While America feuds at home, Russia and China are busy making moves

While Washington has been consumed with its own internal fussing and fighting in recent weeks, a few other things have been unfolding elsewhere around the globe:

For the second time this year, Russia has massed thousands of troops and their armored equipment near its border with Ukraine, and again appears to be using its energy supplies as a weapon to stop any westward drift by Ukraine’s government. In response, the Biden administration dispatched William Burns, director of the Central Intelligence Agency and a former ambassador to Russia, to Moscow to let the Kremlin know the U.S. is watching.

Meantime, Chinese President Xi Jinping skipped the two most important international gatherings of the year—the Group of 20 summit meeting in Rome and the big international climate-change conference in Scotland—in part out of coronavirus fears, but also to prepare for a Communist Party Central Committee meeting this week that will pave the way for him to begin an unprecedented third term as China’s leader. Chinese intimidation of Hong Kong and Taiwan continues apace, and the Pentagon said in an annual report on the Chinese military that Beijing is expanding its nuclear arsenal so rapidly that it could have twice as many nuclear warheads in coming years as previously projected.