Having just returned from a week in China in which I had the opportunity to talk directly—and listen!—to all of its leaders beneath President Xi Jinping, I came away even more worried about the future of the relationship between the United States and China than I had been. While almost every day brings another tweet or announcement in the war of words, I see the current “phony war” as the proverbial calm before the storm. In one line, my bet is that things will soon get worse before they get worse.

This evolving compilation of observations and policy ideas about Russia by Graham Allison is part of Russia Matters’ “Competing Views” rubric, where we share prominent American thinkers’ alternative takes on U.S.-Russian relations, Russia itself and America’s policies toward this country.

The stunning revelation this week that CIA Director Mike Pompeo met with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un over Easter weekend is a stark reminder that the pieces of the puzzle posed by a nuclear North Korea are moving rapidly. According to President Trump’s Wednesday morning tweet, “Meeting went very smoothly and a good relationship was formed…Denuclearization will be a great thing for World, but also for North Korea!”

Most national security experts have criticized Trump’s decision to meet face-to-face with the North Korean leader at the beginning, rather than the end, of a long diplomatic process, and are predicting that the meeting will be a failure. In contrast, I see the potential for a significant win for the U.S. While forecasts about the unknown future are inherently uncertain, I sense the possibility of what I call a “six-win solution.”

In February, the Pentagon released a new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), a comprehensive overview of the nation’s nuclear forces, their disposition, and plans for the future. Here, Belfer Center experts share their assessments of this NPR and the future of America’s nuclear capabilities.

What happened in the world during the first year of the Trump presidency? Yogi Berra warned against making bets—especially about the future. Nevertheless, because the real world offers no opportunity to opt out, the Belfer Center – in collaboration with POLITICO Magazine - invited readers in January 2017 to summon their courage and register their bets for 2017.  The deadline for placing “bets” was February 7, 2017.

"Belfer Center Newsmakers" highlights members of the Belfer Center community who have been featured recently in the news.

Kori Schake’s essay (and the book from which it is adapted) provides a serious, penetrating, and provocative invitation to debate the overriding geostrategic challenge of our time: what to do about the rise of China. Safe Passage is an outstanding example of the sort of work we champion at the Harvard Belfer Center’s Applied History Project. It illuminates current challenges by careful analysis of the historical record. And the case she examines in which the United States rose to rival and eventually surpass the British global hegemony is among the most instructive of the 16 cases in the Harvard Thucydides’ Trap case file for policymakers seeking to cope with the current U.S.-China competition.

Will Presidents Trump and Xi, or their successors, follow in the tragic footsteps of the leaders of Athens and Sparta or Britain and Germany? In his new Gelber Prize-nominated book, Allison says the omens are not good

• U.S. experts debate whether russia can be a viable CT partner for America.
• Graham Allison on importance of prevention of nuclear terrorism.
• Russia’s National Guard is mulling drone defense at NPP.
• U.S. Nuclear Posture Review on countering nuclear terrorism.

It isn’t often that a book comes along that should be mandatory reading for every member of Congress, Cabinet member and, for that matter, any senior governmental official with a connection to foreign policy and national security. But Graham Allison’s Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? is such a book.