With Europe braced for a hard winter, support for Ukraine could fall away as Western elites come to realise that frozen conflicts, while unwanted, are still better than a forever war.
Repurpose them to let businesspeople, scholars and students meet their Chinese counterparts there while keeping community infection at bay. As the rest of the world economy opens up, China cannot afford continued self-isolation.
While we could expect China hawks to dominate his team in any comeback, his disdain for allies and military adventures, and penchant for deal-making, will chime with a Beijing hoping to cool US-China tensions.
American history is no stranger to bureaucrats and advisers whose cunningness led America to war. A new generation of scheming Washington hawks have faith in the invincibility of US military power and its ability to deter China.
A Xi-Biden meeting would go a long way to reassure a world anxious about the prospects of a new cold war. Not meeting would cement the perception that the only two men who can steer the world away from the abyss missed an opportunity to do so.
The details in the indictment against the Chinese nationals show China is no outlier in a world where cyberspying and hacking is what modern intelligence agencies in all countries are paid to do.
Going to the edge and risking world peace is a prerogative of a superpower, not a middle power like Britain. Russia and China will show much less tolerance for Royal Navy incursions into what they believe to be their waters than for the much more powerful US Navy.
Like many other steps the US and its allies have taken against China, such an action would be self-defeating. Attempts to humiliate Beijing will only backfire and expose America’s loneliness and inability to sway its allies.
Other countries prefer to stay neutral amid the intense jockeying for influence between China and the US. The only way they can achieve that is to join hands in pushing back attempts by either power to use them as a pawn against the other.