Articles

105 Items

"Speaking of Leaks," cartoon, Independent, January 29, 1917.

Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

"Wars without Gun Smoke": Global Supply Chains, Power Transitions, and Economic Statecraft

    Authors:
  • Ling S. Chen
  • Miles M. Evers
| Fall 2023

Power transitions affect a state’s ability to exercise economic statecraft. As a dominating and a rising power approach parity, they face structural incentives to decouple their economies. This decoupling affects business-state relations: high-value businesses within the dominant power tend to oppose their state’s economic statecraft because of its costs to them, whereas low-value businesses within the rising power tend to cooperate because they gain from it. 

Flowers bloom around graves of World War I soldiers prior to a foundation laying ceremony at Loos British Cemetery in Loos-en-Gohelle, France, Thursday, May 4, 2023.

AP Photo/Michel Spingler)

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

The Peril of Peaking Powers: Economic Slowdowns and Implications for China’s Next Decade

| Summer 2023

Peaking great powers facing a slowdown in growth are likely to try to violently shake up the world. These findings amend classic theories of great power conflict. They help explain some of the most consequential geopolitical events in modern history. And they have ominous implications for contemporary Chinese foreign policy. 

Gate of Tianjin Free-Trade Zone. A brightly lit arch over a nighttime roadway. A brightly lit pillar appears in the background.

Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Collective Resilience: Deterring China’s Weaponization of Economic Interdependence

    Author:
  • Victor Cha
| Summer 2023

China leverages its market in a form of “predatory liberalism” that weaponizes the networks of interdependence created by globalization. ne response to China’s bullying would be for its targets to form an alliance to retaliate against China’s high-dependence trade should Beijing act against any alliance members. 

Residents wearing face masks walk by tree shadow cast on a Communist Party's logo near a residential area in Beijing, Thursday, March 2, 2023. Chinese leader Xi Jinping's agenda for the annual meeting of the ceremonial legislature: Revive the economy by encouraging consumers to spend more now that severe anti-virus controls have ended, and install a government of loyalists to intensify Communist Party control over the economy and society. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

AP Photo/Andy Wong

Magazine Article - Foreign Affairs

The New China Shock: How Beijing’s Party-State Capitalism is Changing the Global Economy

| Dec. 08, 2022

In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008, China began to move away from the market-based approach that had shaped its economic policies for three decades, and toward something that might be termed "party-state capitalism," which involves a high degree of CC control over strategic sectors of the economy. This has led to significant changes in the U.S.-Chinese economic relationship, as both sides have made efforts to secure supply chains, screen inward and outward capital flows, diminish the power of global firms, and reorganize alliances to protect against economic coercion.

Map of scheduled airline traffic around the world, circa June 2009.

Wikimedia Commons

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

China's Party-State Capitalism and International Backlash: From Interdependence to Insecurity

| Fall 2022

Economic interdependence has long been considered important to international peace. Questions about harmful effects of the free flow of capital, however, are arising. China and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries are increasingly involving their business firms in security and intelligence work, causing a security dilemma dynamic that increases economic competition.

Pakistan Navy soldier stands guard while a loaded Chinese ship prepares to depart.

AP Photo/Muhammad Yousuf

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Pier Competitor: China's Power Position in Global Ports

    Authors:
  • Isaac B. Kardon
  • Wendy Leutert
| Spring 2022

Commercial international port terminals owned and operated by Chinese firms provide dual-use capabilities to the People's Liberation Army during peacetime. They enable China to project power into critical regions worldwide by providing military logistics and intelligence networks.

Mads Brügger Receives Lux Film Prize in 2019

Wikimedia Commons/ European Parliament

Journal Article - Nonproliferation Review

Of Moles and Missiles: Anatomy of a North Korean Arms Deal?

| Apr. 08, 2022

In October 2020, a parade celebrating the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Korean Workers Party showcased a range of new weapons systems, including a new large intercontinental ballistic missile. The same weekend saw the release of a fascinating documentary film directed by provocative Danish filmmaker Mads Brügger, entitled The Mole: Undercover in North Korea. The film consists of footage—much of it filmed undercover—that was shot over a period of 10 years. It tells the story of a retired Danish chef’s infiltration of the Korean Friendship Association (KFA), an international organization that seeks to promote the ideology, history, and culture of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and defend the country from its critics. The story culminates in the exploration of plans for a series of sanctions-busting deals: constructing an underground arms factory on a Ugandan island, shipping oil to North Korea, and supplying arms to unspecified customers of Pyongyang through a private arms dealer. This review essay seeks to contextualize the film’s contents, consider the insights it offers into North Korea’s arms dealing, and examine a number of questions that arise.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, second from right, inspects the preparation of the launch of a Hwasong-14 ICBM in North Korea on July 4, 2017.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Defending the United States: Revisiting National Missile Defense against North Korea

| Winter 2021/22

The costly Ground-based Midcourse Defense system remains unproven and unreliable in deterring North Korea’s threat to use intercontinental ballistic missiles. An airborne boost-phase intercept system may offer an alternative defense against North Korea without threatening Russian or Chinese deterrents.