If US relations with China turn sour, there will probably be war | Timothy Garton Ash

America needs a strategy to handle its superpower rival that can last 20 years. Instead we get soundbites

What is the biggest challenge facing the next president of the United States? How to deal with China. The relationship between the emerging and the enduring superpower is the greatest geopolitical question of our time.

If Washington and Beijing do not get it right, there will probably be war somewhere in Asia some time over the next decade. Vladimir Putin’s neo-imperialist Russia and the brutality of Islamic State are medium-sized regional challenges by comparison. Climate change and the world economy cannot be managed without American-Chinese cooperation. All this demands a bipartisan American grand strategy for the next 20 years, but US politics seems incapable of generating anything more than a partisan soundbite for the next 20 minutes.

Related: What’s behind Beijing’s drive to control the South China Sea? | Howard W French

Republican presidential candidates make random, sometimes wild comments about China

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