Friday Focus: No winners in the Middle East — and Xi warns Trump against falling into the Thucydides Trap
About this episode
The episode discusses the escalating tensions in the Middle East and the implications of U.S.-China relations amid Trump's visit to China.
Tickets to our May 20th Munk Debate on Foreign Wars taking place in Toronto and featuring Mike Pompeo, Victoria Nuland, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, are almost sold out. Visit https://munkdebates.com/debates/foreign-wars-debate/ to purchase tickets. Rudyard and Janice start today's show by taking stock of how intolerable the situation in the Middle East is becoming. Iran is asserting control over the Strait of Hormuz, while surging inflation threatens to send shockwaves through the global supply chain. Tehran believes it can withstand Trump's blockade longer than he can withstand its grip over the flow of energy. The missing piece of this story is just how dire conditions have become inside Iran, with massive unemployment and the hollowing out of the middle class. How long can the regime survive under these conditions? In the second half of the show, Rudyard and Janice turn to Trump's visit to China this week and Xi Jinping's striking invocation of the “Thucydides Trap” to warn of the dangers of escalating strategic rivalry between the U.S. and China. Yet despite the symbolism and spectacle, the visit produced no major breakthroughs or concrete agreements…
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