Lost Decade is an essential guide for understanding the historic shift to Asia-centric geopolitics and its implications for America's present and future.

Across the political spectrum, there is wide agreement that Asia should stand at the center of US foreign policy. But this worldview, first represented in the Obama Administration's 2011 Pivot to Asia, marks a dramatic departure from the entire history of American grand strategy. More than a decade on, we now have the perspective to evaluate it in depth. In Lost Decade, Robert Blackwill and Richard Fontaine--two eminent figures in American foreign policy--take this long view. They conclude that while the Pivot's strategic logic is strong, there are few successes to speak of, and that we need a far more coherent approach to the Indo-Pacific region. They examine the Pivot through various lenses: situating it historically in the context of America's global foreign policy, revealing the inside story of how it came about, assessing the effort thus far, identifying the ramifications in other regions (namely Europe and the Middle East), and proposing a path forward.

The authors stress that the US has far less margin for foreign policy error today than a decade ago. As the international order becomes more unstable, Blackwill and Fontaine argue that it is imperative that policymakers fully understand what the Pivot to Asia aimed to achieve--and where it fell short--in order to muster the resources, alliances, and resolve to preserve an open order in Asia and the world. Crafting an effective policy for the region, they contend, is crucial for preserving American security, prosperity, and democratic values.

A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2016

Today, nations increasingly carry out geopolitical combat through economic means. Policies governing everything from trade and investment to energy and exchange rates are wielded as tools to win diplomatic allies, punish adversaries, and coerce those in between. Not so in the United States, however. America still too often reaches for the gun over the purse to advance its interests abroad. The result is a playing field sharply tilting against the United States.

Geoeconomics, the use of economic instruments to advance foreign policy goals, has long been a staple of great-power politics. In this impressive policy manifesto, Blackwill and Harris argue that in recent decades, the United States has tended to neglect this form of statecraft, while China, Russia, and other illiberal states have increasingly employed it to Washington's disadvantage.
--G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs

A readable and lucid primer...The book defines the extensive topic and opens readers' eyes to its prevalence throughout history... Presidential] candidates who care more about protecting American interests would be wise to heed the advice of War by Other Means and take our geoeconomic toolkit more seriously.
--Jordan Schneider, Weekly Standard

Taiwan is becoming the most dangerous flash point in the world for a possible war that involves the United States, China, and probably other major powers, warn Robert D. Blackwill, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy, and Philip Zelikow, University of Virginia White Burkett Miller professor of history.

In a new Council Special Report, The United States, China, and Taiwan: A Strategy to Prevent War, the authors argue that the United States should change and clarify its strategy to prevent war over Taiwan. The U.S. strategic objective regarding Taiwan should be to preserve its political and economic autonomy, its dynamism as a free society, and U.S.-allied deterrence-without triggering a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

We do not think it is politically or militarily realistic to count on a U.S. military defeat of various kinds of Chinese assaults on Taiwan, uncoordinated with allies. Nor is it realistic to presume that, after such a frustrating clash, the United States would or should simply escalate to some sort of wide-scale war against China with comprehensive blockades or strikes against targets on the Chinese mainland.

If U.S. campaign plans postulate such unrealistic scenarios, the authors add, they will likely be rejected by an American president and by the U.S. Congress. But, they observe, the resulting U.S. paralysis would not be the result of presidential weakness or timidity. It might arise because the most powerful country in the world did not have credible options prepared for the most dangerous military crisis looming in front of it.

Proposing a realistic strategic objective for Taiwan, and the associated policy prescriptions, to sustain the political balance that has kept the peace for the last fifty years, the authors urge the Joe Biden administration to

• affirm that it is not trying to change Taiwan's status;
• work with its allies, especially Japan, to prepare new plans that could challenge Chinese military moves against Taiwan and help Taiwan defend itself, yet put the burden of widening a war on China; and
• visibly plan, beforehand, for the disruption and mobilization that could follow a wider war, but without assuming that such a war would or should escalate to the Chinese, Japanese, or American homelands.

The horrendous global consequences of a war between the United States and China, most likely over Taiwan, should preoccupy the Biden team, beginning with the president, the authors conclude.

In Xi Jinping on the Global Stage: Chinese Foreign Policy Under a Powerful but Exposed Leader, Robert D. Blackwill and Kurt M. Campbell argue that Chinese President Xi Jinping has amassed unprecedented power and conducted an assertive foreign policy meant to challenge U.S. interests in Asia and ultimately displace the United States as the dominant power in the region. The report proposes a new U.S. grand strategy toward China that recognizes Asia's growing importance to American interests and maintains U.S. primacy in the region.

The evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election is overwhelming, note CFR Senior Fellows Robert D. Blackwill and Philip H. Gordon in a new Council Special Report, Containing Russia: How to Respond to Moscow's Intervention in U.S. Democracy and Growing Geopolitical Challenge. As the report shows, Russia not only meddled in the U.S. democratic process and sought to exacerbate American social divisions but also seeks to undermine U.S. power in Europe and around the world. Blackwill and Gordon, former senior officials in numerous Republican and Democratic administrations, respectively, argue that neither President Barack Obama nor President Donald J.] Trump--for different reasons--adequately elevated Russia's intervention in the United States to the national priority that it is, or responded to it in a way sufficient to deter Russia or other hostile states from undertaking future attacks.

In this report, Blackwill and Gordon contend that Russia's intervention should not be seen as just another of many stumbles in U.S.-Russia relations over the decades but as a historic turning point because of the nature of Moscow's threat to America's democratic institutions. A more robust and comprehensive strategy to protect the United States, its allies, and its interests against Russian attacks is therefore sorely needed. To that end, the authors put forth a wide range of policy prescriptions to strengthen U.S. defenses and increase the costs of continued Russian interference. Their prescriptions include expanded sanctions on Russian officials and entities to punish past transgressions and deter future ones; strengthened measures to defend U.S. electoral bodies and cybersecurity and to create greater transparency in social media; and additional U.S. commitments to European security to better protect allies and U.S. interests against Russian aggression.Blackwill and Gordon conclude that the United States is currently in a second Cold War with Russia and urge the Trump administration to change its policies to reflect this fact.

President Donald J. Trump's actions have often been rash, ignorant, and chaotic. But an automatic dismissal of President Trump's foreign policy is too simple. It lacks a careful examination of Trump's and his administration's objectives, strategies, and policies; their connections to U.S. national interests; or their actual successes and failures. What matters most is the effectiveness of U.S. policy over time and its consistency with U.S. national interests, not the personal qualities of its leaders.

This Council Special Report by Robert D. Blackwill examines in detail Trump's actions in a turbulent world in important policy areas, including the United States' relationships with its allies, its relationships with China and Russia, and its policies on the Middle East and climate change. This report acknowledges the persuasive points of Trump's critics, but at the same time seeks to perform exacting autopsies on their less convincing critiques. It then gives a grade to each of the president's major foreign policies. Finally, this report comes to a net assessment of the overall quality of the Trump administration's foreign policy halfway through his first term.

China wants to replace the United States as the strongest and most influential power in Asia and beyond, warns Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy Robert D. Blackwill. Washington should launch an all-out effort to limit the dangers that Beijing's economic, diplomatic, technological, and military expansion pose to U.S. interests in Asia and globally, he writes.

To more effectively compete with China, Blackwill offers proposals starting with modernizing U.S. domestic infrastructure, improving education, and harnessing next-generation technologies. On the foreign policy front, Blackwill recommends spending fewer resources on the Middle East, deepening ties with allies in Asia and Europe, shifting military assets to Asia, and seeking a more constructive relationship with Russia.

Although the Trump administration is the first to recognize the failed policies of the past toward China, it has developed no such grand strategy toward the country, and thus no integrated and detailed work plan. This puts the United States at a major strategic disadvantage because China does have a grand strategy, writes Blackwill.

On ratcheting up tensions between the United States and China, the author warns, If both foolishly continue to actively seek primacy in the Indo-Pacific, few consequential compromises will be advanced or accepted by Washington or Beijing. With little or no willingness by either side to take the other's vital national interests into account, the road opens to sustained confrontation and perhaps even, in extremis, military conflict.

However, such a dangerous outcome is far from inevitable, Blackwill writes. Washington and Beijing, through sustained diplomacy, can manage this enduring policy contention in ways that avoid perpetual confrontation. This would require thoughtful and prudent statecraft in both capitals, which is now not the case.

Iran: The Nuclear Challenge maps the objectives, tools, and strategies for dealing with one of the most vexing issues facing the United States and global community today. The book brings together leading experts-CFR's Elliott Abrams, Robert D. Blackwill, Robert M. Danin, Richard A. Falkenrath, Matthew Kroenig, Meghan L. O'Sullivan, and Ray Takeyh-on the issues and contingencies surrounding Iran's nuclear program, including sanctions, negotiations, U.S. and Israeli military options, regime change, and how to deal with a latent or actual Iranian nuclear weapons capability. This volume presents one of the clearest pictures of Iran's nuclear program to date, along with the various policy options available to the United States and others and their potential consequences.

Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J. Tellis argue that the United States has responded inadequately to the rise of Chinese power. This Council Special Report recommends placing less strategic emphasis on the goal of integrating China into the international system and more on balancing China's rise.

The U.S.-Israel relationship is in trouble, warn Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellows Robert D. Blackwill and Philip H. Gordon in a new Council Special Report, Repairing the U.S.-Israel Relationship. Significant policy differences over issues in the Middle East, as well as changing demographics and politics within both the United States and Israel, have pushed the two countries apart. Blackwill, a former senior official in the Bush administration, and Gordon, a former senior official in the Obama administration, call for a deliberate and sustained effort by policymakers and opinion leaders in both countries to repair the relationship and to avoid divisions that no one who cares about Israel's security or America's values and interests in the Middle East should want.

For strategic, historical, and moral reasons, both governments should do all they can to reframe and revive the U.S.-Israel strategic partnership, the authors argue. The upcoming transition to a new administration provides an opportunity to put recent disagreements aside and to show the political will needed to reverse the negative policy trends described, write Blackwill and Gordon.

Drawing on their foreign policy experience in both Republican and Democratic administrations, they propose six policy prescriptions to repair and sustain the relationship in the two countries' mutual interest. Blackwill and Gordon argue that this mutually important partnership can be preserved, but only if leaders and publics on both sides honestly acknowledge the challenges and take meaningful steps to address them.

Blackwill was formerly deputy assistant to the president, deputy national security advisor for strategic planning, and presidential envoy to Iraq under President George W. Bush, and U.S. ambassador to India from 2001 to 2003. Gordon served as special assistant to President Barack Obama and White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region from 2013 to 2015, and as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs from 2009 to 2013.

Several nations are challenging decades of effort by the international community to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. Robert D. Blackwill and Albert Carnesale, along with eight other experts, analyze the national security consequences for the United States if new nuclear-weapon states emerge to threaten American interests. The contributors examine the nations most likely to cross the nuclear threshold and how these countries would acquire, maintain, and protect their new nuclear weapons capabilities. Individual chapters address: how nuclear weapons in Saddam Husseins hands could have altered the outcome of the Gulf War; the ways that American diplomacy and international arms control could meet the dangers posed by new nuclear nations; U.S. military options for dealing with the nuclear weapons and delivery systems of new proliferators; the role and limitations of intelligence systems of new proliferators; the role and limitations of intelligence in penetrating hostile nuclear programs; and the circumstancesif andunder which the United States should provide technical assistance to increase the safety of emerging nuclear arsenals.

This important and timely work, prepared by the leading researchers, planners, and policymakers from both Eastern and Western alliances, analyzes the major issues in the Vienna talks on conventional forces in Europe involving NATO and Warsaw Pact nations. It is likely to have a significant influence on the course of these negotiations and on emerging debate on conventional arms control. The contributors met in Moscow prior to the Vienna conference to review and compare their analyses and revised them thereafter for publication in this work.

This important and timely work, prepared by the leading researchers, planners, and policymakers from both Eastern and Western alliances, analyzes the major issues in the Vienna talks on conventional forces in Europe involving NATO and Warsaw Pact nations. It is likely to have a significant influence on the course of these negotiations and on emerging debate on conventional arms control. The contributors met in Moscow prior to the Vienna conference to review and compare their analyses and revised them thereafter for publication in this work.

The prescriptions contained in this report seek to intensify a broader and more comprehensive transatlantic partnership. Some reinforce current administration policy, especially with respect to European security and political economy, while other policy suggestions go against administration policies, particularly outside Europe. The entire thrust of the ambitious prescriptions, however, requires more vigorous and active presidential and congressional leadership than has often been seen in recent years. The most important departure from present U.S. policy is the report's emphasis on drawing Europe, over time, much further into a global strategic partnership with the United States in order to help shape the new era.