uncertain path in the Senate.

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This article talks about how the US/Biden administration doesn't want to leave any democratic country behind and how they will support the country as they become democratic.

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Well-placed geographically and politically between America and Europe, Britain has long marketed itself as the diplomatic bridge linking the two continents.

Most British prime ministers since World War Two have reached for the metaphor at some time or other to describe what they saw as Britain's essential and aggrandizing function in transatlantic relations.

When Europeans in 2001 were assailing President George W. Bush for his foreign policy plans, including pulling the U.S. out of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change, Britain's then-leader, Tony Blair, emphasized his desire to "build bridges of understanding between the U.S. and Europe."

Britain's role as a useful intermediary traditionally has been welcomed in Washington, although the role has often been resented in European capitals stretching back to the time of Charles De Gaulle, the French leader who blocked Britain from joining the then European Common Market, partly because he feared Britain would act as America's agent inside the bloc.

Post-Brexit and Joe Biden's foreign policy team is likely to have to switch roles and act as a diplomatic bridge for Britain to an estranged European continent, say analysts.

"I think you will see a concerted effort by the Biden team to engage London with Brussels, Berlin and Paris," says Damon Wilson, executive vice president at the Atlantic Council, a foreign policy think tank based in Washington.

A former senior director for European Affairs at the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration, Wilson says Biden's foreign policy advisers will likely decide that to maintain coherence in the transatlantic alliance they will have to make sure "London is at the table with Brussels and the other main Western powers."

Britain's messy departure from the European Union, which saw more than four years of bruising, and sometimes petty, haggling, has left Britain's relations with its European neighbors in tatters. They are hardly in the mood to accept Britain as an American emissary.

And since Britain and its erstwhile 27 partners struck a final Brexit deal last month, defining, at least in the midterm, Britain's trade relations with the EU, ill-feeling has persisted.

This week a diplomatic row broke out between London and Brussels over the status of the bloc's ambassador in London with Britain's Foreign Office withholding full diplomatic recognition to the envoy on the grounds that the EU is not a sovereign state but an international body.

That breaks with the practice of 142 other countries that grant full privileges to the bloc's diplomats. Infuriated EU officials have dubbed Britain's move "petty."

British policymakers remain highly anxious about the future of Anglo-American relations post-Brexit, and now post-Trump. Britain's Boris Johnson at one time saw himself and Donald Trump as kindred spirits. Trump dubbed Johnson as "Britain Trump."
Special relationship
Proximity to U.S. power enhances British power - hence Britain's perennial eagerness to maintain the much-vaunted "special relationship" between London and Washington. Some observers say Britain has shown such an over-eagerness to engage that it could be construed as a sign of weakness, even desperation.

The fear in London is that the Biden administration will relegate Britain, seeing Germany and France as the more important transatlantic partners. President Biden's key foreign policy advisers, including his nominee to be the new U.S. secretary of state, Tony Blinken, a Francophone and Francophile who was raised in Paris, and Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, were disparaging of Brexit, viewing it as a strategic mistake by the British and one that would diminish Britain's usefulness to the United States.

Like Barack Obama, who openly backed Britain's remaining in the EU, Biden also disapproved of Brexit. In a speech in Dublin the day after the 2016 Brexit referendum, Biden condemned "reactionary politicians and demagogues" for Brexit, adding, "We'd have preferred a different outcome." Some former British diplomats have worried that Brexit "chickens will come home to roost" with a Biden administration.

President Biden himself has shown little liking in the past for Johnson, describing the British leader at a fundraiser during the primary race for the Democratic nomination "a physical and emotional clone of the president [Trump]."

Biden is said to have taken as much offense as Obama over a newspaper column Johnson wrote many years ago when he was mayor of London in which he accused Obama of being "part-Kenyan" and harboring an "ancestral dislike of the British Empire."

That column was written in response to Obama's moving a bust of the great British wartime Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. Trump returned the bust where George W. Bush had placed it, and Biden has now followed Obama's example.

Johnson's tune is different this time. In a statement, Downing Street said: "The Oval Office is the president's private office, and it's up to the president to decorate it as he wishes."

The fears of Britain's ruling Conservatives about how Anglo-American relations may unfold under a Biden administration were partly assuaged in November when Biden, after his election win, chose to phone Johnson ahead of talking with France's Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Angela Merkel. "Special relationship maintained as Johnson is first on Joe Biden's call list," The Times of London exhaled on its front page.

But British fears have not been banished completely. "The incoming administration of Joe Biden will seek to heal America's relations with allies in Europe and Asia," Robin Niblett, director of Britain's Chatham House, wrote in a commentary. "But Brexit Britain will have to fight its way to the table on many of the most important transatlantic issues, with the EU now the U.S.'s main counterpart," he added.

The British may be over-anxious, though, according to some analysts. A key policy aim of the new U.S. administration is to steady democracies roiled by unprecedented domestic political turmoil and challenged by authoritarian powers. Biden has said he wants to convene a global summit of democracies to forge common goals. Victoria Nuland, a veteran diplomat slated for a top job at the State Department, recently said: "It's time to stand up and defend it [democracy]."

The Biden administration appears to be in no mood to leave any democracy behind.

Speaking in December at an event in Washington, and before her pick to rejoin the State Department, Nuland said in her concluding remarks: "It's going to be very, very important for all of us to relink hands with the U.K. and ensure that London stays a strong global player and is well docked into the U.S.-EU conversation, the democracy conversation, and is really the global Britain that they have said they want to be."

The Atlantic Council's Damon Wilson says under the Biden administration "there will be a big and dramatic change when it comes to relations with Berlin and a very big emphasis on Berlin." "Germany will have a more prominent place in consultations," he adds.

But Wilson, who knows the Biden aides well, doesn't see that as necessary coming at the expense of Britain. "The UK is going to be valuable because it will be quicker, it will be more nimble" compared to the EU and Brussels. "You work with the British because they can move fast, they can do things and that expediency will make Britain still relevant," he adds.

Biden aides presented "strong and compelling cases about why Brexit would not be in American interests, but they won't hold Brexit against the British," he says.

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Role Reversal for US and Post-Brexit Britain

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The Biden administration appears to be in no mood to leave any democracy behind and will work hard to help Britain improve its strained relations with Europe

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This artical is about Biden and Xi Jinping
talking about trade between the U.S. and China.

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U.S.-China Trade Talks Should Prioritize Opening Up China’s Internet

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One of the world’s biggest trade barriers is also a tool of censorship.

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U.S.-China Trade Talks Should Prioritize Opening Up China’s Internet

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https://www.nytimes.com/
This article talks about their community and sharing their stories with us and having kind love familarity. ¨In this stunning series of 36 flash stories, Kawakami uses one unnamed neighborhood in Japan and its recurring characters to show us a particular vision of humanity — one filled with equal parts fable and the everyday. It’s a vision that astounds even as it shrugs, the stories soaring to the grandness of princesses and world domination, but also descending to children squabbling inside a sandbox and the simple powerlessness of the neighborhood dog. ¨

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The New York Times - Breaking News, US News, World News and Videos

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Live news, investigations, opinion, photos and video by the journalists of The New York Times from more than 150 countries around the world. Subscribe for coverage of U.S. and international news, politics, business, technology, science, health, arts, sports and more.

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This article is talking about the new administration wanted to see if the page could be turned on iraq and the U.S relationship.

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The 1990s were a decade of intensive peace process negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. In Madrid and Oslo and Shepherdstown and Camp David, two American presidents tried to bring peace to the Middle East.

In the end it was mostly a failure, with one exception: the Jordan-Israel peace treaty of October 26, 1994. Twenty-five years ago, the treaty was signed in the Wadi Arava along the border between the two countries with President Bill Clinton as the witness. It has endured because it has strategic value to both countries and the United States.

Quiet beginnings

The treaty is very much a derivative of the Oslo process. When the secret talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) were divulged in 1993, Jordan's King Hussein felt betrayed. For years he had been secretly meeting with the Israelis to broker peace; now he discovered that they were secretly meeting with the Palestinians and making a deal without consulting him. The PLO, fellow Arabs, had not consulted the king either. He was devastated.

I was in Aqaba when Clinton hosted the now iconic handshake at the White House between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat. The mood in the palace was grim. Clinton had sent me and a team of experts to assess Jordanian compliance with the United Nations sanctions on Iraq. Jordan's tilt toward Iraq in the 1990 Kuwait crisis had poisoned American-Jordanian relations. Aid had been stopped, military support and logistics cut off, and the Jordanians' only port at Aqaba was under quarantine to check for traffic transiting to Iraq via Jordan. The new administration wanted to see if the page could be turned on Iraq and the U.S. relationship with Jordan restored to normal. I visited the border crossing to see if the Jordanians were actually ensuring only U.N.-approved humanitarian goods were entering Iraq.

In September 1993, Rabin secretly came across the border from Eilat to Aqaba to address King Hussein's concerns and assure the Jordanians that they would be kept informed about the future of the Oslo process. The meeting was arranged by Efraim Halevy, the deputy director of the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad. Hussein had been dealing with the Mossad and Halevy for years as a trusted clandestine back-channel. He would be a key player in the treaty's consummation.

Jordan would not be alone.

Gradually over the fall and winter of 1993-94, King Hussein and his brother Crown Prince Hassan bin Talal recognized that the Israeli-Palestinian talks were actually an excellent opportunity for Jordan. Hassan was to be the king's closest advisor in the talks with Rabin and Halevy. Jordan had long held back from a peace treaty with Israel because it did not want to get in front of the Palestinians. It did not want a separate treaty with Israel, like President Anwar Sadat had done for Egypt. But now Arafat was engaging in direct talks with the Israelis to make a peace agreement: Jordan would not be alone. Even the Syrians were engaging with Israel via the Americans. Jordan was free to negotiate a peace treaty with Israel after decades of clandestine contacts begun by Hussein's grandfather King Abdullah without fear of a backlash from the other Arabs.

Moreover, the negotiation of a peace treaty with Israel would also open the way for a rapid restoration of ties with Washington. Clinton supported the peace process enthusiastically. A Jordanian treaty would get his support and help him sell the revival of bilateral relations with Jordan to Americans still angry over the Iraq war, especially in Congress. The king still did not truly grasp how badly his ties to Saddam Hussein had tarnished his image with the Americans.

In April 1994, King Hussein sent for Halevy to come across the Jordan River for another secret meeting. The king told him that he was ready to go for a peace treaty and engage in direct talks to settle the borders and all other issues. He wanted to move quickly. He also wanted Israeli help with Washington to restore relations, including the resumption of military aid and spare parts as well as delivery of a squadron of F-16 jet fighters for the Royal Jordanian Air Force.

The king also had tight constraints on how he wanted the negotiations to proceed. The Americans would not be in the room and not mediate the talks. Jordan and Israel would keep the Americans informed, but the king did not want Washington using its leverage in a negotiation process given the Americans' closer ties to Israel.

He also wanted Halevy as the principal Israeli negotiator. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was to be excluded from the talks. Hussein had bitter experience with Peres and believed he was a publicity seeker who could not keep a secret. Hussein was particularly upset that Peres could not deliver Israeli support for a secret agreement the two had signed in London in 1987. He also was well aware that Rabin and Peres were rivals.

It was an extraordinary message for the Mossad officer to deliver to Rabin. The timing was also bad: Two terrible terrorist attacks had just occurred in Israel. Some were erroneously blaming Jordan for harboring the terrorists' leaders. But Rabin had met with the king secretly for almost two decades, and he was impressed by the message. The first round of talks began.

Trusted partners

The Rabin-Hussein relationship was crucial to the success of the negotiations. Both trusted the other. Hussein saw Rabin as a military man who had the security issues under his command. He was convinced that he had a unique opportunity to get a peace treaty and Rabin was central to the opening.

The king also saw the negotiation process as almost more of a religious experience than a diplomatic solution to the passions of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The king also saw the negotiation process as almost more of a religious experience than a diplomatic solution to the passions of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He spoke movingly of restoring peace between the children of Abraham. He wanted a warm peace, not the cold peace between Egypt and Israel.

Jerusalem was also a core issue for the Hashemite family. Despite losing physical control of East Jerusalem in 1967, the king had retained influence in the Muslim institutions that administered the holy sites in the city. The preservation of Jordan's role in the administration of the third holiest city of Islam was a very high priority of Hussein then, and still is for his son King Abdullah today. In another secret meeting in May 1994, in the king's home in London, Rabin assured the king that Israel would abide by the Hashemite link to the city. It would be explicitly mentioned in the treaty's article 9. It was the crucial breakthrough.

Meanwhile, in Washington

In Washington, the Clinton administration closely monitored the progress in the Jordanian track. Initially there was some skepticism that Hussein was really prepared for a treaty; he had held back before. Also, the king preferred to talk to the Americans through the Central Intelligence Agency rather than the State Department. Halevy, too, was more comfortable with the CIA. As the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia back at the CIA, I found that I was better informed on the process than my colleagues in Foggy Bottom, often knowing the latest sooner than they.

In June, King Hussein came to Washington to tell Clinton exactly the progress made and lobby for resuming aid. He asked Rabin to send Halevy to help behind the scenes. The Jordanians provided the White House with a detailed and lengthy memorandum on the bilateral issues they wanted addressed.

On June 22, the king meet with the president. Clinton had studied the Jordanian wish list carefully. The top priority was for debt forgiveness, amounting to $700 million dollars. Clinton told Hussein that this would be a tough lift on Capitol Hill. If Hussein would meet Rabin at a public ceremony in the White House hosted by the president, Clinton said he could get the debt relief and progress on Jordan's other requests.

The king told his aides that this was the best meeting he had had with an American president since his first with Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1959. On July 9, the king told the Jordanian parliament that it was time for an end to the state of war with Israel and for a public meeting with the Israeli leadership. He wanted the meeting to take place in the region.

The Americans wanted it in Washington. They were dangling fulfillment of Jordan's wish list but wanted the dramatic public pictures to be in their capital. Hussein reluctantly agreed. The Jordanian and Israeli peace teams met publicly on the border to start the rollout, followed by a foreign ministers meeting at the Dead Sea in Jordan - a way to bring Peres into the photo op but not the negotiations.

Those went on behind the scenes to craft a document laying out the principals that would frame the treaty. The Washington Declaration was very closely held. The Americans got a copy only on the night before the White House ceremony.

Success

On July 25, 1994, Clinton read the declaration on the White House lawn and Rabin and Hussein signed it. It terminated the state of war. Israel formally undertook to respect the special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in the Muslim holy shrines in Jerusalem. All three gave speeches, but the king's address got the most attention. His speech included a clear and unqualified statement that the state of war was over. He spoke of the realization of peace as the fulfillment of his life-long dream.

At the banquet that night, Clinton spoke of the king's extraordinary courage in pursuit of peace. He compared him to his grandfather, who had been assassinated for his talks with Israel. Hussein had witnessed King Abdullah's murder first-hand and had just narrowly escaped death himself - in fact, the assassin's bullet ricocheted off a medal his grandfather had insisted he wear that day. Hussein was visibly moved.

The next day, Rabin and Hussein addressed a joint session of Congress. Hussein spoke about his grandfather's commitment to peace. "I have pledged my life to fulfilling his dream." Both received standing ovations. Behind the scenes, Halevy was lobbying Congress for debt relief. He returned to the region on the royal aircraft with the king and queen.

The king's jet was given clearance to overfly Israel en route to Amman, one of the agreements in the Washington Declaration. He was escorted by Israeli F-15 fighters. The aircraft flew over Jerusalem and circled it several times at 1,000 feet. It was the first time Hussein had looked at the city since 1967. The queen said it was a deeply moving moment, especially as they looked down at the Dome of the Rock.

Three months of intense negotiations began to finalize a treaty. Teams from the two countries met every day, mostly at the crown prince's house in Aqaba. Hassan supervised the day-to-day talks for his brother.

The toughest issues were land and water. In the years after the 1967 war, Israel had encroached on Jordan's land south of the Dead Sea, taking 380 square kilometers of land, roughly the size of the Gaza Strip but mostly empty of people. On October 12, Rabin and Hussein reached agreement on a compromise that Hassan and Halevy had worked out. The border would be slightly adjusted, but the Jordanians would get back the land. Jordan would also get a generous increase in water from the Jordan Valley.

The final issues were addressed at another Rabin-Hussein summit meeting in Amman on the evening of October 16. The two leaders got down on their hands and knees to pour over a large map of the entire border from north to south and personally delineated the line. Two small areas got special treatment: Israel would lease the two areas from Jordan so Israeli farmers could continue access to their cultivation. By 4am, it was done.

On October 26, 1994, Clinton witnessed the signing of the treaty on the border by the prime ministers of Israel and Jordan. It was only the second visit to Jordan by a sitting American president. (Nixon had visited in 1974 in a desperate effort to avoid impeachment by highlighting his role in the Middle East after the October 1973 war.)

In Amman, demonstrators waved black flags to protest the treaty. Many Jordanians felt it was dishonorable to make peace with Israel while the occupation of the West Bank continued. Some argue that it legitimates the Israeli occupation. It has gotten progressively more unpopular in the 25 years since the signing ceremony.

Rabin's assassination a year later removed Hussein's partner in peace. He attended the funeral in Jerusalem, his first visit to the city since the 1967 war. Two years later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dispatched a Mossad hit team to Amman to poison a Hamas leader. The botched murder attempt created a crisis in the new peace, and Halevy had to be called back from his new job in Brussels as ambassador to the European Union to smooth out the disaster and get the Mossad team released. He would then be appointed the head of the Mossad.

The king sent Crown Prince Hassan to Washington to assess the damage. Clinton used his leverage to get the crisis resolved. Hussein never trusted or respected Netanyahu after it, and the peace has been cold ever since. It was a defining moment.

But Hussein's strategic goal of restoring bilateral relations with the United States was achieved. In 1995, I accompanied Secretary of Defense William Perry to Amman where he announced the forthcoming delivery of a squadron of F-16s to Jordan. Perry called the country the "lynchpin" of the Middle East. Debt forgiveness was already done. And in December 1999, I traveled with Clinton and three former presidents to attend Hussein's funeral in Amman in a strong demonstration of America's commitment to Jordan.

The Trump administration has tilted dramatically toward Israel on all the issues that concern Jordanians about the future of the Palestinian issue, especially the status of Jerusalem. The movement of the American embassy to Jerusalem was a particularly important shock to the peace treaty. If Israel begins to annex parts of the West Bank, as Netanyahu has promised, the Jordanians will be in a corner. The treaty may be more endangered today than ever before.

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25 years on, remembering the path to peace for Jordan and Israel

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The 1990s were a decade of intensive peace process negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. In Madrid and Oslo and Shepherdstown and Camp David, two American presidents tried to bring peace to the Middle East. In the end it was mostly a failure, with one exception: the Jordan-Israel peace treaty of October 26, 1994.

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John kirby talks about how china and climate change are two very important national security threats and also admits that the US is part of why climate change is happening. Also talks about how the US is trying its best to stop climate change by trying get tactical vehicles hybrid and about 170,000 non tactical vehicles used on the bases fully electric.

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The Pentagon said Wednesday it considers China and climate change to be "equally important" national security threats facing the U.S. Department of Defense.

"Both are equally important," press secretary John Kirby told Fox News. "Both are challenges that the secretary wants the senior leadership at the Pentagon to be focused on, as well as many others too.

"I think we get paid to examine all the threats to our national security. And I don't know that it does anybody good to put some sort of relative analysis assessment on that," he said when Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson asked whether China or the climate was a bigger threat to the U.S.

PELOSI AGREES WITH COMMENT THAT US MILITARY A 'LARGER POLLUTER THAN 140 COUNTRIES COMBINED'
"You've heard the secretary talk about the climate as a real and existential national security threat," he continued. "And it is - not just to the United States, but to countries all over the world."

Kirby's comments came just one day after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi conceded that the U.S. military is "a larger polluter than 140 countries combined," during her trip to Scotland for the United Nations Climate Summit.

"We have been nothing but honest about the fact that we are the largest emitter here, in the federal government," Kirby said "We know that. And that's...one of the reasons why we're taking the climate crisis so very seriously, because we are a contributor to those emissions and we know that."

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks on Tuesday touted the military's plan to launch a fleet of electric vehicles as part of President Biden's push to counter climate change.

Tactical vehicles will be the first to become hybrid, to ease the reliable transition between fully electric and fossil fuel-reliant vehicles.
PENTAGON, CONGRESS INCREASINGLY WORRIED ABOUT THE RISE OF CHINESE MILITARY
Roughly 170,000 nontactical cars and trucks used on bases will become fully electric, though it is unclear when this goal will be achieved.

While speaking to the automobile industry in Detroit, Hicks said the U.S. is looking to have the DOD reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The deputy defense secretary said as the administration looks to relinquish its reliance on fossil fuels, it will need to beef up its supply chains for lithium batteries.

"Batteries are also essential to thousands of military systems, from handheld radios to unmanned submersibles, and to future capabilities like lasers, directed energy weapons, and hybrid electric tactical vehicles," she explained.

Hicks said the U.S. is working to shore up its domestic supply of lithium batteries to take on not just climate change, but China.

"It is estimated [that] investments committed to the global lithium-ion battery supply chain are approaching a trillion dollars," she continued. "The problem, however, is that China presently dominates that supply chain."
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Defense officials have contested climate change poses a security threat to not only U.S. military facilities today, but to the future of the institution as it addresses prolonged instability worldwide.

"Every dollar we spend recovering from the effects of climate change is one dollar the department is not investing to meet other priorities," Hicks said. "In the face of these increasingly challenging conditions, the Department of Defense must remain ready to defend the nation."

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Pentagon says China and climate change 'equally important' national security threats

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The Pentagon said Wednesday it considers China and climate change to be "equally important" national security threats facing the U.S. Department of Defense. "Both are equally important," press secretary John Kirby told Fox News. "Both are challenges that the secretary wants the senior leadership at the Pentagon to be focused on, as well as many others too.

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In this article it goes on to explain on how climate change is a big issue that is ongoing and has been for a while and has a lot of affect to it such as having an affect towards food production, heat waves, increase of wildfires, sea levels rising that can cause risks of catastrophic flooding , and much more issues that go on. But these issues go on to effecting our style of living and can cause difficulties if there are no changes made to better our climate change.

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the article is about cia director william burns secretly blaming russia about the unknown syndrome that has affected military   personnel and government officials. if they are shown to be guilty there will be repercussions  according to the william burns. symptoms include: "hearing a sudden loud noise, pain in one or both ears, feeling of pressure or vibrations in the head, tinnitus, visual problems, vertigo, nausea, cognitive difficulties,fatigue and dizziness"

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CIA Director William Burns delivered a secret warning to Russian intelligence services that they will face "consequences" if they are responsible for the mysterious health incidents known as " Havana Syndrome " that have afflicted U.S. spies, diplomats, FBI agents and others spies around the world, three sources familiar with the matter said.

The warning was first reported by The Washington Post.

Burns raised the issue during a visit to Moscow this month, the sources said, while he was speaking to top officials of Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB, and its Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR.

The sources said he told the Russian spies that harming U.S. personnel and their families would break the unwritten rules of acceptable behavior for professional intelligence services. If it was determined that the Russians were responsible, he said, there would be repercussions.

Victims suffering from Havana Syndrome have reported hearing a loud sound and feeling pressure in their heads and then experiencing dizziness, unsteady gait and visual disturbances. Many say they have suffered long-standing debilitating effects.

NBC News reported in 2018 that U.S. intelligence officials considered Russia a leading suspect in what some of them assessed to have been deliberate attacks on diplomats and CIA officers overseas. But in the three years since then, the spy agencies have not uncovered enough evidence to pinpoint the cause or the culprit of the health incidents. U.S. officials cannot say for sure that they were the result of human activity.

Many U.S. officials remain convinced that Russia is behind the incidents, which Burns has privately called "attacks," current and former officials say. Russia has consistently denied responsibility.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine said in a report last year that some of the observed brain injuries were consistent with the effects of directed microwave energy, which the report said Russia has long studied.

A team of medical and scientific experts who studied the symptoms of as many as 40 State Department and other government employees concluded that nothing like them had previously been documented in medical literature, the report said.

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CIA head warns Russians of consequences if they caused Havana Syndrome

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CIA Director William Burns delivered a secret warning to Russian intelligence services that they will face "consequences" if they are responsible for the mysterious health incidents known as " Havana Syndrome " that have afflicted U.S. spies, diplomats, FBI agents and others spies around the world, three sources familiar with the matter said.

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This article explains how the United states and the South Korea alliance remains locked in. Although this alliance faces some challenges due to the history but will still help deter potential chinese military aggression threats from North Korea. The U.S also made the choice to permanently deploy the helicopter which was proof that they value the alliance made with them.

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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has arrived in South Korea for annual security talks expected to bolster the countries' decades-long military alliance in the face of North Korean nuclear threats and mounting challenges from China

SEOUL, South Korea -- U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in South Korea on Wednesday for annual security talks expected to bolster the countries' decades-long military alliance in the face of North Korean nuclear threats and mounting challenges from China.

The U.S.-South Korea alliance "is the linchpin of peace and security in this region," Austin tweeted after landing.

But how substantially the alliance, sealed in the bloodshed of the 1950-53 Korean War, can be solidified is in doubt as South Korea remains locked in thorny historical disputes with Japan - another key American regional ally - and hesitates to actively join U.S.-led efforts to curb China's rising strength.

"The alliance faces some obstacles. It's not desirable for the South Korea-Japan history issue and other problems to work as obstacles" in South Korea's national security, said Moon Seong Mook, a retired South Korean army general and analyst at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy.

The meeting Thursday between Austin and his South Korean counterpart, Suh Wook, comes after the Pentagon released the results of a global posture review earlier this week. The review directs additional cooperation with allies and partners to deter "potential Chinese military aggression and threats from North Korea," while informing Austin's approval of the permanent stationing of a previously rotational attack helicopter squadron and artillery division headquarters in South Korea.

Boo Seung-Chan, a spokesman at South Korea's Defense Ministry, said Tuesday the U.S. decision to permanently deploy the helicopter and artillery units was proof that both countries highly value their alliance.

Some experts said the alliance was at risk in recent years as then-President Donald Trump threatened to withdraw the 28,500 American troops stationed in South Korea if Seoul failed to drastically increase its financial support for them, and repeatedly complained of the cost of regular military drills with South Korea.

After his landmark first summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in 2018, Trump baffled many by unilaterally announcing the suspension of major summertime military drills between the U.S. and South Korea, calling them "very provocative" and "tremendously expensive."

But such worries have gradually eased since Trump's successor, Joe Biden, said he would restore Washington's alliances throughout the world.

In Thursday's meeting, the allies are expected to announce a strengthening of their ties and the U.S. security commitment to South Korea, Moon said. Although such announcements aren't something new, Moon said it would still "discomfort North Korea, which basically aims to drive a wedge between South Korea and the U.S." amid stalled nuclear disarmament talks.

South Korea has been struggling to strike a balance between the U.S., its most important security ally, and China, its biggest trading partner. South Korea suffered economic retaliation from China after allowing the U.S. to install a missile defense system in its territory in 2017 which Beijing views as a security threat.

"Washington is also looking for Seoul to do more beyond the (Korean) peninsula, which would involve trilateral cooperation with Japan despite tensions over history, and contributing to Asia's maritime security despite objections from China," said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Seoul's Ewha University.

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US, SKorea to bolster alliance at talks but questions remain

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U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has arrived in South Korea for annual security talks expected to bolster the countries' decades-long military alliance in the face of North Korean nuclear threats and mounting challenges from China SEOUL, South Korea -- U.S.

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this article is about how the trades are and it has to be with a agreement to trade.

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International Trade Administration | Trade.gov

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The goal of trade agreements is to reduce barriers to U.S. exports, protect U.S. interests competing abroad, and enhance the rule of law in the FTA ...

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The state department removed FARC from the terrorist list, they stated that they no longer engage with terrorism or terrorist activity and don't have the ability or to do so. In 2016 Colombia's government and the FARC agreed in peace and ended a 5-decade conflict. Removing them from the terrorist list can make peace with the country since they've been asking them to remove them from the terrorist list.

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WASHINGTON - The State Department removed the Revolutionary Forces of Colombia from its list of foreign terrorist organizations on Tuesday, as many of the group's former commanders have turned to conventional politics after a decades-long conflict.

In a statement, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the group, known as FARC, had "formally dissolved and disarmed" and "no longer exists as a unified organization that engages in terrorism or terrorist activity or has the capability or intent to do so."

The move, which drew criticism from several prominent Republicans, is a sign of the Biden administration's support for a fragile peace deal that the Colombian government signed with the FARC in November 2016. The agreement officially ended a five-decade conflict in which the U.S. military backed the government against a left-wing fueled insurgency that was funded by the drug trade. The fighting left more than 220,000 people dead.

Colombia had urged Washington for years to remove the FARC from its official list of terrorist groups, and Mr. Blinken said in his statement that the shift would allow the United States to "better support implementation of the 2016 accord, including by working with demobilized combatants." Many of the FARC's former top military commanders are now prominent politicians.

Under the deal, more than 13,000 FARC rebels agreed to lay down their arms in return for more government investment in neglected rural areas. But implementation of the accord has been shaky. Government aid has been slow to materialize in remote areas, and pockets of armed rebels carry on their fight.

After a helicopter carrying Colombia's president, Iván Duque, was attacked in July, the government arrested 10 former FARC rebels and charged them with attempted assassination and a car bombing at a military base.

Mr. Blinken said two rebel groups formed by former FARC commanders who refused to demobilize were designated terrorist organizations. Segunda Marquetalia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People's Army, or FARC-EP, are responsible for armed attacks, assassinations and hostage-takings, he said.

The United States also designated several leaders of the two groups as terrorists.

Some Republicans have criticized the Biden administration's decision to remove the FARC's terrorist group designation. After the planned action was first reported last week by The Wall Street Journal, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Mike McCaul of Texas, called the move "an exercise in appeasement."

FARC members "have not exercised remorse or acts of contrition for their ongoing narco-terrorism against innocent Colombians & Americans," Mr. McCaul wrote on Twitter.

"President Biden's decision to remove the FARC from the State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations will embolden terrorist groups throughout Latin America, empower narco-traffickers and pave the way for Castro-chavismo in Colombia," Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, said in a statement.

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U.S. Removes Colombia's FARC Rebel Group From Terrorist List

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WASHINGTON - The State Department removed the Revolutionary Forces of Colombia from its list of foreign terrorist organizations on Tuesday, as many of the group's former commanders have turned to conventional politics after a decades-long conflict. In a statement, Secretary of State Antony J.

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This talks about the U.S trade representative Katherine Tai who is in Tokyo to meet with japanese government ministers to discuss trade on steel and aluminum. It is believed that this will strengthen the relationship between the two and will help create sustainable, inclusive and competitive trade policies which will help out the people and economies

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WASHINGTON, Nov 17 (Reuters) - The United States and Japan announced on Wednesday a new trade partnership to boost cooperation on labor, environment and digital trade issues, with an emphasis on "third country concerns," a reference to China's state-driven economic policies.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, who is in Tokyo to meet with new Japanese government ministers, said initial meetings of the U.S.-Japan Partnership on Trade would take place early in 2022, with periodic meetings on a regular basis.

"This partnership will deepen the cooperation between the United States and Japan that has defined our strong bilateral trade relationship," Tai said in a statement issued by her office in Washington.

"Our close collaboration will support the Biden-Harris Administration's economic framework for the Indo-Pacific and help create sustainable, resilient, inclusive, and competitive trade policies that lift up our people and economies."

USTR's statement made no mention of the new forum as a body aimed at negotiating new trade agreements between the world's largest and third-largest economies.

Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi told Tai at the start of talks in Tokyo that the aim was to further deepen the Japan-U.S. alliance and strengthen bilateral coordination to achieve a free and open Indo-Pacific.

"Based on the strong Japan-U.S. economic relations, we'd like to further deepen the Japan-U.S. alliance, and strengthen Japan-U.S. coordination for the achievement of a free and open Indo-Pacific," he said.

Earlier, the foreign ministry said in a statement that the new partnership would allow the two countries to hold discussions on their shared global agenda, cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region and talk about bilateral trade issues.

The United States and Japan are set to begin new talks to address concerns over U.S. "Section 232" national security tariffs on steel and aluminum and curbing global excess capacity for the metals largely centered in China. The talks follow a U.S. quota deal with the European Union to allow around 4 million tons of EU-produced steel duty-free into the United States annually.

Japan has also sought to negotiate a broader agreement with the United States after striking a limited trade deal with former President Donald Trump in 2019 that staved off his threat of higher duties on imported cars, and to coax Washington into returning to a Pacific Rim trade pact.

USTR said the new partnership instead would focus on addressing labor and environmental-related priorities, trade facilitation, a supportive digital ecosystem and cooperation in regional and multilateral trade forums, the latter a reference to the World Trade Organization, which holds a major ministerial meeting at the end of November in Geneva.

The Biden administration is working to rebuild trade ties with allies that became strained during Trump's presidency, with the aim of building a broader coalition to confront China's subsidies and other state-driven economic policies.

The USTR statement mentioned such "third country concerns" as a focus of the new group.

It said the partnership would be chaired by USTR and Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Economy, Industry and Trade.

Reporting by David Lawder; addition reporting in TOKYO by Kiyoshi Takenaka and Daniel Leussink, Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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U.S., Japan to rebuild trade ties with new forum, meetings

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WASHINGTON, Nov 17 (Reuters) - The United States and Japan announced on Wednesday a new trade partnership to boost cooperation on labor, environment and digital trade issues, with an emphasis on "third country concerns," a reference to China's state-driven economic policies. U.S.

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This article talks about how climate change grew to record high levels during 2021. Also How weather gotten worse with extreme heat, wildfire hurricanes and floods across the country.

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Along with 2021's extreme heat, wildfires, hurricanes, and floods, we saw a remarkable increase in the American public's understanding and concern about climate change.

KEY CONCEPTS

The American public's understanding and concern about climate change grew to record-high levels during 2021, according to a new survey from Yale University and George Mason University.

The remarkable growth in climate concern this year coincided with a period of record-breaking extreme events and widespread climate risk across the U.S.

Climate change has left its mark on 2021 in many ways. Climate Central's resources can help you continue to cover locally relevant climate stories and grow public understanding.

Most Americans think that global warming is happening and harming Americans now, according to new survey results from Yale University and George Mason University.

Between March and September of 2021-a period of devastating extreme heat, wildfires, hurricanes and floods across the country-the proportion of Americans who think global warming is happening grew by six percentage points to reach a record-high of 76%.

Seven in ten Americans are at least "somewhat worried" about global warming. And 55% of Americans think that global warming currently harms people in the U.S.

These and other results from a nationally representative September 2021 survey indicate that more Americans are concerned about climate change now than at any time since these surveys began in 2008.

This year's growth in Americans' climate concern overlapped with significant extreme events, local resilience, scientific advances and global action on climate change. Two-thirds of U.S. adults perceive more frequent extreme weather, with 46% saying their local area has experienced extreme weather in the past year, according to a Pew Research Center survey.

Climate Central's resources are here to help you continue to cover local climate stories and grow public understanding of...

Climate Resilience. Local communities continue to face devastating fire seasons, coastal flooding, crop damage, and urban heat. We help to share their stories of both loss and resilience through Partnership Journalism.

Climate Solutions. Our growing Solutions Series provides briefs and reporting resources on the latest developments in wind energy to electric vehicles and climate-friendly homes

Climate Futures. With nearly 200 interactive visuals, Picturing Our Future illustrates how climate actions we make this decade could transform coastal sites around the globe through sea level rise.

Climate Science. We help to unpack and understand this year's global assessment report on climate science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, with more to come in 2022.

Climate Policy. Our localized analysis and reporting resources connect the 2021 United Nations global climate summit to local audiences across the U.S.

2021 has also been a remarkable year for Climate Matters. Our network is on track for a record year of climate reporting, and Climate Matters has just been designated by Tools of Change as one of the most "successful, innovative, replicable and adaptable" approaches worldwide for promoting environmental citizenship.

These achievements would not be possible without the hard work and dedication of our nationwide network of meteorologists and journalists. Thank you!

We look forward to providing more localized data, analysis, and multimedia to help you understand the science and share the stories of climate change in 2022 with an increasingly concerned American public.

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Along with 2021's extreme heat, wildfires, hurricanes, and floods, we saw a remarkable increase in the American public's understanding and concern about climate change. The American public's understanding and concern about climate change grew to record-high levels during 2021, according to a new survey from Yale University and George Mason University.

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In this article, it talks about how the implication of democracy is declining and how the Biden administration as committed to with holding and supporting fellow democratic governments.

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If the United States intends to address the lure of authoritarianism domestically, it should devote deliberate attention to making the American people safer at home.