Forget Russia, US should focus instead on North Korea

During the US presidential election, there were growing concerns in world capitals that the election of Donald Trump, running on an "America First" foreign policy platform, would usher in a new isolationist age: global affairs would be placed at the bottom of the policy agenda and Americans would turn their back on the rest of the world.

But if anything, during the first months of the Trump presidency, Washington seems to be preoccupied with its relationship with the rest of the world, and specifically its ties with Russia. It sometimes feels that we are witnessing now the revival of the Cold War between Washington and Moscow that had been pronounced dead a quarter-of-a-century ago. Indeed, each day seems to generate new news reports and congressional investigations about alleged Russian attempts to subvert the US political system, including the possibility of a collusion between Mr Trump's campaign aides and Kremlin officials. The most recent development in this political brouhaha was President Trump's decision last week to fire James Comey from his position as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

No one would deny that managing the relationship with Russia - a global nuclear power whose interests sometimes collide with those of the United States - should remain a top American policy priority. But the Cold War is over and part of history. And beyond the spectre of a more assertive Russia, the United States, the world's most powerful military economic power, is now facing other and even more urgent geo-strategic challenges that require its immediate attention, ranging from responding to the economic collapse of Venezuela to dealing with the military ascent of China.