Day: June 9, 2019

Background Briefing: June 9, 2019

 

America’s Leading Expert on China “On Hostile Coexistence with China”

We  begin with an analysis of whether we are now entering not just a post-American but a post-Western era with China as Trump inflames Sinophobia and Xi Jinping stokes Chinese nationalism. Ambassador Chas Freeman, a senior fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs who was the former Director of Chinese Affairs at the U.S. State Department and the principal interpreter during the late President Nixon’s ground-breaking visit to China in 1972. With Putin and Xi Jinping appearing to get along like new best friend at the economic summit in St. Petersburg, we will assess whether the opening Nixon made with China which put the U.S. in the catbird seat playing the USSR off against the PRC has now been reversed. And we will discuss the recent talk Ambassador Freeman gave at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Relations at Stanford “On Hostile Coexistence with China” and look into whether Trump’s erratic hostility to China in pursuing a trade war to get them to cry uncle will work. The Chinese apparently believe this is an integrated U.S. strategy which it is not, because Trump is all about government by stunt to sow chaos then fix a problem he has created to make himself look like a hero to get reelected in 2020 in order to stay out of jail.

 

Solving the Central American Refugee Problem at Its Roots

Then we  speak with Raul Hinojosa Ojeda, who is the founder and director of the North American Integration and Development Center at UCLA and one of the people who originally proposed the North American Development Bank which Mexico’s President Lopez Obrador is using as a vehicle to enact his part of the bargain he struck with Trump months ago in spite of Trump’s sudden reversal of his tariffs threat over the weekend claiming victory in solving a crisis Trump created. Raul attended the “defense of national dignity” rally in Tijuana Lopez Obrador held on Saturday and we will examine whether the Trump administration will follow the Mexican president’s advice to address the immigration problem at its root in Central America by making life more livable for the people in the countries from which asylum-seekers are fleeing.

 

Separating Manufactured Problems on the Border from Real Ones

Then finally we examine further the border issues which Trump appears to be deliberately exacerbating to rally his base, at the same time address a real and growing humanitarian problem that the U.S. has not been able to solve which Trump is trying to make the much less resourced and capable country of Mexico responsible for. Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, a Professor of Public Policy and Government at George Mason University and the President of the Association of Borderland Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center of Scholars, joins us. The author of “Los Zetas Inc.: Criminal Corporations, Energy, and Civil War in Mexico” she will try to separated manufactured problems from real ones.