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      The TikTok wars – why the US and China are feuding over the app

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      TikTok is once again fending off claims that its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, would share user data from its popular video-sharing app with the Chinese government, or push propaganda and misinformation on its behalf.China’s foreign ministry on Wednesday accused the US itself of spreading disinformation about TikTok’s potential security risks following a report in the Wall Street Journal that the committee on foreign investment in the US – part of the treasury department – was threatening a US ban on the app unless its Chinese owners divest their stake.So are the data security risks real? And should users be worried that the TikTok app will be wiped off their phones?Here’s what to know:What are the concerns about TikTok?Both the FBI and the Federal Communications Commission have warned that ByteDance could share TikTok user data – such as browsing history, location and biometric identifiers – with China’s authoritarian government.A law implemented by China in 2017 requires companies to give the government any personal data relevant to the country’s national security. There’s no evidence that TikTok has turned over such data, but fears abound due to the vast amount of user data it, like other social media companies, collects.Concerns around TikTok were heightened in December when ByteDance said it fired four employees who accessed data on two journalists from BuzzFeed News and the Financial Times while attempting to track down the source of a leaked report about the company. Just last week, the director of the FBI, Christopher Wray, told the Senate intelligence committee that TikTok “screams” of national security concerns and that China could also manipulate the algorithm to perpetuate misinformation.“This is a tool that is ultimately within the control of the Chinese government, and to me, it screams out with national security concerns,” Wray said.How is the US responding?White House national security council spokesperson John Kirby declined to comment when asked on Thursday to address the Chinese foreign ministry’s comments about TikTok, citing the review being conducted by the committee on foreign investment.Kirby also could not confirm that the administration sent TikTok a letter warning that the US government may ban the application if its Chinese owners don’t sell its stake but added, “we have legitimate national security concerns with respect to data integrity that we need to observe.”In 2020, then president Donald Trump and his administration sought to force ByteDance to sell off its US assets and ban TikTok from app stores. Courts blocked the effort, and President Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s orders but directed an in-depth study of the issue. A planned sale of TikTok’s US assets was also shelved as the Biden administration negotiated a deal with the app that would address some of the national security concerns.In Congress, US senators Richard Blumenthal and Jerry Moran, a Democrat and a Republican, respectively, wrote a letter in February to the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, urging the committee on foreign investment panel, which she chairs, to “swiftly conclude its investigation and impose strict structural restrictions” between TikTok’s US operations and ByteDance, including potentially separating the companies.At the same time, lawmakers have introduced measures that would expand the Biden administration’s authority to enact a national ban on TikTok. The White House has already backed a Senate proposal that has bipartisan support.How has TikTok already been restricted?On Thursday, British authorities said they are banning TikTok on government-issued phones on security grounds, after similar moves by the EU’s executive branch, which temporarily banned TikTok from employee phones. Denmark and Canada have also announced efforts to block the app on government-issued phones.Last month, the White House said it would give US federal agencies 30 days to delete TikTok from all government-issued mobile devices. Congress, the US armed forces and more than half of US states had already banned the app on official devices.What does TikTok say?TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said the company was already answering security concerns through “transparent, US-based protection of US user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification”.In June, TikTok said it would route all data from US users to servers controlled by Oracle, the Silicon Valley company it chose as its US tech partner in 2020 in an effort to avoid a nationwide ban. But it is storing backups of the data in its own servers in the US and Singapore. The company said it expects to delete US user data from its own servers, but it has not provided a timeline as to when that would occur.TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is will testify next week before the House energy and commerce committee about the company’s privacy and data-security practices, as well as its relationship with the Chinese government. In the lead-up to the hearing, Chew has quietly met with several lawmakers – some of whom remain unmoved by their conversation with the 40-year-old executive.After convening with Chew in February, Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado who previously called on Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores, said he remained “fundamentally concerned that TikTok, as a Chinese-owned company, is subject to dictates from the Chinese Communist party”.Meanwhile, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has been trying to position itself as more of an international company – and less of a Chinese company that was founded in Beijing in 2012 by its current chief executive, Liang Rubo, and others.Theo Bertram, TikTok’s vice-president of policy in Europe, said in a tweet on Thursday that ByteDance “is not a Chinese company”. Bertram said its ownership consists of 60% global investors, 20% employees and 20% founders. Its leaders are based in cities such as Singapore, New York, Beijing and other metropolitan areas.Are the security risks legitimate?It depends on whom you ask.Some tech privacy advocates say that while the potential abuse of privacy by the Chinese government is concerning, other tech companies have data-harvesting business practices that also exploit user information.“If policymakers want to protect Americans from surveillance, they should advocate for a basic privacy law that bans all companies from collecting so much sensitive data about us in the first place, rather than engaging in what amounts to xenophobic showboating that does exactly nothing to protect anyone,” said Evan Greer, director of the nonprofit advocacy group Fight for the Future.Karim Farhat, a researcher with the Internet Governance Project at Georgia Tech, said a TikTok sale would be “completely irrelevant to any of the alleged ‘national security’ threats” and go against “every free market principle and norm” of the state department’s internet freedom principles.Others say there is legitimate reason for concern.People who use TikTok might think they’re not doing anything that would be of interest to a foreign government, but that’s not always the case, said Anton Dahbura, executive director of the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute. Important information about the US is not strictly limited to nuclear power plants or military facilities; it extends to other sectors, such as food processing, the finance industry and universities, Dahbura said.Is there precedence for banning tech companies?Last year, the US banned the sale of communications equipment made by Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE, citing risks to national security. But banning the sale of items could be more easily done than banning an app, which is accessed through the web.Such a move might also go to the courts on grounds that it could violate the first amendment as some civil liberties groups have argued. More

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      Will UK follow US in demanding TikTok be sold by its Chinese owner?

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      When asked this week whether the UK would ban TikTok on government phones, Rishi Sunak’s response signalled a change in stance: “We look at what our allies are doing.”Previously ministers had seemed sanguine, even saying that whether or not the app stayed on someone’s phone should be a matter of “personal choice”.Not any more. The UK’s allies are turning against TikTok and it was when Sunak said he was watching their actions closely that a government ban became inevitable. The US, Canada and the EU’s executive arm have already decided to strip the app from official devices. It is now a matter of geopolitical choice.TikTok is owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance. The fear among its critics on both sides of the Atlantic is that the Chinese state can access data generated by its more than 1 billion users and manipulate its recommendation algorithm in order to push a China-friendly point of view to unsuspecting users.There is no hard evidence this is the case and TikTok says it would refuse any data request from the Chinese government, although the UK government cited concerns about “the way in which this [user] data may be used” for the ban on Thursday. But tensions over Taiwan, concerns that China will supply weaponry to Russia, the shooting down of a spy balloon that hovered over the US and warnings of state espionage have created a toxic backdrop to those denials. And on Monday a refreshed integrated review of UK defence and foreign policy described China as an “epoch-defining” challenge.TikTok’s reputation was severely damaged last year when ByteDance admitted employees had attempted to use the app to spy on reporters.TikTok will be concerned that Sunak will match each upward ratchet in pressure from his counterparts. On Wednesday the Biden administration demanded the platform’s Chinese owner sell the app or face a complete ban. Will the UK ultimately threaten the same?If geopolitics is the leading factor in these moves, as opposed to hard proof that TikTok poses a security threat, then it is likely every deterioration in relations between China and the west will push the app further along the road to a complete ban or forced divestment from its owners in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, a forced sale in the US – if the Chinese government lets TikTok’s owners do so – could lead to TikTok being peeled off from ByteDance in its entirety.The shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon off the east coast of the US last month was followed by reports that negotiations between TikTok and the Biden administration over a deal to resolve security concerns had stalled, while this week the White House gave its support to a Senate bill giving the president the power to ban TikTok.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTikTok’s attempts to assuage those concerns – for instance announcing plans to store US and European user data on third-party data servers – seem to have failed with the current American president in the same way they did with his immediate predecessor, who also tried to force a divestment of TikTok’s US business. The backstop used by TikTok’s critics is the existence of Chinese laws that could force ByteDance to cooperate with Beijing authorities, including the national intelligence law of 2017, which states that all organisations and citizens shall “support, assist and cooperate” with national intelligence efforts. For many, this is enough evidence.Perhaps eliminating the concerns over Chinese interference by selling TikTok to non-Chinese investors is the only way to quell the critics. But there are plenty of other aspects of the Chinese tech industry – from Huawei mobile phones to other electronic devices – that are just as capable of eliciting similar fears. Without strong supporting evidence there is no way of knowing how proportionate the UK government is being – and the same could be true for moves against other Chinese tech interests. More

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      Kevin Rudd: Australia’s incoming ambassador to US says balloon saga threatens push to ease tensions with China

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      Kevin Rudd: Australia’s incoming ambassador to US says balloon saga threatens push to ease tensions with ChinaFormer Labor prime minister says incident has created ‘diplomatic clouds’ that may overshadow efforts to stabilise relationship The incoming Australian ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd, has warned the Chinese balloon saga has created new “diplomatic clouds” that put at risk recent efforts to ease tensions between Beijing and Washington.In a speech in Brisbane on Wednesday, Rudd also warned against expecting any “softening in China’s ideological cleavage with the west”.Rudd, a former Labor prime minister who remains as president of the Asia Society until late next month, emphasised that he was offering “personal reflections” which “do not represent the views of the Australian government”.But given he is due to take up his diplomatic posting within weeks, Rudd’s views are likely to attract attention in Washington and Beijing.UK rehearsing economic fallout scenarios if China invades TaiwanRead moreDelivering the inaugural China Matters Oration at the University of Queensland, Rudd reiterated his view that “we are now indeed living in what I have called the decade of living dangerously”.He said the Chinese Communist party appeared to have abruptly changed course on Covid-19 policy because it “feared that not doing so would threaten its unofficial social contract with the Chinese people”.It also worried that a structural slowdown in growth could undermine China’s long-term strategic competition against the US, Rudd said. Those factors made it essential to “return to economic growth at all costs”.“While there has been much internal criticism for how the abrupt change to Chinese Covid policy was made, we should not conclude as a result that Xi Jinping is in real and immediate political danger,” Rudd said.“We should never forget that Xi’s control of the hard levers of power across the party’s security, intelligence and organisational apparatus continues to be near-complete.”Spurred by the “new urgency of its economic growth imperative”, China had attempted to make changes to its international relations in the wake of Xi’s meeting with the US president, Joe Biden, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in November.Rudd said those efforts included Xi’s renewed contact with heads of government around the world, particularly European leaders, to promote Chinese trade and investment opportunities.Xi had also reined in “the polarising practice of ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy seen over the last five years toward US partners and allies around the world, as Beijing embarks on a new approach in the short-to-medium term to accommodate its immediate economic growth agenda”.But Rudd predicted none of those shifts were likely to result in China changing its current military posture regarding the US, Japan and Taiwan.He said China retained its long-term strategic objective of increasing its power relative to the US “to make it possible to secure Taiwan by force at a time of Beijing’s choosing”.He said these structural tensions would “likely manifest in continued and increasing Chinese air force crossings of the median line in the Taiwan Strait; so too with Chinese intercepts of US and allied reconnaissance flights over the South China Sea”.“But nonetheless, prior to recent developments over the interception of the Chinese balloon over the United States, Beijing had begun to moderate its political relationship with Washington.”This was meant to pave the way for a visit to China by the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to continue talks on putting in place “protections” or “guardrails” to manage growing strategic competition.But Blinken postponed this month’s trip after the detection over US territory – and later shooting down – of a high-altitude balloon that American officials said was a Chinese surveillance device.What do we know about the four flying objects shot down by the US?Read more“While Beijing’s objectives may have been limited in scope, both sides appeared to have agreed not to allow their relationship to continue to freefall for the near term,” Rudd said.“At least that was the case until the extraordinary events of February. As of today, it remains unclear if and when the diplomatic clouds may clear to the extent they would enable the return of Secretary Blinken to Beijing – and the extent to which bilateral political resolve remains to find new mechanisms to stabilise the relationship as envisaged last November.”Rudd is due to take up his posting as ambassador to the US at a time when Australia is planning the most substantial overhaul of its defence capabilities in decades, even as it tries to “stabilise” its previously frosty relationship with China.On Tuesday the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, received the report of a defence strategic review, which is widely expected to see Australia acquire longer range missiles and attempt to project power further from its shores.Australia is also finalising the details of its plans to acquire at least eight nuclear-powered submarines with help from the US and the UK under the Aukus deal.The head of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine taskforce, V-Adm Jonathan Mead, revealed on Wednesday that he had handed his recommendations to the government “earlier this year”. A joint announcement by Albanese, Biden and the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, is expected next month.Australia’s deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, told the ABC the government’s response to the wide-ranging defence review would be released “weeks” after the initial Aukus announcement.Marles also said he planned to introduce legislation to “remove any doubt” that former Australian defence personnel must maintain their country’s secrets. It follows a review into concerns about China’s attempted recruitment of former fighter pilots.TopicsKevin RuddChinaAsia PacificAustralian politicsUS politicsAustralian militaryTaiwannewsReuse this content More

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      in World Politics

      Vietnam and India Are Now Acting to Contain Aggressive China

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      in World Politics

      Toward a New Foreign Policy for the Taliban? A Timid Thaw in the Afghan Great Cold

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      Trump’s march back to power has faltered. Now comes the real challenge for the global left | Martin Kettle

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      Trump’s march back to power has faltered. Now comes the real challenge for the global leftMartin KettleThe US midterms have provided modest relief – but dilemmas facing US allies from Ukraine to the UK remain “It could have been a lot worse” will never be the most inspiring verdict on any election result, especially in a political and media environment that insists on absolutist conclusions and disparages nuance. In the case of the US midterms, however, it is the wisest one.American democracy is flawed and under threat. But an overlooked virtue of well-rooted democratic political systems, not just the US version, is that they rarely produce catastrophes, even if sometimes they can come close. The midterms were just such a non-catastrophe.Don’t get this wrong. For the Republicans to win control of the House, particularly in the aftermath of what happened in the US Capitol on 6 January last year, is a genuinely serious development. If Republicans eventually win back control of the Senate as well, it will be even more serious.Either way, it will have direct consequences for Joe Biden’s legislative agenda. It will be felt in Ukraine, as weapons procurement programmes intended for Kyiv become stalled. And it will strengthen the numbers of legislators on Capitol Hill who believe, or who say in public they believe, that Biden stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump.Election deniers in the Republican party won a lot of races this week. Their success in winning party nominations and then getting elected to Washington is an indication that much of the party remains the willing hostage of Trump and his Maga movement. But the midterms suggest that this will not be good news for Republican chances in 2024, especially if Trump is the presidential nominee.The nightmare fatalism that seemed to have overwhelmed many moderate and liberal observers about Trump’s return in the final days of the campaign was palpable. Yet it proved significantly misplaced. There wasn’t a landslide. And there isn’t – yet, at least – a tide carrying Trump back towards the White House either.If anything, these elections suggest election denial and the score-settling Trump agenda have become a drag on the party’s wider electoral chances. That’s now part of the reality of the next two years too. If, as expected, Trump declares next week that he is running in 2024, they will become an even bigger part.Ordinarily this might help his likely chief rival, Ron DeSantis. But Trump has the power to actively wound his party too. He is threatening to go to war with DeSantis if he runs. The internal conflict between them will also affect the larger electoral dynamic, possibly helping Biden or whoever runs next time.The deeper dive into how and why things have turned out this way can only come once all of the midterm contests are concluded – which will not be until December. Nevertheless, the Democratic vote has held up rather better than many expected, perhaps because of the supreme court’s abortion agenda, perhaps because Biden’s economic interventions have helped, and surely also because the Trump threat was a mobilising factor.As a result, prominent election deniers such as Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for state governor in the important swing state of Pennsylvania, were very badly beaten. Candidate quality was also an issue, notably in Georgia, another swing state these days. But voter reluctance over Trump could again be a crucial factor in 2024.Given that midterm elections are always a referendum on the incumbent president, and that Biden’s percentage approval ratings remain in the low 40s, these were always going to be tough contests. Given also that these are unfamiliarly tough economic times for middle America, with inflation (currently around 8% in the US, a 40-year high) seen as the most important issue by most voters, it would have been genuinely striking for the Democrats to buck the historic trend and hold on or even make gains. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t happen.This should be a warning to the Democrats, as well as a temporary relief. If the Democrats were able to limit their losses this time because disapproval of Trump outweighed dissatisfaction with Biden, it may follow that Biden was simply lucky in the way many voters framed the choice at the polls. A fresh candidate such as DeSantis would pose a different and conceivably more effective challenge.All of this underlines why those who watch the US from this side of the Atlantic should be careful too. It is always a mistake to oversimplify in politics. The midterms do not show that the country is hurtling towards a second Trump presidency. But they do not show that it is turning its back on Trump either.This uncertainty is a continuing problem for the whole world. It is certainly one for America’s western allies, since there is no way of predicting how the next two years will play out. In the long run no issue matters more in this context than the climate crisis. In the shorter run, the number one issue at stake is Ukraine.These two years may decide the outcome of the Ukraine war. So it matters to all European nations that the Biden administration will remain Kyiv’s principal ally, supplying the weapons and knowhow to keep Ukraine armed. Nevertheless, the approaching 2024 contest will cast a shadow. Democrats will not want an election with an unfinished war. Republicans could pledge to turn off the spending tap for Ukraine.The dilemmas facing Britain over all this are intense and immediate. For post-Brexit Britain, the US looms large as key ally and partner. Boris Johnson’s integrated review in 2021 of post-Brexit foreign and security policy imagined the US as the guarantor and enhancer of Britain’s roving role in the world. That was fanciful even before Ukraine and before talk of a Trump return grew louder. Now it is even more uncertain.Rishi Sunak, an instinctive Atlanticist, is learning foreign policy on the job. He cannot make airy assumptions about the US. He should make a priority of toning down the post-Brexit rhetoric about Britain’s role. He needs to recognise that a second Trump administration would be a minefield for Britain, and that he must prioritise a more practical approach to Europe.The same also applies to Labour’s response. As the 2024 US election approaches, so will Britain’s own. The inescapable foreign policy challenges facing Keir Starmer will in some ways be easier to navigate than they will for Sunak, since Starmer is more naturally in favour of good relations with Europe. But he will not want the British general election to be fought on that issue, so he may back away from it.The temptation, for Britain and other European nations, after the 2022 midterms is to allow modest relief at the outcome to stop us thinking strategically and in more self-reliant ways about how to respond to the new and profoundly uncertain United States that is evolving across the Atlantic. In an era dominated by the urgency of the climate crisis and the Ukraine war, that would be a foolish choice.
      Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsUS midterm elections 2022OpinionUS politicsJoe BidenDonald TrumpForeign policyDemocratsRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

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      We can’t keep treating talk of negotiations to end the Ukraine war as off limits | Rajan Menon and Daniel R DePetris

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      We can’t keep treating talk of negotiations to end the Ukraine war as off limitsRajan Menon and Daniel R DePetrisBroaching the subject of peace negotiations invites accusations of helping Putin – but that’s misguided The war in Ukraine shows no sign of abating, let alone ending. Unable to make headway on the battlefield, Russia has been bombarding Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure in hopes of freezing Ukrainians into submission as winter looms. The Ukrainians continue to press their offensive against Russian troops, many ill-trained and poorly motivated, to gain as much territory as possible before the cold sets in.The United States continues to provide economic aid and armaments to Kyiv. Another $275m in weapons and ammunition was pledged on 27 October, taking total US financial, military and humanitarian aid to more than $50bn since January. Additional assistance is certain.Could Ukraine’s drone attack on Russian ships herald a new type of warfare?Read moreAs the war drags on, the debate back home on how the US should handle it is likely to get more pointed and accusatory. Indeed, we may have already reached that point. Today, anyone broaching the subject of peace negotiations, let alone proposing ideas for a settlement, invites accusations of furthering Vladimir Putin’s narrative or providing aid and comfort to the enemy. The Congressional Progressive Caucus learned this the hard way recently, when its letter to President Biden proposing diplomacy to end the war was immediately vilified.That’s more than lamentable; it’s harmful. It’s during times of war that serious, unfettered discussion about the stakes, costs and risks of a particular policy choice is not only appropriate but absolutely essential. Arbitrarily policing the debate not only does a disservice to free thought but potentially leads to a situation whereby common-sense policy options are dismissed. Reasoned debate becomes a casualty.Facts on the ground make clear that the likelihood of immediate negotiations are virtually nil. Ukraine’s forces are making slow but steady progress and are trying to push Russian troops out of Kherson, so Kyiv has no reason to sue for peace. Moreover, Ukraine rightly fears that a ceasefire would leave about a fifth of its territory in Putin’s hands and give him a respite to regroup his army and then resume the offensive.Alleged Russian war crimes in Bucha, Mariupol and elsewhere have made Ukraine all the more determined to win the war. Meanwhile, Putin’s unlawful annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson last month have further convinced Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy that talks aren’t possible.Still, although talks may be infeasible now, they may be possible later on.War is inherently unpredictable. The side advancing today could be retreating tomorrow – or six months later. The course of this war makes this evident. Early this summer, the Russian army, using its superiority in artillery, pummeled Ukrainian positions in Luhansk and captured the towns of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk; Ukrainian troops suffered heavy losses. Two months later, Russian troops were beating a chaotic retreat and the Ukrainian army regained more than 3,000km of land in Kharkiv province within days.The tide could turn again once as tens of thousands of new Russian recruits (even if many are poorly armed, equipped and trained) join the fray and enable a Russian counteroffensive. The same Ukrainian government that now regards talks as pointless may then be open to them if it helps them avoid losing even more land. This may not happen, but the possibility that it could means that suggestions for a settlement should not be demonized.As the war continues – for months, perhaps years – the economic costs to the west in arms and economic aid to Ukraine, already substantial, will increase, particularly if Russia continues its relentless attacks on Ukrainian economic assets. Moscow’s slashing of energy exports has already contributed to an economic crisis in Europe. Germany, the EU’s largest economy, risks slipping into a recession and has had to mobilize $200bn to help consumers and businesses battered by high energy prices. France and Spain saw their GDPs contract in the July-to-September quarter. Eurozone inflation reached 10.7% in October, a record high. In the Baltic countries, the rate exceeds 22% as fuel and food prices have rocketed.If Europe’s economic conditions get even worse and a recession occurs in the US, it isn’t far-fetched to imagine calls for a settlement becoming more palpable if it helps reduce the economic burden.Moreover, there is always the possibility that the war could escalate, potentially drawing Russia and Nato into a direct confrontation. Hence proposals to prevent this denouement through diplomacy should be welcomed.Many dismiss the risk of escalation and Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling as empty rhetoric. Perhaps it is. But none of us can know what Putin would do if Russian conventional forces continued to lose ground or were facing a complete defeat. Policymakers don’t have the luxury of planning for the best-case scenario or hoping Putin will respond the way we expect him too. We should be humbler about our powers of prognostication: two years ago, who would have foreseen Europe witnessing its worst war in nearly eight decades?None of this means a deal with Putin should be cut behind Ukraine’s back. Nor should the US necessarily lead the process; simple geography suggests that Europe should play a larger role on all fronts in addressing the gravest threat to its security in a generation.The notion that offering proposals for ending the war betrays Kyiv and aids Moscow is absurd. We need constructive discussions about diplomatic solutions. One day, they will be needed.
      Rajan Menon is the director of the grand strategy program at Defense Priorities, a professor emeritus at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at the City College of New York, and a senior research fellow at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. He is the co-author of Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order
      Daniel R DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune and Newsweek, among other publications
      TopicsUkraineOpinionUS politicsForeign policyUS CongressVolodymyr ZelenskiyVladimir PutinRussiacommentReuse this content More

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      Saudi Arabia has screwed over the US – and the world – yet again. Enough is enough | Mohamad Bazzi

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      Saudi Arabia has screwed over the US – and the world – yet again. Enough is enoughMohamad BazziBy gouging global oil prices, Saudi Arabia has humiliated Biden and boosted Putin. The US must end this unofficial alliance In July, Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia and shared a fist bump with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. As a presidential candidate, Biden had promised to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” for its human rights abuses and its seven-year war against Yemen. But a devastating global pandemic and Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine forced him to set these concerns aside in favor of realpolitik. Biden needed the Saudis to increase oil production in order to lower gasoline prices for American consumers, so he swallowed his pride and treated the crown prince as the world leader he aspires to be.Unfortunately for Biden, that cringe-inducing fist bump photo op has backfired in spectacular fashion.Earlier this month, the Saudi-led Opec+ energy cartel agreed to cut oil production by 2m barrels a day, which will mean higher fuel prices this fall and winter. In the days leading up to the vote, the Biden administration invested significant political capital in its efforts to dissuade Saudi Arabia and its allies from cutting production. In the end, Biden’s wooing of Prince Mohammed yielded nothing but a 2% reduction of the world’s oil supply.In fact, the prince has inflicted political damage on the Biden administration a month before the US midterm elections. After soaring to $5 a gallon in June, US gasoline prices fell for more than three months. Now they are rising once again, increasing by an average of 12 cents a gallon over the past week, to $3.92.Rising prices threaten the Democrats’ hopes of maintaining control over both houses of Congress after the November elections. The prince and his Gulf allies clearly preferred dealing with Donald Trump, whose freewheeling Republican administration gave Prince Mohammed a blank check in exchange for stable oil prices and multibillion-dollar arms sales.The Saudis also sided with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who needs higher oil prices to help fund his war against Ukraine. As part of their economic sanctions against Moscow, the US and EU are trying to impose a cap on the price paid to Russia for its oil exports. But that effort could now collapse as global oil prices rise and Europe heads into a winter season when heating costs are expected to soar thanks to the Ukraine war.While Prince Mohammed may believe he outmaneuvered Biden and demonstrated his influence over the global oil market, his power play has upset the foreign policy establishment in Washington. Even so-called foreign policy “realists”, who for years ignored progressive criticisms of the US-Saudi partnership, must confront an uncomfortable question: if Washington can’t count on a steady supply of oil, what does it get in return for its decades of unwavering support for the House of Saud?Technically, the US and Saudi Arabia are not allies – they’ve never signed a mutual defense agreement or a formal treaty. For decades, the US-Saudi relationship has been largely transactional: the kingdom used its leverage within Opec (and later the larger Opec+ cartel) to keep oil production and prices at levels that satisfy Washington. The US used to import significant amounts of oil from Saudi Arabia, but now that Washington is the world’s largest oil producer, it no longer relies as heavily on Saudi imports. In return for guaranteeing a steady global supply of oil, successive US administrations supported the House of Saud politically, sold it billions of dollars in advanced US weapons, and provided military assistance whenever aggressive neighbors threatened the kingdom.In 1990, after Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait, Washington sent half a million troops to Saudi Arabia, which feared it would be Hussein’s next target. The US still deploys hundreds of troops and advisers to train the Saudi military and help it operate American weapons, including advanced warplanes, helicopters, and Patriot antimissile systems, which the kingdom has used to intercept drone and missile attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels.This oil-for-security arrangement has lasted through Democratic and Republican administrations, including multiple crises like the Arab-led oil embargo and Opec price increases in the 1970s and the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, where 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals recruited by Al-Qaida.Yet Prince Mohammed has now upended the decades-old understanding. Worse, he’s timed that decision so as to maximize Biden’s humiliation: a month before pivotal congressional elections, and as Washington and its allies are trying to maintain a united front against Russian aggression.If Biden doesn’t respond forcefully, he may embolden the crown prince to take more risks. So far, Biden has promised unspecified “consequences” in response to the Saudi maneuvering. But a growing number of Democrats in Congress, including centrists who hesitated to abandon the partnership despite the kingdom’s atrocious human rights record, are now demanding action.On 10 October, Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat who chairs the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, called for an immediate freeze on “all aspects of our cooperation with Saudi Arabia”, and promised to block future US weapons sales. Senator Dick Durbin, another centrist and the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, was even harsher, writing on Twitter that the House of Saud “has never been a trustworthy ally of our nation. It’s time for our foreign policy to imagine a world without their alliance”.Even before the ill-fated fist bump, Biden signaled to Prince Mohammed that he would carry out a business-as-usual relationship with the kingdom. In February 2021, weeks after taking office, Biden did follow through on a campaign promise to release a summary report of the US intelligence community’s findings on the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The report concluded that Prince Mohammed had approved the assassination at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018. But Biden, worried about harming the US-Saudi partnership, decided not to impose sanctions on the crown prince.By abandoning his promise to hold Khashoggi’s killers accountable, Biden convinced Prince Mohammed that he was too powerful to punish. At the time, Biden aides argued that banning the prince from visiting the US or targeting his personal wealth would accomplish little. But the lack of even symbolic US sanctions or response likely emboldened the prince to overturn the basic premise of the US-Saudi relationship.Since Prince Mohammed rose to power with his father’s ascension to the Saudi throne in 2015, he has presided over a series of destructive policies, including the Saudi-led invasion of Yemen and the kingdom’s campaign to blockade its smaller neighbor, Qatar. But the crown prince keeps failing upward, consolidating more control over Saudi Arabia. And he continues to be wooed by foreign leaders and business titans, thanks to the world’s sustained dependence on oil and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.Prince Mohammed had clearly concluded that he can get away with keeping oil prices high and undermining the US and EU campaign to isolate Russia – and still secure US protection and military assistance because Biden can’t get past the decades-old policy of American support for the House of Saud.This is no longer a case of Biden choosing realpolitik over the stated, but rarely enforced, US ideals of supporting human rights and democracy over autocracy. It’s time for Biden to acknowledge that his supposed realist approach toward Saudi Arabia has failed – and tear up the oil-for-security deal.
      Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and a journalism professor at New York University. He is also a non-resident fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now
      TopicsForeign policyOpinionSaudi ArabiaMohammed bin SalmanMiddle East and north AfricaJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicscommentReuse this content More