Asia & the Pacific

THE YEAR before he died in 2017, one of America’s leading twentieth-century strategic thinkers, Zbigniew Brzezinski, sounded an alarm. In analyzing threats to American security, “the most dangerous scenario,” he warned, would be “a grand coalition of China and Russia…united not by ideology but by complementary grievances.” This coalition “would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower.”

Having just returned from a week in China in which I had the opportunity to talk directly—and listen!—to all of its leaders beneath President Xi Jinping, I came away even more worried about the future of the relationship between the United States and China than I had been. While almost every day brings another tweet or announcement in the war of words, I see the current “phony war” as the proverbial calm before the storm. In one line, my bet is that things will soon get worse before they get worse.

Stephen M. Walt asks the following question: Is the real problem that Washington can't trust others, or rather that other states can't trust it? 

CNBC's Eamon Javers reports from the White House on the press conference with Swedish Prime Minister, Stefan Löfven, and President Donald Trump. With CNBC Contributor Larry Kudlow; Nicholas Burns, Harvard's Kennedy School; and CNBC's Mike Santoli.

"One overlooked feature in this ongoing tragedy is that Trump isn't wrong about everything. Some of his critics won't admit it, but several of the themes he sounded during the 2016 campaign — such as the need to rebuild America's deteriorating infrastructure — were correct (if far from original), and some of his foreign-policy instincts were sound even if his command of details was not. A minimally competent president could have made substantial progress on most if not all of these fronts, thereby leaving the country better off and enhancing his prospects for a second term."

"As bad as Trump's first six months have been, there are a number of major foreign-policy blunders he hasn’t made yet and for which we should therefore be grateful. Unfortunately, there are also signs he's contemplating several of them, and plunging ahead may look more tempting as his political fortunes erode. The more desperate he gets, the more he may be inclined to divert attention from his incompetence here at home by stirring up trouble somewhere else."