The word “encirclement” does not appear in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law by President Joe Biden on December 27th, or in other recent administration statements about its foreign and military policies. Nor does that classic Cold War era term “containment” ever come up. Still, America’s top leaders have reached a consensus on a strategy to encircle and contain the latest great power, China, with hostile military alliances, thereby thwarting its rise to full superpower status. The gigantic 2022 defense bill — passed with overwhelming support from both parties — provides a detailed blueprint for surrounding China with a potentially…

In September 2015, U.S. President Barack Obama stood beside Chinese President Xi Jinping in the White House Rose Garden and announced a historic deal to curb cyber-related economic espionage. The scope of the agreement was modest, committing China and the United States only to stop stealing or aiding in the cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property in order to boost domestic industry. It was an easy promise for the United States to make, since Washington had long prohibited U.S. intelligence services from conducting economic espionage for the benefit of private companies. But it was a groundbreaking pledge for China, whose military…

It’s not unusual for headline-making accusations, allegations and second-guessing to follow a disaster or other crisis. It is a crisis management best practice to pay close attention to what is said about the activities that may have caused the crisis or made it worse—and immediately correct the record so that inaccurate or misleading statements by others do not become conventional wisdom. Nine days after a tornado killed six Amazon employees who were working in the company's warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois, several members of Congress are https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/12/20/congress-letter-amazon-tornado-warehouse/" aria-label="seeking documents and information" style="box-sizing:border-box;color:rgb(0, 56, 145);cursor:pointer;background-color:transparent;text-decoration-line:none">seeking documents and information about the company’s policies, practices and…

I sat in Court 4 in the Royal Courts of Justice in London yesterday with Stella Moris, Julian Assange’s partner. I have known Stella for as long as I have known Julian. She, too, is a voice of freedom, coming from a family that fought the fascism of Apartheid. Today, her name was uttered in court by a barrister and a judge, forgettable people were it not for the power of their endowed privilege. The barrister, Clair Dobbin, is in the pay of the regime in Washington, first Trump’s then Biden’s. She is America’s hired gun, or “silk”, as she…

For many people, the Covid-19 pandemic has shown that democracy in the United States is fundamentally broken. With the exception of vaccines, the government has failed to help develop and quickly implement strategies for tracing and containing the outbreaks. As the economy ground to a halt during last year’s lockdowns, unemployment swelled, as did food insecurity and debt. Covid further exposed the country’s deep socioeconomic disparities: The health and finances of Black Americans and other minorities were most affected by the pandemic, and the move to remote learning at the majority of the nation’s schools forced many women to drop…