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In the Human Interest – Mel Gurtov

In the Human Interest – Mel Gurtov

Critical appraisals of foreign affairs and politics from a global-citizen perspective

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Post #376: The Taiwan Imbroglio

4 Jun 2023
What’s Going On? In my previous blog (Post #375) I reported on the worrying signs of a large gap in communications between the US and China. But I also noted…
BLOG

Post #375: Out of Touch: The US-China Communications Gap

21 May 202322 May 2023
Among the many troubling trends in US-China relations these days is the lack of high-level diplomatic engagement. Until a few weeks ago, only John Kerry, Biden’s special envoy on climate…
BLOG

Post #374: China’s Aid to Russia Under the “No Limits” Partnership    

10 May 20239 May 2023
        "No Limits” Has Limits In the war in Ukraine, the China-Russia relationship is a wildcard. The notion persists, going back to the Putin-Xi meeting in Beijing just before Putin…
BLOG

Post #373: Nuclear Politics: The US-South Korea “Washington Declaration”

5 May 20235 May 2023
The US-Republic of Korea (ROK) alliance began in 1953, at the end of the Korean War. Now seventy years later, President Biden and Korea’s Yoon Suk Yeol met to cement…
BLOG

Post #372: TikTok and US National Insecurity

22 Apr 2023
High-tech spying is in the news because of the one-sided, hypocritical debate in Congress on whether the popular app TikTok is actually a tool for Chinese government data collection on…
BLOG

Post #371: France’s Diplomatic Disaster in China

13 Apr 202312 Apr 2023
“Strategic Autonomy,” French Style French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen just visited China. You can bet Joe Biden and his national security team are…
BLOG

Post #370: A Political Lynching

7 Apr 20237 Apr 2023
            The Tennessee House of Representatives, dominated by a Republican supermajority, voted yesterday to expel two Black Democratic legislators who had participated in a peaceful public demonstration on behalf of…
BLOG

Post #369: The Climate Time Bomb

3 Apr 2023
The Bomb is Ticking             The odds are against us. That is the bottom line in the latest IPCC report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on global…
BLOG

Post #368: A Big Deal: China’s Middle East Diplomatic Coup

26 Mar 202325 Mar 2023
A Big Deal for Some By any stretch of the imagination, the March 10 announcement of China’s brokering of a Saudi Arabia-Iran agreement to resume diplomatic relations and exchange security…
BLOG

Post #367: Deepening Tensions on the Korean Peninsula Demand New Thinking in Washington

18 Mar 202318 Mar 2023
The Mounting Danger Tensions on the Korean peninsula have reached a new level of intensity. North Korea’s foreign ministry issued a statement Feb. 17 in anticipation of another round of…
BLOG

Post #366: No Exit: Two Ukraine Peace Proposals Going Nowhere

6 Mar 20235 Mar 2023
Two Very Different Paths to Peace Two proposals for bringing peace in Russia’s war on Ukraine were issued on nearly the same day last month: a UN General Assembly resolution…
BLOG

Post #365: The Coup in Israel

28 Feb 202328 Feb 2023
Israel has always been touted as America’s most reliable friend in the Middle East, a bastion of democracy in a region dominated by autocracies. Now that picture is fraying as…
BLOG

Post #364: China and Europe: Profits versus Principles

22 Feb 202320 Feb 2023
With all the attention on US-China relations, Beijing’s on-again, off-again relations with the European Union (EU) don’t receive the attention they deserve. In the short space of a few decades,…
BLOG

Post #363: More on the China Balloon Episode: Much Ado About Very Little

13 Feb 202322 Feb 2023
(The China Balloon Incident has three phases. We have just exited Phase 2. In Phase 1, “Discovery,” the Biden administration went into action mode on finding that a Chinese “spy”…
BLOG

Post #362: Risky Business: Japan Steps Out

25 Jan 202325 Jan 2023
(This blog is also available as a podcast at https://www.podserve.fm/episodes/86207/67-risky-business-japan-steps-out-h1JT0.mp3) Background to a Changing Strategic Perspective Japan’s Prime Minister Kishida Fumio has just visited Washington, drawing attention to how Japan…
BLOG

Post #361: Ukraine’s Future: Peace Through War?

14 Jan 202315 Jan 2023
Hopes and Realities Ukraine’s President Zelensky had a fairly successful visit to Washington last month, returning home with promises of more American weapons and unqualified US backing for Ukraine’s war…
BLOG

Post #360 The Threat Business: China or Russia?

2 Jan 20233 Jan 2023
Dual Enemies For those in charge of US national security, the central challenge is identifying threats and determining how to counter them. The Biden administration has cast China and Russia,…
BLOG

Post #359: The Iran Protests and US Policy

13 Dec 202212 Dec 2022
"Women, Life, Freedom" Streets in dozens of Iran cities are filled with angry people in popular protests that have already gone on much longer—three months and counting—than those in 2009…
BLOG

Post #358: China’s COVID Uprising

4 Dec 20227 Jan 2023
Significant dissent in China reared its head for the first time since the Tiananmen uprising in 1989. In many of China’s major cities, protesters joined hands to denounce the COVID…
BLOG

Post #357: The Biden-Xi Summit in Bali

22 Nov 202222 Nov 2022
Some Reasons for Optimism             The much-ballyhooed first in-person summit between Pres. Biden and Xi on November 14 went off pretty well. Biden clearly communicated the US belief that a…

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  • Post #376: The Taiwan Imbroglio
  • APB: Kissinger at 100
  • Post #375: Out of Touch: The US-China Communications Gap
  • Post #374: China’s Aid to Russia Under the “No Limits” Partnership    
  • Post #373: Nuclear Politics: The US-South Korea “Washington Declaration”

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