Asia & the Pacific

Less than three months after declaring that he had “great confidence” China would rein in North Korean belligerence, President Trump ranted on Twitter last week, “Trade between China and North Korea grew almost 40 per cent in the first quarter. So much for China working with us — but we had to give it a try!” Losing patience with China, Trump may take unilateral, even military, action against North Korea’s nuclear programme. Could this escalate into a second Korean War? 

Chinese analysts, from President Xi Jinping on down, have nominally rejected Allison’s pessimistic analysis. “There is no Thucydides Trap,” Xi has argued, claiming that he had devised an alternative “new type of great-power relations” that would avoid war by recognizing that each Asian giant had its own legitimate interests. More recently, he has shifted to arguing that “China and the U.S. must do everything possible to avoid [the] Thucydides Trap.”

We are certain to see a succession of confrontations between China and the United States in the years ahead. What is in doubt is whether the leaders of these two great powers can manage these confrontations without escalating them to war. For now, that’s up to Trump and Xi.

In a "policy memo" to President-elect Donald Trump, Graham Allison and Dimitri K. Simes write: "The two Chinese characters that make up the word “crisis” can be interpreted as meaning both “danger” and “opportunity.” Russia today offers your administration not only a serious challenge but a significant opportunity.

Russia is no longer the Evil Empire the United States confronted over decades of Cold War. Nonetheless, Russia remains a player whose choices affect vital U.S. interests profoundly across the agenda of global issues. First and foremost, Russia remains the only nation that can erase the United States from the map in thirty minutes.

Dr. Ian Bremmer, expert in political risk and founder of the Eurasia Group, gave a seminar sponsored by the the Future of Diplomacy Project on Thursday, November 9 at the Harvard Kennedy School, titled “Managing Risk in an Unstable World."