In just over a week’s time, on December 2nd, COP24, the 2018 United Nations Climate Change Conference will take place in Katowice in Poland. In the two days before the G20, the grouping of the world’s most powerful states will meet in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At both meetings the escalating confrontation between the US and China is expected to become more acute as the two superpowers’ divergent world views will likely play out publicly.
The two meetings are expected to demonstrate the philosophical and practical gulf that exists between the US President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ Manichaean world view, and the interdependent, multi-dimensional rules-based world of the kind envisaged by China’s President Xi Jinping.
