The Asia Policy Institute recently released a collection of speeches by its President and former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd about the rivalry between China and the United States. In his forward to the collection, Graham Allison explains why relations between the two countries have become "the defining issue of international relations in the 21st century", and why Kevin Rudd is uniquely equipped to provide insight into them. Read on for both the full introduction and the full report.

"Within the covers of this book, long-time China watcher and former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has provided an analytic snapshot that would normally only be available to the president or prime minister of a major nation. In substance, it would be the envy of the best professional intelligence agency."

Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warned in 1997 that the greatest long-term threat to U.S. interests would be a “grand coalition” of China and Russia, “united not by ideology but by complementary grievances.” This coalition “would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower.”

Graham Allison was interviewed on CGTN’s “The Heat: One on One” about U.S.-China relations on January 21, 2019.

With the conclusion of the first round of negotiations yesterday in Beijing, the way ahead for the United States and China to avoid a full-scale tariff war has become clear. With fifty days remaining before the March 1 end of the truce Trump and Xi announced to prevent U.S. tariffs increasing from 10 to 25 percent on $200 billion of Chinese imports, negotiations are likely to continue until the deadline. But before March 1, Trump will declare “victory” in this phase of the trade war—extending the truce for another six months in which a second phase of negotiations will address even more contentious issues.

Douglas Dillon Professor of Government Graham Allison took the stage at TED World Theater in New York in September to discuss the question: How will the U.S. respond to the rise of China? Allison's TED Talk was part of TED's "We the Future" event that explored some of the world's most daunting challenges along with possible solutions. 

Nonetheless, my bottom line: 2019 promises more of the same. Where this conflict stands today is not good. But it is better than it was when Trump took office, and better than it would be under a Clinton administration following conventional wisdom.

The ongoing trade war between the United States and China is emblematic of other, larger issues, argues Graham Allison. And now that there is a lull in their conflict over trade, we should ask ourselves: what must we do to prevent even worse conflicts from occurring between these two great powers?

THE YEAR before he died in 2017, one of America’s leading twentieth-century strategic thinkers, Zbigniew Brzezinski, sounded an alarm. In analyzing threats to American security, “the most dangerous scenario,” he warned, would be “a grand coalition of China and Russia…united not by ideology but by complementary grievances.” This coalition “would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower.”

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, the guns of World War I fell silent — and nearly 20 million people lay dead. Could such a conflict happen today? After more than seven decades without a shooting war between great powers, many Americans find the thought of the United States and a major adversary like China killing millions of one another’s citizens virtually inconceivable.

But when we say something is “inconceivable,” we should remember this: the realm of what is possible is not bound by what our limited minds can conceive. Today, the intensifying rivalry between a rising China and a ruling United States could lead to a war that neither side wants and that both know would be even more catastrophic than World War I.