When I told a friend I had just written a book on morality and foreign policy, she quipped: “It must be a very short book.” Such skepticism is common. An Internet search shows surprisingly few books on how US presidents’ moral views affected their foreign policies. As the eminent political theorist Michael Walzer once described American graduate training in international relations after 1945, “Moral argument was against the rules of the discipline as it was commonly practiced.”

At the start of a new decade, it’s useful to review the state of the world and the forces that will shape the future. Though success won’t come easily, China is set to emerge as one of the greatest forces for good in history.

While a partial trade agreement has been reached between the US and China, few believe that a full truce is underway. For 2020, the two countries should focus on managing interdependence and “smart competition” instead of being consumed by exaggerated fears.

China and the United States need to economic and technological competition in a healthy and peaceful zone because it’s normal and necessary for progress.

The age of artificial intelligence is coming. But if major powers fail to keep pace, they could be putting mankind at risk.

Globalization offers context for the identity politics that grips political life everywhere. China knows that that balancing market efficacy and social justice is essential.

The United States is trying to make high-tech a platform for strategic rivalry, which is not how China sees it. The reality in the field is a kind of constructive and strategic mutual dependency.

December 11, 2019, is the 18th anniversary of China’s accession to the World Trade Organization. It also marks the start of an era in which the WTO no longer has a functioning appellate body to adjudicate trade disputes among member countries. Why is the WTO imploding, and can it be resuscitated before it’s too late?

China’s idea for a new model of international relations is about more than economics. It envisions global solidarity in the context of multipolar politics.

The Trump administration has demonstrated a lack of a respect for international trade law throughout the US-China trade dispute. Now, organizations like the WTO will suffer at the hand of Trump’s prioritization of his ‘America First’ policies.