A Cold Relationship Gets Frostier

A U.S. fighter jet shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon on Saturday, prompting Beijing’s “strong discontent and protest.” As the drama played out last week, FP’s James Palmer covered the diplomatic ramifications of the balloon’s discovery in his weekly China Brief. On Friday, as the fast-moving story gathered pace and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled his visit to China, Palmer added that the incident was “confirmation that we’re in the early days of Cold War 2.0.” 

Amid a growing bipartisan hawkishness on Beijing, FP’s Rishi Iyengar reports on an executive order that would put in place more stringent rules on U.S. companies looking to invest in China’s technology sector. And FP’s newest columnist Zongyuan Zoe Liu explains why government stimulus and greater exports can’t dig China’s economy out of a deep hole. 

Neil Thomas, a senior China analyst at Eurasia Group, argues that Chinese President Xi Jinping wants his country to “lead the world in comprehensive national power and international influence.” FP subscriber FORRESTJ pushes back on Thomas’s perspective in the comments section, noting how “the ‘all under heaven’ (天下) view of Chinese dominance collides with the realities of global interdependence, and leads to diplomatic isolation.” 

Want to know how last week’s news could impact the U.S.-China relationship? Join us on Friday at 11 a.m. EST for our latest FP Live discussion featuring Palmer and Georgetown University’s Emily S. Weinstein. Subscribers can send in questions here.

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• A Complicated Legacy: Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former president, died at age 79 in Dubai. Mosharraf Zaidi’s obituary details a charismatic Pakistani general who shredded the constitution and recklessly obeyed Washington’s commands.
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FP Live

The Balloon and the U.S.-China Relationship

Feb. 10, 2023 | 11 a.m. EST

The very public spat over alleged spying is just the most recent example of strains in the world’s most important relationship. Beyond the kerfuffle over the balloon, what are the broader impacts on Washington’s China policy? Join FP’s Ravi Agrawal for a discussion with Emily S. Weinstein, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, and James Palmer, a deputy editor at Foreign Policy and the author of FP’s weekly China Brief newsletter.

Register here.

Israel’s Democratic Decline

Feb. 13, 2023 | 11 a.m. EST

Join FP’s Dan Ephron in conversation with Amir Tibon, a senior editor and writer at Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. They’ll discuss Israel’s new far-right government, its plans to overhaul and weaken the judiciary, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial, and U.S. policy on Israel under President Joe Biden.

Register here.

Exercise Your Mind

A lawyer for Jair Bolsonaro confirmed last week that the former Brazilian president has applied for what kind of U.S. visa?

1. A diplomatic visa
2. A tourist visa
3. An immigration visa
4. An asylum visa

You can find the answer to this question at the end of this email. Click here to take the rest of our weekly news quiz. FP subscribers can sign up to be notified when new editions are available.

Is Cold War Inevitable?

A new biography of George Kennan, the father of containment, raises questions about whether the old Cold War—and the emerging one with China—could have been avoided.

Even at the advanced age of 94, George Kennan was still arguing that the Cold War hadn’t been inevitable—that it could have been avoided or, at least, ameliorated. A decade after that 44-year conflict ended, Kennan, the somewhat dovish father of the United States’ Cold War containment strategy, contended in a letter to his more hawkish biographer, John Lewis Gaddis, that while Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was alive, an early way out might have been possible.

The so-called Stalin Note from March 1952—an offer from Moscow to hold talks over the shape of post-World War II Europe—showed that the United States had ignored the possibilities of peace accomplished through “negotiation, and especially real negotiation, in distinction from public posturing (italics original),” Kennan wrote in 1999.

Those words still resonate today. Because public posturing is mostly what we’re seeing as the United States finds itself spiraling toward a new kind of cold war with both China and Russia. Yet almost no debate or discussion about these policies is taking place in Washington.

Continue reading on Foreign Policy.

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Answer: 2.) A tourist visa. Bolsonaro has been holed up in Florida since late last year. He is facing scrutiny at home in Brazil, where the new government is investigating the Jan. 8 insurrection on Brasília, Oliver Stuenkel writes.