Carnegie Council Audio Podcast

George Washington understood that building capable partners during peacetime can actually prevent war, says Heidi Grant. She is deputy under secretary of the Air Force, International Affairs, an organization which works with over a hundred countries to address shared security challenges. This includes selling them military equipment and increasing their capability to conduct their own ISR: intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.

Under Xi Jinping, China is stepping up a crackdown on freedom of expression, including in universities, reports China expert Joshua Eisenman. Is this the beginning of a new Cultural Revolution, as some people fear? If so, we need to understand that this time it will be a Cultural Revolution of the political right, not the left, says Eisenman. "The tactics that they're using are neo-Maoist tactics, but the ideas are neo-fascist."

After four decades of stellar growth, where is China's economy headed today? "In the last few years not only has the economy slowed down, but the government's commitment to economic liberalization has waned," warns Scott Kennedy, an expert on China's economy.

"I think the biggest impact of Donald Trump's presidency, particularly in Asia-Pacific, has been the concept of uncertainty," says Baker, citing the lack of a clear and concise policy from the administration. "Uncertainty, if the United States were just a small peripheral country, is manageable; uncertainty when the United States is such a large and impactful country becomes very difficult to manage."

In this post-TPP world where the U.S. has taken a step back from Asia, the vacuum is being filled by China's initiatives, such as the One Belt One Road, says Ziad Haider, former State Department special representative for commercial and business affairs. Nevertheless, we shouldn't fall into the narrative of "The United States and China are locked into competition." China's actions also offer opportunities for the U.S.

Major changes must be made if U.S. nuclear war plans are to conform to the principles of just war doctrine and the law of armed conflict, declares Stanford University's Scott Sagan. He proposes a new doctrine: "the nuclear necessity principle." In sum, the U.S. will not use nuclear weapons against any target that could be reliably destroyed by conventional means.

Michele Wucker describes a gray rhino as the "love child of the black swan and the elephant in the room." In other words, "it's a metaphor for the big, obvious thing that's coming at you that you've got a choice to deal with or not." Why has this concept struck such a chord in China, Taiwan, and Korea, while Americans tend to be more in denial about their gray rhinos?

Since South Sudan's civil war broke out in late 2013, soldiers on both sides have been using rape and other forms of sexual violence on a massive scale as a weapon of war, says Amnesty International's Sarah Jackson. The resulting refugee crisis is putting a severe strain on neighboring Uganda, a country with one of the most generous refugee policies in the world. What is at the root of this violence? How can governments and NGOs help?

Tired of conventional wisdom? Check out geopolitical forecaster George Friedman. The period that began at the end of World War II was a freak, he says. "We're returning to a more normal structure in which the nation-state is dominant, international trade is intense but managed by states for their own benefit, and where this idea that the nation-state is obsolete goes away." And find out why he's bullish on Japan and thinks we overestimate China.

"First and foremost, a G-zero is a world in which no one country has dominant power or can influence the international system of governance," explains political risk expert Meredith Sumpter. "We are amidst a transition to a multipolar world, a world that is marked by the relative rise and power of other countries, even while the United States continues to be the most powerful country."

In this inspiring interview, Brig. Gen. Bolduc discusses his time in Afghanistan and his assessment of the situation there as well as in Africa, where he was in charge of countering violent extremism. He also reveals his experiences with PTSD, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and multiple other physical injuries, explaining how he finally got help and how he is working hard to help others with the same issues.

In the West we view cyber threats as largely a technical issue, while in Russia and China they see it in terms of propaganda, information control, and influencing their domestic affairs, says Alex Klimburg. When we confuse these two narratives, we risk missing other nations' key strategies to push the Internet in unwanted directions. Indeed, almost without realizing it, we are contributing to something approaching an arms race in cyber.

Thucydides's Trap is the dangerous dynamic that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, explains Harvard's Graham Allison. So is war between China and the United States inevitable? No, says Allison, but both nations will have to make "painful adaptations and adjustments" to avoid it, starting with U.S. policy adjustments regarding the South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula.

Asia Society's Isaac Stone Fish is working on a novel set in Pyongyang, but he's also looking for the truth in the "world's most opaque country." Why does he think the North Koreans are acting rationally? What are the possible outcomes if tensions continue to rise between Kim and Trump?

The U.S. and China have fundamentally different priorities regarding the Korean Peninsula, explains Asia expert Rapp-Hooper. "So, by subcontracting North Korea policy to China," she says, "I think the United States is evincing some amount of naïveté on how far Beijing is likely to actually be willing to go."

How should companies strategize in the age of "Brump" (shorthand for Brexit and Trump)? Should they think locally rather than globally? Are trade wars inevitable, and if so, how will they affect countries large and small? Don't miss this analysis from economist Pankaj Ghemawat.

"This has happened before where we've had a great power who is essentially the leader of the international system taking a transactional approach. The closest example would be maybe Bismarck in the 1870s until the eve of World War I. There it worked quite well. . . . The drawbacks of this, of course, are that it is highly unstable."

"I still believe that we're heading toward a renewable resource-based economy. I think that it's inevitable," declares Steven Cohen. How will we get there? A combination of market forces as renewables become cheaper, better technology, and the sharing economy.

Across the world today, there is active hostility towards experts, says Tom Nichols of the U.S. Naval War College, and this is a very dangerous trend. Donald Trump didn't create this, but he certainly weaponized it politically, just as Brexiteers did in the UK.

The result of a war with China? "At best we have to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons nobody will use which are badly in need of nation building at home; at worst, we get into a war with a major power that has nuclear weapons."