Asia & the Pacific

Aroop Mukharji analyzes how the 1898 Treaty of Paris that ended the Spanish-American War changed U.S. foreign policy and the course of history.

Graham Allison, Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard Kennedy School, said in an interview with Bloomberg that China is rivaling the U.S. in virtually every domain. Because of the dynamic between these two powers, Allison warned that the future will be "extremely dangerous."

The authors analyze the U.S.–North Korea nuclear standoff and the role of back channel negotiations and then develop a game theory framework for understanding why back channels can be beneficial.

"Johnson did what modern American presidents are never supposed to do: refrain from seeking re-election. (Since World War II, only Harry Truman in 1952 has done likewise.) He feared that his health could not withstand four more years, but what really worried him was the Vietnam War and the divisions it had created. The war was not just a threat to his personal legacy; it was a threat to the very foundations of the liberal political order that he cherished so deeply and that had built so many middle-class American dreams."

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.

No two financial crises are the same. The next one will not be like the last one. But there will be a next one and, as the monetary medication begins to be withdrawn, it draws nearer.