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Power Problems • April 4, 2023 

# Chinese vs American Diplomacy in the Middle East 

Trita Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, explains how China’s impartial approach to diplomacy gives it an edge against America’s more Manichean tendencies. He also discusses what US troops are doing in the unauthorized war in Syria, Beijing’s diplomatic mediation of negotiations between Saudi Arabia and Iran — and potentially between Ukraine and Russia, and what accounts for the slow pace of change in America’s posture in the Middle East, among other topics.

**Show Notes**

- [Trita Parsi bio](https://quincyinst.org/author/tparsi/)
- Trita Parsi and Kalid Aljabri, “[How China Became a Peacemaker in the Middle East](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china-became-peacemaker-middle-east),” *Foreign Affairs*, March 15, 2023.
- Trita Parsi, “[The U.S. Is Not an Indispensable Peacemaker](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/22/opinion/international-world/us-china-russia-ukraine.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare),” *New York Times*, March 22, 2023.

[![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) 
This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). 

##### Featuring 

![Trita Parsi](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2025-05/trita-parsi.jpg?itok=HXUvvHB_) 

##### Trita Parsi 

Co-founder and Executive Vice President, Quincy Institute

![John Glaser](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2021-01/John%20Glaser.jpg?itok=-uvxR8zG) 

##### John Glaser 

Host, Power Problems Podcast

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](https://twitter.com/jwcglaser)