2015-4-23
Kenneth Lieberthal, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
In foreign policy, it requires not only you understand what the other government's policies are, but what shapes these policies. My experiences in China and the US show that both countries use the same words but understand them very differently. Each side has very few people who understand the political system, society and cultures on the other side.
If you want to foster cooperation and minimize misunderstanding, you need to have people who have deep knowledge of the way the other system functions, their concerns and meaning of words they use.
What China does influences tremendously our interests both directly and indirectly on major global issues, so we have interest in high-quality decision-making in China and understanding why China adopts a decision as it is and how it understands what we are doing because there is often considerable misunderstanding and accompanying distrust.
We can't totally eliminate that, but think tanks can act in a way that governments cannot do and can go deeply into understanding the thinking, concerns and assumptions that the other side is preparing to do. They can speak in a way that government officials cannot in deep dialogues and join research projects, which is vital.
No comments:
Post a Comment