By Parag Khanna The fashionable position in Washington today is to dismiss the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a power play that won’t last—an attempt at neo-colonial debt trap diplomacy, in which China uses unpayable debts to control less powerful states, that is ultimately destined to collapse under the weight of financially spurious projects. On the other hand, there are also those who view BRI as a serious threat—a sign of China’s continued quest for global hegemony and the presence of a new “Cold War” between the U.S. and China. Either way, the U.S. position so far has been to shrug at China’s new initiative. In this, Washington is making a grave mistake.