Members of the alliance are conflicted over the prospect of Ukraine’s membership. In particular, America has changed its mind, and this could affect the future of the war. Because of rapidly rising sea levels, China’s coastal cities are on sinking sand. Will another great wall slow the tide? And, say hello to our new Style Guide.
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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Shanghai's skyscrapers and Guangzhou's ports are reminders of how important China's coastal cities have been for its development story.

As sea levels rise, and rapidly so, the superpower is urgently trying to protect these cities from the worst of climate change.

And our language columnist introduces you, or rather reintroduces you, to The Economist's Style Guide, a book of rules and tips for writing as formidably as we do.

Next month, NATO countries will meet in Vilnius for their annual conference.

And top of the agenda, perhaps predictably, will be what to do about Ukraine.

The country is vying for a place in the treaty organization, but the decision to offer them 1 is dividing allies.

Jens Soltenberg at the NATO informal foreign ministers said the reform of their armed forces is happening whilst engaged in conflict.

I think the UK's position would be very, very supportive if we moved on from the membership action plan, recognising that the offer to both Sweden and Finland didn't require that.

Speaking at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in London this week, British Foreign Secretary James Cleverley gave a positive nod towards a bid, praising Kiev's efforts to fall in line with NATO requirements.

Standing beside him, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reinforced the American position.

President Biden said from the outset of Russia's aggression against Ukraine that we would stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes And both of our countries are deeply committed to that We will continue to deliver on that commitment...

...Including through a new robust US assistance package

Yesterday he announced another $1.3bn in financial assistance to Kiev But US support may not extend to diplomatic backing at the summit in July On Saturday, President Biden said America would not make it easier for Ukraine to join NATO, and questioned whether it met the same standards as other member states.

Kiev's greatest military backer may also be the 1 to rein in its ambitions.

NATO has a summit every year, and this year Ukraine will be front and centre.

Anton LaGuardia is The Economist's diplomatic editor.

Not only in terms of how the alliance strengthens itself against the threat from Russia, but also how it strengthens Ukraine and helps it wage what is likely to be a long war.

And on that question, there are certainly differences of view within the alliance.

Well, there are 2 parallel tracks on the Ukraine question.

Ukraine wants to join the alliance quickly, and the allies have to decide what to do about that.

The second track involves strengthening Ukraine to build up its armed forces, not only for today's fight, but for the future.

And that would involve a series of commitments, long-term pledges made by individual allies outside the NATO structure.

And again, there, there are differences of emphasis with the ghosts of the past lurking over the proceedings.

So on membership, most countries, including notably the French, who are usually reluctant, want Ukraine to have a clear path towards membership.

However, the Americans are reluctant about expanding the alliance.

And why is America opposed to making such commitments?

Well, it's a change from its historical position.

Back in an ill-fated summit in Bucharest in 2008, America was a champion of enlargement, the French were resisting.

But then it seemed that the prospect of a war between NATO and Russia was remote.

Today, given the fighting that's going on in Ukraine, it feels all too real.

And the Americans know that as the pillar of NATO, if NATO were ever to be involved, it would be American troops that would have to be doing much of the fighting.

And Joe Biden has been adamant about not getting involved in a direct fight from Russia.

That, he says, would be tantamount to fighting World War 3, given the risk of nuclear escalation.

Okay, so there's quite the conflict here.

Well, there's an effort to find a form of words that satisfies everybody to an extent.

And Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary General, is proposing that Ukraine should skip a thing called the Membership Action Program.

This had been the antechamber of membership for many countries joining after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But this year, Finland joined without it, and Sweden similarly is waiting to join if last-minute objections from Turkey and from Hungary can be removed.

The membership action programme had been designed to help aspirants prepare for NATO, but it became a block to their path.

Abolishing it then would give Ukraine the sense that it is making progress towards membership without actually having to promise that it will happen soon.

And how is the American side feeling about this suggested compromise?

They're open to it because it doesn't involve a firm promise of membership.

The Americans think all this is flim-flam, let's not get caught up in the rhetoric and declaratory policy, let's focus on the things that would make a real difference.

And that is giving Ukraine long-term help to defend itself through a series of bilateral and multilateral arrangements that would in essence be giving Ukraine more of what it is getting now weapons, intelligence, training, money and so on.

And how are the Ukrainians feeling about these proposals?

Again, here there are differences of language brought about by the ghosts of the past.

The Ukrainians are allergic to the idea of security assurances, because that is a terminology used in the Budapest Memorandum of

when America, Britain, and Russia promised Ukraine it would be safe in exchange for it giving up Soviet nuclear weapons that were on its territory.

This is terminology that appeared in a proposal by Andrei Yermak, who is an advisor to President Vladimir Zelensky and Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former NATO Secretary General.

But the Americans worry that this is a backdoor to some kind of military involvement by NATO and the Americans, so they're resisting it.

So perhaps a neutral word will be commitments or arrangements, which is terminology promoted by a think tanker in America.

But whichever word they end up going with, commitments or guarantees, Anton, will they last?

The slogan that everybody is using is that they will help Ukraine for as long as it takes.

And that raises the question of, well, how long will it take?

Nobody really has any idea of how long the war is going to go on for.

But it is interesting that you're starting to hear discussions of diplomacy and of possibility of peace.

So, there is possibly a peace summit to be hosted by the French ahead of the Vilnius summit from which the Russians would be excluded, but which may include countries such as India and China and African nations.

They have been shuttling between Kiev and Moscow in quest of some kind of cessation of violence and a peace agreement.

And the Americans seem ready to encourage them quietly.

Antony Blinken, the American Secretary of State, says he spent a lot of time talking to China's President Xi Jinping about what role China may play in ending the conflict.

So then where does all this leave Ukraine?

Well, it leaves Ukraine possibly struggling to achieve what it dreams of, which is a great victory that evicts Russian forces from its territory and ideally, indirectly Vladimir Putin from power in the Kremlin.

That is a tall order, given the slow pace of its counteroffensive, at least as far as we've seen it, and the fact that the West may not be in for such a maximal objective.

So I think that brings back the whole discussion of NATO membership for Ukraine, because it may be the bridge between what Ukraine dreams of and what it can achieve, or between what it wants and what the West is willing to give.

And it also may be the cement for a diplomatic solution, because if you get a cessation of violence, then the question is how do you prevent it from starting again?

And NATO membership for Ukraine may be the ultimate guarantee against a resumption of hostilities.

Vladimir Putin has proven very aggressive towards countries in Russia's near abroad if they're not members of NATO, but he has not so far at least attacked a NATO country

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More than 40 years ago, Deng Xiaoping, China's then paramount leader, began allowing coastal cities to dabble in free market policies and attract foreign investment.

Now, the gleaming skyscrapers and bustling ports of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Shanghai are at the heart of global supply chains.

Local people's wealth has increased a hundredfold and immigrants from poorer inland areas have moved there in their droves.

While Deng's policy certainly brought wealth to seaside cities, he and his successors appeared to have overlooked 1 very significant threat, the sea.

to 57 million Chinese people could be living below the high tide line, according to projections, and another 60 million would be threatened by annual coastal floods.

Gabriel Crosley is a China correspondent for The Economist.

So sea level rise is a real problem that China's government is going to have to work with.

And How do coastal cities in China compare with other parts of the world?

While confusingly different parts of the sea warm up and expand at different rates, so different coastlines seeing different rates of sea level rise.

China is seeing particularly quick sea level rise.

A report by the Ministry of Natural Resources said that the sea level rises on the country's coasts are rising by about 4 millimetres a year since

That compares with the global average of 3.4 millimetres.

Sea level rise is set to accelerate and there's a good amount of uncertainty as to how fast that could be depending on how fast, for instance, ice melts on the poles.

The other problem that China has is that in the Western Pacific, it's exposed to about a dozen typhoons a year.

These are also set to get more severe as the oceans warm and the storm surges that they bring when they hit the land will also get more severe.

The other problem is that development in China has made things a lot worse.

Half of China's coastal wetlands and mangrove forests, which act as natural shields against floods, were destroyed during the rapid economic development over the last few decades.

Okay, so it sounds like a big part of this problem is how the land has been managed.

Yeah, a lot of development along the coasts, although this is common everywhere, it's particularly prominent part of China's development.

And this involves often pumping unsustainable amounts of groundwater out of the earth, building heavy skyscrapers on top of it.

This can lead to something called subsidence, where the land sinks into the sea, in some places, faster than the sea is rising.

Parts of Shenzhen, a southern city, are falling by 74 millimeters a year.

The salt spoils the crops and threatens drinking water.

The biggest danger though is flooding, usually from typhoons.

The number of people dying from coastal flooding has fallen thanks to better emergency warnings and evacuations, but the economic damage from floods has been increasing.

So last year, floods in the coastal provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian caused $5 billion of damage.

And then an insurance company estimates that just 6% of that was insured.

Gabriel, is there anything that can be done to slow down the land sinking in these areas?

There are things that could be done to help alleviate the problem.

So central government has said that coastal governments should include sea level rise projections in urban planning.

They've also said that important economic regions should set out migration blueprints based on worst-case sea level rise scenarios.

And it is true that the most reckless sorts of coastal development have slowed.

Wetlands, mangrove forests are better protected than they were, and they're growing again in many areas.

Land reclamation, which added over 7, 000 kilometers of low-lying coastal land in recent decades, also approved much less often, and groundwater is much better managed.

OK, well that sounds like a positive development, but Gabriel, will it be enough?

Coastal land is China's most valuable and local officials really want to keep building on it.

So giant construction is continuing all along China's coastlines.

I recently visited Shantou, a port city on China's south coast known for its fierce typhoons.

I saw a 22, 000 seat stadium which was recently completed there, surrounded by construction sites which will become industrial parks and residential buildings.

Well, if China won't stop building in these flood prone areas, then how is it going to protect its coasts?

Local officials are betting on sea walls.

China has thousands of kilometres of them.

A huge proportion of its coast is already artificial.

Unfortunately, around half of them are shoddy, according to a government report, which called for improving them quickly.

Even those that do meet official standards might not last long as climate change will increase the frequency of the extreme events that these seawalls are built to withstand.

So the plan is to build more seawalls and make the existing ones higher.

The problem with seawalls is that they become much more expensive as they get higher and the risk of failure also increases as sea level rise accelerates.

Higher seawalls can also create illusions of safety which leads to more construction in coastal areas.

So if sea walls are only a temporary fix, what would be a long-term solution?

More ambitious engineering works could help.

So 1 academic I spoke to suggested that Shanghai build a tidal barrier similar to the Thames barrier in London.

This is an idea which has been in discussion for a long time, but the main worry is that China might not act until after a catastrophe.

The Thames barrier was only undertaken after disastrous floods.

The locals don't seem particularly worried about sea rise though.

People in Shantou said they could just build houses higher to leave space for storm waters.

It's not hard to see where this confidence comes from.

In Shantou, GDP per person has grown by over 400% in the last 2 decades.

That inspires a lot of trust and authorities.

China's government has certainly done a great job in creating wealth on their coasts.

The question is now, over the next few decades, how well they can defend it.

Gabriel, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Over the past 180 years, The Economist has developed its own style, not least with the written word.

And now, the big old book of editorial rules is getting a revamp.

Say hello to the latest edition of The Economist Style Guide, subtitled Writing with Style.

This book is not just a helpful reminder to staff on how to make their editors happy and a reminder to people like me what an em dash is, it's also a guide to making people better writers.

A good starting point to describe The Economist's philosophy of language can be summed up in a quote from Winston Churchill, who said, "'Short words are best, and old words, when short, are best of all.'"

Lane Greene is The Economist's language columnist and author of Writing with Style.

The goal of good writing like The Economist tries to do is clarity and honesty and readability.

And that means reaching for the clearest, most plain and ordinary words.

And as a resident language expert, tell us what's 1 common trap that writers fall into?

Well, speaking of those short words and old words, English is a language with lots of layers of vocabulary, and that gives it lots of synonyms and very near synonyms, but they have very subtle differences.

And the ability to pick between these different layers is the hallmark of a good writer.

But some insecure writers are really tempted by the fancy words.

They might say, go to a thesaurus to try to vary their vocabulary.

But a good rule of thesaurus use is that if you really need a thesaurus, you probably shouldn't use 1 because that means you don't really have that intimate feel for how these different words have different shades of meaning.

Okay, Lane, there are so many grammatical rules in the English language.

How long did it take you to write the official Economist's Style Guide?

It took about 9 months of work off and on, And that's because so much of the work was actually done before me.

Now, The Economist, we've been publishing for 180 years, and the previous edition of the style guide has been around since the 1980s, and it went through 12 editions in its previous form.

But that said, new words and new phrases are constantly coming up, and so we needed another edition to incorporate those.

And after 12 editions of the old guide, it made sense to kind of start over with a new package, explaining the old and traditional style that we have to new readers as well as to new journalists joining us, many of whom weren't even born when the first edition of the Style Guide first came out.

And you cover a lot of ground in the book, including words that irritate our editors at The Economist.

On the list we've got facilitate, wannabes, iconic, I know that's 1 that even irritates our podcast editors, stakeholders.

If I can I'm gonna give a two-word phrase which is the phrase lived experience.

Now, there's nothing wrong with talking about people's lived experience when saying that they have a perspective maybe that others don't have.

But in that 2 word phrase are 2 great words.

1 of which is you can say in someone's life, or you can say in their experience, both of which kind of mean the same thing.

Maybe lived experience could be contrasted with something like professional experience, but mostly it's 1 of those things where you're kind of trying to juice things a little too much.

And so I like to cut lived experience just back to experience.

And by the way that goes for professional experience.

Usually context will make it clear and 1 word is almost always better than 2.

Okay Lane, I know you wrote the book but we're actually going to test you on it so we've come up with a bit of a quiz.

I'm basically gonna throw out a little phrase and you're gonna tell me the correct way to write it and the rationale behind it.

So first up, Second World War, is it capitalized?

This 1 I know for sure because The Economist has a very kind of light capital style, which means that we lowercase lots of things that other people do cap.

So things like the king, the queen, the pope, and the Second World War and the Cold War.

Okay, here I think I know the answer, but I'm less certain.

And again, 1 hallmark of our style is we tend to close things up, like most publications, when a compound like voicemail or indeed email sticks around for a long time.

The older a compound like that is, the more likely it is to go from 2 separate words to 1 hyphenated word to a single word with no hyphen.

There actually is still a hyphen in voicemail, apparently.

Okay, I might have to just change that in the next edition then.

But I still have to look things up all the time in my own book.

It is several hundred pages of rulings, not all of which I have committed to remember.

If I went riding, what would Americans call that activity?

Well, this is another 1 I'm pretty sure about because we do say, when I am American, we do say horseback riding in America.

And so Americans can be a bit confused when Britons just say they went riding, but they both mean the same thing.

Well, don't give away all our secrets, but tell us, what's 1 tip from the book that will make me a better writer?

I started with short and simple words and that's the first tip I'd give.

And if I gave 1 more, it's really easy, which is use full stops, or as we say in America, periods.

There's that key below your right ring finger, which is the most important 1 on the keyboard.

Sentences get long and twisty, and you find yourself making mistakes or saying things that you didn't mean to say.

If you hit that key as often as you possibly can, you break up those twisty sentences and you end up finding that you say exactly what you mean and not misleading or confusing yourself or your readers.

And if any of you want to read the Style Guide, Writing with Style is out in the UK and the EU already.

And it comes out in North America on July the 4th.

Lane, Thank you so much for coming on the show.

That's all for this episode of The Intelligence.

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No guarantees: NATO members debate Ukraine’s future