Book Praise
“[An] engaging book.”
—Journal of Peace Research
“showing with rigor and clarity that the logic of strategic competition won’t lead us to greater global security and prosperity, but to more conflict and insecurity.”
—Matt Duss, executive vice president, Center for International Policy, and former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders
“an important book that directly challenges the conventional wisdom in America’s foreign policy establishment.”
—David C. Kang, University of Southern California
“powerful book…You won’t look at U.S.-China rivalry the same way again.”
—Stephen Wertheim, author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy
Welcome! People find their way here for different reasons.
Academic: By day, I’m an American scholar of international relations. I specialize in the class politics of geopolitics, with a particular emphasis on East Asian and Pacific international relations and US foreign policy. I’ve written five books, the first two with Cambridge University Press, about US-North Korea relations. My third book—Pacific Power Paradox—which examines America’s paradoxical role in sustaining, threatening, and ultimately embrittling the “Asian peace” since 1979, came out in January 2023 with Yale University Press. My fourth book, Grand Strategies of the Left, came out in December the same year. And my fifth book, just out with Yale University Press, is The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy (with Michael Brenes).
Public Intellectual: Current Affairs magazine described me as “a dissident among foreign policy intellectuals”—I love it. By night, I do a lot of pundit stuff; I try to be a public conscience. If you want to hear me sound off, about all things foreign policy, I have a regular newsletter, I’m an occasional writer for the Duck of Minerva, and host The Un-Diplomatic Podcast, which Apple Podcasts listed as one of the “Top Podcasts in Politics” for 2019. I also co-host the Bang-Bang Podcast—a show about war movies, with an anti-imperial twist.
Student/Career Advice: See the Advice for Students section of this site, which is not only for students.
Grappling: In the unlikely event you’re here to track my adventures in Brazilian jiu jitsu, this is the place.✌️