White House says ‘outcompeting China and restraining Russia’ top Biden foreign policy aims – as it happened

That’s all from our live politics blog for today. Thanks for joining us.

Here’s what we followed:

• Joe Biden’s foreign policy objectives were laid out in his administration’s long awaited national security strategy, a 48-page document released by the White House this morning. Outcompeting China, curbing Russian aggression, and building an international alliance to do both are the main goals.

• National security adviser Jake Sullivan said the US was better placed than any other nation to seize what he called a “decisive decade” that will determine the fate of the free world. “The actions we take now will shape whether this decisive decade is an age of conflict and discord are the beginning of a more prosperous and stable future,” he said.

• Biden dedicated the Camp Hale continental divide national monument during a visit to Vail, Colorado. The proclamation preserves the lands to “honor our nation’s veterans, Indigenous people, and their legacy,” the president said.

• Biden made clear he’s willing to retaliate against Saudi Arabia for backing the Opec+ oil production cut, but hasn’t yet said what measures he supports. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre spoke of unspecified “consequences” for the Saudis, but not for some time.

• Mitt Romney is staying out of the Senate race in Utah, declining to endorse his Republican Senate counterpart Mike Lee, or independent challenger Evan McMullin, both of whom he considers friends.

• Tulsi Gabbard, who yesterday announced she was leaving the Democratic party, is heading to New Hampshire to campaign for rightwing Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc.

• Political polling by telephone has become so difficult it may soon become impossible, The New York Times warns.

Rightwing InfoWars host Alex Jones must pay $965m to families of victims and those he hurt by calling the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting a hoax, a jury has decided.

The decision concludes his second defamation trial, in Waterbury, Connecticut, less than 20 miles from Newtown, where a man shot 26 children and teachers dead in 2012.

Donald Trump will have to answer questions under oath next week in a defamation lawsuit lodged by a writer who says he raped her in the mid-1990s, a judge ruled Wednesday.

US district judge Lewis Kaplan rejected a request by Trump’s lawyers that the planned testimony be delayed. The deposition is now scheduled for 19 October.

The decision came in a lawsuit brought by E Jean Carroll, a longtime advice columnist for Elle magazine, who says Trump raped her in an upscale Manhattan department store’s dressing room. Trump has denied it. Carroll is scheduled to be deposed on Friday.

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A quick summary of Karine Jean-Pierre’s answer when she was asked this afternoon about Joe Biden’s earlier “we will take action” comment about Saudi Arabia, for pushing Opec+ to slash oil production: there will be consequences, but not for some time.

The White House press secretary was asked during a “gaggle” with reporters on Air Force One what the president mean by “action”, a remark he did not expand on as he departed Washington DC en route to Colorado:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}As he said this morning, when the House and the Senate get back we’ll discuss and make decisions in a deliberate way. But he was very clear there will be consequences. We believe the decision that Opec+ made last week was a mistake.

We’re going to review where we are. We’ll be watching closely over the coming weeks and months. There’s going to be consultation with our allies, there’s going to be consultation with Congress, and decisions will be made in a deliberate way.

We want to be very deliberate about this. And that is going to take some time. I don’t have a timeline for you.

The US is better placed than any other nation to seize what White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan says is a “decisive decade” that will determine the fate of the free world.

Sullivan is speaking at Georgetown university, where he’s putting flesh on the bones of the Biden administration’s national security strategy, released earlier today.

Outcompeting China, curbing Russian aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere, and building a global coalition to tackle those issues, are Biden’s key policy objectives for the year, Sullivan says:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The post-cold war era is over and the competition is under way between the major powers to shape what comes next. The US, we believe, is better positioned than any other nation in the world to seize this moment to help set the rules shore up the norms and advance the values that will define the world we want to live in.

[The strategy] details the president’s vision of a free, open, prosperous and secure international order. And it offers a roadmap for seizing this decisive decade to advance America’s vital interests, position America and our allies to outpace our competitors, and build broad effective coalition’s to tackle shared challenges.

The matters laid out in this document and the execution of it do not only belong to the US government, they belong to everyone who shares this vision worldwide.

And the stakes could not be higher. The actions we take now will shape whether this decisive decade is an age of conflict and discord are the beginning of a more prosperous and stable future.

Sullivan is being careful to stress Biden’s foreign policy strategy as a partnership:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}If there’s anything that is a core hallmark of Joe Biden’s approach to the world, it is an investment in America’s allies.

Even if our democratic allies and partners don’t agree on everything, they are aligned with us, and so are many countries that do not embrace democratic institutions, but nevertheless depend upon and help sustain a rules-based international system.

They don’t want to see it vanish and they know that we are the world’s best bet to defend it.

That’s why the second strategic focus of President Biden’s approach is mobilizing the broadest possible coalition of nations to leverage our collective influence. Our goal is not to force our partners to fall in line with us on every issue.

The White House has released a fact sheet about Joe Biden’s unveiling of the Camp Hale continental divide national monument in Vail, Colorado, a little later this afternoon.

The proclamation of the monument “will honor our nation’s veterans, Indigenous people, and their legacy by protecting this Colorado landscape, while supporting jobs and America’s outdoor recreation economy,” the press release says.

The monument “preserves and protects the mountains and valleys where the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division prepared for their brave service that ultimately brought [the second world war] to a close”.

The division’s actions in the Italian Alps using skills acquired in training in Camp Hale’s rugged mountains included a daring nighttime mission scaling a 1,500ft cliff, and ultimately pushing back elite Axis forces.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has been expanding on Joe Biden’s assessment of Vladimir Putin as a “rational actor who has miscalculated significantly” Russia’s prospects of occupying Ukraine.

Jean-Pierre was speaking to reporters aboard a bumpy flight on Air Force One to Colorado, explaining why it was it was an error on the Russian president’s part:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}If you look at how strong the Nato alliance is, he thought he would break that up, and it was a miscalculation because what he has seen as a stronger Nato, what he is seeing as a strong west, and what he’s seeing is a coalition that we have never seen before as far as the strength of the countries coming together to support Ukraine.

He miscalculated what his aggression, what his war that he created against Ukraine, would lead to and and we’ve seen that he has become a pariah.

But she would not be drawn on specifically why Biden thought Putin was “rational”:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}I’m going to let the president’s words speak for themselves. He is a rational actor who has miscalculated.

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The Biden administration’s long awaited national security strategy says outcompeting China, and restraining Russia’s aggression as its war in Ukraine war progresses, will be its key goals for the coming year.

The 48-page document, launched Wednesday after a number of delays as the White House adjusted to Russian president Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine, talks up the president’s resolve to build international alliances to stand up for democracy.

At a press briefing accompanying its release, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the war hadn’t “fundamentally altered” Joe Biden’s approach to foreign policy, but has strengthened the importance of, and his desire to work with international partners:

Sullivan said:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}[The strategy] presents in living color the key elements of our approach, the emphasis on allies, the importance of strengthening the hand of the democratic world and standing up for our fellow democracies and for democratic values.

What the nuclear threats and saber rattling we’ve seen from Russia remind us of is just what a significant and seriously dangerous adversary Russia is, not just to the US but to a world that is seeking peace and stability, and now has seen that flagrantly disrupted by this invasion and now by all of the saber rattling.

Being able to watch how Ukraine unfolded, have the terms of geopolitical competition sharpened up over the course of the past few months, and also being able to put on display how our strategy works in practice – I think all of those serve a good purpose in terms of giving life to the document that we’re releasing today.

Regarding China, the strategy highlights Biden’s concerns that Beijing was attempting to “layer authoritarian governance with a revisionist foreign policy”.

In his preview of the policy Wednesday, Sullivan added:

.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The People’s Republic of China harbors the intention and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order in favor of one that tilts the global playing field to its benefit, even as the US remains committed to managing the competition between our countries responsibly.

[The Biden administration] is looking at ways that the US can more effectively approach our trade policy with China to ensure that we are achieving the strategic priorities the president has laid out, which is the strongest possible American industrial and innovation base and a level playing field for American workers.

Sullivan is scheduled to deliver further remarks this afternoon at an event hosted by the Center for a New American Security and the Georgetown University Walsh school of foreign service.

We’ll hear from Joe Biden in Vail, Colorado, later this afternoon as he talks up America’s outdoor spaces on the first leg of a three-state tour of the west.

But the main purpose of his odyssey is to promote his administration’s accomplishments and rally for Democratic candidates in the upcoming midterms, now less than four weeks away.

Biden’s first stop is to designate his administration’s first national monument at the behest of Democratic Colorado senator Michael Bennet, the Associated Press reports. Bennet is in a competitive reelection race.

The president later today heads for California, where he will hold two events promoting legislative successes including the bipartisan Infrastructure and Chips acts, and headline a fundraiser for the House Democrats’ campaign arm.

In Los Angeles, he’ll get a close-up look at the racism scandal engulfing the city commission. On Tuesday, the president called for the resignation of three Los Angeles city council members who were caught on tape making racist comments in a meeting last year.

Then he will appear on Monday in Oregon, where Democrats’ grip on the governor’s mansion in Salem is under threat. The party is also fighting several close congressional races in the state.

“We’ve been very clear that the president is going to go out, the vice president is going to go out,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in her Tuesday briefing from the White House.

Talking of Jean-Pierre, she is set to deliver a briefing to reporters soon aboard Air Force One en route to Colorado.

When the panel investigating the January 6 attack convenes tomorrow for what’s likely to be its final public hearing, expect to learn more about what Donald Trump knew both ahead of the insurrection, and while it was happening. Meanwhile, president Joe Biden has made clear he’s willing to retaliate against Saudi Arabia for backing the Opec+ oil production cut, but hasn’t yet said what measures he supports.

Here’s what else has happened today:

• Mitt Romney is staying out of the Senate race in Utah, declining to endorse his Republican Senate counterpart Mike Lee, or independent challenger Evan McMullin, both of whom he considers friends.

• Tulsi Gabbard, who yesterday announced she was leaving the Democratic party, is heading to New Hampshire to campaign for rightwing Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc.

• Political polling by telephone has become so difficult it may soon become impossible, The New York Times warns.