7 Items

Chinese President Xi Jinping is displayed on a big screen in Beijing as Chinese battle tanks roll by during a Sept. 3, 2015 parade commemorating the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender during World War II.

(AP Photo)

Magazine Article - The Atlantic

The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?

| September 24, 2015

The defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’s Trap. The Greek historian’s metaphor reminds us of the attendant dangers when a rising power rivals a ruling power—as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece, or as Germany did Britain a century ago. Most such contests have ended badly, often for both nations, a team of mine at the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has concluded after analyzing the historical record. In 12 of 16 cases over the past 500 years, the result was war. When the parties avoided war, it required huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part not just of the challenger but also the challenged.

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Analysis & Opinions - Caixin.com

Lee Kuan Yew: The Sage of Asia

| March 28, 2015

The death of Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore, is an occasion for reflection. Lee, who died Monday, was more than just his country's founding father. He did not just raise a poor, notoriously corrupt port city from the bottom rungs of the Third World to a modern First World state (with clean streets and clean government) in a single generation. He was also one of only two true grand masters of international strategy in the last half century (Henry Kissinger being the other), and a wise counselor to the leaders of the world.  (NOTE: This commentary was published by Caixin in Chinese. This is a Belfer Center English translation.)

Analysis & Opinions - The Atlantic

The Lee Kuan Yew Conundrum

| March 30, 2015

Washington, D.C., is fast becoming an acronym for “Dysfunctional Capital.” Singapore, in contrast, has become the poster child for “the concept of good governance,” to quote the Financial Times’s obituary for the country’s longtime leader, Lee Kuan Yew, who was laid to rest on Sunday. For Americans in particular, this contrast presents a conundrum. On the one hand, Americans hold as a self-evident truth that their democracy is the best form of government. On the other hand, they see mounting evidence daily of Washington’s gridlock, corruption, and theatrical distractions, which makes their system seem incapable of addressing the country’s real challenges.

Paper

Overcoming the Great Recession: Lessons from China

| July 10, 2014

In the aftershocks of the Great Financial Crisis of 2008, Liu He led a research team that prepared an analysis of earlier financial crises to provide guidance for the Chinese government’s response. Graham Allison and Lawrence Summers arranged for that document to be translated and have published it here as a joint discussion paper of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School.

Summers and Allison, who wrote the foreword for the paper, introduce it with comments on why they think Liu He's perspective is so valuable.

Lee Kuan Yew visits the United States, 2002

Wikimedia Foundation

Analysis & Opinions - Forbes

Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew Talks America's Strengths And Weaknesses

| February 13, 2013

Both in the United States and abroad, many influential observers argue that the U.S. is in systemic decline. Not so, says Lee Kuan Yew, the sage of Singapore. Lee is not only a student of the rise and fall of nations.  He is also the founder of modern Singapore. As prime minister from 1959 to 1990, he led its rise from a poor, small, corrupt port to a first-world city-state in just one generation.