What ever happened to the Russian army? Nothing has happened to the Russian military for 50 years, and President Vladimir Putin should have thought twice before heaving his armed forces into war. The Red Army’s generals were convinced that continuing the Cold War would bankrupt the Soviet Union just as President Ronald Reagan had predicted when he launched the arms race a decade earlier. The problem was the communists could not machine parts to compete with the free market’s output. The Cold War was over. The news from Ukraine suggests that Russia never caught up with the West. It tried to catch up, but it failed. So, it relied on stealing weaponry from the West, mainly from the USA. Apparently, that was not good enough. Russian spies were not as productive as Western technology. Time and again throughout the Cold War, the West would move ahead in technology and the Russians would steal the West’s secrets to catch up. It worked occasionally, but in one area their stealing was utterly futile: the microchip. When Moore’s law came into play in the 1980s, the West’s advantage became increasingly apparent. Moore’s law predicted that the processing power of chips would grow exponentially, leaving the Soviets’ capacity to replicate Western chips and other advances far behind. For 50 years, with the help of Moore’s law and the technological know-how to use it, the Western powers have been developing superior weapons while the Russians have been copying filched weapons that by the time they were brought back to Russia were probably already dated.

Sri Lanka and Zambia have already defaulted and Zambia and Pakistan have received bailout funding from the International Monetary Fund. Sri Lanka is asking for a similar bailout. It is too late to stop the IMF’s bailout of Pakistan but the US should prevent a bailout of Sri Lanka and other BRI nations because they would bail China out of its bad loans. Because of unpaid mortgages, Chinese banks may face domestic mortgage losses of $350 billion. China’s central bank has stepped in to provide support to lenders that could require a lender bailout like the one we went through in 2008. The mortgage market is regarded as the foundation of China’s economy. Because it is, China’s $56 trillion banking system is evidently at risk. The mortgage bailout and BRI bad loans are reflected in China’s economic downturn. China’s GDP shrank by 2.6% in the second quarter of the year and is expected to shrink again, meeting the definition of a recession. It would be a mistake to equate Russia’s military weakness, demonstrated in its war on Ukraine, with a concomitant Chinese military weakness or expect China to reduce its military aggression. Mr. Xi is far less patient than his predecessors. He might decide to move against Taiwan before China’s economy shrinks to the point that it cannot afford to. China’s desire to conquer Taiwan remains one of Mr. Xi’s highest priorities. His military forces have been built with two things in mind: the conquest of Taiwan and prohibiting US forces from entering any conflict there or in the South China Sea. China’s economic troubles are not beyond our reach. Blocking IMF bailouts of BRI loans should be just the beginning.

The Chinese Communists have succeeded in making sufficient compromises with capitalism to create the world’s second-largest economy. Despite those compromises, it was probably overconfidence in its economic power that has led China into economic problems that could limit its aggression. China’s economy is suffering several economic crises at once, so the question is whether that will make Xi Jinping’s regime more or less aggressive. Mr. Xi is the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. His “thought,” like Mao’s, is prescribed study for China’s students, military and politicians. Mr. Xi may try to ignore China’s economic problems but they will not simply disappear. Those problems mostly stem from bad loans made under China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), a mortgage banking crisis and Beijing’s zero-COVID policy. China is the largest creditor nation in the world. Through the BRI, China has lent hundreds of billions of dollars to third-world countries around Asia and Africa. Part of the price of those loans was China’s ability to use parts of those nations, such as the port city of Gwadar in Pakistan, for its own military purposes. The foreseeable problem is that most of those countries are, bad economic risks. Many of those loans are not being repaid. China apparently believed that the cost of those loans, even if not repaid, was worth the strategic military advantages gained. But that cost is increasing at a time the Chinese economy is shrinking. China attempted to “rescue” those loans to stave off default thereby increasing the amount those countries owe.

The United Nations finally released its report on the human rights concerns in China’s Xinjiang region, and its conclusions are damning. The report, compiled by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), chronicles massive human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, torture, forced labor, involuntary sterilization, sexual violence, and other crimes. That a country with such a poor human rights record wields so much influence over the U.N. human rights system is troubling. That it does so without even ranking among OHCHR’s top donors hints at the sophistication of its influence. Indeed, the Xinjiang human rights report saga is just the latest example of Beijing using its influence and pressure to bully the international community into serving its interests. Across the U.N. system, China is punching above its weight. Until recently, a Chinese national led more U.N. specialized agencies than any other nation. Beijing’s success is due to its relentless pressure on the organizations, its economic leverage over developing countries, and its diplomatic support for like-minded authoritarian governments, which in turn support its positions and goals in the U.N. Beijing seeks to suppress international criticism of China and weaken global human rights norms, ultimately replacing them with its own set of authoritarian norms. It has had considerable success so far, and its outsized influence threatens human rights not only in China but globally. The international community still can regain control of the human rights narrative, and it must do so before it is too late.

These developments on the Korean Peninsula are happening at a time when North Korea has been supportive of Russia in its war with Ukraine. Pyongyang has recognized the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic and reportedly is providing Russia with rockets and millions of artillery shells. Unconfirmed reporting also mentioned North Korea sending workers to these breakaway provinces of Ukraine and possibly also sending troops to aid Russia and these breakaway provinces in the war with the government of Ukraine. No doubt this is a calculated move on the part of Mr. Kim to secure Russia’s support in the United Nations to ensure that no further sanctions will be imposed on Pyongyang, regardless of their reckless behavior, to include a seventh nuclear test. Additionally, North Korea would receive needed oil, natural gas, and wheat from Russia, in exchange for Pyongyang’s support in the war with Ukraine. However, aligning with a revanchist Russia probably isn’t the option Mr. Kim and his father, Kim Jong-il, wanted to pursue. Rather, it was normalizing relations with the United States. We know this from almost 30 years of negotiations and informal meetings and exchanges. The problem was and is that North Korea wants this normal relationship on their terms - accepting them as a nuclear weapons state. This has been and is the rub - we correctly continue to say “no.” Normalization is available with complete and verifiable denuclearization and significant progress on human rights. We should hold to this principled decision.

On Sept. 9 Kim Jong-un, at a session of the Supreme People’s Assembly, made it officially clear that North Korea will remain a nuclear weapons state with an expansive nuclear doctrine that includes the preemptive use of nuclear weapons. Clearly, this was a message from Mr. Kim to the United States and South Korea. He was telling the United States that any future negotiations will focus on arms control issues, not denuclearization. And in this context, Mr. Kim now appears confident that the United States eventually will relent and accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state, something the North has been pursuing since the Six Party Talks from 2003-2009. North Korea was told then and continues to be told now, that the United States will never accept the North as a nuclear weapons state. Equally concerning was Mr. Kim’s other pronouncement that North Korea now has a nuclear “first use” doctrine that includes the preemptive use of nuclear weapons in response to an attack or an imminent attack on the leadership or its nuclear command structure. South Korean President Yoon Suk yeol, during his campaign, had publicly stated that a preemptive strike was an option for his country in response to an imminent attack from North Korea. It appears that this may have been Mr. Kim’s response - we also have a preemptive use policy - to Mr. Yoon’s comments about a preemptive strike. It was noteworthy in that Mr. Kim now stated clearly - what many suspected - that North Korea will never give up its nuclear weapons, seemingly dashing any hope for the resumption of denuclearization talks.

Mr. Abe realized that the United States was the key to Japan’s survival as an independent nation. Part of his affection for America came from his own personal expertise growing up. As he explained to a Joint Session of Congress on April 29, 2015, his first experience with America occurred when he went to California as a student. As he told Congress: “Here in the U.S. rank and hierarchy are neither here nor there. People advance based on merit. When you discuss things, you don’t pay much attention to who is junior or senior. You just choose the best idea, no matter who the idea was from. This culture intoxicated me.” It was this optimistic, anti-communist, pro-freedom, pro-religious liberty future that Mr. Abe’s critics have sought to destroy in the aftermath of his assassination. Rather than mourning the death of the longest-serving Japanese Prime Minister, his enemies and those jealous of his achievements have sought to smear his memory, drive his supporters into political exile, and eliminate the religious liberty which makes Japan so different from Communist China and Communist North Korea. The leftist Japanese news media has been a partner in undermining and distorting the Abe legacy - and helping drive his supporters and friends out of public life. Japan has not seen this kind of hysteria and viciousness since the politics of the 1930s. It is a great tragedy that the advocate of an alliance of hope has been replaced by a movement willing to destroy religious liberty, smear its opponents, and drive citizens out of public life. Prime Minister Abe deserves a better farewell from the country which he served so long.

The assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on July 8, by a deranged 41-year-old man has unleashed forces that caused me to take a new look at how Japan is evolving. The assassination of Mr. Abe was apparently the act of a single mentally ill individual. However, the demons that have been unleashed since then into the Japanese political system were the result of a long buildup of anti-Abe sentiment. It was as though the spell Prime Minister Abe had cast over Japan from 2006 to 2020 was suddenly shattered. The forces of communism, anti-religious hostility, and anti-American resentment, all came pouring into the public square in a deeply emotional effort to destroy Mr. Abe’s memory - and with it the forces of anti-communist, pro-freedom, and pro-American sentiment that Mr. Abe had so powerfully and effectively represented. Prime Minister Abe was the longest-serving Prime Minister in Japanese history. He led Japan in 2006 and 2007 and again from 2012 to 2020. He was a dynamic leader. Like Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, and Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump in the United States, Abe’s dedication to a strongly nationalist policy - and strong defense - was deeply opposed by a significant part of Japanese society. Mr. Abe was particularly marked by his commitment to remain close to the United States and to work with other nations to contain an increasingly powerful and assertive Communist China. Mr. Abe understood that Japan by itself could not survive as an independent country if it had to cope with China alone. The sheer size of China in population and economic growth required a coalition-alliance approach to contain it.

The United Nations finally released its report on the human rights concerns in China’s Xinjiang region, and its conclusions are damning. The report, compiled by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), chronicles massive human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, torture, forced labor, involuntary sterilization, sexual violence, and other crimes. That a country with such a poor human rights record wields so much influence over the U.N. human rights system is troubling. That it does so without even ranking among OHCHR’s top donors hints at the sophistication of its influence. Indeed, the Xinjiang human rights report saga is just the latest example of Beijing using its influence and pressure to bully the international community into serving its interests. Across the U.N. system, China is punching above its weight. Until recently, a Chinese national led more U.N. specialized agencies than any other nation. Beijing’s success is due to its relentless pressure on the organizations, its economic leverage over developing countries, and its diplomatic support for like-minded authoritarian governments, which in turn support its positions and goals in the U.N. Beijing seeks to suppress international criticism of China and weaken global human rights norms, ultimately replacing them with its own set of authoritarian norms. It has had considerable success so far, and its outsized influence threatens human rights not only in China but globally. The international community still can regain control of the human rights narrative, and it must do so before it is too late.

Renewable energy sources are entirely unsuitable for aviation and long - distance transport and cannot meet varying demands for electricity. It is a utopian fantasy to imagine that solar and wind power will ever be able to make more than marginal contributions to the energy mix. For a long time, one of the arguments for phasing out fossil fuels was that the supply is limited and it was prudent to switch to alternative sources before exhaustion. The singular example was M. King Hubbert’s Peak Oil Theory. When U.S. oil production peaked in 1970 and then systematically declined for 38 years, Hubbert’s theory appeared to be verified. But the introduction of new production technologies reversed the trend, and by 2018 U.S. oil production had exceeded the peak of 1970. When the supply of oil became so abundant that the price briefly became negative on April 20, 2020, a stake was driven through the heart of Peak Oil Theory. Fossil fuels will be gradually phased out of the energy supply this century, but not by renewables. Nuclear power is the only feasible technology that has the potential to supply electric power that is concentrated, reliable and low in cost. The transition to nuclear will take several decades. Attempts to artificially reduce fossil fuel use before nuclear power comes online will strangle economic growth and human prosperity. No one will accept this. Any government policy that attempts to deliberately inflict economic harm will ultimately be rejected in any country that has a semblance of democracy. If fossil fuel use is causing global warming, the only road forward is to forego mitigation and focus on adaptation.