Day: June 14, 2021

Briefings

Background Briefing: June 14, 2021

On By gram

 

The G7 and NATO Issue Warnings About China’s Rise

We begin with President Biden’s meeting at the NATO summit in Brussels at which Nato leaders warned that China poses a military threat representing a “systemic challenge” even though the alliance does not want to start a new Cold War with China. This following the G7 meeting at which Group of Seven leaders criticized China on human rights abuses of the Uighers, the crackdown in Hong Kong and threats against Taiwan. Joining us is Orville Schell, the Director of the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations whose latest books are Wealth and Power: China’s Long March to the Twenty-first Century and My Old Home: A Novel of Exile. We discuss how the West got China wrong in assuming that as China got richer, it would get freer, but Xi Jinping has proven that wrong as he consolidates the power of the Communist Party over the country and cracks down on dissent and democratic aspirations. And we assess what Nato means when it says “we need to address together, as an alliance, the challenge that China poses to our security.”  

 

Israel’s New Government With a One Seat Majority in the Knesset

Then we go to Israel to look into the new government that has ended Netanyahu’s 12 year rule and examine its policies and likely staying power since it has a majority of just one seat in the Knesset and is largely there because the Israeli people are sick of political dysfunction and repeated elections that don’t yield results. Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist and columnist for Haaretz and a member of its editorial board who was formerly a spokesman for Shimon Perez, joins us to discuss his latest article at Haaretz, “Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has nothing to lose.”

 

The Poor People’s Campaign Demonstrate in Joe Manchin’s West Virginia

Then finally, with a rally this evening in Charleston, West Virginia organized by the Reverend Barber’s Poor People’s Campaign aimed at pressuring Senator Joe Manchin to support voting rights and abolish the filibuster, we speak with Anne Marie Lofaso, a Professor of Law at West Virginia University College of Law. She joins us to discuss how infrastructure is the key to winning over Joe Manchin who can neither alienate the Left in his state who are important in the primaries and the Right who voted in huge numbers for Trump.