Asia & the Pacific

A simplified nuclear exchange model demonstrates that China’s ability to launch a successful nuclear retaliatory strike in response to an adversary’s nuclear first strike has been and remains far from assured. This study suggests that China’s criterion for effective nuclear deterrence is very low.

In Cixin Liu's extraordinary science fiction novel "The Three-Body Problem," China recklessly creates, then ingeniously solves, an existential threat to humanity by establishing contact with the planet Trisolaris and then thwarting a Trisolaran invasion.

Analysis of the West's differing responses to Ukrainian and Armenian mass movements reveal that, contrary to the popular Wilsonian narrative, the West assists democratic movements only when that assistance coincides with its material interests.

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, China and the US have been engaged in a wide spectrum of competition that has enhanced their rivalry. We have seen debates and arguments about China's one-party system versus the US democratic system, the China-US blame game, and the ideology-centered media war. How will the pandemic reshape China-US relations? Is cooperation still possible to address the unexpected global challenge posed by the virus? Global Times (GT) reporter Wang Wenwen talked to Graham Allison (Allison), professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides' Trap?, on these issues.

The coronavirus has exposed even deeper fault lines in the increasingly acrimonious U.S.-China relationship. The U.S. is now taking appropriate measures to mitigate the risk to our national security of relying on China for critical technology, precious metals and medical supplies.

Henry Kissinger warns that many existing domestic and international institutions that have helped govern the past decades will not survive the Covid-19 crisis. He is surely correct.

Calder Walton describes four ways how intelligence services are certain to contribute to defeating COVID-19 and why pandemic intelligence will become a central part of future U.S. national security.

Joseph Nye writes that Trump's strategy of great power competition and trade wars is inadequate because the information revolution and globalization are changing world politics. Even if the United States prevails over China as a military power,  the country cannot protect its security by acting alone.

The Trump administration has made one mistake after another—and, with some foreign-policy changes, could emerge with more global power anyway. Stephen Walt details those recommended foreign policy changes.

All national leaders must put their countr's interests first, but the important question is how broadly or narrowly they define those interests. Both China and the US are responding to COVID-19 with an inclination toward short-term, zero-sum approaches, and too little attention to international institutions and cooperation.