WASHINGTON: It is “a good thing” that top diplomats from China and the United States are to hold a meeting in Alaska, though it may unlikely produce concrete outcomes, a U.S. expert has said.
“This is probably the world’s single most important consequential relationship,” Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson Center, told media in a recent interview, noting that this relationship has been rocky in the last four years.
“Even though it isn’t clear what the agenda for the meeting is going to be, and it’s unlikely that there will be concrete outcomes, it is important to simply start talking,” he said.
“I do not have any positive expectations, but I think that’s a good thing that they are holding the meeting,” he said.
“We understand that we have fundamental differences. But neither side should go in with any illusions that they can change the other countries’ basic goals and basic behaviors,” he said.
“The question is (that) can we find a way to manage relations despite each other’s goals and behaviors that we disapprove of, or that we find inimical to our own interests,” he said.
“I think that we need to be frank that this is going to be an extremely difficult long-term set of interactions,” the director said.
In his view, this meeting won’t be a regular dialogue mechanism right now but the two sides do have common interest. “I’m not optimistic, but I’m certainly not hopeless,” he said. – Agencies
