James Kynge

Just look at how much more mild that sentence is compared to describing China as,

antithetical to US values and interests around the world.

So what I think is happening is that Trump is focusing more on doing deals and a lot less on American ideals for the world.

We've left that Reagan-esque type of America as a shining city on the hill, a beacon for mankind, an ideal for global aspirations, the leader of the free world.

All of that rhetoric, well, and it was a lot more than rhetoric, really.

From Reagan's time until now, it's been a great deal more than rhetoric.

It's been followed up with military might and economic muscle.

This is the world that Pax Americana has created.

And now we're just talking about doing better deals and America focusing on its economic interests in the world.

So if this holds, and that is a big if, then it really is a big change.

And I must just say, Alice, that I think your phrase of non-hemispheric influences is going to be a zeitgeist for 2026.

I think that we are going to be talking about re-hemisphering the world a lot more over the coming months.

It's a bit like the Monroe Doctrine of old is going to get reborn in some shape or form, or at least rhetorically reborn.

I have a feeling...

I'm already seeing several think tank articles about re-hemisphering and non-hemispheric influences and all of this.

So I think that's going to be more of the lens through which America looks at the world.

And very clearly, China is not in America's hemisphere, at least not in their own reckoning.

So I think there's going to be a lot to pick up on, a lot to focus on on this topic.

Well, it's hard to know cause and effect, but perhaps it's too much of a coincidence that just the day before the new US national security strategy was announced, the Financial Times had an article which says that the US plans to halt

its intention to impose sanctions on China's Ministry of State Security.