The 2013-14 Strategic Asia volume examines the role of nuclear weapons in the grand strategies of key Asian states and assesses the impact of these capabilities—both established and latent—on regional and international stability. In each chapter, a leading expert explores the historical, strategic, and political factors that drive a country's calculations vis-a-vis nuclear weapons and draws implications for American interests.

Strategic Asia 2014–15: U.S. Alliances and Partnerships at the Center of Global Power examines the trajectories of U.S. alliance and partner relationships in the Indo-Pacific in light of the region’s shifting strategic landscape. Leading experts provide comprehensive assessments of the current state of the United States’ relations with its five treaty allies, as well as with emerging "strategic partners" in Asia, and draw implications for U.S. policy.

The global system of alliances that the United States built after the Second World War underpinned the stability and prosperity of the postwar order. But during the 20th century, the multilateral NATO alliance system in Europe and the bilateral San Francisco alliance system in Asia rarely interacted. This changed in the early 21st century, as US allies came together to fight and stabilise conflicts in the Middle East and Central Asia. This volume presents the first-ever comparative study of US alliances in Europe and Asia from the perspectives of US allies: the challenges, opportunities and shifting dynamics of these fundamental pillars of order. This volume is essential reading for those interested in contemporary and future regional and global security dynamics.

America's traditional allies are in decline. Unfortunately, the distribution of global economic and military power has shifted significantly since the mid-1990s, and key U.S. geopolitical partners have suffered. So how should the United States respond to this situation? Contrary to some recent expert and political discussion, it would be a historic mistake to abandon or deliberately weaken U.S. alliances, given the tremendous value that they have added--and still add--to American statecraft. What U.S. officials should do, rather, is to adapt their alliance management strategy in ways that mitigate and help offset the geopolitical effects of allied decline. To this end, this report offers a strategic framework for alliance management encompassing 11 recommendations. These recommendations are diverse, but the common threads are strengthening and extracting maximum utility from current alliances, while also building new connections, relationships, and partnerships to reflect the changing distribution of global power. There is no single policy the United States can pursue to reverse or fully offset the relative decline of its core allies. But by taking a broad array of steps that cohere around these basic ideas, the United States can still compete effectively in a world in which its allies' strengths are significant, even if reduced from what they were before.

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

The United States has been the world's dominant power for more than a century. Now many analysts believe that other countries are rising and the United States is in decline. Is the unipolar moment over? Is America finished as a superpower? In this book, Michael Beckley argues that the United States has unique advantages over other nations that, if used wisely, will allow it to remain the world's sole superpower throughout this century. We are not living in a transitional, post-Cold War era. Instead, we are in the midst of what he calls the unipolar era—a period as singular and important as any epoch in modern history. This era, Beckley contends, will endure because the US has a much larger economic and military lead over its closest rival, China, than most people think and the best prospects of any nation to amass wealth and power in the decades ahead. Deeply researched and brilliantly argued, this book covers hundreds of years of great power politics and develops new methods for measuring power and predicting the rise and fall of nations. By documenting long-term trends in the global balance of power and explaining their implications for world politics, the book provides guidance for policymakers, businesspeople, and scholars alike.