By refusing negotiation over China’s rise, the United States might be making conflict inevitable. How far will mounting tension with China be translated into the economic policy of the United States? After a rash of sanctions and overtly discriminatory legislation, with action on U.S. investment in China pending, and with talk of war increasingly commonplace in the United States, the Biden administration knows that it needs to clarify its economic relations with the country that is the largest U.S. trading partner outside North America. Read the full article at Foreign Policy

American critics chastise Europeans’ rejection of fossil fuels. But Europe is winning the bet. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has led to a reassertion of national security concerns in every facet of Western countries’ policy. The most obvious aspect is military security, with the United States and the Europeans ramping up ammunition production and wrangling over tank deliveries. But as far as Europe is concerned, the even more urgent priority is energy security. As Russia’s natural gas supplies were cut off and prices surged to record levels, European governments have spent more on subsidizing the energy bills of their populations, stockpiling gas, and bailing out bankrupt energy companies than they have either on their militaries or on supporting Ukraine. The emergency energy programs were short-term expedients. The urgent question now is which direction long-term energy security is to be found. The crisis struck Europe in the midst of an accelerated energy transition away from fossil fuels, one driven by climate concerns and a program of green industrial policy. Since 2020, Europe has been

The Bahamas represents how global capitalism can go very right, and very wrong, at exactly the same time. On Jan. 3, as Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty in New York on charges stemming from the collapse of one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, the FTX debacle became, once again, a U.S. story. The Bahamian backdrop to the last days of FTX has faded into the background. But the torrid affair between what was once touted as the leading edge of financial technology, or fintech, and the Bahamas—a nation of 400,000 people, spread over some 700 islands, 50 miles or so offshore of Florida—is not merely incidental. It highlights the way in which the wider Caribbean region has repeatedly functioned as a Frankenstein laboratory of global capitalism. The Caribbean was the first region of the world to feel the full force of Western conquest and plantation slavery. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Bahamas was a legendary base for piracy and smuggling. The 20th century brought the rise of American power and the struggles