The US Needs To Step Up In The Pacific: Facing Up To China’s Military Challenge

The Hoover Project on China’s Global Sharp Power invites you to The US Needs to Step up in the Pacific: Facing up to China’s Military Challenge on Thursday, May 5 from 3 - 4PM PT.

The US is on the backfoot in the South Pacific. Distracted by other global challenges, it has for a long time outsourced its regional policymaking to Australia and New Zealand. But the South Pacific is essential to US security. If a hostile power controls a base in the region, it could block shipping traffic from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean to the Coral Sea, and beyond. It’s time for the US to step up and make a significant commitment to the Pacific region. This talk surveys China’s interests and activities in the South Pacific and considers policy options for the US going forward.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Professor Anne-Marie Brady is a specialist of Chinese politics (domestic politics and foreign policy), polar politics, China-Pacific politics, and New Zealand foreign policy at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. She is founding and executive editor of The Polar Journal (Taylor and Francis Publishers). She has published ten books and over fifty scholarly papers, and has written op-eds for the New York Times, The Guardian, The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, and The Financial Times, among others. She was a contributor to the 2019 joint report by the Hoover Institution and the Asia Society, China's Influence & American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance.

DISCUSSANTS

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, ​Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He co-chairs the Hoover Institution’s programs on China’s Global Sharp Power and on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region.

Glenn Tiffert is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a historian of modern China. He co-chairs the Hoover project on China’s Global Sharp Power and works closely with government and civil society partners to document and build resilience against authoritarian interference with democratic institutions. Most recently, he co-authored and edited Global Engagement: Rethinking Risk in the Research Enterprise (2020).