The Paris climate accord, signed by 175 countries in April, was a high point of success for the United Nations. The U.N. has also managed to focus governments around the world on sustainable development goals. Yet, on the security side of the equation, for which the U.N. was principally founded, the record is largely one of failure. (continued)

In March 1946, Winston Churchill famously declared that an "iron curtain" had descended across the European continent, casting a decades-long chill between East and West known as the Cold War. A new chill is in the air once again as China and Russia seek to draw a new "digital curtain" across the world in a joint effort to thwart the Western web from penetrating their cultural space.(continued)

Washington still reaches too quickly for its gun over its purse to solve problems abroad. With the notable exception of sanctions, the U.S. still debates its largest geostrategic challenges in overwhelmingly politico-military terms. But this is the era of geoeconomic statecraft, and the contest for leadership in Asia is being waged in primarily economic terms.

The summit bore fruit with a joint China-U.S. communique, plus five separate action plans from different participants. In The Hague in 2014, President Xi put forward a Chinese approach to nuclear security for the first time, which provided an important and useful perspective to promote international nuclear security. At the 2016 summit, President Xi delivered a speech that fully demonstrated China's policies and initiatives.

On May 7, 1999, during NATO's intervention in Yugoslavia, U.S. warplanes accidentally dropped laser-guided bombs on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.  The strike was meant to target a warehouse storing Yugoslav munitions, but the maps given to NATO were out-of-date.

In spite of China's enormous disadvantages, there will always be people thinking that China will one day want to lead the world. This perspective is erroneous.