Asia & the Pacific

Calder Walton recounts how Russia and China are using their intelligence agencies to reverse the outcome of the Cold War

Stephen M. Walt describes a "gnawing fear that we are living through a series of disruptions that are overwhelming our collective ability to respond." What does this mean for public confidence in the entire political system, and is there any cause for optimism?

Ivan Arreguin-Toft argues that non-material considerations like cyber power matter just as much as material ones in debates about U.S. retrenchment from the Middle East.

The Russian/Chinese-led bloc is expected to approve Iran's accession this week amid uncertainty over President Raisi's foreign posture and ongoing turmoil in Afghanistan.

Nathaniel L. Moir writes of historical cases in which a U.S. tendency to over-rely on military capabilities and American economic strength proved unwise and how such power eventually proved to be irrelevant. In addition to the Vietnam War as an example, the rapid collapse of the Republic of China and its large military forces in late 1948 and 1949 offers some parallels with the collapse of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan Government, despite the United States investment of trillions of U.S. dollars.

Stephen Walt argues that what 9/11 means to future generations depends less on what actually occurred on that day or on how the United States and others responded and more on what the United States and others do from this day forward. 

During the Cold War, US grand strategy focused on containing the power of the Soviet Union. China's rise now requires America and its allies to develop a strategy that seeks not total victory over an existential threat, but rather managed competition that allows for both cooperation and rivalry within a rules-based system.

White Southerners opposed to Reconstruction used violence to undermine Black political power and force uncommitted white Southerners to their side. Although structural factors made it harder for the U.S. government to suppress this violence, a series of policy failures prompted Reconstruction’s failure and generations of injustice.

As the United States emerges from the era of so-called forever wars, it should abandon the regime change business for good. Then, Washington must understand why it failed, writes Stephen Walt.

David Kilcullen, a professor at the University of New South Wales, contributes to the debate of  whether contemporary great-power resurgence constitutes a second bi-polar competition by assessing resurging state and non-state competitors and the challenges they pose to the United States–led world order. While the emerging security environment might not be a new Cold War, Kilcullen contends it may be more dangerous than in the past.