Ex-CIA analyst says China filling diplomatic role U.S. used to hold as world’s great negotiator, peacemaker

George Beebe, former CIA analyst and Russia expert, describes the changing geopolitical landscape of the world, with China looking to usurp the U.S. and beginning to fill the void of the United States status at the world’s great negotiator and peacemaker. Beebe says, "right now, the Chinese are, in fact, moving into a diplomatic vacuum that the United States has left. Because we have not focused to the degree that I think we need to on diplomatic statecraft. So that's something I think that we really need to resurrect in our toolkit." He also explains that the U.S. and China have evolved from major trade partners, to competing superpowers. Beebe warns, that Washington is known to overcorrect, and “swing the pendulum too far,” as it is both dangerous for the United tastes to treat China as a partner or “a friend,” but also dangerous diplomatically to overcorrect and to think of “China as an enemy.” Saying, that the United States response needs to be “something in between those two, that we need to be focusing on.”

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