WHITE HOUSE SAUDI TRIP: For weeks, Washington's been talking about Biden's planned visit to the Middle East. It's controversial because of Saudi Arabia's terrible human rights record and Biden's promise on the campaign trail to make it a "pariah" state — but now high oil prices and the need to isolate Russia make the country more palatable. While it's easy to understand the transactional nature of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, the administration seems to underestimate the way foreigners see this — as hypocritical and purely self-interested. Why are the Saudis on the right side of a moral line, but China and Cuba are not, for example? (Oil and Iran, cough cough.) What the White House really means: Jamal Khashoggi 's murder was terrible but the U.S. can't tolerate $150 oil prices or Tehran ditching its last remaining nuclear controls. (Iran has dismantled monitoring equipment used by the International Atomic Energy Agency to measure uranium enrichment, which is a "fatal blow" to the deal, per IAEA director-general, Rafael Grossi.) Instead, Washington is working to integrate air defense systems between Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt — to reduce Iran's capacity to strike them. BRITAIN — IT GETS WEIRDER Boris Johnson's government really is made for television and tabloid dissection. Fresh from being stabbed in both the chest and the back by 148 colleagues over the Covid parties and his general haphazard approach to leading the world's fifth-biggest economy, Johnson is this week… — Trying to overturn an international legal agreement that is the foundation of his key policy achievement: the Brexit-linked Northern Ireland Protocol. It's taken 12 versions of the draft law to get it to this stage. — Flying a handful of refugees on a private plane to Rwanda, rather than allow them to live in Britain, in spite of repeated legal challenges and the objections of Prince Charles. — Heading to the same airport in Kigali as the refugees (and Prince Charles) to host 40 or so leaders for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, even though Rwanda wasn't a British colony: It just decided to join the Commonwealth in 2009. TRADE — WTO MINISTERIAL DOWNLOAD The highest-level meeting of trade ministers in nearly five years is underway in Geneva. Here's POLITICO's analysis.| Our interview with WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala | Opening day speech highlights Ministers will debate easing export restrictions on food and supporting World Food Programme imports to reduce the deadly impacts from the wheat and fertilizer shortages caused by Russia's war in Ukraine. But fears of Moscow's anger (and a veto) are real enough that a draft agreement text to let World Food Programme purchases flow unimpeded contains no explicit mention of the war. Fernando Espino, representing the NGO Both ENDS, offered mixed reviews on those negotiations. "The WTO texts on agriculture focuses on lowering export restrictions but offers no new tools" to ensure food security for vulnerable countries. "We welcome the text on WFP," Espino added, "but the WTO must be more serious and get rid of unfair rules which fuel food insecurity." Civil society organizations are complaining loudly. That's nothing new, given the 25-year history of massive global protests against WTO-led free trade negotiations. It's surprising though that the organization hasn't found more ways to bring outside groups into its tent. A coalition of 50 NGOs from 22 countries insisted to Global Insider that they have been "severely limited in their participation," per Deborah James, the director of international programs at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The Norwegian Trade Campaign's Anniken Elise Storbakk said her group and others had even been locked out of the venue Sunday. CHINA FRONTS TOUGHER ON TAIWAN: China's defense minister Gen. Wei Fenghe was crystal clear in Singapore over the weekend: "We will resolutely crush any attempt to pursue Taiwanese independence." U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin resolutely supports the status quo. In private meetings with the U.S. government, Chinese military officials repeatedly assert that the Taiwan Strait isn't international waters, Bloomberg reported. Despite that, Wei went on to warn that America's Indo-Pacific strategy was pushing the two sides toward confrontation. SOFTER TOWARD UKRAINE? Diplomats in the Shangri-La Dialogue ballroom noticed a change of tone in the Chinese defense minister's Ukraine comments, Stuart Lau reports. In his speech, Wei talked about the "conflict"; but at the Q&A, without a script, he said "war" multiple times and noted that Beijing has not supplied weapons to Moscow. He also urged the U.S. and NATO to talk to Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy risked upsetting his delicate China balance by saying during his Shangri-la Dialogue engagements that the international community should help Taiwan resist China's aggression immediately, before any conventional military attack on the democracy. More from the Washington Post's Josh Rogin. NEW SRI LANKAN PM OPEN TO MORE CHINESE DEBT AND RUSSIAN OIL: Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told the Associated Press he would first look to other sources, but would be open to buying more crude from Moscow, and that he's willing to accept more financial help from China, despite his country's mounting debt. He said Russia had also offered wheat to Sri Lanka. U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wants to see the Quad alliance "lead the way in working to avoid an economic implosion in Sri Lanka that could spark a humanitarian crises with wider, destabilizing, regional impacts," he said in a written statement, urging use of a new Quad Humanitarian and Disaster Relief Mechanism, and urging Tokyo and Canberra to step up to show their value. One bright spot — Australia meets with China, settles submarine deal dispute with France: Canberra will pay a little over $600 million to France's Naval Group for ditching its contract and instead purchasing nuclear-powered subs from the U.S. and U.K. The Australian and Chinese defense ministers also met face-to-face, the first ministerial meeting between the two countries since 2019, amid a bitter diplomatic and trade dispute. SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS The absence of the Mexican president got the headlines, but in hindsight it was the absence of all the most important migration players (from a U.S. perspective) that sticks out. Vice President Kamala Harris, tasked with stemming migration to the U.S. from the Northern Triangle nations, couldn't manage to get them to turn up. Biden skipped the traditional closing press conference Friday — but both he and Jill Biden took time to say they thought media outlets were unfairly negative about the summit, suggesting that perhaps we should talk to more leaders. We're here and all ears. Hit me up at rheath@politico.com. But the summit surely feels different when you're in a motorcade and when hundreds of delegates are there to suck up to you. Journalists see and hear things at summits that presidents don't. And what journalists saw when they looked around was a great state and country fraying . Los Angeles' massive and growing homeless population was on full display and "the unmistakable smell of urine wafted through the warm night air" outside the summit venue, per my colleagues Jonathan Lemire and Christopher Cadelago. Argentina's President Alberto Fernández insisted "we definitely would've wished for a different Summit of the Americas," while Belize Prime Minister John Briceño described Los Angeles as "the best and worst of the Americas," where "too many have too much, and too many have too little." RUSSIA FRONTS On Russia Day, which took place Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken put out an eloquent statement aimed at ordinary Russians. But, really, who's listening? The United States Agency for Global Media has a paltry budget of under $1 billion across all its networks. Where's the huge Telegram presence? Where are the Radio Free Europes for the Web 3.0 era? Send me your thoughts: rheath@politico.com. RUSSIA IS TOLERATING ITS NEW ECONOMIC PAIN: Josh Lipsky from the Atlantic Council's Geoeconomics Center maps out why Moscow isn't more freaked out by Western sanctions and corporate withdrawals: because it's been here before. NICARAGUA AUTHORIZES ARRIVAL OF RUSSIAN TROOPS, planes and ships into the country for training, law enforcement and emergency response purposes. President Daniel Ortega has been a staunch ally of Moscow for decades. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova confirmed the decision. TECH — AI WITH A SOUL: Anyone who's ever tried and failed to get an airline or bank chatbot to understand basic questions would be highly skeptical of the idea that AI has developed consciousness. But that's the claim of Blake Lemoine, a mystic priest, now on leave from Google as a result of his claims. Takeaway: Talk to any group of AI experts (your author is married to one) or futurists and it's quickly obvious that sentient AI is a real possibility, just probably not now.
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