Now committed to humiliating Putin in Ukraine, Biden finds dialogue with China’s Xi increasingly hostile.

(Originally published July 29 in “What in the World“) Ukraine’s forces used U.S.-supplied rocket launchers to knock out a key bridge supplying Russian forces in the Black Sea port of Kherson. Their success in halting Russian advances has raised hopes that more advanced Western weapon deliveries may enable Kyiv to turn the tide against Russian forces after they succeeded in seizing most of Luhansk early this month. But Russia has responded by launching attacks on central Ukraine.

Deteriorating communications between the West, Moscow and Beijing have increased the risk of a nuclear confrontation, according to senior U.K. security adviser Sir Stephen Lovegrove. In a speech to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, Lovegrove warned that the kind of doctrinal understanding each side had for each other in the Cold War is now lacking, heightening the likelihood of a misunderstanding escalating into a strategic showdown.

The outlook for mutual understanding between the United States and Russia appears to be rapidly diminishing. After U.S. President Joe Biden declared Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal, the U.S. Senate has approved a nonbinding resolution calling on the U.S. State Dept. to add Russia to the list of countries—Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria—that are state sponsors of terror.

Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping attempted to improve communications in a 137-minute phone call Thursday. But apparently the issue of Taiwan became a nasty sticking point: Beijing reported that Xi warned Biden in a phrase seemingly plucked from former President Donald J. Trump’s hit parade that “those who play with fire will perish by it.” It’s only been five years since Trump warned North Korea the United States would respond with “fire and fury” to any threats against it.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un certainly remembers. In a speech this week celebrating the armistice that ended the Korean War, Kim threatened to annihilate South Korea’s military if it attempted a preemptive strike and said Pyongyang was fully prepared for a confrontation with the U.S.