Asia & the Pacific

The geopolitical implications of solar displacing oil as the world’s major source of energy are enormous. Why has the Middle East been a central arena in the “great game” for the past century? Because countries there have been the major suppliers of the oil and gas that powered 20th-century economies. If, over the next decade, photovoltaic cells that capture energy from the sun were to replace a substantial part of the demand for oil and gas, who will the biggest losers be? And even more consequentially: who will be the biggest winner?

Both sides of the Atlantic are converging in their assessment of the challenges China poses to transatlantic prosperity and democracy. The U.S. and Europe must now build on this convergence to advance a common strategy toward China. Only together can the U.S. and Europe, alongside other democratic nations, maintain the necessary leverage in trade, technology and multilateral engagement to hold China accountable to a set of standards that protects democratic societies and contributes to global stability.

To develop a stronger transatlantic approach toward China, the Biden administration must work to rebuild trust in the transatlantic relationship and recommit to multilateral alliances and institutions abandoned by President Trump. Europe for its part must unite and take action where it sees China exploiting its critical industries and infringing on its values. A common position on China at the EU–level and across several influential EU member states is critical to making transatlantic cooperation on China feasible.

Nathaniel Moir reviews Maxwell Taylor's Cold War: From Berlin to Vietnam by Ingo Trauschweizer.

In recent years the crisis of the transatlantic relationship and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has become a common theme in media, and various scholars have frequently questioned the futures of both entities. Not only are the new sovereigntist and populist trends within the NATO members calling the relevance of the transatlantic relationship into question, but some have found a reason to identify a crisis in the transatlantic relationship from the rise of global actors and the emergence of China as a great power in particular. China’s economic recovery after its “century of humiliation” is reshaping the international geopolitics and shifting the economic epicenter of the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific.