International Relations

On U.S. Foreign Policy, the New Boss Acts a Lot Like the Old One

WASHINGTON — A fist bump and meeting with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Tariffs and export controls on China. Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. American troops out of Afghanistan. More than a year and a half into the tenure of President Biden, his administration’s approach to strategic priorities is surprisingly consistent with the […]

How China and Xi Jinping Have Turned on the Outside World

The miracle of modern China was built on global connections, a belief that sending young people, companies and future leaders to soak up the outside world was the route from impoverishment to power. Now, emboldened by its transformation, the country is shunning the influences and ideas that nourished its rise. The country’s most dominant leader […]

Russia May Be Seeking Pretext for Ukraine Invasion, Officials Say

KYIV, Ukraine — Russian military exercises on Ukraine’s border were extended indefinitely on Sunday, leaving an unrelenting threat hanging over a vastly outgunned Ukrainian military and jittery population after a weekend of shelling and evacuations that American and Ukrainian officials warned was an effort by Moscow to create a pretext for an invasion. The defense […]

Bond Between China and Russia Alarms U.S. and Europe Amid Ukraine Crisis

Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin have denounced the initiatives. They have long seen those two main strategic prongs of Washington — promotion of democracy abroad and the deployment or sharing of troops and military equipment — as enormous threats to their nations. “It is hoped that the U.S. side will take off their tinted glasses, […]

Ukraine Crisis Rattles Europe After 30 Years of Peace

For the younger generation, concerned, like the German Greens, with the environment and focused on human rights and gender and racial equality, “this is 19th-century policy erupting and crashing into their 21st-century concerns,” he said. In the larger sense, Mr. Ricketts said, the conflict reminds Europeans of the importance of NATO and of American leadership […]

Finland’s President Knows Putin Well. And He Fears for Ukraine.

HELSINKI — As the threat of a new Russian invasion of Ukraine grew, the European head of state with the longest and deepest experience dealing with Vladimir V. Putin fielded calls and doled out advice to President Emmanuel Macron of France and other world leaders desperate for insight into his difficult neighbor to the east. […]

As Other Hot Spots Boil, U.S. Shows Its Foreign Policy Focus Is Asia

MELBOURNE, Australia — With Europe bracing for the possibility of its biggest ground war in decades, the American secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, took a 27-hour flight this week in the opposite direction. On Friday, Mr. Blinken met with the foreign ministers of Australia, Japan and India at a summit in Melbourne of the […]

Putin Is Operating on His Own Timetable, and It May Be a Long One

MOSCOW — The Ukraine crisis is here to stay. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is increasingly staking his legacy on reversing Ukraine’s pro-Western shift. Even if he does not order an invasion this winter, he is making clear that he will keep the pressure on, backed by the threat of force, for as long […]

In Beijing, Olympic Spectacle and Global Power Games

BEIJING — China’s leader, Xi Jinping, opened an Olympic Games on Friday intended to celebrate his country’s increasingly assured global status while standing defiantly with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir V. Putin, in an increasingly ideological contest with the United States and its allies. While President Biden and other democratic leaders shunned the opening ceremony over […]