Managing

Dinorah Figuera has a signature with limited value

“Venezuela cannot stand another communiqué” has become something of a political meme, but it captures the central problem with the process beginning on August 1. Washington has assembled a negotiation between an interim president whose continued rule it chose to preserve and an opposition counterpart it helped revive, hoping to combine Delcy Rodríguez’s control of the state with the residual democratic legitimacy of the 2015 National Assembly. The question is not merely whether they can reach an agreement. It is whether two actors whose authority is partial, externally enabled and detached from the country’s current popular leadership can legitimize a transition roadmap whose broad contours appear to have already been decided in Washington—and whether anything they sign can survive without María Corina Machado’s endorsement.

Everyone involved acknowledges that the mechanism was promoted by the United States. What nobody has explained clearly is what kind of mechanism it actually is. Is this a negotiation between two autonomous Venezuelan parties? Is it a broader national dialogue? Or is it an implementation process for a transition whose direction Donald Trump and Marco Rubio have already chosen?

The distinction matters because both sides are selling versions of the process that exaggerate their freedom to negotiate. The opposition presents it as the beginning of a democratic transition. Primero Justicia has listed substantial objectives: a new electoral authority and calendar, the restoration of political parties, an end to political disqualifications, the liberation of political prisoners, the dismantling of the repressive apparatus, freedom of expression and an independent Supreme Court.

Chavismo presents the same process as a necessary concession to preserve peace, obtain sanctions relief and protect the revolution. In its telling, sitting down with the opposition is not surrender but adaptation. “Dialogue does not mean capitulation,” Diosdado Cabello has insisted.

Neither story is entirely realistic.

The opposition may negotiate how political life is reopened and how future elections are organized. Still, it does not appear free to reopen Washington’s decision that stabilization and institutional reconstruction will precede an electoral transfer. Trump accepted Delcy’s continued presidency and has publicly argued that Venezuela is not yet prepared for another election, so the opposition is unlikely to be permitted to demand the immediate transfer of power it once said had already been decided by the 2024 presidential election.  

Delcy’s room for maneuver is also limited. She cannot seriously defend all the old red lines of chavismo: no foreign supervision, no negotiated reform of state institutions, no conditions on sanctions relief and no binding electoral horizon. The existence of an American-sponsored process involving the 2015 Assembly already violates much of the sovereignty theater through which the revolution previously justified itself.

Her real prohibitions are more practical. She cannot accept a settlement that fractures the military, dismantles the governing coalition, exposes its leadership without guarantees, or leaves chavismo incapable of competing in the order that follows. This is regime learning: not preserving the revolution exactly as it existed, but reducing the meaning of survival till it becomes achievable. If chavismo retains its organization, protects much of its elite and remains a viable electoral force, it can describe retreat as continuity.

The opposition is conducting a retreat of its own. It once insisted that the sovereignty expressed in 2024 had already resolved who should govern Venezuela. It is now negotiating the conditions under which Venezuelans may be allowed to decide that question again.

The two sides are not choosing freely between victory and defeat. They are negotiating the distance between two defeats and deciding which concessions each can successfully rename as victory.

Washington’s role goes well beyond providing the room and the refreshments. Delcy Rodríguez is interim president because the United States chose continuity under Maduro’s vice president over an immediate transfer of power to the leadership produced by the 2024 election. Venezuelan institutions administered the oath, but American recognition made that continuity politically viable.

Dinorah Figuera’s return to relevance followed an equally American route. She did not reemerge because a renewed domestic constituency demanded her leadership or because the forces behind the 2024 campaign selected her as their representative. One of her first consequential official appearances after years of political obscurity was a meeting with Michael Kozak at the State Department. She later returned to Venezuela at Washington’s invitation and became Jorge Rodríguez’s counterpart.

Washington helped produce both sides of the table. It accepted Delcy as the administrator of the interim order and activated Dinorah as the institutional representative needed to negotiate with it.

That does not make either woman a simple American puppet. Delcy controls the state machinery required to implement or sabotage any agreement. Dinorah can withhold the opposition stamp Washington needs to sell Trump’s latest South American peace project. But both operate inside a structure whose outer limits appear to have been drawn elsewhere.

The revival of the 2015 National Assembly is understandable. Delcy possesses effective authority but lacks democratic legitimacy. Her government can implement reforms and enforce agreements. What it cannot provide by itself is a convincing democratic chain of authorization.

The 2015 Assembly offers the missing signature. It remains, at least internationally, Venezuela’s last legitimately constituted national institution. Its participation can make institutional appointments, economic agreements and the broader reopening of the country look less like arrangements reached exclusively between Washington and the surviving chavista elite. That matters to governments, creditors and corporations seeking reassurance that future democratic authorities will not repudiate everything agreed during the interim.

But legal usefulness is not political legitimacy.

The Assembly elected in 2015 was a broad and plural legislature supported by millions of Venezuelans. The body negotiating today is a diminished delegated commission represented by only part of the coalition that originally composed it. Its leaders possess little independent national recognition, and the institution itself is deeply unpopular.

Its problem is not merely that it cannot enforce its decisions. For years, it often declined to act at all. It preserved itself as a constitutional necessity while withdrawing from political life, avoiding renewal and becoming increasingly detached from the society it claimed to represent. It remained alive enough to retain recognition and administer assets, but too frozen to lead.

It has now thawed itself back into relevance because Washington needs its pedigree.

Democratic legitimacy cannot simply be placed in constitutional cryogenic storage and reheated intact. The 2015 Assembly survived by refusing to die. It did not spend those years proving that it knew what to do next.

Primero Justicia has tried to bridge that gap by claiming that the delegated commission represents the sovereignty expressed in the 2024 election. But the commission was not elected in 2024, was not selected by the leadership of that campaign and does not represent the full coalition that supported it. The same communiqué reaffirms the leadership of María Corina Machado and Edmundo González while welcoming their willingness to observe a process they have publicly refused to buy into sight unseen.

The contradiction is striking. The people said to embody the country’s current democratic mandate are assigned the role of observers while an older institutional remnant claims to negotiate in their name.

Yet María Corina is not simply outside the process. She may be formally locked out of the negotiating room, but continues to have a relationship with both Trump and Rubio, based at least on her perceived importance. Dinorah has procedural access to the table. María Corina retains strategic access to the people who arranged it.

That may be intentional. Keeping Machado outside allows the delegated commission to absorb the least attractive compromises over sequencing, guarantees and appointments. It preserves her political capital for the moment when the settlement requires popular endorsement. If the process succeeds, she can validate its results without defending every concession. If it fails, she can truthfully say that she neither designed nor controlled it.

But Washington may be delusional if it believes Dinorah Figuera and Jorge Rodríguez can emerge from a closed room, announce an agreement and expect Venezuelan society to accept it without Machado’s endorsement. Their signatures may produce legal validity. Washington may provide international recognition. Foreign corporations may decide that the arrangement offers enough reassurance to begin investing.

Neither Dinorah nor Jorge can manufacture a national constituency.

The mechanism is an attempt to assemble a legitimacy that none of its participants possesses alone. Delcy supplies control of the state. The 2015 Assembly supplies constitutional pedigree. Washington supplies leverage and guarantees. María Corina supplies contemporary popular legitimacy. The problem is that the last component remains outside the formal process and has not promised to endorse whatever it produces.

August 1 does not need to resolve Venezuela’s political crisis. It does need to establish whether this mechanism can produce anything beyond the language of its communiqués. Its credibility will not come from another declaration of democratic intentions, but from evidence that someone can compel chavismo to share power with forces outside its orbit. The first test is not simply whether the parties promise another election. As chavismo reminds us at every opportunity, Venezuela has held plenty of those. The real test is whether the country can move credibly beyond replacing red chavismo with a poorly disguised blue version of the same political order.

The first meaningful agreement should not merely tell Venezuelans when they might vote. It should begin dismantling the police state we somehow cannot escape, even under American tutelage. Without the freedom to speak, organize, report and return without fear, another election would merely place a democratic label over the same machinery of control.

The organizers must also explain what they are asking the country to trust. If this is a negotiation, they should say what remains negotiable. If it is a dialogue, they should identify who participates and what authority the table possesses. If it is an implementation mechanism, Washington should disclose the roadmap being implemented. And if it is genuinely a transition, someone must eventually announce the date on which the interim order ends.

Venezuela cannot stand another communiqué because communiqués allow everyone to declare intentions without assuming ownership. Dinorah Figuera and Jorge Rodríguez may be able to sign an agreement. Washington may guarantee it. María Corina Machado may eventually persuade Venezuelans to give it a chance.

But only results can turn it into a transition.

Hope may be vigilant. Legitimacy is less patient.

WASHINGTON — The relationship between President Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron started simply enough, with a handshake, nearly a decade ago.

But even then, there were signs of strain in their relationship — tensions that could be on full display during next week’s G7 summit in France.

Back in 2017, Trump was a brash businessman just elected to America’s most powerful office, and Macron was an upstart politician who had won his race in a landslide. At a NATO summit in Brussels, they clinched hands far longer than most people do when they meet for the first time. Neither seemed to want to be the first to break a grip so tight that it exposed white knuckles.

Nevertheless, a friendship was born. And early on, Macron seemed to be the one European leader with a knack for managing his mercurial, three-decades-older counterpart.

Macron invited the Republican president to join him for Bastille Day celebrations in July 2017, including an Eiffel Tower dinner date with their wives. Trump reciprocated by making Macron the guest of honor the following year at his first White House state dinner, the highest diplomatic honor the United States can extend to an ally.

But by the end of Trump’s first term, the bromance had faded. And in his second term, the leaders now openly trade barbs, disagreeing over tariffs, Ukraine and the Iran war. That dynamic will be scrutinized next week when Trump and the leaders of Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan join Macron in the French lakeside resort of Evian-les-Bains for the G7 summit.

Trump’s long-simmering frustrations with US allies could be on display

There could be awkward moments between Trump and Macron, as well as among Trump and the other G7 leaders he’s criticized for not joining him in Iran.

“But I also think European leaders are quite professionals when it comes to politics, and in some ways diplomacy at this point, and will maybe see it as an opportunity as well,” Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview.

Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said the Trump-Macron relationship has been further complicated by the Iran war and Trump’s complaints “that Europeans weren’t helping, when they hadn’t been consulted, and their interests are very much affected by this.”

“I think that was a negative for Macron,” Volker said.

Trump joined Israel in a war against Iran over its nuclear program back in February without consulting other U.S. allies. He then complained publicly when European countries spurned his requests for their help.

Waning support for Ukraine in its war against Russia from the Trump administration “has really irritated the French,” Volker said. “They feel this is important and we’re not paying attention to it.” Macron invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to join the leaders’ discussions on Tuesday.

Macron is the G7 member who has dealt with Trump the longest

In Trump’s first term, Macron appeared confident that he could persuade and influence the U.S. leader, but the relationship increasingly has come to be defined by their disagreements.

Macron now says he is “careful” about Trump’s statements, suggesting he no longer takes them at face value. Their relationship remains cordial as each calls the other “my friend.” But the relationship has also experienced some ups and downs.

As president-elect, Trump attended the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in late 2024 at Macron’s invitation. After Trump began his second term in 2025, Macron was an early Oval Office visitor. The president wrote on social media that he was “delighted” to welcome Macron back to the White House and said the relationship with France has been “very special.”

But at one point during the meeting, the French president publicly corrected Trump after he wrongly suggested that Europe would recover the money it had provided to support Ukraine. With a smile, Macron touched Trump’s forearm and replied, “We provided real money.”

Macron also condemned as “brutal and unfounded” new tariffs that Trump slapped on steel, aluminum and a broader range of European imports in early 2025.

But there have also been some lighter moments mixed with the tensions.

A documentary aired last year on French television showed Macron telling Trump during a phone call that Zelenskyy had agreed to a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal. Trump replied, “You’re the greatest.”

Macron has often said he can reach Trump directly whenever he needs to — and proved his point during last year’s U.N. General Assembly session in New York. After police officers blocked the French leader from crossing a street because traffic had been halted for Trump’s motorcade, Macron whipped out his cellphone and dialed the U.S. president.

“How are you?” Macron said. “Guess what? I’m waiting in the street because everything is frozen for you!”

‘This is not a show,’ Macron has said about Trump’s NATO ambiguity

Macron has argued that Trump’s “America first” policies bolstered his case for a stronger European defense capability that would lessen reliance on the United States.

In April of this year, as Trump sent mixed signals about Washington’s commitment to NATO after the start of the war in Iran, Macron delivered some of his sharpest criticism of the U.S. president.

“There is too much talk, and it’s going in all directions,” Macron said. “We all need stability, calm and a return to peace. This is not a show.”

“You have to be serious, and when you want to be serious, you don’t say the opposite every day of what you said the day before,” he said.

Trump, while mimicking a French accent, recently has taken to reenacting a conversation he says he had with Macron over drug prices and tariffs. Trump also poked Macron by telling a private luncheon in April that his wife, Brigitte Macron, treats her husband badly. The comments were in a video the White House had posted on its YouTube channel before blocking access.

Macron didn’t see any humor in Trump’s comments. “The remarks I heard were neither elegant nor appropriate,” he said. “They do not deserve a response.”

Still, Macron has tried to accommodate Trump’s schedule to ensure his presence at the summit in Evian-les-Bains, knowing that he has a record of leaving such gatherings early.

Macron originally had set Sunday, which is Trump’s 80th birthday, as the opening day of the summit, but he pushed the start back a day because Trump is celebrating the occasion with a UFC show staged on the White House grounds.

Superville and Corbet write for the Associated Press. Corbet reported from Paris.

The world today is no longer witnessing isolated geopolitical crises. From Ukraine and West Asia to Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific, almost every major flashpoint bears the imprint of an expanding strategic contest between the United States and China. The emerging order increasingly resembles a “Cold War 2.0” — though very different in structure, methods and consequences from the US-Soviet rivalry of the 20th century.

Unlike the earlier Cold War1.0, the present contest is not defined by ideological blocs alone. The US and China remain deeply intertwined economically, technologically and financially even as they posture against each other militarily, diplomatically and strategically. It is therefore a paradoxical competition: adversarial coexistence under conditions of mutual dependence.

The forthcoming summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing assumes significance far beyond bilateral optics. It is not merely about tariffs or trade balances. It is about whether the world’s two largest powers can manage competition without pushing the international system into prolonged instability.

Cold War 2.0: Similarities and Differences

There are unmistakable similarities between the old Cold War and the current strategic rivalry. Technology races, military posturing, proxy theatres, sanctions, espionage, supply-chain wars and ideological narratives are again shaping global politics. Taiwan today resembles what Berlin once symbolised during the original Cold War — a potential trigger point with global implications.

Yet the differences are even more important.

The US and Soviet Union operated largely in separate economic ecosystems. In contrast, America and China remain deeply integrated through trade, manufacturing, investment flows and technological supply chains. As a result, Cold War 2.0 is less about total decoupling and more about selective disengagement, strategic denial, and competitive coexistence. China’s rise has also changed the nature of power transition; unlike the Soviet Union, China is economically embedded within the global capitalist system while simultaneously challenging Western strategic dominance. Beijing does not seek immediate overthrow of the international order; rather, it seeks gradual restructuring of global institutions and norms to reflect Chinese power and preferences.

Because of this interdependence, direct conflict is expensive for both parties. As a result, selective disengagement, strategic denial, and competitive coexistence are more important in Cold War 2.0 than total decoupling.

The nature of power transitions has also changed as a result of China’s growth. China, in contrast to the Soviet Union, both challenges Western geopolitical dominance and is economically integrated into the global capitalist system. Beijing aims to gradually restructure international institutions and norms to reflect Chinese strength and preferences rather than topple the current international order.

Trump’s Return: Strategic Pressure with Transactional Flexibility

President Trump’s return has introduced a more personalised and transactional dimension to US-China relations. His approach combines aggressive economic nationalism with pragmatic deal-making. Trump views geopolitics substantially through the prism of economic leverage, tariffs, industrial revival and negotiated advantage.

During his earlier tenure, Trump launched the trade war against China, challenged Chinese technological expansion and questioned assumptions of unlimited globalisation. In his second term his tariff rhetoric and coercive stance seems tampering down by Beijing’s stiff retaliation and domestic vows through courts; hence appears focused on “managed competition” rather than ideological confrontation.

Current indications suggest that Trump seeks three broad objectives from Beijing:

• Reduction of trade imbalances and greater market access for American companies.
• Chinese restraint regarding Iran, fentanyl precursors and strategic technology transfers.
• Taiwan and Indo-Pacific tensions should be relatively stable to prevent unchecked escalation. At the same time, Trump appears willing to negotiate tactical understandings with Beijing if they produce visible economic or political gains domestically.

This reflects an important distinction between traditional American strategic establishments and Trump’s worldview. Washington’s institutional security establishment and deep state often sees China as a long-term systemic challenger. Trump, however, also sees Beijing through the lens of bargaining opportunity. This creates unpredictability both for allies and adversaries.

Xi Jinping’s China: Strategic Patience and Controlled Assertiveness

If Trump represents transactional nationalism, Xi Jinping represents centralised strategic continuity with greater diplomatic maturity.

Beijing’s military modernisation, naval expansion, technological aspirations, and Belt and Road outreach reflect a long-term strategy aimed at reducing dependence on the West while enhancing China’s centrality in global affairs. Under Xi’s leadership, China has evolved from a cautious economic power into an increasingly assertive geopolitical actor. Beijing’s long-term objective to lessen reliance on the West and increase China’s influence in world affairs is reflected in its military modernisation, navy expansion, technological aspirations, and Belt and Road outreach.

Xi’s leadership style is marked by centralised authority, ideological discipline and strategic patience. Unlike the short electoral cycles of Western democracies, China’s leadership can pursue long-duration geopolitical objectives with consistency.

Beijing today appears more confident than during Trump’s first presidency. Despite economic headwinds, demographic pressures and property-sector challenges, China has strengthened domestic technological capabilities and diversified export networks.

China’s approach to global dominance differs fundamentally from America’s traditional model.

The United States historically exercised leadership through alliances, military presence, financial systems and institutional influence. Its dominance relied substantially on coalition-building and normative legitimacy, an approach, which seems to be eroding under President Trump, America First/America only agenda.

China’s model is more infrastructure-centric, economically transactional and state-driven. Beijing prefers influence through trade dependency, technology ecosystems, strategic investments and manufacturing centrality. It avoids formal alliances but expands leverage through economic penetration and calibrated coercion.

In essence, Washington exports political influence backed by military power to dislodge all potential competitors; Beijing exports economic dependency backed by state capacity aims at not dislodging potential markets to include U.S., EU and India.

The Taiwan Factor and Indo-Pacific Competition

No issue captures Cold War 2.0 more sharply than Taiwan.

For China, Taiwan remains a core sovereignty issue tied to national rejuvenation. For the United States, Taiwan represents strategic credibility, Island chain dominance in the Indo-Pacific and the larger balance of power against China.

Neither side currently appears to seek direct military confrontation. Yet both are steadily preparing for prolonged strategic competition around Taiwan. China continues military signalling and grey-zone pressure, while the US strengthens Indo-Pacific partnerships and defence arrangements.

Trump’s Beijing visit is therefore expected to prioritise “stability management” rather than dispute resolution. Beijing seeks assurances against perceived American encouragement of Taiwanese independence and military capacity building, while Washington seeks deterrence against coercive reunification efforts.

With recent claims of President Trump on Greenland, Canada, and Panama and actions in Venezuela, he doesn’t have any moral leverage to lecture China on Taiwan, because his security concerns over these areas are woefully short of Chinese security concerns of Island chains. Thus the reality of Cold War 2.0 is more of escalation management more than genuine reconciliation, as competition remains.

The Real Issue: Supply Chains and Technology Agendas

Artificial intelligence, semiconductors, rare earths, cyber systems, quantum technologies and critical supply chains have become strategic weapons. Economic security is increasingly inseparable from national security.

America still leads in advanced innovation ecosystems, financial influence and military alliances. China dominates large parts of manufacturing, industrial supply chains and infrastructure scalability.

The contest is therefore asymmetric. Washington seeks to slow China’s technological ascent through export controls and alliance-based restrictions. Beijing seeks self-reliance through indigenous innovation and strategic diversification.

Simultaneously, both nations are competing to shape global narratives.

The US projects democratic resilience and rules-based order. China projects efficiency, development delivery and non-interference. Many countries in the Global South increasingly engage both sides pragmatically rather than ideologically.

US-Israel War on Iran: Uneasy Calm Amid Strategic Contestation

China and the United States both need  regional stability in Middle East to avoid economic shockwaves and disruption of global energy flows, but their strategic intentions are quite apart. Trump led America’s action plan, duly influenced by Israeli lobby includes military action, coercive deterrence, and the retaining American strategic dominance in West Asia, especially Petro-dollar domination. China, on the other hand, is attempting calibrated balance, openly supporting de-escalation while covertly defending its long-term geopolitical, economic, and energy links with Tehran.

Beijing will refrain from any overt alignment that could lead to direct conflict with Washington, but it is unlikely to desert Iran. China seems confident that it can endure supply chain crisis in Strait of Hormuz longer than Trump and Iran. In any case a over-engaged US with depleted reserves works towards Chinese strategic advantage.

The larger strategic picture shows for Beijing, the crisis offers an opportunity to project itself as a responsible stabilising power while gradually expanding influence through economic leverage and diplomatic positioning; as a result, the likely outcome is not cooperation in the classical sense, but competitive crisis management—limited convergence to avoid uncontrolled escalation, while China advances through strategic patience, economic penetration, and calibrated diplomacy. Demonstrating credibility and deterrence to adversaries, such as China, is another goal for Washington in the Iran theatre.

Thus, Iran becomes yet another arena in which China gains through strategic patience, economic penetration, and calibrated diplomacy, while the US primarily depends on military power and a weakening alliance structures.

Likely Outcomes of the Trump–Xi Engagement: Competitive Coexistence, Not Resolution

Expectations from the Trump–Xi engagement must remain realistic and free from rhetorical overstatement. The structural contradictions driving US–China rivalry — Taiwan, technological dominance, supply chain control, military competition, sanctions regimes and competing visions of global order — are too deep to be resolved through summit diplomacy alone. At best, both sides may seek temporary stabilisation of tensions to avoid simultaneous economic disruption and strategic overstretch. Therefore, the likely outcome is not reconciliation, but managed confrontation under conditions of deep interdependence.

Trump’s pressure tactics may slow certain aspects of China’s technological rise and compel tactical adjustments, but they are unlikely to reverse Beijing’s long-term strategic trajectory or ambition for greater influence in global governance structures.

Equally, China is not positioned to replace the United States as a singular global hegemon, as yet. Internal economic pressures, demographic decline, debt vulnerabilities, trust deficits and the absence of robust alliance structures remain important constraints on Chinese power projection.

Consequently, the more plausible scenario is a prolonged strategic contest marked by partial economic bifurcation in critical technologies, competing digital and AI ecosystems, intensified military signalling in the Indo-Pacific, and expanded geopolitical competition across the Global South through infrastructure financing, trade dependency, arms transfers and narrative warfare.

Emerging World Order: What should remaining World Do?

Cold War 2.0 will not produce a neat bipolar world nor purely multipolar. Unlike the 20th century, today’s international system is multipolar, economically interconnected and technologically diffused. Middle powers such as India, regional blocs and strategic swing states will play increasingly important roles in shaping outcomes through strategic balancing avoiding bloc politics. The aim remains to avoid collateral damage in a competition, which neither U.S. nor China can decisively win in the foreseeable future.

The prudent course lies in strategic autonomy backed by economic resilience, technological self-reliance, diversified partnerships and flexible diplomacy. Nations will increasingly pursue sector-specific alignments while resisting pressure to become instruments of either camp’s maximalist strategic narratives.

In this evolving landscape, Trump’s coercive unilateralism and “America First” orientation may paradoxically accelerate the very multipolarity Washington seeks to resist. Many nations, including close American partners, increasingly seek strategic hedging against unpredictability in US policy, even while remaining cautious of China’s expanding influence and coercive economic practices

Cold War 2.0 is unlikely to end through a dramatic collapse or military victory. It will instead remain a long geopolitical test of endurance, adaptability, economic resilience and strategic patience in an era of competitive coexistence, issue based cooperation and crisis management below the threshold of military confrontation.

Trump’s leadership may make the contest louder, sharper and more transactional, while Xi’s China may continue pursuing calibrated expansion with long-term strategic discipline. Yet the underlying structural reality remains unchanged: the US–China rivalry is here to stay, and the rest of the world must learn to navigate carefully between pressure and prudence, rhetoric and reality, competition and coexistence.