Foreign Digest: NATO, Communist China, Palau and Venezuela

NATO: Although United States President Joe Biden is a liberal, he supports the candidacy of the center-right Prime Minister of the Netherlands as the next Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The center-left Biden has increased American defense spending every year and taken a tough stand against Russian aggression amidst other global threats. The change in leadership in NATO comes at a time both when the organization is at its strongest in the face of Russian aggression against Ukraine, which is a neighbor to NATO and a strategic partner that is seeking full membership, and with Finland having recently joined and Sweden soon to join because the two formerly neutral Nordic States fear Russia, but also faced with uncertainty because of the presidential candidacy of pro-Russian Donald Trump, who does not recognize the benefit of the alliance to American security and thus treats it like a protection racket, instead of the most successful defensive pact in history. Communist China and Palau: The Prime Minister of Palau last week exposed Communist Chinese attempts to lure the U.S. ally to recognize diplomatically Communist China over the Republic of China on Taiwan. Peking promises grand projects to boost tourism to the Pacific island State that is in free association with the U.S. Communist China has been successful in luring other States around the world to switch their recognition from Taiwan, which is the part of China that the Communists were unable to capture during the Chinese Civil War in 1949 and to which the government and supporters of the Republic of China fled. The U.S. has been countering Communist Chinese moves in the Pacific through security guarantees and trade relations. The failure of the U.S. Congress to ratify the new Free Association agreement signed last year with Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia an the Marshall Islands is creating an opportunity for Peking to exploit. Although the three States in Micronesia became independent in the 1980s and 90s from American administration since the Second World War, they have been in free association with the U.S., with the U.S. responsible for their defense, among other close ties. Venezuela: The opposition to the Venezuelan Socialist dictatorship has compiled a dossier cataloguing a multitude of violations by the regime of the accord mediated between the opposition, who favors liberty and representative government, and the dictatorship, to hold free and fair elections. The dossier was sent to Norway, which had mediated the accord last year in Barbados. Venezuela’s Socialist regime barred the united opposition candidate from seeking the presidency in the elections later this year. The Socialists have ruled since being elected in 2000 and then consolidating power through authoritarianism. The opposition candidate, who is conservative, is leading in the polls, as she continued to campaign, despite the ban on her candidacy.