Strategic Asia 2021–22 Research Team

The Strategic Asia 2021–22 authors join a community of more than 150 leading specialists who have written for the series over the years.

Michael J. Green is Director of Asian Studies and Chair in Modern and Contemporary Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and Senior Vice President for Asia and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He previously served in government as special assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and senior director for Asia on the National Security Council staff. His recent publications on Asia include By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783 (2017) and Line of Advantage: Japan’s Grand Strategy in the Era of Abe Shinzo (2021). He serves on the boards of the Asia Foundation and Radio Free Asia and the advisory board of the Center for a New American Security. He received his undergraduate degree from Kenyon College and his master’s and doctoral degrees from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Marcin Kaczmarski is a Lecturer in Security Studies in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. His research focuses on Russia-China relations, Russia’s foreign and security policy, comparative regionalism, and the role of rising powers in international politics. Dr. Kaczmarski is the author of Russia-China Relations in the Post-Crisis International Order and has published articles in leading academic journals, including Survival, International Affairs, International Politics, and Europe-Asia Studies. He was a visiting scholar at the Chengchi University in Taiwan, the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center in Japan, the Aleksanteri Institute in Finland, the Kennan Institute in Washington, D.C., and the Shanghai International Studies University in China. Prior to joining the University of Glasgow, Dr. Kaczmarski combined research and teaching at the University of Warsaw with policy-oriented analysis for the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki and the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw.

Huong Le Thu is a Senior Fellow in the Defence and Strategy Program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in the Southeast Asia Program. At ASPI, she leads projects on Southeast Asia, including on regional alignment politics, Southeast Asian perceptions of great-power competition, regional dispute management, and ASEAN regionalism. Prior to joining ASPI, Dr. Le Thu taught at the Australian National University and held research positions at the ISEAS– Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore and the Institute of International Relations at the National Chengchi University in Taiwan. She has worked and lived in Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, and Seoul, among other cities. In 2020, she was awarded an inaugural Asia EDGE fellowship at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). Dr. Le Thu frequently comments in global media and has written for Asian Security, Asia-Pacific Review, Asia Policy, Oxford University Press, Foreign Policy, the Financial Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Nikkei Asia, the Australian Financial Review, the Straits Times, Japan Times, and Taipei Times, among others. Dr. Le Thu received her PhD from the National Chengchi University in Taiwan and holds a master’s in international studies from Jagiellonian University in Poland. She speaks five languages and has published in four.

Rohan Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. His research focuses on the grand strategies of rising powers and their impact on international security and order, with an empirical specialization in South Asia and East Asia. His book, Ascending Order: Rising Powers and the Politics of Status in International Institutions, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. His work has been published in journals such as International Affairs, Asian Security, Contemporary Politics, Survival, Global Governance, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, India Review, and International Journal, as well as in edited volumes from academic presses such as Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, University of North Carolina, and Brookings. Dr. Mukherjee has co-edited a policy-focused volume with Oxford University Press that brings together top scholars and analysts across generations from Japan and India to chart the future course of bilateral relations. He received his PhD from the Department of Politics at Princeton University and an MPA in international development from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. He has also been a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the MIT Security Studies Program and a nonresident visiting fellow at the United Nations University in Tokyo.

Rebecca Strating is the Executive Director of La Trobe Asia and an Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations in the Department of Politics, Media and Philosophy at La Trobe University. Her research focuses on Australian foreign policy and maritime disputes in the Indo-Pacific. She has published over twenty peer-reviewed articles and three monographs, with the most recent being Defending the Maritime Rules-Based Order: Regional Responses to the South China Sea Disputes (2020). In 2019, Dr. Strating was awarded an Asian Studies visiting fellowship to the East-West Center in Washington, D.C. She has been a visiting affiliate fellow at the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore and a visiting affiliate at Georgetown University, and she is currently a non-visiting fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre. Dr. Strating was awarded the Boyer Prize for best article published in the Australian Journal of International Affairs in 2017. She received her PhD in politics from Monash University.

Alison Szalwinski is Vice President of Research at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). She provides executive leadership to NBR’s policy research agenda and oversees research teams in Seattle and Washington, D.C. She is the author of numerous articles and reports and a co-editor of six volumes in the Strategic Asia series along with Ashley J. Tellis and Michael Wills. Prior to joining NBR, Ms. Szalwinski spent time at the U.S. Department of State and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Her research interests include U.S. policy toward Asia, especially U.S.- China relations and the importance of great-power competition for U.S. alliances in the region. She holds a BA in foreign affairs and history from the University of Virginia and an MA in Asian studies from Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Ashley J. Tellis is the Tata Chair for Strategic Affairs and a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has also served as Research Director of the Strategic Asia Program at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) and co-editor of the program’s annual volume since 2004. While on assignment to the U.S. Department of State as senior adviser to the undersecretary of state for political affairs, Dr. Tellis was intimately involved in negotiating the civil nuclear agreement with India. Previously, he was commissioned into the Foreign Service and served as senior adviser to the ambassador at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi. He also served on the U.S. National Security Council staff as special assistant to President George W. Bush and senior director for strategic planning and Southwest Asia. Prior to his government service, Dr. Tellis was a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation and professor of policy analysis at the RAND Graduate School. He is the author of India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture (2001) and co-author of Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and Future (2000). He holds a PhD in political science from the University of Chicago.

Joanne Wallis is Professor of International Security in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Adelaide. She is the author or editor of seven books, including Constitution Making during State Building (2014) and Pacific Power? Australia’s Strategy in the Pacific Islands (2017). Dr. Wallis is the chief investigator on two Australian Research Council Discovery projects that analyze Australian interventions in the Pacific Islands and the operation of the Australia–New Zealand alliance. She is also the chief investigator on an Australian Department of Defence Strategic Policy Grant that studies the potential of a networked security architecture in the Pacific Islands. Dr. Wallis co-edits the journal Peacebuilding, is on the international advisory board of the Round Table, and serves on the editorial boards of the Australian Journal of International Affairs and Global Studies Quarterly. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge as a Poynton Cambridge Australia scholar and then spent over eight years with the Strategic and Defense Studies Centre at the Australian National University. Prior to that, she was a lawyer at Allens Arthur Robinson (now Allens Linklaters).

Michael Wills is Executive Vice President at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). He manages all aspects of NBR’s financial and business operations, serves as secretary to the Board of Directors, and is a member of the Asia Policy journal’s editorial advisory committee. His research expertise includes geopolitics, international security, and the international relations of Asia, with a particular interest in China’s relations with Southeast Asia. Mr. Wills is co-editor of twelve Strategic Asia volumes (with Ashley Tellis and, since 2015, Alison Szalwinski) as well as New Security Challenges in Asia (2013, with Robert M. Hathaway). Before joining NBR, he worked at the Cambodia Development Resource Institute in Phnom Penh, and prior to that with Control Risks Group, an international political and security risk management firm, in London. He holds a BA (Honors) in Chinese studies from the University of Oxford.

Suisheng Zhao is Professor and Director of the Center for China-U.S. Cooperation in the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He was previously a postdoctoral Campbell National Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, associate professor of political science and international studies at Washington College in Maryland, and associate professor of government and East Asian politics at Colby College in Maine. Dr. Zhao is the founder and editor of the Journal of Contemporary China and the author and editor of more than two dozen books and several dozen articles on Chinese nationalism, Chinese politics and political economy, Chinese foreign policy, U.S.-China relations, cross- strait relations, and East Asian regional issues. His forthcoming book is tentatively titled The Dragon Roars Back: Transformational Leaders and Dynamics of Chinese Foreign Policy (2022). He received his PhD in political science from the University of California, San Diego.