Are We Ready? | The China Reckoning, With Rush Doshi

The President’s Inbox

Council on Foreign Relations

Politics, News:politics, News

4.4 • 734 Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rush Doshi, the C.V. Starr senior fellow for Asia Studies and director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council, sits down with James M. Lindsay to discuss how the United States is reckoning with the rise of China and a world of renewed geopolitical competition. This is the first 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: Rush Doshi, The Long Game: China's Grand Strategy to Displace American Order, Oxford University Press David J. Lynch, The World’s Worst Bet: How the Globalization Gamble Went Wrong (And What Would Make It Right), PublicAffairs For an episode transcript and show notes, visit The President’s Inbox at: https://www.cfr.org/podcasts/tpi/are-we-ready-china-reckoning-rush-doshi

Transcript

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0:00.0	Three, two, one.
0:03.0	The world has turned dangerous.
0:05.0	Russia wages war on Ukraine.
0:07.0	Talk of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan grows.
0:10.0	North Korea's nuclear arsenal continues to expand.
0:14.0	Iran clings to its nuclear ambitions.
0:17.0	At the same time, America's war fighting capacities under pressure,
0:20.0	a military that spent two decades combating terrorists and insurgents now contemplates fighting a major power war.
0:27.6	The long-neglected U.S. Defense Industrial Base struggles to keep pace.
0:31.6	Supply chains depend upon imports from potential foes.
0:34.6	All the while, cheap drones, autonomous weapons, and AI-in-hand systems
0:39.6	are rapidly reshaping warfare.
0:41.3	Is the United States prepared to meet the new challenges it might face?
0:45.3	In this special series from the President's inbox, we're bringing you conversations with
0:49.3	Washington Insiders to assess whether the United States is ready for a new, more dangerous world.
0:57.0	Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has been removed from power, and there are tanks now in the streets of Moscow.
1:07.0	The collapse of the Soviet Union 1991 left the United States as the world's unchallenged
1:12.8	superpower, believing that its victory in the Cold War had closed the book on great power
1:17.2	rivalry. Washington sought to remake the world in its image. How do you measure such an astonishing
1:21.9	moment in history? But the so-called unipolar moment proved to be just that. A moment.
1:32.7	Other major powers began to balk at Washington's policies and to chart their own course.
1:36.0	The result has been the return of great power rivalry.
	...

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