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The U.S. Can’t Afford to Demonize China – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/29/the-u-s-cant-afford-to-demonize-china

The relationship between Beijing and Washington is collapsing fast, to everyone’s detriment.

The United States and China’s lengthy track record of constructive engagement is disintegrating at an alarming rate, requiring a major correction by both sides. Despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s occasional talk of his “truly great” connection with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Xi’s constant references to “win-win” outcomes all round, recent policies and actions — especially on the U.S. side — have created an enormously destructive dynamic in the relationship.

In the case of the United States, this dynamic is most clearly driven by excessively critical, often hostile, authoritative U.S. strategy documents such as the recently issued National Security and National Defense Strategies, similar statements by senior U.S. officials, and U.S. economic policy shifts — including grossly ill-conceived tariffs — that all envision Beijing as a “revisionist” power that threatens all Americans hold dear.

American journalists reinforce this dim view of U.S.-Chinese relations. Almost daily, pundits unveil new aspects of China’s perfidy, ranging from Chinese attempts to undermine intellectual freedom at U.S. universities to China’s sinister debt traps designed to ensnare and control developing countries.

This steady drumbeat of criticism assumes that every Chinese gain comes at American expense, and that past U.S. policymakers and experts have long overlooked the hostility of the Chinese regime. These critics conclude that any cooperation with China must take a back seat to the imperative of pushing back against the growing threat through all means possible. This hyperbole often reaches stratospheric heights, as Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin wrote last December:

Washington is waking up to the huge scope and scale of Chinese Communist Party influence operations inside the United States, which permeate American institutions of all kinds. China’s overriding goal is, at the least, to defend its authoritarian system from attack and at most to export it to the world at America’s expense.

Three Months After U.S. Freeze, Syrian Recovery Stuck in Limbo – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/29/three-months-after-u-s-freeze-syrian-recovery-stuck-in-limbo-isis-tru

Short on funding, U.S. and European programs designed to help rebuild after the Islamic State are faltering.

Nearly three months after the White House froze roughly $200 million earmarked to help fund recovery in Syria, U.S. and European officials trying to stabilize the country’s north are scrambling to plug the gaps left by the near-complete withdrawal of American assistance.

Critical programs meant to restore power and clean water and to clear land mines out of urban areas have been disrupted, and the much-needed networks of local assistance are melting away without funding. Other countries are reluctant to cover the difference while Washington is missing in action.
[…]
“People are very upset in Raqqa because everything is destroyed and there is no help,” said Fabrice Balanche, a visiting fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who visited the region this year. “They say, ‘You came here to expel [the Islamic State], you destroyed everything, and you don’t rebuild anything and you don’t help us.’”