A stable world order is a rare thing. When one does arise, it tends to come after a great convulsion that creates both the conditions and the desire for something new. It requires a stable distribution of power and broad acceptance of the rules that govern the conduct of international relations. It also needs skillful statecraft, since an order is made, not born.
Having long criticised U.S. policy in the Middle East, President Donald Trump has outlined the contours of a fresh approach to the region…But these new plans don’t consider a critical challenge: the shifting alignments in the region, which have intensified following the killing of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
In unrelenting rain, more than sixty world leaders—Presidents and Prime Ministers, kings and princes, from a third of all the nations on Earth—shared big black umbrellas as they marched together down the Champs-Élysées, in Paris, on Sunday. They gathered to mark the hundredth anniversary of the Armistice that ended the fighting of the First World War, and to express global unity. Donald Trump was not among them.
It is possible to think two things at once: that U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has been “bad,” which many think it has been, and that it has offered a somewhat coherent alternative for how the United States should conduct itself beyond its borders. This suggests that the casual and smug dismissals of Trump, on domestic and foreign policy alike, are missing something important.
For the past two years, the secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, has watched as President Donald Trump upends American foreign policy, engaging in trade wars while simultaneously disengaging from international agreements and alliances. And now Guterres has reached a verdict: The United States, once the guarantor of global stability, is losing its ability to influence world events.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have vowed to bolster Sino-Russian ties and oppose unilateralism, as the two nations seek to counterbalance the United States’ power on the international stage. The two leaders met for the third time this year on Tuesday on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. The talks coincided with the start of Vostok 2018, Russia’s largest military exercise since the Soviet era, and which involves troops from China and Mongolia.
Read Here – South China Morning Post
Also Read: Shinzo Abe And Xi Jinping ‘Pledge Japan And China Will Deepen Cooperation’
Ahead of the already-fraught process of hosting President Donald Trump later this week, the government of Theresa May faces the most serious test of her premiership. David Davis, the Brexit secretary, resigned his post this past weekend. Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, followed suit Monday. At issue is the putative raison d’etre of May’s administration: British exit from the European Union.
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The trade dispute between China and the US could be the biggest challenge Chinese President Xi Jinping has faced since coming to power in 2012, analysts said. During his first term of office, a period Beijing described as a time when “the West is chaotic and China is prosperous”, Xi accomplished many of the goals on his to-do list, both at home and abroad…But a so-called trade war with the United States is a whole new ball game.
Given the tense state of U.S.-Russian relations and the paucity of high-level contacts, there are strong arguments for Trump to hold a summit with Putin. However fractured the relationship, it makes sense for the world’s two nuclear superpowers to sit down together and re-establish some of the channels of communication that were cut off after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and war in southeastern Ukraine.
