How is China influencing international security—and why do so many analysts get it wrong? Our experts help disentangle the facts from the fiction.
September 21, 2020 9:58 AM EDT
Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, recently called for a major change in US policy towards Taiwan. He wants the United States to provide the island with a guarantee of US military protection from China. He argues it is the best way to keep the peace. He’s wrong.
September 4, 2020 9:34 AM EDT
US President Richard Nixon told Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai the United States recognized Taiwan was a part of China. Nixon made the statement during secret talks conducted during his historic visit to China in 1972. But what Nixon said in secret was intentionally obscured in the joint communiqué the two governments issued after the talks concluded.
This extraordinary act of deception, mistakenly heralded as an act of diplomatic genius, created a long-lived misunderstanding about US policy towards Taiwan that continues to poison US-China relations to this day.
November 4, 2019 6:27 AM EDT
Is Kim Jong-un preparing a dramatic provocation worthy of his predecessors? International analysts of the North Korean nuclear weapons program warn the United States should take his end-of-the-year deadline for negotiations seriously.
The North Korean leadership keeps a careful eye on US domestic politics. They read the presidential polls with the same level of interest as the candidates themselves.
US observers often complain about dramatic shifts in North Korean policy, strategy and tactics, but predicting US policy can be just as difficult. Clinton’s “Agreed Framework” gave way to Bush’s “Axis of Evil.” Obama’s “Strategic Patience” preceded Trump’s “Fire and Fury.” The historic US outreach in Singapore ended with the United States walking out in Hanoi.
Like many Americans, the North Koreans are trying to guess what might come next. Read more >
October 28, 2019 5:46 AM EDT
International and Chinese participants discuss verification technologies at the 16th PIIC Beijing Seminar on International Security in Shenzhen, China. The conference was sponsored by the Chinese Arms Control and Disarmament Association (CACDA), the Program for Science and National Security Studies (PNSS) at China’s Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics (IAPCM) and the US-based Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI).
Fu Cong, the director general of the Arms Control Department of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, recently called on all nuclear weapons states to abandon the policy of preparing to launch nuclear weapons on warning of an incoming nuclear attack. He issued the unprecedented official statement in his keynote address to a major international arms control conference held in Shenzhen in mid-October.
Cong also asked nuclear weapons states to take additional steps to diminish the role of nuclear weapons in their national security doctrines, including joining China in publicly committing to never use nuclear weapons first. Read more >
September 29, 2019 7:48 AM EDT
Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong prepares to proclaim the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949.
President Trump’s trade war is demolishing US–China relations. The presidential candidates, Congress and now General Mattis are all lending a hand. Before long the entire economic, social and cultural infrastructure erected after the United States recognized the People’s Republic in 1979 will be a pile of rubble. Read more >
