Asia & the Pacific

Kari A. Bingen and Heather W. Williams write that if Russia plans to deploy nuclear weapons in space to target satellites, the threat is definitely serious—and the U.S. should act fast.

During foreign policy disputes involving China and some of its most important commercial partners, why do local leaders punish or protect foreign commercial actors? The decision comes down to the political incentives facing each local leader. Understanding this variation is important because how local leaders treat foreign businesses can influence the overall effectiveness of the Chinese government’s economic coercion against foreign states. 

Power transitions affect a state’s ability to exercise economic statecraft. As a dominating and a rising power approach parity, they face structural incentives to decouple their economies. This decoupling affects business-state relations: high-value businesses within the dominant power tend to oppose their state’s economic statecraft because of its costs to them, whereas low-value businesses within the rising power tend to cooperate because they gain from it. 

Economic interdependence has long been considered important to international peace. Questions about harmful effects of the free flow of capital, however, are arising. China and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries are increasingly involving their business firms in security and intelligence work, causing a security dilemma dynamic that increases economic competition.

Recent quantitative scholarship uses warhead counts to examine whether nuclear superiority offers political or military benefits beyond having a secure second-strike capability. These analyses overlook other elements of a state’s nuclear capability such as state perceptions and beliefs.

It is a critical first step that the financial policymakers of the United States have acknowledged the need for a CBDC, but that realization is not enough. 

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, launching the nuclear age. On the 75th anniversary of that somber event, Belfer Center experts reflect on the event and its aftermath. 

Rebecca Davis Gibbons and Stephen Herzog provide an update on current efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons. 

The administration of President Donald J. Trump has consistently used fear of China to undermine nearly five decades of bipartisan consensus on US–Russian nuclear arms control. The negative consequences of these actions may last far beyond the Trump presidency. If generations of agreement between Democrats and Republicans on bilateral nuclear treaties with Russia erode, it will pose a significant setback to US national security and global stability. Future leaders may ultimately need to consider new approaches to nuclear risk reduction that preserve the benefits of the arms control regime.

Juergen Braunstein and Sachin Silva argue that sovereign wealth funds may be central to governments' efforts to balance public responsibility with private interests in post-pandemic economies.