Are We Ready? | China's Campaign to Reshape the Global Order, With Hal Brands and Michael Kuiken

The President’s Inbox

Council on Foreign Relations

Politics, News:politics, News

4.4 • 734 Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hal Brands, Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and Mike Kuiken, Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, sit down with James M. Lindsay to discuss the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission's latest annual report to Congress and how China is working to reshape the global balance of power. This is the sixth episode in a special series from The President’s Inbox, bringing you conversations with Washington insiders to assess whether the United States is ready for a new, more dangerous world. Mentioned on the Episode: U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, "2025 Annual Report to Congress" For an episode transcript and show notes, visit The President’s Inbox at: https://www.cfr.org/podcasts/tpi/are-we-ready-chinas-campaign-reshape-global-order-hal-brands-and-michael-kuiken

Transcript

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0:00.0	Three, two, one.
0:03.0	The world has turned dangerous.
0:05.0	Is the United States prepared to meet the new challenges it might face?
0:08.0	In this special series from the President's inbox, we're bringing you conversations with Washington insiders
0:14.0	to assess whether the United States is ready for a new, more dangerous world.
0:20.0	Is America's for a new, more dangerous world.
0:27.6	Is America's time is the world's leading power coming to an end? The past three decades have seen China's remarkable rise.
0:30.6	Beijing is not just challenging the United States economically.
0:34.6	It is rapidly building up its military,
0:36.6	inflexing its diplomatic muscles around the world.
0:39.6	China's goal looks to be remaking the international system so that it is friendly to Chinese interests
0:45.0	in the needs of the Chinese Communist Party. That means surpassing the United States as an economic
0:49.8	and technological power, undercutting U.S. global leadership and values, and separating the
0:54.7	United States from its friends, partners, and allies.
0:57.5	In doing so, China is assembling its own coalition of countries eager to end U.S. primacy.
1:03.0	How should the United States adapt to the emergence of its first true peer competitor since
1:07.1	it emerged from World War II as the world's leading power?
1:10.1	What would seeding global leadership to China mean for American prosperity in values?
1:14.9	Can Washington craft a long-term strategy capable of blunting the challenge that China presents
1:20.0	and do so while avoiding great power war?
1:24.6	From the Council on Foreign Relations, welcome to the president's Inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay. Today I'm
1:30.4	joined by Hal Brands and Michael Kuyken, two members of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review
	...

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