How China Confronts Crisis
Examine three major hinge-points in China’s history & how China responds to crisis.
America’s use of power in the world has long been entangled with dreams of world peace. In the settlements of both the First and Second World Wars, American statesmen worked to build international institutions that could resolve disputes between states as legal matters. In 1929, the U.S. Senate, through its lopsided ratification of the Kellogg-Briand Pact (there was only one dissenting vote, John J. Blaine of Wisconsin,) went so far as to ban war altogether. Ambitions of mutual disarmament drove Cold War policymakers in both Republican and Democratic administrations—and hopes for collective security, robust arms control, and in general, the beating of swords into ploughshares remain very much alive today.
Yet the bearers of such hopes are regularly mugged by geopolitical reality. To understand how liberal visions of peace through mutual understanding are undermined by human nature and by geography itself, and to organize our thinking about a realistic basis for America’s global policy, we will examine Nicholas Spykman’s classic geopolitical study America’s Strategy in World Politics. Building on the work of British geopolitical theorist Halford Mackinder, Spykman developed the idea that the key to global security was to be found in control of the Eurasian “Rimland,” an insight that has driven American grand strategy ever since, with varying degrees of self-consciousness. We will then apply the teachings of Spykman to understanding 2024’s endemic instability, from a land war in Europe to the effective closure of the Red Sea to the threat of Chinese expansionism in the Pacific. What does classical geopolitical analysis suggest for America’s actions today?
Mike Gallagher on Asian Geopolitics & Beyond
This course is part of our residential Security Studies Program. Fellows participate in morning seminars and meet prominent men and women in public life over afternoon and evening sessions. Up to 16 fellows will be selected.
Faculty
Mike Gallagher
Mike Gallagher served for four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives as Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District representative. Previously, he served seven years on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps, including two deployments to Iraq.
Mike Gallagher
Mike Gallagher served for four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives as Wisconsin’s 8th Congressional District representative. Previously, he served seven years on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps, including two deployments to Iraq. He also was the lead Republican staffer for the Middle East and Counterterrorism on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and worked in the private sector at an energy and supply chain management company in Green Bay.
Mr. Gallagher was the honor graduate from The Basic School, the Marine Corps CI/HUMINT Basic Course, as well as the MAGTF Intelligence Officers Course. He earned a Ph.D. in International Relations from Georgetown University. He also earned a Master’s degree in Security Studies with honors from Georgetown and a Master’s of Science in Strategic Intelligence from National Intelligence University. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Princeton University with a focus on Near Eastern Studies and Arabic.
Aaron MacLean
Aaron MacLean is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and the host of the School of War podcast. Previously, he was senior foreign policy advisor and legislative director to Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Aaron served on active duty as a U.S. Marine for seven years, deploying to Afghanistan as an infantry officer in 2009–2010.
Aaron MacLean
Aaron MacLean is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute and the host of the School of War podcast.
Previously, Mr. MacLean was senior foreign policy advisor and legislative director to Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR). He served on active duty as a United States Marine for seven years, deploying to Afghanistan as an infantry officer in 2009–10. Following his time in the operating forces, he was assigned to the faculty of the US Naval Academy, where he was the 2013 recipient of the Apgar Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Mr. MacLean received a B.A. in philosophy and the history of math and science from St. John’s College, Annapolis, and an M.Phil. (Dist.) in medieval Arabic thought from the University of Oxford. He has been a Boren Scholar and a Marshall Scholar and lives in Virginia, where he was born.
Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session
The End of History, Circa 1910
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
- What is “the great illusion” to which Angell refers?
- In Angell’s account, modern liberal economics render war irrational. How does his argument work? What flaws do you see in the argument?
- Are Angell’s arguments obsolete, or do you see manifestations of them in present-day debates?
Mackinder: Britain & the Heartland
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
- Why does Mackinder think that democracies struggle with understanding aggression?
- What is the case for the dominance of sea power in human history?
- Why might land power become dominant instead?
Spykman I: The Monroe Doctrine & Hemispheric Defense
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
- How did America’s geographical circumstances shape its foreign policy from the Founding through the 19th century?
- Is America a naturally isolationist country?
- What is the British strategic tradition and what relevance does that history have for post-war America?
Spykman II: America & the Rimland
Readings:
- Nicholas Spykman, Chs. 3, 4, 5, The Geography of the Peace
- Nicholas Spykman, Conclusion (pp. 446–72), America’s Strategy and World Politics
Discussion Questions:
- What necessities does America’s geopolitical situation impose in its post-war reality?
- Is hemispheric defense feasible? If so, why? If not, why not?
- What is the relationship between Spykman’s thinking and America’s actual Cold War strategy?
Grand Strategy, the Pax Atomica, & New Ways of War
Readings:
Discussion Questions:
- How does the advent of nuclear weapons affect classical geopolitical analysis?
- How do other new technologies and their warfighting applications affect the usefulness of pre-1945 geopolitical reasoning?
