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Recording: Michael Green Book Talk

Recording: Michael Green Book Talk


On May 24, the Global Taiwan Institute hosted a book talk with Michael J. Green, on his latest work: By More than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia Pacific Since 1783 (Columbia University Press), In the book, Green explores the primary drivers for, as well as the past, present, and future of American grand strategy in the Asia-Pacific region. The discussion devoted special attention to how Taiwan fits into US strategic thinking about Asia.

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Soon after the American Revolution, certain of the founders began to recognize the strategic significance of Asia and the Pacific and the vast material and cultural resources at stake there. Over the coming generations, the United States continued to ask how best to expand trade with the region and whether to partner with China, at the center of the continent, or Japan, looking toward the Pacific. Where should the United States draw its defensive line, and how should it export democratic principles? In a history that spans the eighteenth century to the present, Michael J. Green follows the development of US strategic thinking toward East Asia, identifying recurring themes in American statecraft that reflect the nation’s political philosophy and material realities.

Drawing on archives, interviews, and his own experience in the Pentagon and White House, Green finds one overarching concern driving US policy toward East Asia: a fear that a rival power might use the Pacific to isolate and threaten the United States and prevent the ocean from becoming a conduit for the westward free flow of trade, values, and forward defense. By More Than Providence works through these problems from the perspective of history’s major strategists and statesmen, from Thomas Jefferson to Alfred Thayer Mahan and Henry Kissinger. It records the fate of their ideas as they collided with the realities of the Far East and adds clarity to America’s stakes in the region, especially when compared with those of Europe and the Middle East.

THE AUTHOR

Dr. Michael J. Green is Senior Vice President and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, and Chair in Modern and Contemporary Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He has served most recently in government as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Asian Affairs on the National Security Council Staff. Dr. Green held prior positions at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Institute for Defense Analyses, the Department of Defense, MIT, and Johns Hopkins SAIS. He is currently a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for New America Security and a member of the Aspen Strategy Group and the Council on Foreign Relations, in addition to other advisory and editorial boards.

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