Asia & the Pacific

346 Items

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. 

A security guard stands near a sculpture of the Chinese Communist Party flag at the Museum of the Communist Party of China on May 26, 2022, in Beijing.

AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Strategic Substitution: China’s Search for Coercive Leverage in the Information Age

    Author:
  • Fiona Cunningham
| Summer 2022

After the mistaken U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999, China turned to information-age weapons to create a risk of escalation to nuclear war with the United States. This shift helps compensate for its conventional military inferiority.

Hijacked airliner headed toward World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001

REUTERS/Sean Adair

Report - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Countering Terrorism With "Blue Sky" Thinking

| May 19, 2022

In the past, strategic surprise has often stemmed from a failure of imagination. Most intelligence failures are rooted in a lack of foresight or early warning of impending events. Blue sky thinking seeks to prevent these surprises by devoting more attention not just to known risks and likely scenarios, but also to low probability, high impact events. In an unprecedented step in forging ongoing global collaboration, 129 global experts gathered in Amman, Jordan, in December 2021. The conference was held under the auspices of Jordan’s Aqaba Process and facilitated by representatives from the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center’s Intelligence Project. Attendees included intelligence officers, diplomats, military officers, private sector practitioners, and academics representing 29 countries, 5 continents, and 68 government and private sector organizations. Through presentations and discussion under Chatham House Rules, the conference facilitated an open exchange of ideas on the possible next big threats from terrorism and on strategies for moving forward.

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.

A 10 Squadron AP-3C awaits its crew as the sun rises over RAAF Base Edinburgh, Australia.

Wade Roberts

Paper

Winning Strategic Competition in the Indo-Pacific

| September 2020

The strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific involving the United States, Australia and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is arguably the most significant contemporary international relations issue. It spans all aspects of state power: hard, sharp and soft; diplomatic, information, military and economic; and all domains: air, sea, land, space, cyber, technology and innovation. But in their rush to recover ground perceived to be already lost to the CCP, neither the U.S. nor Australia have paused to devote sufficient attention to understanding the nature of strategic competition, to comprehend what winning it actually means, and therefore to grasp how best to approach it. As a result, they both continue to cede the initiative to the CCP, while it continues to compete on the terms most favorable to it.

Workers in protective suits stand by a container ship in Qingdao, China, March 31.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Analysis & Opinions - The Wall Street Journal

An Allied Plan to Depend Less on China

| Apr. 30, 2020

The Covid-19 pandemic is prompting reconsideration of issues that were thought to be settled. One is the wisdom of China as a hub in vital supply chains, a reality driven by cost considerations and the belief that integrating China into the global economy would moderate Beijing’s behavior. Unfortunately, China hasn’t moderated. Beijing has been an unreliable supplier that pressures trading partners.

People crowd a supermarket in Milan, Italy, on March 8 after the country announced a sweeping quarantine.

Claudio Furlan/LaPresse via AP

Magazine Article - Politico Magazine

Cologne Sanitizer, Boxed Wine and Bidets: How People in 68 Countries Are Coping With Coronavirus

| Mar. 22, 2020

As the novel coronavirus continues spreading, the whole world is preparing for the onslaught in similar ways—social distancing, working from home, panic buying at grocery stores. But people in different countries are also weathering this crisis in different ways, finding, for example, different products to hoard, different ways to pass the time, different people to blame and even different things to worry about.

Analysis & Opinions - Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship

Critical Times for the Atlantic Alliance

| Nov. 13, 2019

As part of the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship’s (PETR) event series, Nicholas Burns, Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations, moderated a conversation on the crisis in the transatlantic relationship with Ambassador Victoria Nuland, Senior Fellow on the Future of Diplomacy Project and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and Ambassador Philippe Etienne, Ambassador of France to the United States and diplomatic adviser to the President of the French Republic.