The

The Hello and welcome to behind the news. My name is Doug Henwood. Normalcy continues its comforting reign today, two guests, two segments.

Jake Werner will review what went on at the Trump-Jee Summit and update us on U.S.-China relations generally,

and Gareth Gore will tell us all about the sinister and secretive Catholic organization Opus Day.

Donald Trump, not known for his warm feelings towards China,

held a summit meeting with that country's leader, Xi Jinping, last week. It was not expected to be

eventful, and it wasn't. Xi's warnings about the Thucydides trap was a striking moment in the

proceedings. The term, popularized by the foreign policy pundit Graham Allison, refers to the ancient Greek

historian's writing on the Athens-Sparta rivalry, in which Athens, the incumbent power, was

displaced by Sparta, the rising power, a transition that was resolved by war.

By the count of Allison and his colleagues, there have been 16 such hegemon transitions

in history, 12 of which ended in war. No doubt Trump

had no idea what Xi was talking about, but it's nice Xi wants to avoid war, or at least thinks

it's important to say so. Trump did pick up something about the U.S. being in decline,

but in the truth social post, he averred that Xi was actually talking about the terrible Biden years.

To Trump, the U.S. is hot and respected.

My first guest, Jake Werner, doesn't think China has these sorts of successor hegemon ambitions.

He is the director of the East Asia program at the Quincy Institute.

Here he is to talk about relations between the two countries.

The Trump-Jee summit turned out in the words of the Council and

Foreign Relations, Joshua Kirlansik, turned out to be not totally disastrous. We're

expectations that low to start with? The foreign policy community in the U.S. was very apprehensive

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