Book picks similar to
The China Challenge: Shaping the Choices of a Rising Power by Thomas J. Christensen
china
non-fiction
politics
asia
Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China
Ezra F. Vogel - 2011
And no scholar is better qualified than Ezra Vogel to disentangle the contradictions embodied in the life and legacy of China's boldest strategist--the pragmatic, disciplined force behind China's radical economic, technological, and social transformation.
The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World
Peter Frankopan - 2018
Today, they lead to Beijing.'When The Silk Roads was published in 2015, it became an instant classic. A major reassessment of world history, it compelled us to look at the past from a different perspective. The New Silk Roads brings this story up to date, addressing the present and future of a world that is changing dramatically.Following the Silk Roads eastwards, from Europe through to China, by way of Russia and the Middle East, The New Silk Roads provides a timely reminder that we live in a world that is profoundly interconnected. In an age of Brexit and Trump, the themes of isolation and fragmentation permeating the Western world stand in sharp contrast to events along the Silk Roads since 2015, where ties have been strengthened and mutual cooperation established.With brilliant insight, Peter Frankopan takes a fresh look at the network of relationships being formed along the length and breadth of the Silk Roads today, assessing the global reverberations of these continual shifts in the centre of power - all too often absent from headlines in the West. This important - and ultimately hopeful - book asks us to reassess who we are and where we are in the world, illuminating the themes on which all our lives and livelihood depend.
Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond
Michael Ignatieff - 2000
In Virtual War, he offers an analysis of the conflict in Kosovo and what it means for the future of warfare. He describes the latest phase in modern combat: war fought by remote control. In real war, nations are mobilized, soldiers fight and die, victories are won. In virtual war, however, there is often no formal declaration of hostilities, the combatants are strike pilots and computer programmers, the nation enlists as a TV audience, and instead of defeat and victory there is only an uncertain endgame.Kosovo was such a virtual war, a war in which U.S. and NATO forces did the fighting but only Kosovars and Serbs did the dying. Ignatieff examines the conflict through the eyes of key players--politicians, diplomats, and generals--and through the experience of the victims, the refugees and civilians who suffered. As unrest continues in the Balkans, East Timor, and other places around the world, Ignatieff raises the troubling possibility that virtual wars, so much easier to fight, could become the way superpowers impose their will in the century ahead.
Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare
Thomas Rid - 2020
Spy agencies pour vast resources into hacking, leaking, and forging data, often with the goal of weakening the very foundation of liberal democracy: trust in facts. Thomas Rid, a renowned expert on technology and national security, was one of the first to sound the alarm. More than four months before the 2016 election, he warned that Russian military intelligence was "carefully planning and timing a high-stakes political campaign to disrupt the democratic process. But as crafty as such so-called active measures have become, they are not new.The story of modern disinformation begins with the post-Russian Revolution clash between communism and capitalism, which would come to define the Cold War. In Active Measures, Rid reveals startling intelligence and security secrets from materials written in more than ten languages across several nations, and from interviews with current and former operatives. He exposes the disturbing yet colorful history of professional, organized lying, revealing for the first time some of the century's most significant operations--many of them nearly beyond belief. A White Russian ploy backfires and brings down a New York police commissioner; a KGB-engineered, anti-Semitic hate campaign creeps back across the Iron Curtain; the CIA backs a fake publishing empire, run by a former Wehrmacht U-boat commander, that produces Germany's best jazz magazine. Rid tracks the rise of leaking, and shows how spies began to exploit emerging internet culture many years before WikiLeaks. Finally, he sheds new light on the 2016 election, especially the role of the infamous "troll farm" in St. Petersburg as well as a much more harmful attack that unfolded in the shadows.Active Measures takes the reader on a guided tour deep into a vast hall of mirrors old and new, pointing to a future of engineered polarization, more active and less measured--but also offering the tools to cut through the deception.
Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade
Bill Emmott - 2008
Though books such as The World Is Flat and China Shakes the World consider them only as individual actors, Emmott argues that these three political and economic giants are closely intertwined by their fierce competition for influence, markets, resources, and strategic advantage. Rivals explains and explores the ways in which this sometimes bitter rivalry will play out over the next decade—in business, global politics, military competition, and the environment—and reveals the efforts of the United States to manipulate and benefit from this rivalry. Identifying the biggest risks born of these struggles, Rivals also outlines the ways these risks can and should be managed by all of us.
Stealth War: How China Took Over While America's Elite Slept
Robert Spalding - 2019
While those in power have been distracted and disorderly, China has waged a six-front war on America's economy, military, diplomacy, technology, education, and infrastructure--and they're winning. It's almost too late to undo the shocking, though nearly invisible, victories of the Chinese.In Stealth War, retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Spalding reveals China's motives and secret attacks on the West. Chronicling how our leaders have failed to protect us over recent decades, he provides shocking evidence of some of China's most brilliant ploys, including:- Placing Confucius Institutes in universities across the United States that serve to monitor and control Chinese students on campus and spread communist narratives to unsuspecting American students.- Offering enormous sums to American experts who create investment funds that funnel technology to China.- Signing a thirty-year agreement with the US that allows China to share peaceful nuclear technology, ensuring that they have access to American nuclear know-how.Spalding's concern isn't merely that America could lose its position on the world stage. More urgently, the Chinese Communist Party has a fundamental loathing of the legal protections America grants its people and seeks to create a world without those rights.Despite all the damage done so far, Spalding shows how it's still possible for the U.S. and the rest of the free world to combat--and win--China's stealth war.
Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World
H.R. McMaster - 2020
General H.R. McMaster, U.S. Army, ret., the former National Security Advisor and author of the bestselling classic Dereliction of Duty, comes a bold and provocative re-examination of the most critical foreign policy and national security challenges that face the United States, and an urgent call to compete to preserve America’s standing and security.Across multiple administrations since the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy has been misconceived, inconsistent, and poorly implemented. As a result, America and the free world have fallen behind rivals in power and influence. Meanwhile threats to security, freedom, and prosperity, such as nuclear proliferation and jihadist terrorism have grown. In BATTLEGROUNDS, H.R. McMaster describes efforts to reassess and fundamentally shift policies while he was National Security Advisor. And he provides a clear pathway forward to improve strategic competence and prevail in complex competitions against our adversaries.BATTLEGROUNDS is a groundbreaking reassessment of America’s place in the world, drawing from McMaster’s long engagement with these issues, including 34 years of service in the U.S. Army with multiple tours of duty in battlegrounds overseas and his 13 months as National Security Advisor in the Trump White House. It is also a powerful call for Americans and citizens of the free world to transcend the vitriol of partisan political discourse, better educate themselves about the most significant challenges to national and international security and work together to secure peace and prosperity for future generations.
The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations
John Baylis - 1997
The book features three new chapters on International Law, Terrorism, and Social Constructivism and two updated case studies. Written specially for those coming to the subject for the first time, this text has been carefully edited by John Baylis and Steve Smith to ensure a coherent, accessible and lively account of the globalization of world politics. As with the previous edition, there is a companion website that offers up-to-date case studies of the conflicts in Kosovo and the 1990-91 Gulf War and a new case study on Iraq. The Globalization of World Politics, Third Edition, is ideal for undergraduate and graduate courses in International Relations.
The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History
Philip Bobbitt - 2002
But now our world has changed irrevocably. What faces us in this era of fear and uncertainty? How do we protect ourselves against war machines that can penetrate the defenses of any state? Visionary and prophetic, The Shield of Achilles looks back at history, at the “Long War” of 1914-1990, and at the future: the death of the nation-state and the birth of a new kind of conflict without precedent.
China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power
Rob Gifford - 2007
It flows three thousand miles from east to west, passing through the factory towns of the coastal areas, through the rural heart of China, then up into the Gobi Desert, where it merges with the Old Silk Road. The highway witnesses every part of the social and economic revolution that is turning China upside down.In this utterly surprising and deeply personal book, acclaimed National Public Radio reporter Rob Gifford, a fluent Mandarin speaker, takes the dramatic journey along Route 312 from its start in the boomtown of Shanghai to its end on the border with Kazakhstan. Gifford reveals the rich mosaic of modern Chinese life in all its contradictions, as he poses the crucial questions that all of us are asking about China: Will it really be the next global superpower? Is it as solid and as powerful as it looks from the outside? And who are the ordinary Chinese people, to whom the twenty-first century is supposed to belong? Gifford is not alone on his journey. The largest migration in human history is taking place along highways such as Route 312, as tens of millions of people leave their homes in search of work. He sees signs of the booming urban economy everywhere, but he also uncovers many of the country’s frailties, and some of the deep-seated problems that could derail China’s rise. The whole compelling adventure is told through the cast of colorful characters Gifford meets: garrulous talk-show hosts and ambitious yuppies, impoverished peasants and tragic prostitutes, cell-phone salesmen, AIDS patients, and Tibetan monks. He rides with members of a Shanghai jeep club, hitchhikes across the Gobi desert, and sings karaoke with migrant workers at truck stops along the way.As he recounts his travels along Route 312, Rob Gifford gives a face to what has historically, for Westerners, been a faceless country and breathes life into a nation that is so often reduced to economic statistics. Finally, he sounds a warning that all is not well in the Chinese heartlands, that serious problems lie ahead, and that the future of the West has become inextricably linked with the fate of 1.3 billion Chinese people.“Informative, delightful, and powerfully moving . . . Rob Gifford’s acute powers of observation, his sense of humor and adventure, and his determination to explore the wrenching dilemmas of China’s explosive development open readers’ eyes and reward their minds.” –Robert A. Kapp, president, U.S.-China Business Council, 1994-2004
The Perfect Weapon: How the Cyber Arms Race Set the World Afire
David E. Sanger - 2018
The Perfect Weapon is the riveting story of how, in less than a decade, cyberwarfare displaced terrorism and nuclear attacks as the greatest threat to American national security. Cheap to acquire, difficult to defend against, and designed to shield their user's identities so as to complicate retaliation, these weapons are capable of an unprecedented range of offensive tactics; they can take us just short of war, allowing for everything from disruption to theft to the cause of widespread damage of essential infrastructure systems. And the vulnerability of those systems has created a related but equally urgent conflict: American companies like Apple and Cisco must claim allegiance to no government in the name of selling secure products around the globe yet the US intelligence agencies want the help of such companies in defending against future cyberattacks. Reported and written with unprecedented access by New York Times chief Washington correspondent and bestselling author David Sanger, The Perfect Weapon takes readers inside war rooms and boardrooms, into the secret cyberdens of American and Chinese military, to give the deep-background story of the increasingly pitched battle between nations, their governments, their cyberwarriors, and their corporations.
Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers
Richard E. Neustadt - 1986
"An illuminating guide to the use and abuse of history in affairs of state".--Arthur Schlesinger.
Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power
Howard W. French - 2017
That diffidence has now been set aside. China has asserted its place among the global heavyweights, revealing its plans for pan-Asian geopolitical dominance by building up its navy, fabricating new islands to support its territorial claims in areas like the South China Sea, and diplomatically bullying smaller players.Underlying this shift in attitude is a strain of thinking that casts China's present-day actions in historical terms. China is now once more on the path to restoring the glories of its dynastic past. Howard W. French demonstrates that if we can understand how that historical identity informs current actions — in ways ideological, philosophical, and even legal — we can learn to forecast just what kind of global power China intends to become — and to interact wisely with the superpower.
China Goes Global: The Partial Power
David Shambaugh - 2013
Indeed, China has famously become the "workshop of the world." Yet, while China watchers have shed much light on the country's internal dynamics--China's politics, its vast social changes, and its economic development--few have focused on how this increasingly powerful nation has become more active and assertive throughout the world. In China Goes Global, eminent China scholar David Shambaugh delivers the book tmany have been waiting for--a sweeping account of China's growing prominence on the international stage. Thirty years ago, China's role in global affairs beyond its immediate East Asian periphery was decidedly minor and it had little geostrategic power. As Shambaugh charts, though, China's expanding economic power has allowed it to extend its reach virtually everywhere--from mineral mines in Africa, to currency markets in the West, to oilfields in the Middle East, to agribusiness in Latin America, to the factories of East Asia. Shambaugh offers an enlightening look into the manifestations of China's global presence: its extensive commercial footprint, its growing military power, its increasing cultural influence or "soft power," its diplomatic activity, and its new prominence in global governance institutions. But Shambaugh is no alarmist. In this balanced and well-researched volume, he argues that China's global presence is more broad than deep and that China still lacks the influence befitting a major world power--what he terms a "partial power." He draws on his decades of China-watching and his deep knowledge of the subject, and exploits a wide variety of previously untapped sources, to shed valuable light on China's current and future roles in world affairs. - Description from Amazon.com
How India Sees The World
Shyam Saran - 2017
In this magisterial book, Saran discerns the threads that tie together his experiences as a diplomat.In his book, part memoir and part thesis on India’s international relations since Independence, Shyam Saran discerns the threads that tie together his experiences as a diplomat. Using the prism of Kautilya’s Arthashastra and other ancient treatises on statecraft, Saran shows the historical sources of India’s worldview. He looks at India’s neighbourhood and the changing wider world through this lens and arrives at fascinating conclusions — the claims that the world is hurtling towards Chinese unipolarity are overblown; international borders are becoming irrelevant as climate change and cyber terror bypass them; and India shouldn’t hold its breath for a resolution to its border disputes with China and Pakistan in the foreseeable future. The book also takes the reader behind the closed doors — from Barack Obama popping by a tense developing-country strategy meeting at the Copenhagen climate change summit to the private celebratory dinner thrown by then US President George W. Bush for then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the success of the nuclear deal.Praise For The Book - ‘Part history, part memoir, How India Sees the World is an illuminating and at times controversial insight into the thinking of one of India’s great diplomats and civil servants. A vigorous defender of India’s national interests, Shyam Saran offers us a unique and candid view of policy deliberations at the highest levels of the Indian government. He rightly argues for a deeper understanding of China and the historic factors which inform and shape its strategic behaviour today. Moreover, Ambassador Saran provides a timely overview of the contemporary challenges facing global politics, including but not limited to cyberspace, climate change and outer space. This is a strong contribution from a fine strategic thinker’ – *Kevin Rudd, former prime minister of Australia*‘As an insightful, acute and erudite description of the well-springs of Indian foreign policy, Shyam Saran’s How India Sees the World is unmatched. Drawing on his deep experience in crucial positions and his undoubted intellectual gifts, this book is required reading for anyone interested in India’s role in the world, and the future of Asia and the world. His familiarity with traditional Indian statecraft, and his focus on China - a country he is familiar with and has studied for over forty years - makes for fascinating and thought-provoking reading. A must read and an essential addition to any library on modern India’ – *Shivshankar Menon, former national security advisor of India*