Graham Allison spoke at the WACC Distinguished Speaker Series on May 21. He shared his research on China's response to COVID-19 and its role in this new global order through diplomacy and aid to countries affected by the coronavirus.

I do not think it’s likely that Kim Jong-un will conduct another test of ICBMs—since Trump had repeatedly drawn a bright red line there. Kim Jong-un and his experts would rightly be worried that were they to cross this line, especially in an election season, Trump would respond by attacking North Korean ICBM launch sites—as he’s signaled he would do. 

As Washington now stumbles from one misstep to the next, Massachusetts has an opportunity to show how intelligent choices can allow us BOTH to increase protection for those most vulnerable to this novel killer, AND, with appropriate precautions, reopen the economy and society for the overwhelming majority of our citizens.

We can reopen in an intelligent way while going further to protect the most vulnerable, says 
Graham Allison.
 

The struggle between President Trump’s drive to reopen the American economy as quickly as possible, and the insistence by his public health team and many others that this has to be delayed until further hurdles are overcome, is largely a false dilemma. We can simultaneously increase protection for those who are most vulnerable to coronavirus and, with appropriate precautions, reopen most of our economy and society. 

With reservations about venturing into territory outside our normal wheelhouse, and in full certainty that some of what we write here will in retrospect turn out to have been wrong, a team of researchers at the Belfer Center and I have been collecting all the data we have been able to find about coronavirus, analyzing it to the best of our ability, and debating competing answers to the fundamental questions about the challenge this novel virus poses to our nation.

What follows is our current first-approximation of a work in progress. We are posting at this point in the hope of stimulating a wider debate that will include a much larger number of analysts beyond public health professionals and epidemiologists—including in particular intelligence officers, financial wizards, historians, and others.

Today, President Trump, leaders of his administration, Congress, and governors are wrestling with fateful choices about when and how to reopen America’s economy. In designing a program to do that, it is essential that they have the clearest possible understanding of who is actually bearing the lion’s share of the additional burden from coronavirus.

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, China and the US have been engaged in a wide spectrum of competition that has enhanced their rivalry. We have seen debates and arguments about China's one-party system versus the US democratic system, the China-US blame game, and the ideology-centered media war. How will the pandemic reshape China-US relations? Is cooperation still possible to address the unexpected global challenge posed by the virus? Global Times (GT) reporter Wang Wenwen talked to Graham Allison (Allison), professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides' Trap?, on these issues.

China’s autocratic system has performed better in some aspects than America’s democracy so far in responding to the coronavirus pandemic, but it is too early to write off the United States despite its many early missteps, analysts at a China Institute event said.

The world is now in the midst of a once-in-a-century global health pandemic that threatens the lives and livelihoods of billions. This coronavirus transcends borders and nationalities, and until a vaccine is found, a cluster of cases in any one country will endanger the health and safety of people everywhere. For this reason, there has rarely been a time in which the fates of the world's nations were so clearly linked and where American leadership and purposeful international coordination were so urgently required.