Japan

A Critical Review of The Strategy of Denial: American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict by Elbridge Colby, Yale University Press, 2021. 

The United States are not prepared for a cold war with China over Taiwan, yet to avoid it, America needs to start acting as if they were already upon them, and learn from the last one.

The fact that President Joe Biden chose South Korea as the first stop of his first Asian tour since his inauguration is significant. Washington and Seoul are seeking to upgrade their military alliance into a “comprehensive global strategic alliance.”

The struggle for that free and decent world never ends this side of the parousia.

Much of the world is now awakened to the PRC’s ambitions and keenly aware of its claws. America and its partners are coming to the stark realization that a renewed commitment to deterrence is the only way to ensure the twenty-first century isn’t made in the PRC.

A recent US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) report gives examples of China’s transgressions.

President Joe Biden’s China policy is coming into focus. As some of us predicted before his inauguration, he appears to be continuing the previous administration’s hard-line stance with Beijing—suggesting that the COVID-19 crisis marks a turning point akin to how the communist bloc’s attempt to seize West Berlin and South Korea solidified bipartisan commitment to waging the Cold War.

Ever since President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in 2017, Washington has been engulfed in a contentious debate whether leaving the treaty was a geo-economic blunder or a necessary step to protect the American economy.

As President-elect Joe Biden pivots to the all-important work of governing, those of us who teach and write about foreign policy are pivoting to the less-important work of forecasting how a Biden administration might steer the ship of state.