Asia & the Pacific

Stephen Walt analyzes the priority that the United States should place on competing with China by asking and answering five questions.

The European Union is planning to adopt semiconductor export controls, restrictions on outbound investment in China, and new rules to reduce the European market share of Chinese renewables. This strategy brings Brussels' into closer alignment with Washington and is likely to increase tensions with Beijing significantly.

Joseph Nye writes: From an American perspective, it is just as dangerous to underestimate Chinese power as it is to overestimate it. While hysteria creates fear, discounting China's recent progress and future ambitions could lead the United States to squander its own long-term advantages.

Ivan Arreguin-Toft analyzes the West's information technology asymmetry of capability, which has given way to asymmetry of vulnerability. While democracies worldwide remain threatened, they also contain the means to restore themselves.

Will China succeed in what some call its grand strategy of displacing American power? Whichever scenario emerges also depends on the strategy the US chooses in response, rites Joseph Nye.

Joseph Nye writes that although the United States has long commanded the technological cutting edge, China is mounting a credible challenge in key areas. But, ultimately, the balance of power will be decided not by technological development but by diplomacy and strategic choices, both at home and abroad.

The success of U.S. President Joe Biden's China policy will depend on whether the two powers can cooperate in producing global public goods, while competing in other areas. The U.S.-China relationship is a "cooperative rivalry," in which the terms of competition will require equal attention to both sides of the oxymoron.  Joseph Nye argues that it will not be easy.

The Republican Party's willingness to indulge U.S. President Donald Trump's dangerous fantasies reveals a blithe disregard for U.S. foreign policy and national security, Stephen Walt writes.

China has the world’s largest army. Russia wields the most tanks. America owns the fanciest satellites. But who has the most cyber-power? A new National Cyber Power Index by the Belfer Centre at Harvard University ranks 30 countries on their level of ambition and capability. Offensive cyber-power—the ability to do harm in or through computer networks—is one measure. But so too are the strength of a country’s defences, the sophistication of its cyber-security industry and its ability to spread and counter propaganda.

The geopolitical and geo-economic forces wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, as examined previously in this series, are likely to slow the transition to a more sustainable global energy mix. Fortunately, the pandemic has also resulted in governments gaining vastly greater influence over whether this shift stalls or accelerates.