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2023-05-19t092212z_1645669827_rc2l11aq105w_rtrmadp_3_g7-summit-scaled

Biden's overseas summit cancellations aren't a big deal

Claims from many in Washington about the debt ceiling crisis impeding the president's foreign policy are a bit of an overreaction.

Analysis | Asia-Pacific

There has been much hand-wringing about President Biden canceling his trip to Australia for the Quad summit and to Papua New Guinea for a meeting of Pacific leaders (though he is attending the G7 summit in Hiroshima). The domestic paralysis over the debt ceiling may be serious, but the foreign policy implications of the canceled visits are not.

The leaders of the four Quad countries (Australia, India, and Japan, apart from the United States) will still meet in Hiroshima, and thus a de facto Quad summit will take place. It won’t have the pomp of the canceled Australia event, but substantive discussions will still take place. (However, the fact that the Quad has delivered little of substance more than five years into its second wind — except a steadily deepening military exercise, officially disowned by the grouping — is a topic for another discussion.)

The Papua New Guinea visit cancellation is more consequential. The United States is reportedly about to sign a sweeping military pact with PNG, aimed at China. Biden’s visit was likely a bequeathal of status to the far poorer and weaker Asian nation. It may also have been aimed at settling any outstanding issues in the deal. That effort may be delayed but it is unlikely to die because a president doesn't go. The power asymmetry and the overweening presence of close U.S. ally Australia in the region ensures that PNG can be ably coaxed or otherwise persuaded to follow through.

In fact, more attention should be paid to the PNG military pact. An unconfirmed leak suggests that the deal will give the United States military sweeping access to ports and territory in PNG. The presence of U.S. troops there will be governed by a reportedly highly unequal Status of Forces agreement. Most likely this is why the White House followed the cancellation up with an invite to PNG prime minister James Marape to Washington later this year for a summit with Pacific island nations.

This is hardly a new experience for the Global South, of course, where power differentials have contributed to such lopsided arrangements in the past — and have sometimes created a backlash downstream which can harm U.S. interests and influence. There is currently very little debate within America of expanding the U.S. military footprint in Asia and the Pacific. If only the mainstream media spent more time covering that, than the rather inconsequential cancellation of a couple of presidential visits.


U.S. President Joe Biden, Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Council Charles Michel, Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, France's President Emmanuel Macron and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida attend a working lunch meeting at G7 leaders' summit in Hiroshima, western Japan May 19, 2023, in this photo released by Kyodo. Mandatory credit Kyodo via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. JAPAN OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN JAPAN
Analysis | Asia-Pacific
Trump ASEAN
Top photo credit: U.S. President Donald Trump looks at Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., next to Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim when posing for a family photo with leaders at the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, October 26, 2025. Vincent Thian/Pool via REUTERS

‘America First’ meets ‘ASEAN Way’ in Kuala Lumpur

Asia-Pacific

The 2025 ASEAN and East Asia Summits in Kuala Lumpur beginning today are set to be consequential multilateral gatherings — defining not only ASEAN’s internal cohesion but also the shape of U.S.–China relations in the Indo-Pacific.

President Donald Trump’s participation will be the first by a U.S. president in an ASEAN-led summit since 2022. President Biden skipped the last two such summits in 2023 and 2024, sending then-Vice President Harris instead.

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iran, china, russia
Top photo credit: Top image credit: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi shake hands as Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu looks on during their meet with reporters after their meeting at Diaoyutai State Guest House on March 14, 2025 in Beijing, China. Lintao Zhang/Pool via REUTERS

'Annulled'! Russia won't abide snapback sanctions on Iran

Middle East

“A raider attack on the U.N. Security Council.” This was the explosive accusation leveled by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov this week. His target was the U.N. Secretariat and Western powers, whom he blamed for what Russia sees as an illegitimate attempt to restore the nuclear-related international sanctions on Iran.

Beyond the fiery rhetoric, Ryabkov’s statement contained a message: Russia, he said, now considers all pre-2015 U.N. sanctions on Iran, snapped back by the European signatories of the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) — the United Kingdom, France, Germany — “annulled.” Moscow will deepen its military-technical cooperation with Tehran accordingly, according to Ryabkov.

This is more than a diplomatic spat; it is the formal announcement of a split in international legal reality. The world’s major powers are now operating under two irreconcilable interpretations of international law. On one side, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany assert that the sanctions snapback mechanism of the JCPOA was legitimately triggered for Iran’s alleged violations. On the other, Iran, Russia, and China reject this as an illegitimate procedural act.

This schism was not inevitable, and its origin reveals a profound incongruence. The Western powers that most frequently appeal to the sanctity of the "rules-based international order" and international law have, in this instance, taken an action whose effects fundamentally undermine it. By pushing through a legal maneuver that a significant part of the Security Council considers illegitimate, they have ushered the world into a new and more dangerous state. The predictable, if imperfect, framework of universally recognized Security Council decisions is being replaced by a system where legal facts are determined by political interests espoused by competing power blocs.

This rupture followed a deliberate Western choice to reject compromises in a stand-off with Iran. While Iran was in a technical violation of the provisions of the JCPOA — by, notably, amassing a stockpile of highly enriched uranium (up to 60% as opposed to the 3.67% for a civilian use permissible under the JCPOA), there was a chance to avert the crisis. In the critical weeks leading to the snapback, Iran had signaled concessions in talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency in Cairo, in terms of renewing cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s inspectors.

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On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants
Top Photo Credit: (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)

On Ukraine and Venezuela, Trump needs to dump the sycophants

Europe

While diplomats labored to produce the Dayton Accords in 1995, then-Secretary of Defense Bill Perry advised, “No agreement is better than a bad agreement.” Given that Washington’s allies in London, Paris, Berlin and Warsaw are opposed to any outcome that might end the war in Ukraine, no agreement may be preferable. But for President Trump, there is no point in equating the illusion of peace in Ukraine with a meaningless ceasefire that settles nothing.

Today, Ukraine is mired in corruption, starting at the very highest levels of the administration in Kyiv. Sending $175 billion of borrowed money there "for however long it takes" has turned out to be worse than reckless. The U.S. national sovereign debt is surging to nearly $38 trillion and rising by $425 billion with each passing month. President Trump needs to turn his attention away from funding Joe Biden’s wars and instead focus on the faltering American economy.

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