Commentaries, Analysis, And Editorials -- November 3, 2017

U.S. President Donald Trump (L) and China's President Xi Jinping walk along the front patio of the Mar-a-Lago estate after a bilateral meeting in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., April 7, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Albert Hunt, Modern War Institute: In the US-China Relationship, Time is Not on Our Side. Or Is It?

Most undergraduate political science majors are familiar with Thucydides’s quote about power shifts and war: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.” This oft-cited quote echoes in debates over the rise of China, from the “pivot” to “rebalancing” to the Trump Administration’s promises to “get tough” with Beijing. While the term “groundbreaking” is used so often it has become hackneyed, David Edelstein’s Over the Horizon truly does break new ground in our understanding of the relationship between declining power and the preventive motivation for war. Edelstein builds on previous research suggesting that states respond to relative decline based upon their beliefs about the malleability of rising powers’ intentions.

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Commentaries, Analysis, And Editorials -- November 3, 2017

Containing China on the Open Seas -- Phillip Orchard, Geopolitical Futures

How the North Korean-Vietnamese friendship turned sour -- Balazs Szalontai, NK News

A sense of abandonment burgeons among Iraq's Kurds -- Stefanie Dekker, Al Jazeera

Russia saved Assad but Syria peace settlement elusive -- AFP

Russian 'czar' back in Tehran -- Al-Monitor Staff

A Visit to 'Africa's North Korea' -- Bartholomäus Grill, Spiegel Online

How the Catalonia vote threatens the EU -- John Lloyd, Reuters

Spain's Catalan Strategy Buffeted by Jail for Separatists -- Charles Penty and Thomas Gualtieri, Bloomberg

Catalonia isn’t just Spain’s nightmare – it is Europe’s -- Simon Jenkins, The Guardian

Spain could learn from Belgium’s political history to solve its conflict with Catalonia -- Bart Cammaerts, The Independent

Whose Catalonia coup is it anyway? -- Melissa Rossi, Reuters

Despite International Support, Venezuela’s Opposition Is Beginning to Unravel -- Frida Ghitis, WPR

Implications of Venezuela's proposed foreign debt restructuring -- Brian Ellsworth, Reuters

The U.S. Isn’t Prepared for the Next Recession -- Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic