US enemies are lining up to test Joe Biden
CNN
President Joe Biden is confronting a series of distinct but interlocking global crises and hotspots with US foes lining up to test the mettle of an under-pressure leader and their own sense that the United States is a retreating global power.
Biden made the kind of fateful decision on Monday that might be more at home in the tense 1970s, putting up to 8,500 troops on alert to rush to Eastern Europe to counter the Kremlin's move to force the US away from its Western flank. But his trial of nerves with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is holding Ukraine hostage in a bid to reverse the West's expansion after the Cold War, is far from his only global headache.
On the other side of the globe, a strategic ballet of military might is playing out as the US and China maneuver armadas and warplanes amid tensions over Taiwan, and other disputed territories, in a long-term duel for dominance in the Asia-Pacific region. While the prospect of a Russian invasion of Ukraine is fixating the world right now, a future Chinese strike against the self-governing democratic island is the more likely trigger for a disastrous superpower conflict.
President Joe Biden asserted Friday that Hamas has been degraded to a point where it can no longer carry out the type of attack that launched the current 8-month conflict in Gaza, laying out a three-phase proposal Israel has submitted to wind down the grinding crisis as he declared, “It’s time for this war to end.