The summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a grouping of Asian and Eurasian states, opened on Sunday in the Chinese city of Tianjin. China is aiming to maximize the payoffs from the spectacle of the SCO’s largest-ever gathering.
More than 20 world leaders including those from North Korea, India, Iran, central Asian states, Turkey, and China’s close partner Russia are being hosted by President Xi Jinping. The Secretary-General of the United Nations and ASEAN are both taking part. Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto had planned to attend but cancelled at the last minute due to anti-government protests raging outside his capital today.
The SCO’s roots are as a security grouping, but is increasingly taking on economic and connectivity agendas. During this summit, China is pushing for an SCO development bank and new financing arrangements on extraction of critical minerals. But bilateral meetings will also be important to watch, especially ones between China and India, China and Russia, and Russia and Iran.
The summit comes during a time when the United States is building tariff walls with most of the world and is increasingly perceived as an unreliable partner by many trading powers. Beijing has tried to take advantage of the turbulence by presenting itself as a stabilizer and a hub for trade and technology in Asia and the Global South.
U.S. policy volatility and uncertainty contrasts with a broader stability and economic dynamism in key parts of Asia. Though much of the region has made major compromises with Washington on the tariffs question, summits like the one at Tianjin enable participating states to further push diversification and multi-alignment.
This is especially true during this summit for India and Indonesia. India, with its relations with the United States facing the greatest crisis in more than a quarter century, is looking to stabilize its difficult China relationship and further deepen its already strong ties to Russia. Indonesia too continues to play all sides. Having struck a trade deal with the United States after a difficult period of negotiations, it has also been deepening its relations with both China and Russia.
The increased recourse to hedging and multi-alignment across the international system can only accelerate the decline of unipolarity in the longer-run. In order to remain relevant, the United States needs to find ways to present itself as a stable and reliable partner. This cannot be achieved through trying to bring back primacy, especially through deepening militarization.
A better way may be finding common interests and their joint pursuit with key middle powers in Asia and elsewhere.
Sarang Shidore is Director of the Global South Program at the Quincy Institute, and member of the adjunct faculty at George Washington University. He has published in Foreign Affairs and The New York times, among others. Sarang was previously a senior research scholar at the University of Texas at Austin and senior global analyst at the geopolitical risk firm Stratfor Inc.
The new British “National Security Strategy” is not really a strategy at all, but a mess of conflicting (and often fantastical) goals and unexamined assumptions.
For this, two things above all are responsible. The first is the unexamined tension between, on the one hand, the strategy’s promise of a “systematic approach to pursuing national interests,” and, on the other, the repeated assertion that these interests are totally and inextricably bound up with Britain’s alliances. For it should be clear by now that “allies” cannot necessarily be relied on, and that in certain circumstances the agendas of allies are not a security asset but rather a source of greatly increased danger to Britain.
The second fundamental problem, one that has plagued Britain for many years, is the tension between the professed commitments set out in the “Strategy” and the practical limits on Britain’s resources. The authors should have paid attention to the famous maxim of former French prime minister Pierre Mendes-France: “To govern is to choose.”
When, however, the choices involved are difficult and painful, to choose requires not just knowledge and intelligence but also moral courage. In this case, the authors do not understand or have chosen to ignore the meaning of the word “priority.” Having set one “priority” in NATO and the alleged Russian threat, they then add more and more “priorities.” The new “strategy” promises to bring ambitions and resources into alignment through a huge increase in military spending and military industry; but even if this happens — and there are good reasons to think that it is fiscally impossible — it will not be remotely enough to achieve all the conflicting goals set out in this document.
For almost 70 years, the British establishment has sought to maintain its posture as a great power on the shoulders of the United States. The result in the case of this “Strategy” is that it is suffused with U.S. language, U.S. assumptions, and U.S. (and Israeli) agendas. Thus, Western democracies are threatened by “authoritarian aggression,” the “rules-based order” is threatened by Russia, Chinese, Iranian and North Korean “revisionists,” and “European and Indo-Pacific security are inextricably linked.”
This document sets out a legitimate national interest argument for British defense co-operation with Australia in terms of a boost to British military shipbuilding, through the “Aukus” agreement under which the US, UK and Australia will co-operate to build a new generation of nuclear attack submarines to be delivered — hopefully — about 20 years from now. This project would create about 7,000 new jobs in the UK.
The problem is that, echoing the discourse of Washington, it wraps this in hostile language about China that goes far beyond any real Chinese threat to Australia or international trade, and impossibly far beyond any Chinese threat to Britain. It is not just that this adds a completely unnecessary element of tension to Anglo-Chinese relations; it also ignores the fact that, if there were a serious Chinese military threat to Australia, there would be almost nothing the British armed forces could do about it.
One aspect of the would-be British role in the “Indo-Pacific” is symbolized, literally, by the little image of a British aircraft carrier next to the priority of “developing relationships in new domains.” One of Britain’s two carriers, HMS Prince of Wales, has indeed just been sent on a temporary deployment to the Indian and Pacific Oceans as part of a British carrier “strike group.”
According to the British government, one objective of the mission is “to declare the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers with all their constituent parts fully operational.” But the British carriers are well knownnot to be “fully operational.” Both have suffered repeated technical problems. They are unable to carry their full complement of (U.S.) fighters. The Royal Navy claims that the Indo-Pacific task force is “international by design,” but in actual fact it is international by necessity, since Britain cannot provide enough escort vessels.
Oddest of all is the statement that this Pacific deployment is also intended to “reaffirm the UK’s commitment to NATO.” NATO stands for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, not the Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization. With one British carrier at sea, the other is effectively immobilized for lack of aircraft, escort vessels and spare parts. How then is the Royal Navy to play its promised leading part in deterring or fighting the Russian threat that the National Security Strategy repeatedly identifies as the greatest direct threat to Britain and Europe? One of the three escorting frigates is provided by Norway, which has only four frigates. What has become of the supposed Russian threat to Norway?
On the part of the Norwegians, this is simply a continuation of the old European trick of making purely symbolic contributions to U.S. operations elsewhere in the world to try to persuade Washington to remain committed to European security. If so, however, this is a mission on autopilot, for Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby (echoing a widespread view in Washington) has reportedly told the British that they are not really needed in the Pacific and should concentrate on the defense of Europe.
But the British establishment simply cannot let go of the desire to play a role, any role, on the world stage. Thus on page 23 of the “Strategy” we read that,
“Sovereignty over the Overseas Territories must be protected against all challenges so that, for those who live in the Territories as British nationals, their right of self-determination is upheld…We will maintain our military presence in Gibraltar, the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri & Dhekelia, Ascension Island, the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands to deliver UK defence objectives.”
We should all of course support the right of the British Nationals of South Georgia and the South Sandwiches to self-determination — if such people existed. Alas, the only residents are seabirds and penguins. Then again, it would be a great deal less dangerous for the Royal Navy to spend its time protecting the British penguins’ Sandwiches than poking China in the eye. As for Gibraltar and the bases on Cyprus, the only conceivable “challenges” to them are from Spain and Turkey — both fellow NATO members.
Even this “Strategy” cannot quite manage to turn Russia into a threat to the British Sandwiches; though not, one suspects, for want of trying. But if Antarctic penguins, 8,000 miles from Britain’s shores, are “British nationals,” then it is easier to swallow the strategy’s statement that Ukraine — a mere 1,000 miles away — is Britain’s “neighbor.”
The British government and its National Security Strategy seek to justify the huge increase in British military spending to the British public (at a time of economic stagnation and severe fiscal pressure) above all on the basis of an alleged direct, serious and imminent Russian threat to Britain itself. The inconsistency here should be obvious. If such a threat really exists, then - as in the years before the First World War - Britain should be reducing its commitments elsewhere in the world in order to concentrate them closer to home. Deployments to the Indo-Pacific and Ukraine should both be off the table. Instead, Britain is declaring a “100 year” pact with Ukraine, and proposing a leading and permanent British military presence as part of a European “reassurance force.”
And while the “Strategy” is permeated with veiled anxiety about the unreliability of America as an ally, the policies being adopted by the British establishment towards Russia and the Ukraine War make Britain more and more dependent on Washington. Should Britain actually send troops to Ukraine, that dependence would become absolute, for as Prime Minister Keir Starmer has himself stated, such a force would rely totally on U.S. backup and protection.
It seems deeply foolish for Britain to choose to rely more on an unreliable U.S. This reliance will make it more and more difficult for Britain to distance itself from U.S. agendas elsewhere, especially in the Middle East. The language of the British “Strategy” simply parrots the U.S. in repeatedly portraying Iran and unspecified terrorists as the threat to order in the region. The word “Israel” never appears. The document talks of the need for Britain to exploit its diplomatic links to Commonwealth countries – but the great majority of those countries would regard the picture of Middle Eastern security set out here as a gross and immoral falsification.
For as the events of recent months have made clear, it is Israeli actions and ambitions that pose the greatest threat to order and security in the Middle East, to British interests and British lives in the Gulf, and to social peace and political stability within Britain itself. But what can the “Strategy” — or any British government — do about this if the U.S. establishment is completely subservient to Israel and the British establishment is totally reliant on the U.S.?
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Israeli soldiers prepare shells near a mobile artillery unit, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Israel, January 2, 2024. (REUTERS/Amir Cohen)
The House is poised to expand the use of a secretive mechanism for funneling weapons to Israel.
Hidden deep in a must-pass State Department funding bill is a provision that would allow for unlimited transfers of U.S. weapons to a special Israel-based stockpile in the next fiscal year, strengthening a pathway for giving American weapons to Israel with reduced public scrutiny. The House Foreign Affairs Committee is set to discuss the bill Wednesday morning.
The stockpile — known as War Reserve Stock for Allies-Israel, or WRSA-I — is “the least transparent mechanism of providing arms to Israel,” former State Department official Josh Paul told Responsible Statecraft. Since Oct. 7, Israel has quietly purchased huge numbers of American weapons from WRSA-I, facilitating a wave of airstrikes that many analysts consider the most intense bombing campaign of the 21st century.
The transfer process is simple. When Israel asks for weapons from WRSA-I, the secretary of defense can approve the request without having to go through typical steps like notifying Congress or even the White House in advance. Then “Israel can just drive in, pull whatever it requires, and drive out,” said Paul, who now runs a lobbying firm called A New Policy, adding that payments for the weapons are “worked out or provided in the future.”
The legislation, crafted by committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-Fla.), would build on a 2024 law that temporarily waived restrictions on the value and type of U.S. weapons transferred to WRSA-I each year. (U.S. law previously limited such transfers to $200 million annually.) That law also gave the secretary of defense the authority to assess the value of arms transfers rather than relying on the fair market value of the article.
Even before these changes, the U.S. had already started taking advantage of WRSA-I to quietly fuel Israel’s war in Gaza. In the early days of the conflict, Biden administration officials appeared to dodge transparency rules by cutting up larger transfers from WRSA-I into smaller weapons packages that fell under the $25 million threshold for notifying Congress of the sale. This helps to explain how Israel has managed to prosecute the war in Gaza despite receiving few publicly acknowledged weapons sales from the U.S.
Some worry that these arms transfers could place additional pressure on U.S. weapons stockpiles, which have already been strained by American support for Israel and Ukraine.
According to Paul, the proposed expansion of WRSA-I risks creating “a significant drain on U.S. military readiness.”
The effort to expand arms transfers to Israel comes after a panel of United Nations experts determined that Israel is committing a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The Israeli government rejected that claim, which it says relies “entirely on Hamas falsehoods.”
Notably, the bill also contains a provision that would eliminate all of the State Department’s reporting requirements, meaning that the department would no longer need to submit reports to Congress on issues like human rights abroad.
“Congressional oversight would take a very big hit if this were to pass as it exists now,” said John Ramming-Chappell, an adviser at the Center for Civilians in Conflict. “Congress and the public would have less information about U.S. foreign policy and its impact.”
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Top image credit: Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sanchez during the summit of Heads of State and Government of the European Union at the European Council in Brussels in Belgium the 26th of July 2025, Martin Bertrand / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
The final stage of the Vuelta a España, Spain’s premier cycling race, was abandoned in chaos on Sunday. Pro-Palestinian protesters, chanting “they will not pass,” overturned barriers and occupied the route in Madrid, forcing organizers to cancel the finale and its podium ceremony. The demonstrators’ target was the participation of an Israeli team. In a statement that captured the moment, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez expressed his “deep admiration for the Spanish people mobilizing for just causes like Palestine.”
The event was a vivid public manifestation of a potent political sentiment in Spain — one that the Sánchez government has both responded to and, through its foreign policy, legitimized. This dynamic has propelled Spain into becoming the European Union’s most vocal dissenting voice on the war in Gaza, marking a significant break from the transatlantic foreign policy orthodoxy.
Sanchez’s support for the protesters was not merely rhetorical. On Monday, he escalated his stance, explicitly calling for Israel to be barred from international sports competitions, drawing a direct parallel to the exclusion of Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. “Our position is clear and categorical: as long as the barbarity continues, neither Russia nor Israel should participate in any international competition,” he said. This position, which angered Israel and Spanish conservatives alike, was further amplified by his culture minister, who suggested Spain should boycott next year’s Eurovision Song Contest if Israel participates.
More significantly, it emerged that his government had backed its strong words with concrete action, cancelling a €700 million ($825 million) contract for Israeli-designed rocket launchers. This move, following an earlier announcement of measures aimed at stopping what it called “the genocide in Gaza,” demonstrates a willingness to leverage economic and diplomatic tools that other EU capitals have avoided.
Sánchez, a master political survivalist, has not undergone a grand ideological conversion to anti-interventionism. Instead, he has proven highly adept at reading and navigating domestic political currents. His government’s stance on Israel and Palestine is a pragmatic reflection of his coalition that depends on the support of the left for which this is a non-negotiable priority.
This instinct for pragmatic divergence extends beyond Gaza. Sánchez has flatly refused to commit to NATO’s target of spending 5% of GDP on defense demanded by the U.S. President Donald Trump and embraced by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, citing budgetary constraints and social priorities.
Furthermore, Spain has courted a role as a facilitator between great powers. This ambition was realized when Madrid hosted a critical high level meeting between U.S. and Chinese trade officials on September 15 — a meeting Trump lauded as successful while reaffirming “a very strong relationship” between the U.S. and China. This outreach is part of a consistent policy; Sánchez’s own visit to Beijing, at a time when other EU leaders like the high representative for foreign policy Kaja Kallas were ratcheting up anti-Chinese rhetoric, signals a deliberate pursuit of pragmatic economic ties over ideological confrontation.
Yet, for all these breaks with the mainstream, Sánchez’s foreign policy is riddled with a fundamental contradiction. On Ukraine, his government remains in alignment with the hardline Brussels consensus. This alignment is most clearly embodied by his proxy in Brussels, Iratxe García Pérez, the leader of the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) group in the European Parliament. In a stark display of this hawkishness, García Pérez used the platform of the State of the Union debate with the EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to champion the demand to outright seize frozen Russian sovereign assets.
This reckless stance, which reflects the EU’s broader hawkish drift on Ukraine, is thankfully tempered only by a lack of power to implement it, rendering it largely a symbolic act of virtue signaling. The move is not just of dubious legality; it is a significant error in statecraft. It would destroy international trust in the Eurozone as a safe repository for assets. Most critically, it would vaporize a key bargaining chip that could be essential in securing a future negotiated settlement with Russia. It is a case of ideological posturing overriding strategic calculation.
This contradiction reveals the core of Sánchez’s doctrine: it is circumstantial, not convictional. His breaks with orthodoxy on Israel, defense spending and China are significant, but driven, to a large degree, by the necessity of domestic coalition management. His alignment on Ukraine is the path of least resistance within the EU mainstream, requiring no difficult choices that would upset his centrist instincts or his international standing.
Therefore, Sánchez is no Spanish De Gaulle articulating a grand sovereigntist strategic vision. He is a fascinating case study in the fragmentation of European foreign policy. He demonstrates that even within the heart of the Western mainstream which he represents, dissent on specific issues like Gaza and rearmament is not only possible but increasingly politically necessary.
However, his failure to apply the same pragmatic, national interest lens to Ukraine — opting instead for the bloc’s thoughtless escalation — proves that his policy is more a product of domestic political arithmetic than coherent strategic vision. He is a weathervane, not a compass — but even a weathervane can indicate a shift in the wind, and the wind in Spain is blowing away from unconditional Atlanticism.
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