Gideon Rachman is the FT’s chief foreign affairs commentator. His new book ‘War is Interested in You’ is published by Bodley Head on October 22I mean it seems like they were until someone just decided to give them huge infusion of money, remove all sanctions passed against them and throw them a huge lifeline. Oh and can't forget "remove sanctions for oligarchs".
Xi isn't doing anything ostentatious like sending his navy to the Persian gulf or overtly dropping weapons supplies in the Middle East. After all they are going for the economic win- something that always eluded the USSR.
Let Trump hang himself and the Chinese make it out like the good guys. After all the most important thing nations want is not human rights it's stability.
Fundamentally China isn't Russia or USA which both have a proclivity to become entangled in foreign problems. For the US (I'm american) the civil side has four strategic risks:
- weak to no show congress which has ceded war making to the executive branch
- civilian leadership who think bomb it and declare success which is naive
- the inability to stop being suckered in by our own hurbris when others say but we can't get it done without US involvement
- an economy post WWII built on cheap oil, which has tentacles into the mideast
Meanwhile after having pissed away 50 years of culture wars particularly since newt gingrich and the tea party, the US fiscal situation is deplorable.
Most maddening? We did this to ourselves. Blaming immigrants isn't the flex people think it is
Sure, you might be switching governments often (and that's a feature, not a bug) at times, but things change slowly.
Which is what you need in a mature rich democracy.
The last thing you want is to elect hard to boot and control individuals like in presidential and semi presidential republics.
That’s… problematic
> As a journalist ... It was at the three-day Munich Security Conference that ended on February 20 2022
Ah yes, nothing was happening in the world in previous 30 years and some countries absolutely didn't insist on being involved in the military conflicts on the other side of the globe. Nothing happened and it was kumbyaya everywhere. And no civilian casulties, of course.
Unless of course they elect anti-immigration populists and ruin their appeal. Then they're doomed to shrink.