As Trump offers to mediate between India and China, Beijing counsels restraint
mediate between India and China over their “raging
border dispute
,” in another wild swing at
diplomatic intervention
in the region.
“We have informed both India and China that the United States is ready, willing and able to mediate or arbitrate their now raging border dispute. Thank you!” Trump said on Wednesday morning, in a flurry of tweets over a range of subjects amid raging civic unrest in the US following the purported murder of a black man by police in Minneapolis filmed in broad daylight.
The US President’s offer, dismissed or ignored in both China and India, surprised most observers given its timing – coming when Washington’s own ties with
Beijing
are fraught. The fact that Trump tweeted about it first thing in the morning – around 7.30 a.m. – suggested the issue must have featured in the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB), an intelligence assessment that is given to the President each morning
In another sense, the Trump mediation offer was unsurprising given his penchant for random, off-the-cuff diplomatic swishes with barely any background or forethought on issues – such as with his repeated offer to mediate between India and Pakistan over the
issue, despite New Delhi’s known antipathy to third-party mediation of bilateral issues.
In fact, by one account Trump did not even know that India shared a border with China when he first met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House. In the book “A Very Stable Genius: Donald J.Trump’s Testing of America,” Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig quote Trump telling Modi "It's not as though you have China right on your border..." prompting, they add, then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to cover part of his face with one hand so as to signal something to Modi without Trump seeing it.
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