By Robbie Gramer and Jack Detsch
Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep! Robbie and Jack here. Sorry we missed you last week, but imagining that Thanksgiving food coma in all of our futures really tired us out. Robbie is on the way back from San Francisco from a meeting of two of the world’s great powers, and Jack is back after two-ish weeks away from the desk.
Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: Biden and Xi get the U.S. and China talking again—maybe, the United States boosts defense ties in China’s backyard, and the Nordic countries say the Russians are retaliating against them by sending asylum-seekers to their borders.
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U.S. President Joe Biden (R) and Chinese President Xi Jinping walk together after a meeting during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ week in Woodside, California, on Nov. 15, 2023.Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images
SAN FRANCISCO—As U.S. President Joe Biden met Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week, throngs of demonstrators lined the streets here behind a maze of security barriers. Some waved massive Chinese flags, playing the Chinese national anthem over loudspeakers. Others waved anti-Xi signs, blaring an anthem of their own that repeated “take down the Xi-CP” (a play on the CCP—the Chinese Communist Party).
Down the middle of the road between the opposing demonstrators on either side, literally and figuratively, drove the motorcades ferrying high-level U.S. and Chinese delegates to their meetings.
It’s unclear how Biden’s big meeting with Xi, divisive as it was in both Washington and the streets of San Francisco, will pay off in the long run.
Hotline bling. But one of the most important and tangible agreements in the immediate term is that both sides are restarting military-to-military talks. China rebuffed U.S. efforts to reestablish a so-called hotline after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022, as well as the spy balloon saga in February this year. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin got ghosted when he tried reaching out to his Chinese counterpart during that time, a fact that began to really rattle the nerves of U.S. officials and their allies.
An accident such as a Chinese fighter jet hitting a U.S. plane near the South China Sea, or a misinterpretation of movement of naval forces, could be quickly resolved with a quick phone call between U.S. and Chinese military officials. Without that channel, officials feared, a mishap could spiral into a full-fledged crisis. “Vital miscalculations on either side can cause real, real trouble with a country like China or any other major country,” Biden told reporters after the meeting. “And so, I think we made real progress there.”
Even after the straightforward talks, Biden insisted he hadn’t changed his view on one thing. Xi, he said, is effectively a dictator.
Hold the bubbly. But don’t pop your champagne just yet. U.S. officials have warned that China is dangerously buzzing American jets and ships at an alarming rate in the Indo-Pacific. The Pentagon indicated in a report last month that the People’s Liberation Army had targeted foreign aircraft and ships with lasers, reckless approaches, and by discharging flares or small pieces of aluminum and plastic to confuse the radars of nearby jets. Oh, and Chinese aircraft are penetrating Taiwan’s air defense identification zone at an alarming rate, forcing Taiwanese planes into the sky to respond and burning out their pilots.
Nobody home. And even as the United States is calling for more hotlines with China—something that Biden has been hoping for since the beginning of his administration—if they build it, who would come? China removed Defense Minister Li Shangfu in October, Austin’s nominal counterpart, without explanation after a two-month disappearance and has not named a successor. Li, who shook hands with Austin in Singapore this summer instead of taking a meeting, has not been seen in public since August.
That’s not a one-off. Former Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang was also ousted in July after a prolonged disappearance. (U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Qin’s successor, Wang Yi, in Washington last month.)
Things aren’t all doom and gloom, though. One other takeaway from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit worth noting: Pandas may be coming back to zoos in the United States in a win for the soft and fuzzy side of diplomacy. More background on that pressing issue can be found here.
Muriel Chase is now director of broadcast media in Biden’s executive office.
Chandresh Harjivan is now associate director for domestic preparedness and response to pandemic and biological threats at the White House after running a pharmaceutical company.
Joshua Geltzer is now deputy counsel to Biden and a legal advisor to the National Security Council (NSC), moving from his prior role as the NSC’s deputy homeland security advisor.
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
The other defense stuff at APEC. The Biden-Xi meeting dominated the headlines at APEC, but that wasn’t all that happened in Indo-Pacific news this week. Biden met with Indonesian President Joko Widodo at the White House on Monday, where the two leaders agreed to strengthen military ties with the announcement of a new formal defense cooperation agreement. This is significant, and not just because his meeting with the Indonesian leader was arranged as something of a diplomatic cleanup act after he rankled Indonesia by skipping the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit back in September.
Following major boosts in U.S.-Philippines defense cooperation and a high-profile upgrade of U.S.-Vietnam ties, the new U.S.-Indonesia cooperation pact is another symbolic win for U.S. efforts to reassert its geopolitical clout in the Asia-Pacific (all with an eye toward competing with China). The deal, White House officials at APEC said, will include joint U.S.-Indonesian military exercises, as well as new cooperation on cybersecurity and maritime security.
Not in my backyard. Finland is closing four of its border crossings with Russia this weekend after a rise in asylum applications. That’s nearly half of the nine border crossings between the newly minted NATO country and Russia. On Tuesday, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said the rise in applications was an act of Russian revenge for formerly neutral Finland building a closer defense relationship with the United States. Norwegian officials are also indicating that they are ready to shutter their borders on short notice.
Hold up. The Turkish Parliament’s foreign affairs committee opened debate on Sweden’s NATO bid today. That should mean that Stockholm will finally join the 31-nation military alliance after more than a year in purgatory, right? Not so fast. The wrangling stopped almost as soon as it started, with Turkish lawmakers from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party postponing the debate for a later date, saying that negotiations with Sweden had not “matured” enough. Your SitRep hosts are not sure what the heck that means, but Turkey has long been upset about Sweden’s relationship with Kurdish groups and still hasn’t received the U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets it wants in exchange for rubber-stamping the NATO bid.
Members of the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, carry out a 41-gun royal salute to mark the 75th birthday of British King Charles III at Green Park in London on Nov. 14. Kate Green/Getty Images
Thursday, Nov. 16: Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida are set to meet in San Francisco on the heels of Biden’s meeting with the Chinese leader.
Madagascar holds a presidential election.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen held a major speech on China.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is in Indonesia for the ASEAN defense ministers’ meeting, the final leg of a three-country swing through the Indo-Pacific that began last week.
Too much news? Too bad.
Friday, Nov. 17: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is set to host Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Berlin.
Sunday, Nov. 19: Argentina holds a runoff vote in the presidential race.
Tuesday, Nov. 21: South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol begins a three-day visit to the United Kingdom.
“Can’t talk to you, I’ve gotta go meet the Rock.”
—Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to reporters, before meeting Hollywood superstar Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Johnson was on Capitol Hill this week to talk about military recruitment with some lawmakers. Or, as the Rock might say: “Know your role.”
Stop stalling. The new book Poland at War, by the journalist Zbigniew Parafyanovich, has some juicy anecdotes about Poland’s support for Ukraine. Parafyanovich reports that Warsaw quickly got tired of waiting for Washington to send fighter jets to Ukraine in the spring of 2022, so it disassembled 10 Mig-29 fighter jets and disappeared them in the forest, only to tell Kyiv about the lost parts. We think you know what happened next.
