On September 10, 2021, during an important diplomatic meeting that occurred by telephone, U.S. President Joseph Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping affirmed the necessity of a better relationship between their two nations. According to the official Chinese summary, Xi said that “when China and the United States cooperate, the two countries and the world will benefit; when China and the United States are in confrontation,
Conflict or Cooperation in U.S.-China Relations?
The United States and China, the world’s mightiest military and economic powers, are currently heading toward a Cold War or even a hot one, with disastrous consequences. But an alternative path is available and could be taken.
Beginning in 2018, U.S. government policy toward China turned sharply hostile, bringing relations between the two nations to their lowest point in the last four
Nationalism on the Decline
Although, beginning in about 2015, nationalist political parties made enormous advances in countries around the world, more recently they have been on the wane.
The nationalist surge was led by a new generation of rightwing populist demagogues who, feeding on public discontent
A Rapidly Globalizing World Needs Strengthened Global Institutions
The world is currently engulfed in crises—most prominently, a disease pandemic, a climate catastrophe, and the prevalence of war—while individual nations are encountering enormous difficulties in coping with them.
These difficulties result from the global nature of the problems. An individual nation is unable to institute adequate measures to safeguard public health because diseases spread easily across national boundaries. Similarly, an individual nation cannot stave off the deterioration