Model Diplomacy
World101
CFR Centennial
Council of Councils
Think Global Health
President Trump sent U.S. troops to the border with Mexico to supplement the work of authorities there. President Biden pledges a new approach as pressures mount along the boundary.
About the Expert
Expert Bio
Joshua Kurlantzick is senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He is the author, most recently, of A Great Place to Have a War: America in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA. Kurlantzick was previously a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he studied Southeast Asian politics and economics and China's relations with Southeast Asia, including Chinese investment, aid, and diplomacy. Previously, he was a fellow at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy and a fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy. He is currently focused on China’s relations with Southeast Asia, and China’s approach to soft and sharp power, including state-backed media and information efforts and other components of soft and sharp power. He is also working on issues related to the rise of global populism, populism in Asia, and the impact of COVID-19 on illiberal populism and political freedom overall.
Kurlantzick has also served as a columnist for Time, a correspondent for The Economist based in Bangkok, a special correspondent for the New Republic, a senior correspondent for the American Prospect, and a contributing writer for Mother Jones. He also serves on the editorial board of Current History.
He is the winner of the Luce Scholarship for journalism in Asia and was selected as a finalist for the Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism in Asia. His first book, Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World, was nominated for CFR’s 2008 Arthur Ross Book Award. He is also the author of State Capitalism: How the Return of Statism is Transforming the World, and Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of the Middle Class and the Worldwide Decline in Representative Government.
Kurlantzick received his BA in political science from Haverford College.
Affiliations:
- Freedom House, contributor to Freedom in the World
- Pinter Politik, contributor
- World Politics Review, contributor
Featured
Beyond devastating public health, COVID-19 has worsened socioeconomic inequality, possibly for years to come, and exacerbated democratic regression in the United States, Brazil, India, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
To prevent further democratic regression in South and Southeast Asia, countries should continue holding elections, put time limits on emergency powers, and empower civil society to contest illiberal leaders.
Learn about China's evolving approach to global governance and how it has shifted strategy under President Xi Jinping related to trade, the belt and road initiative, and the coronavirus pandemic.
Beijing has increased its manipulation of information as well as disinformation efforts around COVID-19 to damage democracies and boost itself, but its strategies have had mixed results.
The White House has taken a tough approach to Chinese state media, but its actions may prove counterproductive.
The definitive account of the secret war in the tiny Southeast Asian nation of Laos, which lasted almost two decades and forever changed the CIA’s controversial role in foreign policy.
By adopting tougher regional strategic and economic measures with Vietnam, the Donald J. Trump administration could further convince Southeast Asian states to embrace the Free and Open Indo-Pacific concept.
In State Capitalism, Joshua Kurlantzick ranges across the world—Brazil, China, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and more—and argues that the increase in state capitalism across the globe has, on balance, contributed to a decline in democracy.
A thought-provoking study of democratization proposing that the spate of retreating democracies, one after another over the past two decades, is not just a series of exceptions.
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Over the weekend, 15 Asian states, including China, signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. The deal provides a major signal to investors that the region is still committed to multilateral trade integration.
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