Balance of Powers
What Does China Want?
David Kang, Jackie Wong & Zenobia Chan
International Security, Summer 2025, Pages 46-81
Abstract:
The conventional wisdom is that China is a rising hegemon eager to replace the United States, dominate international institutions, and re-create the liberal international order in its own image. Drawing on data from 12,000 articles and hundreds of speeches by Xi Jinping, to discern China's intentions we analyze three terms or phrases from Chinese rhetoric: “struggle” (斗争), “rise of the East, decline of the West” (东升西降), and “no intention to replace the United States” ((无意取代美国). Our findings indicate that China is a status quo power concerned with regime stability and is more inwardly focused than externally oriented. China's aims are unambiguous, enduring, and limited: It cares about its borders, sovereignty, and foreign economic relations. China's main concerns are almost all regional and related to parts of China that the rest of the region has agreed are Chinese -- Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Our argument has three main implications. First, China does not pose the type of military threat that the conventional wisdom claims it does. Thus, a hostile U.S. military posture in the Pacific is unwise and may unnecessarily create tensions. Second, the two countries could cooperate on several overlooked issue areas. Third, the conventional view of China plays down the economic and diplomatic arenas that a war-fighting approach is unsuited to address.
Access Denied? The Sino-American Contest for Military Primacy in Asia
Nicholas Anderson & Daryl Press
International Security, Summer 2025, Pages 118-151
Abstract:
How has the balance of power shifted in maritime East Asia, and what does this change mean for the U.S.-China military competition in the region? We examine these questions by focusing on a central pillar of U.S. military might -- land-based air power -- in the context of a war over Taiwan. We create a new, unclassified, and transparent model of a Taiwan conflict, which allows users to explore multiple scenarios, alternative U.S. basing options, various People's Liberation Army attack strategies, and a range of potential U.S. defensive enhancements to see how those alternatives influence outcomes. We find that: (1) the United States' current approach to defend Taiwan exposes U.S. forces to significant risk of catastrophic defeat; (2) the U.S. Air Force's answer to this problem is both unlikely to work and escalatory; and (3) a combination of hardening air bases and enhancing missile defenses and local jamming at U.S. facilities is a better option. More broadly, U.S. national security policy toward China approaches an inflection point. The United States can lean in and significantly enhance the resilience of its forces in East Asia; lean back and rely more on instruments of military power that are less vulnerable to China's regional defense systems; or reconsider its broader geopolitical goals in the region. The current path, seeking to deter Chinese attacks with a vulnerable forward-based military posture, courts disaster.
One Sentiment, Multiple Interpretations: Contrasting Official and Popular Anti-Americanism in China
Yinxian Zhang & Di Zhou
Sociological Science, August 2025
Abstract:
This study contrasts official and popular expressions of anti-Americanism in China by comparing narratives from People’s Daily and Zhihu between 2011 and 2022. Using computational and qualitative methods, we examined sentiment trends, topics, and opinions in official and popular discourses. We find that although both discourses have become increasingly negative toward the United States, they diverge significantly in specific expressions: official discourse mirrors Western liberal critiques of American social problems but attributes these issues to American democracy, whereas popular discourse blends left- and right-wing populism and blames liberal elites and capitalism for the American decline. These findings highlight both the limits of state control over public opinion and the pluralistic nature of nationalist expressions. The study also situates Chinese local political discourse in unexpected contexts, anti-Americanism within a global zeitgeist, discussing how populism transcends borders and shapes local political discourse in unexpected contexts.
Creating Status Loss: Delegitimation through Information Warfare
Alex Yu-Ting Lin
International Studies Quarterly, September 2025
Abstract:
How do states compete for status -- i.e., an elevated position in the international order? Conventional wisdom suggests that states do so by enhancing their own status, such as by joining selective international institutions or winning wars. I theorize and test another strategy: reducing their competitor's status through delegitimation. By spreading information about the target's failure (i.e., character assassination), delegitimation can undermine the target's status in the eyes of third-party states and subvert the target's ability to form coalitions with said third-party states. I test my theory through a survey experiment in Canada, wherein select respondents were exposed to Chinese information campaigns about US failure in the Middle East. Exposure to delegitimation reduces the respondents’ assessment of US status, in turn reducing their (1) support for Canada to participate in joint military exercises with the United States and (2) assessment of US credibility in multilateral trade negotiations. I contextualize these results through a case study of Chinese delegitimation of US policy in Africa and its impact on African countries’ alignment with the United States. My analysis highlights the changing character of war: the mechanisms and effects of information warfare, including America's psychological operations, China's “three wars,” or Russia's active measures.
Casus Belli
Mats Ekman
Kyklos, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article proposes that wars are fought to bring about and monitor mutual reductions of overinvestment in broadly defined military preparedness. If two potential combatants are overinvested in military preparedness, it is in their individual interest to scale down in order to use their resources in politically more desirable ways. However, unilateral disarmament exposes one to the risk of extortion by the not-yet-disarmed side. Wars can therefore be a politically desirable way of monitoring the other side's disarmament. This hypothesis predicts fewer civilian deaths from war the more specialized the combatants are, the exceeding rarity of three-way wars, and also offers a number of additional implications.
Does the US Really Embolden Its Allies? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Japan
Yasuki Kudo & Viet Hung Nguyen Cao
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do patrons’ signals of security commitments embolden junior partners? Scholars and practitioners have considered that supportive gestures by patrons could motivate junior partners to adopt more aggressive postures in their own disputes. While the theoretical logic is compelling when considering states as unitary actors, it is less clear if this logic applies to the domestic public that may have differing interests from leaders. To complement this gap, we conducted a survey experiment in Japan, a close US ally with a territorial dispute with China. We find that US presidential signals increase the credibility of US military intervention in the dispute; however, no evidence of emboldenment effects is found -- public support for escalatory policies does not increase accordingly. Additionally, we find that US signals do not encourage the public to punish leaders backing down after announcing aggressive policies. These findings challenge the conventional understanding of an important effect of alliance politics.
Military Experience and Casualty Sensitivity in Elite Discourse: Evidence From the U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
Michael Kenwick, Sumin Lee & Burcu Kolcak
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Veterans are disproportionately represented among political elites, and the question of whether military experience shapes their behavior is a central puzzle in the study of international relations. Existing theories link military experience with hawkish or dovish foreign policy preferences. Rather than determining their positions on the use of force ex ante, we argue that domain-specific knowledge and their elevated social status will make veterans less likely to change their expressed positions, especially in response to wartime casualties. We test our argument by analyzing Congressional speeches referencing the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, finding strong support for our expectations. Our core insight is that veteran politicians are partisans first and veterans second, and that military experience may say more about how they update, rather than establish, their political positions.
Polarized Patriots: Political Giving by U.S. Military Officers
Neil Snyder
Armed Forces & Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
How has political polarization affected political giving by military officers? I argue that public data on military officers’ donations to political causes is likely to reveal partisan and ideological divides among military officer donors. I analyze military officers’ donations from 1979 to 2024 and show that the number of military officers donating to political causes has increased dramatically. The results show that military officer donors are polarized, sorted by their partisan donation tendencies and divided by political ideology. While the data show military officer donors are unlikely to be representative of all military officers, I find that military officer donors lean Republican more than nonmilitary partisan donors and are more conservative than other partisan donors (including donors from many other professional classes). The findings are significant to American civil−military relations, because military officers’ political giving may exacerbate known challenges with political polarization and civil−military relations.
Launching by cavitation
Dalei Wang et al.
Science, 28 August 2025, Pages 935-939
Abstract:
Cavitation, characterized by formation of vapor bubbles in a low-pressure or high-temperature region of a liquid, is often destructive, but it can be harnessed for actuators and robots. We exploit cavitation to accumulate substantial energy in superheated liquids by suppressing its immediate release until reaching a stability limit. The energetic, unstable bubbles collapse violently, producing a burst of high power and force that initiates motion. Notably, a millimeter-scale device launched by cavitation can jump to a height of 1.5 meters -- reaching a 12 meters per second (m/s) peak velocity, a 7.14 × 10^4 m/s^2 acceleration, and a 0.64% energy efficiency -- and can also swim on water at 12 centimeters per second. Cavitation-based launching works with a broad range of device materials, liquid media, stimuli, and operational environments.