Asia & the Pacific

Stephen Walt argues for a return to a realism-based U.S. grand strategy.

During the Trump administration, the usual ways of conducting diplomacy have been upended. Many positions in the State Department have never been filled, and meetings with foreign leaders such as Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin have been undertaken with little advance planning. What effect are these changes having now, and how will they affect ongoing relationships between the United States and its allies and adversaries?

The small open economies of the Gulf and Southeast Asia are pioneers in the establishment of

Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs). The SWFs of countries like Qatar and Singapore are among the

world’s largest in terms of total asset size relative to Gross Domestic Product. This article looks

at the different compulsions behind the setting up of SWFs by small open economies.

During the 1990 German reunification negotiations, did the United States promise the Soviet Union that it would not expand NATO into Eastern Europe? Although no written agreement exists, archival materials reveal that U.S. officials did indeed offer the Soviets informal non-expansion assurances, while keeping open the possibility of expansion and seeking to maximize U.S. power in post–Cold War Europe.

The Chinese cyber threat to the United States has been exaggerated. China's cyber capabilities are outmatched by those of the West, and Beijing reaps too many benefits from the internet's liberal norms to attempt to seriously undermine them.

States have long worried that their dependence on oil gives producers a means of coercion. The oil market, however, is far larger and more integrated than it used to be. The potential for coercion differs across a series of distinct market segments. In this varied market, the United States remains the dominant force.

Despite their disagreements, proponents of deep engagement and offshore balancing share an optimistic but unrealistic assessment regarding the durability of U.S. military dominance. China’s antiaccess/area denial strategy and conventional precision-strike capabilities are already undermining the United States’ military dominance in East Asia. The United States will need to adapt its military to meet this challenge.

In this new lead article, Prof. Calestous Juma, Harvard University and Prof. Yee-Cheong Lee, UNESCO, reflect on the progress made since the UN Millennium Project's Task Force report on science, technology and innovation (ST&I) was published. In 2005, the Task Force released the report Innovation: applying knowledge in development. It outlined a number of ways in which ST&I could be used to realize the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The authors claim that the report has played a key catalytic role in raising global awareness of the importance of ST&I in development.