The Global Perspective

The US rhetoric on China is based on a bipartisan condemnation of the country’s human rights record, unfair trade tactics, military assertiveness, and authoritarian rule. Reports from Xinqiang of the treatment of the Uighurs, accusations of dumping, the Belt and Road initiative, cyberespionage, aggressive posture towards Taiwan, and electronic surveillance of its own people appear to support such a view. The fact that China is the only country in the world to have eradicated COVID-19 through often ruthless methods involving forced isolation, draconian lockdown of whole regions, and cutting off almost all connections with the rest of the world, only corroborates this overall picture of a country that does not respect individual freedoms, and is pursuing world dominance through a variety of commercial and military tactics. But this is a picture painted in far too broad strokes, unable to identify the fine grain of what is under way in this huge country.  China emerged from WW2 with a...

International politics can be sometimes frustrating to follow: negotiations appear to move slowly in the face of calls for urgent action; regional conflicts develop in ways that run counter to our expectations; apparently simple solutions to major problems appear to be systematically ignored by world leaders, who seem to prefer to ignore problems rather than make decisions. If you feel frustrated by such a state of affairs, you are not alone. World powers can make bad decisions because they have a bad understanding of facts on the ground. But more often, those “bad” decisions might be logical responses, which we don’t understand because we are not aware of the decision making processes that bring world leaders to reach such decisions. The decision taken might be “bad” to our uninformed eyes, but be perfectly understandable if we look at things from their perspective, and have a clear understanding of all the facts they are taking into account. Of course, many international policy decis...