Opinion today: A Trump-Xi deal will not last

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What is the best lens through which to examine the current crisis in US-China relations? A Marxist would predict that mutual economic self-interest will lead, sooner or later, to a cessation of hostilities. Followers of the “realist” school of international relations would conclude that a serious clash between an established power like the US and a rising one like China is inevitable. While someone who believes that history evinces no discernible pattern would point out that prediction is useless, since outcomes turn on the behaviour of unpredictable human beings.

Gideon Rachman, in his column this week, argues that there is something to be said for each of these approaches. But, given that military tensions in the Pacific are growing as trade-based antagonism deepens, he concludes that the “realist” assessment of Sino-American relations is the one most likely to be vindicated.

John Thornhill suggests that French president Emmanuel Macron is right to believe that there is a “third way” for European technology policy to carve out between the freewheeling libertarianism of Silicon Valley and China’s digital authoritarianism.

Anne-Marie Slaughter writes that local solutions to stubborn policy problems are offering a pragmatic alternative to partisan gridlock in Washington DC.

Robert Shrimsley concludes that, for all their bluster, Theresa May’s hardline Brexiter opponents have been outmanoeuvred and outfought by the UK prime minister.

Writing from Moscow, Henry Foy discovers that EU sanctions have been an indirect boon to Russian cheesemakers.

What you’ve been saying

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No one minds being called a patriot (Letters) but nationalists — and nationalism — have acquired a bad name. Ernest Renan’s 1882 essay “What is a nation?” goes some way to explain why. To be truly a nation, he said, common memories (which he considered its soul) were essential. He said, “Forgetting history or even getting it wrong, is one of the major elements in building a nation, which is why the progress of historical studies is such a danger to nationalism.”

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We should respect the views of the 63 per cent: letter from Elizabeth Mortimer, Burford, Oxon, UK
Richard Oldfield wants to know (Letters) whether one can argue that the people did not decide to leave the EU in the referendum of 2016 or whether we have to respect the result. The fact is that 63 per cent of the electorate did not decide to leave the EU, and many abstained because they did not feel competent to vote on such a complicated issue. We should respect the views, not the will, of that majority.

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