Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J. Tellis argue that the United States has responded inadequately to the rise of Chinese power. This Council Special Report recommends placing less strategic emphasis on the goal of integrating China into the international system and more on balancing China's rise.
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2016 Today, nations increasingly carry out geopolitical combat through economic means. Policies governing everything from trade and investment to energy and exchange rates are wielded as tools to win diplomatic allies, punish adversaries, and coerce those in between. Not so in the United States, however. America still too often reaches for the gun over the purse to advance its interests abroad. The result is a playing field sharply tilting against the United States. “Geoeconomics, the use of economic instruments to advance foreign policy goals, has long been a staple of great-power politics. In this impressive policy manifesto, Blackwill and Harris argue that in recent decades, the United States has tended to neglect this form of statecraft, while China, Russia, and other illiberal states have increasingly employed it to Washington’s disadvantage.” —G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs “A readable and lucid primer...The book defines the extensive topic and opens readers’ eyes to its prevalence throughout history...[Presidential] candidates who care more about protecting American interests would be wise to heed the advice of War by Other Means and take our geoeconomic toolkit more seriously. —Jordan Schneider, Weekly Standard
The U.S.-Israel relationship is in trouble," warn Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellows Robert D. Blackwill and Philip H. Gordon in a new Council Special Report, Repairing the U.S.-Israel Relationship. Significant policy differences over issues in the Middle East, as well as changing demographics and politics within both the United States and Israel, have pushed the two countries apart. Blackwill, a former senior official in the Bush administration, and Gordon, a former senior official in the Obama administration, call for "a deliberate and sustained effort by policymakers and opinion leaders in both countries" to repair the relationship and to avoid divisions "that no one who cares about Israel's security or America's values and interests in the Middle East should want.
Systematic and concrete prescriptions for strengthening America's alliances in the Asia-Pacific region. Unlike the new and largely peaceful Europe, the Asia-Pacific region is fraught with old instabilities and new risks, as well as opportunities. America's Asian alliances face an arc of potential instability, from the divided Korean peninsula in Northeast Asia, to the nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan on the South Asian subcontinent, to an unstable Indonesia in Southeast Asia. The United States and its allies must also address the rise of Chinese power, slow the spread of nuclear and high-tech conventional weapons, maintain access to energy resources, and expand the world free-trade system. In this book, nine distinguished US and Australian strategists present systematic and concrete prescriptions for strengthening America's Asian alliances. These policy-driven chapters address the roles that the US-Japan, US-South Korea, and US-Australia alliances can play in ensuring long-term stability and prosperity in the region.
Iran: The Nuclear Challenge maps the objectives, tools, and strategies for dealing with one of the most vexing issues facing the United States and global community today. The book brings together leading experts-CFR's Elliott Abrams, Robert D. Blackwill, Robert M. Danin, Richard A. Falkenrath, Matthew Kroenig, Meghan L. O'Sullivan, and Ray Takeyh-on the issues and contingencies surrounding Iran's nuclear program, including sanctions, negotiations, U.S. and Israeli military options, regime change, and how to deal with a latent or actual Iranian nuclear weapons capability. This volume presents one of the clearest pictures of Iran's nuclear program to date, along with the various policy options available to the United States and others and their potential consequences.
Across the political spectrum, there is wide agreement that Asia should be at the center of US foreign policy. But this worldview, the "Pivot to Asia" announced by the Obama Administration in 2011, is a dramatic departure from the entire history of American grand strategy. Ten years on, we now have some perspective to evaluate it in depth. In The Lost Decade, Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine take this long view. They conclude that there are few successes to speak of, and that we lack a coherent approach to the Indo-Pacific region. They examine the Pivot through various lenses: situating it historically in the context of America's global foreign policy, revealing the inside story of how it came about, assessing the effort thus far, identifying the ramifications in other regions (namely Europe and the Middle East), and proposing a path forward.
CNN “Book of the Week” Featuring a foreword by Henry Kissinger The grand strategist and founder of modern Singapore offers key insights and opinions on globalization, geopolitics, economic growth, and democracy in a series of interviews with the author of Destined for War, and others “If you are interested in the future of Asia, which means the future of the world, you’ve got to read this book.” —Fareed Zakaria, CNN When Lee Kuan Yew speaks, presidents, prime ministers, diplomats, and CEOs listen. Lee, the founding father of modern Singapore and its prime minister from 1959 to 1990, has honed his wisdom during more than fifty years on the world stage. Almost single-handedly responsible for transforming Singapore into a Western-style economic success, he offers a unique perspective on the geopolitics of East and West. American presidents from Richard Nixon to Barack Obama have welcomed him to the White House; British prime ministers from Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair have recognized his wisdom; and business leaders from Rupert Murdoch to Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, have praised his accomplishments. This book gathers key insights from interviews, speeches, and Lee’s voluminous published writings and presents them in an engaging question and answer format. Lee offers his assessment of China’s future, asserting, among other things, that “China will want to share this century as co-equals with the U.S.” He affirms the United States’ position as the world’s sole superpower but expresses dismay at the vagaries of its political system. He offers strategic advice for dealing with China and goes on to discuss India’s future, Islamic terrorism, economic growth, geopolitics and globalization, and democracy. Lee does not pull his punches, offering his unvarnished opinions on multiculturalism, the welfare state, education, and the free market. This little book belongs on the reading list of every world leader.
The Trump administration recognizes the China challenge, but it needs a grand strategy. Blackwill recommends decisive action, sustained diplomacy, collaboration among branches of the U.S. government, and working with allies in Asia and Europe, among other approaches.
Because the American effort to 'integrate' China into the liberal international order has now generated new threats to U.S. primacy in Asia, and could result in a consequential challenge to American power globally, Washington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy. The authors argue that such a strategy is designed to limit the dangers that China's geoeconomic and military power pose to U.S. national interests in Asia and globally, even as the United States and its allies maintain diplomatic and economic interactions with China.
Blackwill examines in detail Trump's actions in a turbulent world in important policy areas, including the United States' relationships with its allies, its relationships with China and Russia, and its policies on the Middle East and climate change. This report acknowledges the persuasive points of Trump's critics, but at the same time seeks to perform exacting autopsies on their less convincing critiques.
The United States should respond to the COVID-19 reordering moment and stop deterioration in the balance of power with China, bolster relations with India and Europe, and reform the way it deals with allies and partners.
Russia not only meddled in the U.S. democratic process and sought to exacerbate American social divisions but also seeks to undermine U.S. power in Europe and around the world. Neither President Barack Obama nor President Donald J. Trump responded to Russia's intervention in a way sufficient to deter it from future attacks.
Iran: The Nuclear Challenge maps the objectives, tools, and strategies for dealing with one of the most vexing issues facing the United States and global community today. The book brings together leading experts-CFR's Elliott Abrams, Robert D. Blackwill, Robert M. Danin, Richard A. Falkenrath, Matthew Kroenig, Meghan L. O'Sullivan, and Ray Takeyh-on the issues and contingencies surrounding Iran's nuclear program, including sanctions, negotiations, U.S. and Israeli military options, regime change, and how to deal with a latent or actual Iranian nuclear weapons capability. This volume presents one of the clearest pictures of Iran's nuclear program to date, along with the various policy options available to the United States and others and their potential consequences.
Written by a former director of the CIA, this is the story of America's and the agency's role in the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. As the only person to rise from entry-level analyst to Director of the CIA and to serve on the White House staffs of four Presidents, Robert Gates is uniquely qualified to tell the unprecedented inside story of the Cold War. Drawing on his access to classified information and top-level involvement in policy decisions, Gates lays bare the hidden wars and operations the United States waged against communism worldwide. Ever certain that the fifty-year struggle with the Soviet Union was indeed a war, Gates makes candid appraisals of Presidents, key officials, and policies of the period. Among his disclosures are: how Carter laid the foundations for Reagan's covert wars against the Soviets; CIA predictions of a conservative coup against Gorbachev and the collapse of the Soviet Union; CIA and KGB "black operations" against each other; the secret relationship between Pope John Paul II and the Soviets; and three secret CIA-KGB summits. From the Shadows is a classic memoir on the career of a CIA officer at the center of power during a time when the threat of global annihilation informed America's every move.
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