China

The People’s Liberation Army is the biggest single provider of troops for the United Nation’s peacekeeping force, known as the Blue Helmets.

CGTN’s John Terrett reports.

We seldom, if ever, see the PLA or its generals at United Nations headquarters, but we do see Ambassador Liu Jieyi and Beijing’s team of diplomats everyday in the Security Council dealing with the most serious of world issues.

In five months in office, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, has so far publicly avoided challenging new US President Donald Trump.

But on Tuesday, he threw the equivalent of a last-minute "Hail Mary" pass during a speech at New York University -- making the case for the US to remain committed to the Paris climate accord in terms that he hoped would change Trump's mind, by warning of a drop in the US's global influence if it pulls out of the agreement.

India’s decision to boycott China’s Belt and Road Forum has reinvigorated the much-needed debate on the strategic relationship between the two Asian giants. This debate comes on the heels of the February 23, 2017 India-China Strategic Dialogue in Beijing, where the two states found, among their divergences, a convergence on Afghanistan that contradicts some of Delhi’s received wisdom.

CNN's Fareed Zakaria in a recent report on the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan highlights Barnett Rubin's War on the Rocks article "It's much bigger than Afghanistan: U.S. strategy for a transformed Region".

Whether launching a few missiles at a Syrian air base, sailing an aircraft carrier toward North Korea (or not), dropping MOAB, or sending more troops to Afghanistan, tactical demonstrations of U.S. strength not tied to strategic objectives sooner rather than later deteriorate into bloody demonstrations of futility.

China’s proliferation activities vis-à-vis Pakistan and North Korea have been unmasked on several occasions both before and after Beijing joined the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1992

The US and Indian navies could carry out ‘benign naval and maritime activity’ during periods of diplomatic strain.

On December 17, 2016 Barnett Rubin made a presentation on the subject of “Security and Development Along the Belt and Road Initiative” at a conference hosted by the Belt and Road Building and Central Asian Studies Institute of Shaanxi Normal University in Xi’an, China.