This year will go down as the century’s worst if measured by the disruption, misery and strife that has marked the Year of the Rat. There seems no end in sight to the cascading series of crises afflicting millions of people around the world. Even those with no religious bent must wonder whether the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have been let loose as drought, wildfires, hurricanes, floods and pestilence continue to wreak havoc. Read more
“The difference between this cold war and the last one is the alignment and bifurcation are a lot more fluid,” said Alan Dupont, a leading Australian security strategist. “It’s a far more interdependent world now, and a lot of countries will not be in a single bloc. They’ll want to straddle both.”
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The clashing geopolitical ambitions of the two states are fueling a rivalry that could be even more dangerous and consequential than the original Cold War.
The rift between the United States and China threatens to become a chasm. Barely a day passes without some tit-for-tat exchange of barbs, accusations, or actions designed to make life difficult for the other country or to trumpet the superiority of their respective political systems.
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MITIGATING THE NEW COLD WAR: Managing US-China trade, tech and geopolitical conflict
-by Alan Dupont
Center for Independent Studies, Analysis Paper 8, May 2020
Fulltext: https://www.cis.org.au/app/uploads/2020/05/ap8.pdf
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Op-ed by Paul Kelly, Editor-at-Large for The Australian, in response to The Center for Independent Studies, Analysis Paper 8, May 2020, MITIGATING THE NEW COLD WAR: Managing US-China trade, tech and geopolitical conflict, by Alan Dupont
Four months into the COVID-19 crisis, the world and Australia confront a worse problem — the descent into a version of cold war between the US and China, many years in the making but now apparently sealed in the great-power animosity unleashed by the virus.
The virus will be conquered by scientific, rational and logical public policy. But such elements are absent on the US-China front where Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have tipped each other into a confrontation neither seems willing to abandon, with escalation the most likely result.
The coronavirus pandemic that recognises neither nationality nor ideology should have brought the leading powers into co-operation but the opposite has happened — the threat to humanity has exposed the true descent in the US-China crisis. The warning lights are flashing on emergency.
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The U.S. killed at least 25 Ktaib Hezbollah fighters on Sunday night in its first counterstrike in a decade against an Iran-aligned Iraqi Shia militia. U.S. F-15E aircraft struck three sites in Iraq and two in Syria in retaliation for Ktaib’s Friday rocket attack, which killed an American contractor and wounded four U.S. service personnel. Read more
In recent years, there has been growing bipartisan concern about the national security and economic risks posed by China. Although both Congress and the White House have taken steps to address these issues, the United States still lacks a clear and comprehensive strategy. Read more
Professor Aaron L. Friedberg testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee at the hearing “Smart Competition: Adapting U.S. Strategy Toward China at 40 Years.” Friedberg is a Counselor for the National Bureau of Asian Research and Co-chair of the NBR Taskforce on Transforming the Economic Dimension of U.S. China Strategy. He is also Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. Read Friedberg’s prepared statement below or view the webcast on the House Foreign Affairs Committee website: Hearing on Smart Competition: Adapting U.S. Strategy Toward China at 40 Years.
Will they or won’t they? The gyrations of Theresa May’s discombobulated government have dominated the headlines as British parliamentarians agonise over whether to leave the EU or remain. But the same question also is being asked of trade negotiations between the US and China as the two countries inch their way towards a deal that many believe will determine the trajectory of the most important relationship in the world.
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What are China’s grand ambitions? Did the United States get China “wrong”? And what policies should the United States adopt against a newly assertive China? What Western strategists are on the Chinese Communist Party’s reading list? Professor Aaron Friedberg and Brad Carson discuss these issues and much more in the new episode of “Jaw-Jaw.”
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