Building a world safe for diversity

The 90-day ceasefire since Dec 1 in the "tariff war" between the United States and China provides a welcome opportunity to pause - and to think. Trade negotiators are focused on the search for a deal that will prevent a full-blown trade war. But the rest of us should be thinking about two larger questions: Where is the overall relationship between the two great nations heading? And what can the two sides do to avoid an outcome no one wants?

At this point, even the rosiest optimists have awakened to the fact that this is not just a tiff about tariffs. Owing to last week's detention of Huawei's chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, some claim the US and China are now sliding rapidly toward what could soon become "Cold War 2.0".

In the original Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union engaged in war by all means short of bombs and bullets. This conflict included unlimited economic, political, and ideological assaults on each other, and even "hot" proxy wars.