This article reviews the potential for United States accession to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) under the current U.S. leadership, the administration of President Donald J. Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress. The strategic significance of U.S. ratification of UNCLOS is demonstrated by U.S. claims and rights in areas subject to geopolitical contestation such as the Arctic and South China Sea. More broadly, the United States has a compelling interest in preserving the international order and protecting the global commons, as embodied in the terms of the treaty. Despite clear evidence that ratification is in the U.S. national interest, UNCLOS faces the obstacle of continued Senate inaction and the challenge of a domestic political atmosphere suspicious of international law and institutions. President Trump, as a Republican leader and populist dealmaker, may be well-positioned to overcome domestic political opposition and achieve a vital U.S. foreign policy objective that has eluded his White House predecessors.

This article investigates the recent wave of staged confessions in China in historical perspective. Currently, the authorities “disappear,” detain, and parade people, both Chinese and foreigners, on state television, forcing them to incriminate themselves by making abject confessions prior to legal proceedings. This is a clear break with years of efforts to build the rule of law in China. It also reverses multiple solemn declarations to prohibit police torture and forced confessions, both longstanding practices in China. The new extrajudicial show trials, which are staged spectacles outside courts of law, suggest a return to Mao-era praxis, and have been criticized by many, including leading Chinese judges and lawyers. Despite the painstaking choreography, the TV confessions are widely regarded both in China and internationally as fake — not least because of several new witness accounts provided by former detainees which emerged during 2016. Elements for a historically grounded interpretation emerge from examination of Soviet Communist, Christian, and various East Asian parallels. Kafka's allegory in The Trial exposes how the powerful frame the innocent by forcing them to “confess,” in order to perpetuate their power.

In mid-2016 the Chinese ocean shipping company COSCO succeeded in acquiring a controlling stake in the Greek port of Piraeus. This was the culmination of more than a decade of preparation and prior part ownership, and it represents an important piece in the complex jigsaw of China's One Belt One Road internationalization strategy linking Europe with Eurasia. Along the way there were major setbacks, and in particular a narrowly avoided ejection of COSCO from Piraeus by the newly elected Syriza government, the far left government elected in Jan 2015 by a Greek people exhausted by the austerity imposed by European creditors. This threatened ejection was narrowly avoided by a more comprehensive set of negotiations, which would have seen China funding the Greek government through purchase of its Treasury bills – thereby enabling the Greeks to get around sanctions being imposed by the European Central Bank.