Game On: The United States and China in the Indo-Pacific

Recorded on October 19, 2015 – Hoover Institution fellow Gary Roughead discusses China’s importance and the strategic competition in the next 100 years between the United States and China. The last transfer of strategic power, between Great Britain and the United States was relatively seamless. We came from similar foundations, similar legal structures, similar ideas on trade, and so on. That is not the case with China, where demography is a problem, meaning, we need to look at the playing field differently. Because China will have a significant role in Asia, we need an interdependent relationship with China and Asia. We need to understand the broader context in which the United States, China, and other countries will be playing and what rules, guidelines, and behaviors we can expect in the coming years. Roughead concludes that we need to have the long view, accept that China and the United States will be interdependent, and think in broader terms of the Indo-Pacific playing field and the countries involved. For the United States to succeed we need to view the whole field and realize it is the next strategic competition.