With the rise of an authoritarian and aggressive People’s Republic of China (PRC), the security of the United States – and that of the liberal international order – is increasingly under threat. The greatest potential flash point in this new rivalry is the island-nation of Taiwan, formally the Republic of China. How the United States...
一箭双雕: one arrow, two hawks. This chengyu, analogous to the Western idiom “kill two birds with one stone,” appears frequently in Chinese politics, recently used to describe Chairman Xi Jinping’s financial sector purge — a move to eliminate corruption and to quell political opposition. [1] Xi’s China faces two targets impeding its road to “great-power”...
Review of The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2021) One of the most vivid memories from my deployment to Afghanistan occurred on my first day. It was September 22, 2017, and I was with my infantry company in the base conference room listening...
International politics today is a source of anxiety and uncertainty. China’s rise to power and corresponding ambitions signals a return of great power competition, threatening the peace and stability of the American-led international order. To meet this moment, the American foreign policy community must first address a problem at the core of its field: the...
China’s rise over the past twenty years is the most consequential foreign policy challenge Washington has faced this century. Trade wars, diplomatic standoffs, and aggressive military posturing in the Indo-Pacific all point to intensifying economic and ideological conflict not seen since the Cold War. Naturally, it is tempting to look to that period of geopolitical...
As Russia menaced Ukraine last year, I was learning about a time when Moscow was much more powerful than it is now. Taking a course on the Soviet Union was my attempt to understand the country Winston Churchill once called “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” [1] The seminar spanned the Second...
“It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” [1] Thucydides’ famous observation on great power conflict over two millennia ago remains true today. The spectacular rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) alarms the United States – and thereby Western society as whole –...
1957 was a year of panic. Upon hearing the news that the Soviet Union had successfully launched both Sputnik and the R-7 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, American citizens, military planners, and policymakers looked to the sky with fear. Both launches were the first of their kind, the heavens had become a battleground, and Americans felt exposed...
The decades following the collapse of the Berlin Wall have been described as a “holiday from history,” in which the recurring perils of world war, social crisis, and ideological extremes were mastered by bonds of peaceful progress. [1] In recent years, however, history has returned with almost biblical vengeance in the form of wars, plagues,...
