In Awkward Embrace, Phillip Swagel applies his experience at the Treasury Department to show the reader why America's economic relationship with China has been a beneficial one and details what needs to happen for this trend to continue. Daniel Blumenthal, a former official specializing in Asia at the Department of Defense, is far less optimistic when examining the military, diplomatic, and security ties the United States has--or lacks--with China. China's overall view of the West--and especially of America--is one of hostility and suspicion. Furthermore, China has engaged in military, diplomatic, and human rights actions that are objectionable to a nation such as the United States, which seeks to encourage the establishment of responsible government worldwide. The tension here is real: how can the United States manage this relationship in a way that keeps its economic engagement with China on a steady course but likewise protects its national security interests? Blumenthal and Swagel offer three possible paths for the U.S.-China relationship. In all of them, they strive to demonstrate how internal forces are shaping China's interactions with other nations, and, furthermore, how US leaders can attempt to attain a world order that includes a strong China that contributes positively, while nonetheless preparing for the worst-case-scenario of China engaging in more assertive and destabilizing behavior.

This is a book about China's grand strategy and its future as an ambitious, declining, and dangerous rival power. Once the darling of U.S. statesmen, corporate elites, and academics, the People's Republic of China has evolved into America's most challenging strategic competitor. Its future appears increasingly dystopian. This book tells the story of how China got to this place and analyzes where it will go next and what that will mean for the future of U.S. strategy. The China Nightmare makes an extraordinarily compelling case that China's future could be dark and the free world must prepare accordingly.

Three years ago, when I first met Talbert Faircloth and his wife, Dora, I found it very hard to believe the story that they told me. Talbert was sick at the time, and jobless and angry. Two years earlier he had been carried breathless out of the cotton mill on a stretcher, never to return to work again. I found it hard to believe that thousands of workers in the South's largest and oldest industry could have been afflicted by a crippling disease for years and not have known that they had it or even what caused it. In time, I learned that Talbert's story — like that of 35,000 other Southern textile workers — was so wrought with truth and so difficult for the region's most powerful industry to accept, that it had been suppressed and ignored for decades. A year ago, during a conference at Highlander Center in Tennessee, I first heard Les Falk recount his experiences as medical administrator for the United Mine Workers Health and Retirement Fund. The conference brought together doctors, nurses, organizers and health workers from across the South to discuss topics and articles for this health issue of Southern Exposure and to share common experiences in the health field. Les Falk's recollections of the UMWA Fund's battles with entrenched coal company doctors during the early 1950s gave our gathering of Southern health activists a sense of rootedness in our region's tradition of struggle and innovation in organizing health care.

Rise of the Revisionists: Russia, China, and Iran is a five-essay volume, edited by the American Enterprise Institute’s Gary J. Schmitt, that examines the three rising powers as they challenge the US and the global order in three critical regions of the world. Essays by the American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick W. Kagan on Russia and Dan Blumenthal on China and by Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Senior Fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht on Iran analyze the historical roots of each country’s ambitions, their strategic goals, and possible US policies for meeting the challenges and threats posed by each. Those essays are framed by an introduction by Gary Schmitt that places the tests facing the US foreign policy in a broader strategic framework and by a concluding essay by Hudson Institute Scholar Walter Russell Mead that looks to the Father of History, Thucydides, to provide insight into the complex set of domestic and foreign realities that shape American statecraft in this most challenging time.

In Strategic Asia 2012-13: China’s Military Challenge, leading experts assess and forecast the impact of China’s growing military capabilities. What are China’s strategic aims? What are the challenges and opportunities facing the United States? How is the region responding to China’s military power and to the U.S. policy of “strategic rebalancing”?

Assessments of the military competition between China and the U.S. are badly needed but mostly missing. Such assessments should consider the political objectives of the competitors, their military doctrines, and alliance politics, in addition to quantitative measures of military power in the context in which such capabilities would be deployed. Clashing political and military objectives will define the rivalry between the U.S. and China. For the U.S., the most important characteristics of the rivalry are those that impinge on Washington's ability to defend its interests in the world's most important region. These interests include protecting the U.S. homeland, preventing the emergence of a hostile hegemon in Asia, encouraging continued liberal economic and political reforms, and preserving the global commons. These goals must be assessed against China's growing ability to coerce U.S. allies, interdict U.S. forces, and cut off U.S. access to parts of the global commons in possible pursuit of regional hegemony. Considered in these terms, the United States may not have the overwhelming advantage that many assume.