We live in dangerous times. More than a generation has passed since the benefits of internationalism and cooperation were “glaringly obvious,” as the historian Bear Braumoeller has noted. There are few inhibitions across the U.S. government toward seeing China as the enemy, while some strategists openly contemplate war. Trade is not a cure for war, but it keeps open channels of communication and increases the costs of belligerence. To the rest of the world, the United States appears merely as a “status quo power,” looking after its narrow interests. This is not the nation envisioned by Ronald Reagan as “a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans...a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.”  

Dr. Mathew Burrows is the Counselor and Program Lead of the Stimson Center’s Strategic Foresight Hub. 

Dr. Josef Braml is the Secretary General of the German Group and the European Director of the Trilateral Commission.

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