Council on Foreign Relations: The Rise and Fall of Great Powers? America, China, and the Global Order

 

Insights from Ray Dalio and Paul Kennedy (The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 1987) on the balance of power and future global order. I was in graduate school when Kennedy's book was first published and I still have the hardcover first edition somewhere. Dalio and Kennedy have both carefully studied historical examples and present, in my opinion, a realistic view of what is happening. Kennedy mentions the PRC naval build up as a very explicit, material comparison of strength, whereas Dalio focuses on financial and economic matters. Elizabeth Economy provides some interesting comments on internal Chinese politics, but I am unsure how much insight any US analysts can have into the fine details of this.

The Naval War College Review article mentioned by Paul Kennedy is: 

China’s Global Navy—Today’s Challenge for the United States and the U.S. Navy.

Related: PRC ASBM Test in South China Sea and links therein.

Panelists discuss the rise and fall of great powers and the competing grand strategies of the United States and China. 

Speakers 

Ray Dalio Founder, Co-chairman, and Co-chief Investment Officer, Bridgewater Associates, LP; Author, The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail 

CFR Member Elizabeth C. Economy Senior Fellow for China Studies, Council on Foreign Relations; Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Author, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State; @LizEconomy 

Paul M. Kennedy J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History and Director of International Security Studies, Yale University; Author, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

Bonus! Short WSJ piece on digital RMB rollout. SWIFT beware...