Asia & the Pacific

As President Donald Trump heads to his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he'll have the support of many other world leaders, former ambassador Nicholas Burns told CNBC on Thursday.

It’s important to remember the National Apology didn’t come out of the blue. We had all seen the “Bringing Them Home Report” detailing the tragic stories of the Stolen Generations. This had led to the “Sorry Day” marches across the country where hundreds of thousands of Australians from all sides of politics said with a single voice it was time to say sorry. And as Leader of the Labor Party going into the 2007 election, I had said I would deliver a formal apology on behalf of the entire nation if I became Prime Minister. And that is what I did. For all of us.

"If we're careful to avoid crying genocide when it's not warranted, we should be all the more confident about doing so when it is. And in Myanmar, the signs of genocide are there for anyone who knows how to read them. Not in the scale or savagery of the violence, although both are shocking, but in the evidence of the military’s intent to eradicate the Rohingya minority."

In the global revulsion at the recent terror attacks in four Muslim countries, the United States and its allies have a new opportunity to build a unified command against the Islamic State and other extremists. FDP Senior Fellow David Ignatius examines the diplomatic relationships needed to create an effective counterterrorism strategy.

"The large number of signatories on the dissenting memo is truly historic, but what's equally significant is that these diplomats have now joined a long line of government dissidents during cases of mass atrocity. These 51 names, as yet unknown, undoubtedly will someday rank alongside Henry Morgenthau Jr., Archer Blood and Marshall Harris, 20th century U.S. government officials who took a stand against U.S. policy in response to mass killings abroad."

Despite wary military cooperation, U.S. strategy remains on a collision course with that of Turkey, a NATO ally. What can be done to prevent an eventual rupture that would damage all concerned? David Ignatius, Senior Fellow for the Future of Diplomacy Project, offers suggestions for strategic cooperation.

The end of the year is a good time to consider the risks that lie ahead of us. There are of course important economic risks, including the mispricing of assets caused by a decade of ultra-low interest rates, the shifts in demand caused by the Chinese economy’s changing structure, and European economies’ persistent weakness. But the main longer-term risks are geopolitical, stemming from four sources: Russia, China, the Middle East, and cyberspace.

Although the Soviet Union no longer exists, Russia remains a formidable nuclear power, with the ability to project force anywhere in the world. Russia is also economically weak because of its dependence on oil revenue at a time when prices are down dramatically. President Vladimir Putin has already warned Russians that they face austerity, because the government will no longer be able to afford the transfer benefits that it provided in recent years.

"...[W]e now know that the notion that regime change leads to a better democratic or a humanitarian outcome is decidedly false. From Iraq, where the West tried a heavy footprint strategy, to Libya, where it opted for a light one, the idea that Europe or the United States can actually execute democratic change by force has been exposed as a fallacy."