By Gavin Bade

President Joe Biden and China's President Xi Jinping meet on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Nusa Dua on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on Nov. 14, 2022. | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

TRADE OFF — The Conflict in the Gaza Strip is coming at exactly the wrong time for the Biden administration’s signature foreign policy initiative – unifying its allies against China.

Biden’s first-term foreign policy has focused on pulling world nations into the U.S. orbit and away from Beijing. That’s meant bending over backwards to get nations to sign on to its newfangled economic pacts — like the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework or its critical minerals partnership — even if that means the new rules are little more than symbolic.

It’s all supposed to lead up to one of the biggest diplomatic events of Biden’s term – the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit next month in San Francisco. There, Biden hopes to unveil his U.S.-led economic pact for the region in front of Chinese leader Xi Jinping — a symbol to Beijing that its regional neighbors are leaning toward Washington.

But the Gaza conflict threatens that united front. Already, some of the nations that are most important to Biden’s international economic agenda have espoused very different positions toward the conflict than the U.S.

In Southeast Asia alone, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia have all issued variations on a neutrality statement toward the war in Gaza — not to mention other critical Cold War fence-sitters in the developing world like Brazil.

China, which is eager to gain favor in the Middle East and other developing nations, has taken the opposite tack from the U.S. Beijing’s initial statements as the conflict broke out did not condemn Hamas and drew backlash from Israel and its allies.

China is appealing to many nations that are critical to Biden’s agenda — not just to confront Beijing’s military aggression, but to move American supply chains out of China and secure the critical minerals needed for his clean energy industrial policy back home. It’s a conflict in administration priorities that has some foreign policy watchers worried.

“Here’s a case of the U.S. security stance being out of alignment with the views of some of the [Asia-Pacific] region’s main economies,” said Anna Ashton, director of China corporate affairs at the Eurasia Group, a think tank.

It’s a familiar issue for Biden. For two years, the administration has also struggled to get many developing nations to denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That reluctance surprised many in the administration and helped spark a campaign from Biden’s team to appeal to developing nations with expanded development aid and debt relief.

The Gaza conflict “does recall some of the challenges the U.S. has had with its stance on Ukraine, which is out of line with the Global South’s concerns,” added Ashton.

But while the policy divide on Palestine is evident, Ashton and other experts are skeptical it will change the underlying calculus for nations weighing the U.S. against China — unless the conflict spirals further out of control.

Far from taking a side in the Gaza conflict, most Southeast Asian nations are largely concerned about extracting their own citizens who have moved to Israel, said Josh Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. The bigger issue is that Biden’s economic agenda for the world — which has shifted from a focus on trade to government-led development — has yet to offer much to non-aligned nations.

“Whether or not there was a war in Gaza, or a war in Ukraine, the U.S. still lacks a robust economic agenda in Southeast Asia or in East Asia in general,” he said. “I don’t think it’s gonna have a dramatic effect on the U.S. in relation to Southeast Asia, unless we’re talking about something that gets even bigger and becomes some massive conflict that brings in other countries beyond Lebanon.”

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— Menendez accused of acting as foreign agent for Egypt while helming Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Federal prosecutors accused Sen. Bob Menendez today of secretly acting as an agent of the government of Egypt while serving as the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, adding to the slate of criminal charges for which the New Jersey Democrat was indicted last month. Prosecutors in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office unveiled an updated indictment adding the charge of conspiracy for a public official to act as a foreign agent, alleging that Menendez; his wife, Nadine Menendez; and a New Jersey businessman, Wael Hana, used his Senate position to benefit the government of Egypt without registering as foreign agents.

— U.S. will start charter flights for Americans stuck in Israel: The Biden administration will begin arranging charter flights to ferry Americans from Israel to destinations in Europe starting Friday, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said today. Though some commercial airlines, such as Israel’s El Al, are continuing to operate flights in Israel, many other carriers — including those based in the U.S. — have stopped service, making availability scarce. Kirby cited that limited availability in making his announcement during a briefing at the White House and said President Joe Biden asked his national security team to help Americans who want to leave Israel.

— Inflation eased slightly last month as price increases extend slow descent: Measures of U.S. inflation in September showed that the pace of price increases is still grinding lower, though at a slow and uneven pace. Prices in the United States increased 0.4% from August to September, a slowdown from the previous month. Today’s report from the Labor Department also showed that annual consumer inflation in September was unchanged from a 3.7% rise in August. And underlying inflation declined a bit: So-called core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy costs, climbed 4.1% in September from 12 months earlier, down from a 4.3% year-over-year pace in August. That is the smallest increase in the core measure in two years.

INVESTING IN IOWA — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign is making its first move in the Iowa air wars, with a $2 million ad buy in the state starting in mid-November and running through the night of the caucuses Jan. 15, reports NBC News.

The move will make the campaign the first to reserve airtime in Iowa through the caucuses — and it underlines how important the state is to DeSantis’ presidential hopes. Last week, the campaign announced that a third of its staff will be relocating there from Tallahassee, Florida. Now, the spending is another sign of how former President Donald Trump’s rivals are investing in the state in the hopes of denying him the momentum of a first-in-the-nation victory in January.

EXPIRATION DATE — Counties in Pennsylvania have told Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and lawmakers that it is too late to move up the state’s 2024 presidential primary date if counties are to successfully administer the election, reports the Associated Press.

In a letter, the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania said there is no longer enough time for counties to handle the tasks associated with moving next year’s primary election from the current date set in law, April 23.

The counties’ association drafted the letter after weeks of efforts by lawmakers to move up the primary date, in part to avoid a conflict with the Jewish holiday of Passover. That became embroiled in partisan and intraparty disagreements after Senate Republicans then touted moving up the date as a way to give the late primary state more say in deciding 2024’s presidential nominees.

MESSY BREAKUP — When Cornel West made the decision to leave the Green Party last week, he asked his campaign manager Peter Daou to lay out the pros and cons of leaving, reports POLITICO’s Calder McHugh.

Cons: ballot access headaches; continued questions about his seriousness as a political figure; the destruction of a potentially mutually beneficial coalition. Pros: getting to set your own agenda; removing yourself from some of the intractable and unserious elements of the party; crucially, for West, no more need to kiss any ass.

“The moment of transition became clear, given the internal dynamics of the Green Party,” West said. “The procedures and requirements for debate, you have to go to various Green Party events in a variety of different states. … I said, ‘Oh my God, this is a lot of energy and time and effort.’”

But as Jill Stein, who served as his acting campaign manager through much of the summer, would tell it: “I see this as a bit of a transition for us as Greens. … I see this as a crisis for Cornel’s campaign,”

West thinks the Greens can’t take him where he wants to go. The Greens think West is throwing away movement politics and blowing up his own campaign to boot.

Israeli soldiers patrol an area in Kfar Aza, south of Israel bordering the Gaza Strip, on October 10, 2023. | Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

WITHOUT RESERVATIONS — NATO allies have spent the past 18 months very carefully calibrating what weapons they’ll send to Kyiv and putting restrictions on their use, but NATO defense ministers today showed no such reservations about Israel as they promised to send arms needed to combat Hamas, write Stuart Lau and Joshua Posaner.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin defended Israel’s use of American arms amid concerns about its tactics against Gaza, including cutting off fuel, water and electricity.

"In terms of conditions that we would place on the security assistance that we’re providing to Israel, we have not placed any conditions on the provision of this equipment," Austin said at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

However, as the group’s defense ministers wrapped up a two-day meeting today, there were concerns that Israel’s use of force as it retaliates against terror attacks by Hamas may be disproportionate — amid fears that Iran could benefit.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg expressly named Iran and the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah as potentially playing a role in the attacks, despite the Iranian authorities’ denial of responsibility.

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PERSONAL PUSH — When Mexican Senator Alejandra Lagunes was in her late 20s, she was struggling with depression to the extent that she could barely get out of bed — at one point, she had dropped down to a weight of 75 pounds. Then, she tried Ayahuasca, which contains the psychedelic drug DMT, as well as other substances. It changed her life, she said. Lagunes is now 51 and is leading the charge to convince the region that psychedelics — in particular psilocybin mushrooms native to Mexico — have useful properties and should be legal. For VICE News, Deborah Bonello reports on Lagunes and her efforts.

On this date in 1930: A mass demonstration is staged by the German Socialist Party in Berlin as a protest against the activities of the Hitlerites, the fascist party led by Adolf Hitler. | AP Photo

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