Don’t let America’s enemies use defamation lawsuits as proxy warfare 

Expectations for the September summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Trump were low and were largely met. The meeting produced a few modest agreements, including additional economic talks and new channels for discussing artificial intelligence and preventing military crises, but the fundamental disputes between Washington and Beijing remain unresolved.

This is no surprise. A stalemate was widely predicted, and few incentives exist for compromise right now. This doesn’t mean the competition will stop. Instead, it will migrate. Domestic stalemates tend to empower the courts. International stalemates increasingly do the same.

International lawfare is nothing new, and China has become particularly adept at using legal mechanisms as an instrument of statecraft. As Washington and Beijing settle into prolonged strategic competition, American courts will inevitably become another arena where both sides seek leverage.

Chinese entities are already testing the limits of American jurisprudence. Chinese automaker BYD sued both the Alliance for American Manufacturing and VICE Media for defamation. More recently, Chinese semiconductor company Yangtze Memory Technologies sued the Danish firm Strand Consult over allegedly false and damaging statements. Each case stemmed from allegations that the companies were cooperating with the Chinese government. Courts dismissed all three cases.

Now, a lawsuit brought by Azerbaijan against CNN offers an early glimpse of what full-blown sovereign international lawfare in American courts could look like. 

Azerbaijan has sued CNN in federal court over a June report alleging that Israel had used Azerbaijani territory for military and intelligence operations against Iran. Azerbaijan says the allegations were false, relied on anonymous........

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