THREAD: The United States and China are both incurring significant reputational damage, albeit for different reasons.
Middle powers such as Taiwan and South Korea, by contrast, continue to be exemplars for the rest of the world.
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Middle powers such as Taiwan and South Korea, by contrast, continue to be exemplars for the rest of the world.
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A U.S.-China power transition seems unlikely, for while Washington is in relative decline, it maintains significant strengths; and while Beijing has undergone an extraordinary resurgence, it possesses critical liabilities.
I try to explain here.
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
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I try to explain here.
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
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While China has grown more vocal in expressing its dissatisfaction with the U.S.-led order, it has yet to propose a fully developed alternative, let alone promulgate one that would command widespread traction.
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.@RollandNadege notes that Chinese elites haven't "offered more explicit descriptions of their ideal view of China's role in a new world order under its helm – partly because they are not entirely certain themselves, partly out of obfuscation."
nbr.org/publication/a-…
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nbr.org/publication/a-…
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The countries that have (largely) contained the coronavirus within their own borders and played a vital role in supplying the rest of the world with scarce medical equipment may not have the collective heft to anchor a post-pandemic order.
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Meanwhile, the two countries that collectively account for almost two-fifths of gross world product and possess unrivaled biomedical expertise seem incapable of even temporarily subordinating strategic competition to global imperatives.
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Janan Ganesh notes the ensuing dilemma: "When it matters, the established power is too dysfunctional to lead but its rival lacks the capacity or the trust to fully supplant it. Neither is there a persuasive third power or coalition of countries."
ft.com/content/e4cee4…
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ft.com/content/e4cee4…
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Charles Kindleberger observed in 1973 that the Great Depression persisted "because the international economic system was rendered unstable by British inability and United States unwillingness to assume responsibility for stabilizing it."
voxeu.org/article/new-pr…
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voxeu.org/article/new-pr…
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What we're witnessing today, though, is a vacuum in global leadership borne not of incumbent impotence and upstart passivity, but of reinforcing hostilities.
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