September 01, 2020
Local Interests, Chinese Ambitions, and an Intelligent American Response
Review of Daniel Markey, China’s Western Horizon: Beijing and the New Geopolitics of Eurasia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).
In his book China’s Western Horizon: Beijing and the New Geopolitics of Eurasia, Daniel S. Markey, a distinguished senior research professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), examines China’s relations with continental Eurasia via case studies on Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Iran, which are mired by domestic complexities and difficult relationships between these states and their regional adversaries. China’s Western Horizon is rooted in Markey’s academic and professional pedigree. Markey served as part of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff from 2003 to 2007. His years of academic research and instruction along with his experience as a practitioner shaping and implementing US foreign policy substantiate the book’s arguments with deep knowledge and analytical rigor.
Markey’s principal contribution to the dialogue on China’s growing influence is his emphasis on the often-overlooked role that China’s immediate neighbors have in shaping Beijing’s actions and ambitions. He begins the book with a question and a tentative answer: will China’s growing presence in Eurasia (encompassing the Middle East, South Asia, and Central Asia) prove to be stabilizing or destabilizing for the region? Based on Beijing’s pattern of behavior toward its neighbors, Markey asserts that China’s involvement is more likely to exacerbate existing geopolitical and political-economic fissures than to ease them.
Read the full article from the SAIS Review of International Affairs.
More from CNAS
-
Taking on China and Russia
Commentary
Today Washington has chosen, perhaps by default, to compete with—and if necessary, confront—both Russia and China simultaneously and indefinitely....
By Richard Fontaine
-
Sharper: The State of AI
Commentary
The U.S. government's recent chip export controls are the latest salvo in the U.S.–China rivalry in artificial intelligence. Semiconductors are a key input for AI systems and ...
By Anna Pederson
-
Crafting Transatlantic Responses to BRI, with Lisa Curtis, Jacob Stokes, Josh Fitt, Carisa Nietsche, and Nicholas Lokker
Podcast
Nine years after the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s flagship global infrastructure investment program is at a critical juncture. While many countries were ini...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Jim Townsend, Lisa Curtis, Carisa Nietsche, Joshua Fitt & Nicholas Lokker
-
Sand in the silicon: Designing an outbound investment controls mechanism
Commentary
Recent congressional efforts to establish new authorities to regulate outbound investment have revived a long-simmering debate in Washington about the economic and security ri...
By Emily Kilcrease & Sarah Bauerle Danzman
