Cornell Chronicle

Hockett says:

“While this week's summits between the Biden administration and its Asian counterparts are not expected to produce 'breakthroughs,' no such expectation would have made sense in connection with these first-ever, 'getting to know you' sessions in any event.

“What should and indeed can reasonably be expected in these meetings are (a) preliminary sharing of concerns and (b) sincere demonstrations of mutual respect. As stage-setting preliminaries, moreover, the importance of these meetings should not be gainsaid. The previous White House's opening salvos, long on uncivilized rhetoric and short on constructive or even concrete proposals, were after all hardly productive. 

“Our relations with our Asian peers, from China and North Korea through Japan, South Korea, India, Oceania and beyond, will be among the most fateful cross-national collaborations in history. Trade arrangements must be made to cohere with domestic rebuilding and supply chain restoration. Industrialization and re-industrialization must for its part cohere with the imperative of rescuing our planet before it terminally burns. And the world must 'get on one page' both to end COVID-19 and to preempt the later pandemics which are already germinating.

“Now is accordingly the time for all leaders to make plain, in respect and good faith, what matters most to their countries. Only on that basis do we begin making this world both just and inhabitable for literally all its inhabitants - each of which has equal claim to our hope and concern.”