US-China Relations and Remaking Global Governance: From Stalemate and Progress to Crisis to Resolutions

In this article I examine the emerging crisis in major institutions of global governance, and the ways that US-China relations play crucially in the crisis and its potential resolution. The mix of competition and cooperation in the US-China relationship during the Obama presidency resulted in progress as well as stalemate in global governance, while the subsequent degeneration of relations during the Trump presidency has brought about crisis situations in major international organizations, a critical change-point in global governance. But the change is ambiguous; it can result either in organizational collapse or the pursuit of a fundamentally transformative outcome.