As China-Russia cooperation has strengthened Chinese military might, divergences on some strategic issues between China and powerful countries have continued to widen. The latter’s perceptions of China have been seriously twisted.

Since 2017, America’s National Security Strategy has focused on great power competition, and today much of Washington is busy portraying our relationship with China as a new cold war. Obviously, great power competition remains a crucial aspect of foreign policy, but we must not let it obscure the growing transnational security threats that technology is putting on the agenda.

In a world in flux, it's important for China to navigate creatively. It must keep the global picture in mind, in a bid to make new progress in its foreign policy as America declines.

The age of artificial intelligence is coming. But if major powers fail to keep pace, they could be putting mankind at risk.

A worsening relationship is probably unavoidable if the two countries adhere to their current domestic choices. If they want better ties, both need to make adjustments, but that seems unlikely.

The duo can team up against the U.S. power advantage, but they need to know their limitations.

The G7 Summit, which just concluded at the French seaside resort of Biarritz, showed that Europe and the United States diverge with and even increasingly confront each other on trade issues. Considering its fading influence, the continued value of the G7 has been thrown into doubt, even by European academia.

Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency in 2017 will also make him the new commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces, with a large say over the question of war and peace in the next four years. While some see his strongman style as reminiscent of Theodore Roosevelt’s Gunboat Diplomacy, there are too many known unknowns about Trump’s defense policies to predict how he would react in the event of war or a perceived threat.

The strong tides of anti-establishment anger have shaken politics to its core in a number of Western democracies, as symbolized by the British vote to leave the European Union and the rise of Donald Trump in the United States. Authoritarian capitalism, on the other hand, usually pretends to be meritocracy offering competent governance and economic opportunity for all. In reality, it entrenches corrupt oligarchies that are answerable to no one and that employ ultra-nationalism as the legitimating credo of their monopoly on power.

The gravest threat to American global leadership is neither Russia nor China but continued interest group-driven Congressional abandonment of the kind of balanced strategy that won the Cold War.