Politics

This NBR report examines key issues confronting the subregion of Micronesia within the Pacific Islands and considers strategic avenues for strengthening future U.S. engagement amid climate and health security challenges and U.S.-China competition. The report draws on the Pacific Islands Strategic Dialogue convened by NBR in May 2022 in Tamuning, Guam, in partnership with the University of Guam and with support from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency Strategic Trends Research Initiative.

In this NBR report, experts from Australia, India, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam discuss China’s emerging cyber, space, and autonomous weapons capabilities. They examine regional countries’ responses to counter these challenges and consider opportunities for cooperation with the United States. The report builds on a report published in January 2022.

This report from NBR’s Energy Security Program assesses the risks associated with the growing scarcity of critical minerals. The four essays focus, respectively, on the geographic concentration of critical minerals in a small number of countries (especially China), Australia’s role as a key supplier, lessons from Japan’s and South Korea’s progress in building resilient supply chains, and the outlook for the United States.

This NBR report explores how U.S.-ROK cooperation can position both countries to achieve their net-zero goals by 2050 and charts a future path for this long-standing partnership in a new era of climate action. The report focuses on the hydrogen economy, nuclear power, eco-friendly smart cities, and electric vehicles.

This report examines the understudied field of China’s political influence activities in Africa and describes the united front system’s attempts to manage overseas Chinese communities, co-opt African elites, and shape the perception of wider African audiences.

This report from the Maritime Awareness Project (MAP) draws on qualitative and quantitative data to identify historical trends of assertive behavior between China, the Philippines, and Vietnam and assess the implications for the disputes in the South China Sea. The report is accompanied by the Maritime Assertiveness Visualization Dashboard—an interactive online tool illustrating key findings.

Building on an NBR study of China’s strategic vision for Africa, this report from NBR’s “Into Africa: China’s Emerging Strategy” project examines the implications of China’s growing presence in Africa’s critical infrastructure. Each essay sheds light on a specific domain of activity—ports, railways, industrial parks, information and telecommunication networks, and power generation—and attempts to understand what it could mean for China’s global ambitions.

This report from NBR’s Center for Innovation, Trade, and Strategy examines China’s strategic approach to the digital revolution, assesses the implications for the international order, and provides a roadmap for a multilateral response by the United States and its allies and partners.

In this NBR report, leading experts from six countries—Australia, India, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam—define these countries’ perspectives on China’s military challenge and how, in partnership with the United States and each other, they can counterbalance China’s unwelcome advances.

This report from NBR’s Center for Innovation, Trade, and Strategy examines how increasing complexity in modern supply chains has introduced new vulnerabilities for companies’ intellectual property (IP) and explores ways to better protect IP throughout supply chains, with an emphasis on the use of emerging technology to achieve this goal.

This report from NBR’s Energy Security Program analyzes the role of the power sector in addressing challenges for India’s economic, energy, and environmental security and considers policy options for the country to transition to a more sustainable power mix.

This report examines efforts by the Taiwan government and civil society to counter disinformation and argues that Taiwan demonstrates unique strengths but still faces significant challenges that demand solutions.

This report explores key challenges and strategic opportunities for strengthening the power sector in South and Southeast Asia and considers options for greater U.S., Japanese, and East Asia Summit engagement in this process.

This new NBR Special Report by Nadège Rolland constitutes the first phase of a two-year project to assess China’s strategic inroads on the African continent. The report situates Africa in Xi Jinping’s strategic vision, describes the instruments that China might use to achieve its objectives, and identifies potential challenges.

This report from the John M. Shalikashvili Chair in National Security Studies examines key obstacles for the U.S.-Japan alliance in responding to Chinese gray-zone operations. The four essays shed light on the nature of China’s gray-zone capabilities and discuss policy options for improving allied responses and mitigating the potential for a larger conflict in the East China Sea.

The 2020 report from the Energy Security Program focuses on a range of critical issues, including how the Covid-19 pandemic and other developments may shape the trajectory of Southeast Asia’s power mix, what must be done to encourage investment to bridge the infrastructure gap, and what are the prospects for building out a more sustainable power sector that relies on lower-carbon and renewable energy sources. Collectively, the four essays in this report paint a clear portrait of the needs and prospects for the development of Southeast Asia’s power sector.

This report uses a novel alternative futures methodology to demonstrate that India’s strategic preferences are not fixed but could vary discontinuously under different environmental conditions.

The Chinese leadership has embarked on a journey to reshape and redefine elements of the existing international system to better fit its worldview and interests. It has therefore become imperative to better understand the types of mechanisms, institutions, norms, and rules that Beijing would like to see emerge as part of a new China-centric order. The essays collected in this NBR Special Report investigate China’s objectives, describe its favored tools to achieve them, and assess the effectiveness of its efforts across a range of countries, institutions, and functional domains.

This report describes U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific, challenges and opportunities the United States will likely face in the region over the next decade, the resources available to the United States for protecting and advancing its interests, and a recommended strategy for doing so.

This NBR Special Report offers perspectives from two Chinese scholars on the intellectual framework that structures current discussions within China about the international order. The first essay by Ren Xiao (Fudan University) surveys the growing importance of area studies within China and argues that this trend reflects the country’s increasing interests in the wider world. The second essay by Liu Ming (Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences) examines the implications of Xi Jinping’s concept of a “community with a shared future for humankind” for China’s role as a rising power willing to take on more international responsibility.

This report explores how South Korea seeks to navigate the 5G era, with a focus on the role of policy in shaping or restricting how emerging technologies can be deployed.

This report lays out the intellectual and ideological underpinnings that inform China’s vision for a new world order and examines the process of transition from thought into concrete policymaking.

Energy security has risen to the top of the economic agenda across the Indo-Pacific in the wake of supply chain disruptions, heightened geopolitical tensions, and the Covid-19 pandemic. This report from NBR’s Energy Security Program examines the region’s competing energy and economic security pressures and climate goals and evaluates the implications for regional countries and the United States.

Authored by experts at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, this NBR Special Report uses an econometric approach to identify chokepoints within technology supply chains and evaluate options for addressing related threats to economic and national security.

This new NBR Special Report assesses the current state of U.S.-ROK cooperation on export controls, artificial intelligence, and data policy; identifies challenges and barriers to greater collaboration; and proposes practical options for policymakers and businesses in both countries to advance their common interests. Experts from the United States and South Korea have collaborated on each chapter, first presenting the U.S. and ROK perspectives on a given topic, followed by a jointly authored conclusion with a set of policy options.