Stephen Kotkin

Top 1000 Funds
Date: October 8, 2018
By: Sarah Rundell

China and America’s relationship is the biggest geopolitical risk on the global landscape, said Stephen Kotkin, speaking at the Fiduciary Investors Symposium at Stanford University. The John P Birkelund ’52 Professor in History and International Affairs at Princeton University, and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, told delegates conflict could arise over Taiwan.

He discounted geopolitical risk on the Korean peninsula. Although it is dangerous and potentially catastrophic for the region, it doesn’t pose a systemic risk, he said. Nor, in Kotkin’s estimation, do Russia, instability in the Middle East, or Iran, which has a small army and uses proxies and militias to fight its wars.

He said the “Trump chaos” that has manifest in a denunciation of allies and breaking of key global agreements, looks very different from Obama’s policies. However, scratch beneath the surface and US President Donald Trump’s policies are not that dissimilar, he argued, because the administration is grappling with the same problems as Obama’s: the US is trying to reduce its foreign commitments, demand more of its allies, and find more common ground with its adversaries as America’s power in the world declines.

“Obama tried to do all these things, the style was different, but the substance is similar,” he said.    [FULL  STORY]