U.S. Foreign Policy Archive

“What we’ve seen is an infinitely more assertive China,” says Kevin Rudd, president of the Asia Society Policy Institute and former prime minister of Australia, in assessing the country’s evolution under Xi Jinping. As a result, Mr. Rudd is not surprised by how rapidly the consensus view of China has shifted, with strategic competition having replaced win-win cooperation as the buzzword in the capitals of Western and Asian democracies. “The principle dynamic here has been China’s changing course itself,” he says, as well as China’s emergence as a global power. “We have a new guy in charge who has decided […]

In the 19 years that have passed since I watched the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapse, not a single moment of that day has faded from memory. It was my second day on the job as a cub reporter for the New York Daily News, and I am still a bit embarrassed to admit I was running a little late that morning. I had stopped at the elementary school polling station near my apartment in Queens to cast my vote in the mayoral primaries at around 9 a.m. A few minutes later, as I hustled to catch […]

The coming crisis of American power that is sure to follow the November election will be unique in U.S. history. Competing with China, Russia and whatever other major rivals may emerge will be less about aircraft carriers, fighter jets, nuclear submarines and stealth bombers than ever before, and more about helping other governments meet the vital needs of their citizens. Although the United States suddenly has much less of a hard power edge than it once did, due to China’s rapid and ambitious modernization of its military, and particularly its navy, Americans should treat skeptically the calls that are bound […]

When al-Qaida targeted the centers of American financial and military power on 9/11, it believed that most of the world would welcome seeing the United States knocked down from its perch of power. Whether by accident or by design, Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida’s leader and founder, had formulated his strategy based on an interpretation of classical realist theory, predicting that countries seeking to balance against American hegemony would be disinclined to get involved in any conflict that followed the attacks. Instead, while the ruins of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon still smoldered, leaders around the world pledged their […]

Though changes in trade policy create winners and losers within a given country, the net effect of lowering import tariffs is generally positive for the country’s economy as a whole. Now, however, tariffs are already low, so the trade agenda involves mostly addressing regulatory and other “technical” barriers to trade generated by countries’ domestic policies, with a core principle of international trade rules being to ensure that these domestic policies do not discriminate against imports. But using legally binding trade agreements to influence the substance of policies that apply to both imports and domestic products alike can create friction between […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Guest contributor Thomas Lee wrote the lead story in China Note this week. Amid a global pandemic and a summer of natural disasters and social unrest in the United States, it might be easy to forget that the country is still locked in a destructive trade war with China. Not that China itself is far from the minds of the two major U.S. presidential candidates, especially President Donald Trump. During last week’s Republican National Convention, Trump not surprisingly went […]