Graham Allison on how China’s rising global power could lead to superpower conflict—or something else.

It takes a lot to impress Professor Graham Allison when it comes to geopolitics. He is, after all, the Cold Warrior’s Cold Warrior—as one of America’s most influential defense policy analysts and advisors, he was twice awarded the Defense Department’s highest civilian honor for his work on nuclear disarmament with Russia. He’s a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, former director of the Council on Foreign Relations, a founding member of the Trilateral Commission, and a renowned political scientist who has served as dean of the Kennedy School and head of the school’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Yet even Allison says he marvels at the rapid transformation of China, the world's rising economic, technological, and military superpower, and he says it’s well past time for the United States and the rest of the world to hear some hard truths about China’s power and potential dominance of world affairs during the 21st Century.

To explain how China has not only caught up with, but in numerous cases surpassed, the United States, Allison and a group of colleagues are writing a series of five research papers on the key areas of economics, technological advancement, military power, diplomatic influence, and ideology. The third paper, on China’s extraordinary rise as an economic superpower, states that while some may be tempted to still see China as a developing country, the truth is that it has been adding the equivalent of the entire economy of India to its GDP every four years and that the number of people in the Chinese middle class—some 400 million—now far outnumber the entire population of the United States.

Meanwhile, China is either catching up or leading in foundational technologies of the 21st century like AI, quantum computing, and green tech, while recent war games predict that China’s modernized, expanded military would likely win a military conflict over Taiwan. Graham Allison talks about China’s rise and what could be the next great superpower rivalry—but also about the possibilities for a new paradigm for the US-China relationship that goes beyond Cold War thinking.

About the Guest:

Graham Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University where he has taught for five decades.  Allison is a leading analyst of national security with special interests in nuclear weapons, Russia, China, and decision-making.  Allison was the “Founding Dean” of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and until 2017, served as Director of its Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. As Assistant Secretary of Defense in the first Clinton Administration, Dr. Allison received the Defense Department's highest civilian award, the Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, for "reshaping relations with Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to reduce the former Soviet nuclear arsenal." This resulted in the safe return of more than 12,000 tactical nuclear weapons from the former Soviet republics and the complete elimination of more than 4,000 strategic nuclear warheads previously targeted at the United States and left in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus when the Soviet Union disappeared.

Professor Allison is the author of numerous books, including: “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?” (2017), “Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States and the World” (2013), “Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe” (2004) and “Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971).

As "Founding Dean" of the modern Kennedy School, under his leadership, from 1977 to 1989, a small, undefined program grew twenty-fold to become a major professional school of public policy and government.

Professor Allison was the organizer of the Commission on America's National Interests (1996 and 2000), a founding member of the Trilateral Commission, a Director of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was educated at Davidson College; Harvard College (B.A., magna cum laude, in History); Oxford University (B.A. and M.A., First Class Honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics); and Harvard University (Ph.D. in Political Science).

PolicyCast is a production of Harvard Kennedy School and is hosted by Staff Writer and Producer Ralph Ranalli

PolicyCast is co-produced by Susan Hughes.

For more information please visit our web page or contact us at PolicyCast@hks.harvard.edu.