Morning Brief, Wednesday, December 20

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a much-anticipated visit to China after the discovery of a Chinese surveillance balloon flying over U.S. territory. The very public spat over ...Show morealleged spying is just the most recent example of strains in the world’s most important relationship.  Beyond the kerfuffle over the balloon, what are the broader impacts on Washington’s China policy? How much of a setback does the incident represent? What are the global ramifications to watch out for?  Join FP’s Ravi Agrawal for a discussion with Emily S. Weinstein, a research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, and James Palmer, a deputy editor at Foreign Policy and the author of FP’s weekly China Brief newsletter. FP subscribers can send in their questions in advance. 

The new Israeli government is said to be the most far-right, religiously extreme, and ultranationalist coalition in the country’s history, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-ser...Show moreving prime minister.  Is Israel’s democracy really at risk? What would the government’s planned judicial overhaul mean for Israel’s standing, global cooperation, and economic investments? How does the new government complicate matters for U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security strategy?  Join FP’s Dan Ephron in conversation with Amir Tibon, a senior editor and writer at Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. They’ll discuss Israel’s new far-right government, its plans to overhaul and weaken the judiciary, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial, and U.S. policy on Israel under President Joe Biden. 

Over the last year, the United States has launched dynamic and escalating sanctions to hurt Russian President Vladimir Putin and his allies. The moves haven’t prevented Putin from waging...Show more war in Ukraine, but they have severely hurt the Russian economy. Even so, according to a forecast from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Russia’s economy is set to expand by 0.3 percent in 2023, even as a country like the United Kingdom sees its GDP shrink.Does this mean sanctions haven’t worked? FP’s Ravi Agrawal spoke with two experts on sanctions: Agathe Demarais, global forecasting director at the Economist Intelligence Unit and author of Backfire: How Sanctions Reshape the World Against U.S. Interests; and Nicholas Mulder, an assistant professor of history at Cornell University and author of The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War. FP subscribers can watch or read a condensed version of the interview.