Roundtable in Asia Policy 17.4
Kevin Rudd’s The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the U.S. and Xi Jinping's China
In this book review roundtable on Kevin Rudd’s The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the U.S. and Xi Jinping’s China, Susan Thornton, Rory Medcalf, Joseph Chinyong Liow, Carla P. Freeman, and Kevin Rudd discuss the U.S.-China relationship and strategies for managing great-power competition to avoid a catastrophic conflict.
U.S.-China “Extreme Competition” and the Drumbeat of War
Susan Thornton
Circles of Strategy, Circuits of Risk: Rudd’s Guide to Xi’s China
Rory Medcalf
Is War in the Asia-Pacific Avoidable?
Joseph Chinyong Liow
The Challenge of Avoiding War
Carla P. Freeman
Author’s Response: Walking China and the United States Back from the Abyss
Kevin Rudd
Susan Thornton is a Senior Fellow and Visiting Lecturer at Yale Law School (United States). She is a retired senior U.S. diplomat with almost three decades of experience with the U.S. State Department in Eurasia and East Asia.
Rory Medcalf is Head of the National Security College at the Australian National University (Australia) and author of Indo-Pacific Empire: China, America and the Contest for the World’s Pivotal Region (2020).
Joseph Chinyong Liow is the Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore).
Carla P. Freeman is a Senior Expert on China at the United States Institute of Peace (United States). Previously, she was a member of the China Studies faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where she also directed the SAIS Foreign Policy Institute. Dr. Freeman specializes in China’s foreign policy, nontraditional security issues, and U.S.-China relations.
Kevin Rudd is the Global President and CEO of the Asia Society and has been President of the Asia Society Policy Institute since January 2015. He served as Australia’s 26th prime minister from 2007 to 2010 and then as its foreign minister from 2010 to 2012 before returning as prime minister in 2013. Dr. Rudd graduated from the Australian National University with first-class honors in Chinese and is fluent in Mandarin. He also holds a DPhil from Oxford University, where his dissertation addressed Xi Jinping’s worldview.
About Asia Policy
Asia Policy is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal presenting policy-relevant academic research on the Asia-Pacific that draws clear and concise conclusions useful to today’s policymakers. Asia Policy is published quarterly in January, April, July, and October and accepts submissions on a rolling basis. Learn more