Energy

GRAND RAPIDS, United States, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- While the United States and China may compete in economy and trade, they should also work together to combat global challenges, said a former senior U.S. diplomat here on Friday. 

A interview conducted by The Fletcher School Forum with Ambassador Nicholas Burns, Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the guns of World War I fell silent — and nearly 20 million people lay dead. Could such a conflict happen today? After more than seven decades without a shooting war between great powers, many Americans find the thought of the United States and a major adversary like China killing millions of one another’s citizens virtually inconceivable.

But when we say something is “inconceivable,” we should remember this: the realm of what is possible is not bound by what our limited minds can conceive. Today, the intensifying rivalry between a rising China and a ruling United States could lead to a war that neither side wants and that both know would be even more catastrophic than World War I.

Chinese analysts, from President Xi Jinping on down, have nominally rejected Allison’s pessimistic analysis. “There is no Thucydides Trap,” Xi has argued, claiming that he had devised an alternative “new type of great-power relations” that would avoid war by recognizing that each Asian giant had its own legitimate interests. More recently, he has shifted to arguing that “China and the U.S. must do everything possible to avoid [the] Thucydides Trap.”

Two days after presenting his credentials to President Trump, His Excellency Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry, the newly appointed Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States, expressed optimism about bilateral relations between the two countries. Respondent Adil Najam, Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was more cautious in his assessment of the relationship after years of "reset."

On 24 and 25 November 2016 experts from politics and academia, including FDP Executive director Cathryn Clüver, discussed the impact of Brexit on several policy areas in a series of workshops at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. All events took place under Chatham House rules.

In a bizarre turn of fate, the diehard supporters of Fidel Castro’s left-wing ideology seem to be fighting their last battle in Venezuela, as the frustrated, hungry populationthere pushes for democracy and change. Future of Diplomacy Senior Fellow, David Ignatius, takes a dive into the stalemate in political structure as citizens scour for food.