U.S.-China relations have been deteriorating at an alarming speed, and as distrust grows on both sides, it is unclear how to stop the downward spiral. What does China want and how can we best assess Chinese intentions?

This is a key question on the research agenda of East Asian security expert Oriana Skylar Mastro, FSI’s newest Center Fellow. Mastro, an assistant professor of security studies at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, will begin her appointment at FSI on August 1 and be based at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), where she will continue her research on Chinese military and security policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, war termination, and coercive diplomacy. She will also work with the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), and teach students in both the CISAC Honors program and the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy program.

Here, Mastro discusses Chinese ambitions and the rapidly increasing tensions in U.S.-China relations; talks about her military career and new research projects; shares how she first became interested in East Asian security issues as a Stanford undergraduate student; and even reveals some things we don’t know about her.

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You have argued in your writings that although China does not want to usurp the United States’ position as the leader of the global order, its strategic goal in the Indo-Pacific region is nearly as consequential. Why is it so? What do you foresee for Chinese aims and the U.S.-China rivalry as we near the U.S. presidential election?

Mastro: My claim is that China doesn't want to replace the United States but rather displace the United States. It’s an important distinction because it’s become popular to assume that China wants to have everything that we, the United States, have and that its view of power is the same as ours. But if you look throughout history, every time a country rises, it exercises its power differently. The United States, for example, didn't build colonies because Great Britain had had colonies. It is equally unlikely to assume that China is going to build a global military and engage in foreign military interventions.

Therefore, I argue that China doesn't want to dominate the world. This doesn’t mean that its ambitions are limited, but rather that it thinks that the U.S. in-depth global involvement is an ineffective and costly way of doing business. Outside of Asia, China relies mainly on political and economic influence to ensure that no one goes against its interests. It is only in Asia where China’s military goals are problematic for the United States and where it wants to dominate and see the U.S. military less active. Again, this isn't due to lack of ambition: from China’s viewpoint, whoever dominates Asia, the world’s most dynamic and economically important region, is a superpower, just like whoever dominated Europe during the Cold War would have been a superpower. In short, I think we make assumptions about what China wants and how it will get there based on our own experiences, and those tend to be incorrect.

As for what’s ahead for the U.S.-China relationship and the coming presidential election, I think it’s a misconception to interpret the frictions between the two countries as stemming from the Trump administration. There are aspects of Chinese behavior that both the Republican and Democratic parties find problematic and I believe we will see a tougher policy towards China, regardless of who wins the election. A Democratic president might be less willing to risk confrontation with the Chinese the way the Trump administration is, but either way, I see increased tensions between the two sides as the norm for the next several years.

In your recent testimony on China’s maritime ambitions before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, you distinguish between China's aims in its near seas and far seas. How do these intentions differ and why is it important to make the distinction between them?

Mastro: In the near seas — the South China Sea (SCS) and the East China Sea (ECS) — China is concerned with sovereignty, which is absolute control of these waters, and with regional hegemony. In the far seas — the Indian Ocean and beyond — China aims to operate, but it doesn’t aspire to exclude others from doing so. In these waters, China's ambitions are driven primarily by the desire to protect its strategic lines of communication and its economic and political interests.

It’s important to make this distinction for strategy reasons, which goes right to my previous point. There’s a growing sense now that “whatever China does is bad and the United States needs to counter everything China does,” but that's not quite true. While China's objectives in the SCS and ECS are detrimental to U.S. interests, some aspects of its objectives in the Indian Ocean and beyond are legitimate and do not necessarily threaten U.S. interests, although they are not without risks.

U.S. policy needs to consider these differences in the degree of threat because prioritization is crucial for strategy. If we are to prioritize our strategies, then we should prioritize countering China’s ambitions in its near seas and try to shape its objectives in the far seas, perhaps through more cooperative policies. Perceiving everything that China does as bad isn’t the right approach to competing with it.

In addition to your academic career, you have an extensive military portfolio: for over ten years, you have served in the United States Air Force Reserve. You have just been awarded the Meritorious Service Medal. Tell us more about this award, how your academic and military careers influence each other, and what it’s like to balance the two.

Mastro: I'm a special type of reservist called Individual Mobilization Augmentee (IMA), which means that I have a custom duty schedule and work with my active-duty supervisors to help meet mission requirements of whatever the priority is at the time. The award I just received, the Meritorious Service Medal, which is a recognition of commendable noncombatant service, is for my last role as a senior China analyst at the Pentagon. My main duties in that role were to prepare intel products and brief the senior leadership of Headquarters Air Force at the Pentagon.

I think that the mix of my two careers makes me a better military officer and a better scholar. My experiences in the military inspire a lot of my research projects, oftentimes regarding questions that I don't have good answers for. As an officer, I need the power of argumentation on my side if I am to make a difference. After I engage in the good academic practice of spending a year or more researching something in-depth, I can then go back and provide inputs into the Department of Defense. There is a synergy between the two careers in terms of topics.

Moreover, my experiences in the military have taught me leadership and teamwork skills that we don’t necessarily learn from being professors. There’s a vast difference in leadership and teamwork dynamics between the military and academia. When I’m on active duty, I'm there as Major Mastro to provide my expertise but also be a strong part of a team with a chain of command.

Of course, managing both civilian and military careers demands considerable planning and balancing. I schedule my deployments around my teaching schedule, but sometimes there are urgent assignments given current world events. For example, last semester, I was on duty one day a week while teaching full time. So that requires planning and flexibility on the part of my family, as well as support from the people who employ me.

How did you first become interested in China and East Asian security issues, and what made you pursue a military career?

Mastro: This is a fun topic to talk about at Stanford because it's all thanks to my experiences as an undergraduate student on The Farm. As a freshman, I began learning Chinese, and in the following years, being humanities- and arts-focused, I mainly studied ancient China and Chinese literature. When I returned to campus after a year of intensive study in China, I was looking for a research opportunity and heard about the CISAC Honors Program in International Security Studies. So it was only in my senior year that I took my first course in political science and was exposed to international security studies. I discovered a passion for this topic like nothing else I had studied before. I wanted to learn more and got my first job, at the Carnegie Endowment, researching security issues, and then decided to continue with graduate studies.

During my Ph.D. at Princeton, I met a General in the Air Force who told me I should join the military. At that point, I'd never met anyone in the military. I thought, “I’m not very tough; what could I possibly contribute?” But I took up on his suggestion to do an internship with the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and realized that my Chinese language skills and knowledge about China could be useful. I wanted to serve and planned to do my duty for four years and be done, yet here we are, nearly 11 years later. It’s been a blessing to make a whole career out of this and it’s truly all thanks to many memorable experiences at Stanford and the CISAC Honors Program. I’m thrilled to be back and looking forward to teaching and mentoring students in the Honors program and the Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy program.

What are some of your current research projects and what do you plan to work on at APARC and Stanford at large?

Mastro: My main project is researching a book about what China wants – a framework for understanding how to assess Chinese intentions. This is a policy-relevant book that engages with international relations theory and literature, where understanding state intentions plays a key role. The framework I’m developing assesses information to answer what China’s intentions are in several areas and regarding several cases. There will be chapters on China’s regional ambitions, global ambitions, approach to international institutions, and intentions towards the economic and technological order. As part of this project, you may see me currently publishing works on the South China Sea or the Indian Ocean.

Another project, in its beginning stages, focuses on the China-Russia relationship. Here the overarching framework is an attempt to understand state cooperation. This relates to alliances, though the notion of alliances is rather outdated. China doesn't have any alliances, but that doesn't mean it isn’t aligned or working with other countries. The question is what types of cooperation between China and Russia are problematic for the United States and what types are not. Again, we need to prioritize: is it so bad if China and Russia back each other in the UN, or is it worse that they exercise together? I don't know yet, but I think that international relations theory can shed some light on these questions.

Tell us something we don’t know about you.

Mastro: It may seem that I constantly work because I have a military career in addition to being very involved in the policy and academic worlds, but many people don't realize that I'm a big fan of leisure. I spend plenty of time with my children and have multiple hobbies that I engage in daily: I read novels, do yoga and CrossFit, play the piano, and manage to sleep! I was a very serious pianist and still take Skype lessons with my old teacher back in Chicago. Now with the move to California, I’ll finally be able to enjoy the grand piano my parents bought me for my 16th birthday, which I never had room for. I'm a firm believer in work-life balance. It's just that my work, too, is a passion and a hobby of mine.

Tension and discord in Japan-South Korea relations are nothing new, but the unfortunate, intensifying conflict between the two countries — a manifestation of right-wing Japanese nationalism and left-wing South Korean nationalism — seems headed toward a collision course. To understand the escalating friction between Tokyo and Seoul one must recognize the unique characteristics of Korean nationalism, and particularly its historical origins, development, and political role in shaping Korean attitudes toward Japan.

This is the focus of my article The Perils of Populist Nationalism, published in the September 2019 issue of the Korean magazine Shindonga (New East Asia). In this piece, which has received much attention in South Korea, I analyze the friction between Seoul and Tokyo and explain the attitude among Koreans toward Japan in contrast to their different attitude toward China. The anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea was forged amidst the rise of modern Japan. Through the experience of Japanese colonial rule, Korean nationalism took on an exclusionary form that emphasized one’s ancestry and the ethnic purity of the Korean people. The current tension between Seoul and Tokyo is rooted in this Korean nationalist sentiment.

It is time South Korea moved beyond its psychological complex toward Japan and recognized that ethnic nationalism is obsolete. Korean intellectuals, I argue, must play a critical role in a sustained effort to cultivate rational liberalism and prevent the excesses of nationalism if South Korea is to become a more open society — one that, in Popperian terms, accepts criticism and rejects a monopoly on truth.

The complete English translation of my article is now available.

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From political power in Britain, China, and New York City to robots and morality, APARC faculty draw inspiration for their work from a wide range of sources. Several of them share here what’s on their nightstand or e-book device this summer.

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Thomas Fingar, Shorenstein APARC Fellow

I've decided to devote a portion of my summer reading to books on landmark developments in China being celebrated (or not), because 2019 is a major anniversary year. It marks the 100th anniversaries of the May Fourth Movement and of the establishment of the Kuomintang; the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China; the 40th anniversary of Reform and Opening plus normalization of U.S.-China relations; and the 30th anniversary of Tiananmen Square.

To mark the centennial of the May Fourth Movement, I will reread the pioneering book by Chow Tse-tung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China.

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David M. Lampton, Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow

My recommendation is Working, by Robert Caro. A gem on the art of political interviewing and the study of political power. It is also substantively interesting on Robert Moses who literally built New York City. Short and good on many levels.

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Yong Suk Lee, SK Center Fellow at FSI and Deputy Director of the Korea Program at APARC

Here are a few books on my Kindle/nightstand for the summer:

I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov. 
Some of the futuristic novels of the early twentieth century are surprising relevant today. As robots and artificial intelligence have resurfaced in popular media and are the main subject of my current research, I wanted to read this iconic science fiction on robots.

Churchill: The Power of Words, by Winston Churchill and Martin Gilbert 
Churchill’s own account on the power of words. I wanted to revisit Churchill as words have become potentially more powerful and dangerous in today's social media-infused, polarized world.

Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan, and The Vision of Frank Lloyd Wright, by Thomas Heinz 
My more entertaining summer reads: a novel about Frank Lloyd Wright that takes the reader through his personal life, accompanied by one of the most thorough volumes on Wright's architecture.

Happy Summer from APARC!

By Hal Benton, Seattle Times staff reporter

Karl Eikenberry is a retired Army officer whose two tours of Afghanistan duty — and later service as ambassador to that nation — left him keenly aware of the limits of U.S. military power.

As a soldier, Eikenberry launched the still-ongoing effort to build an Afghan military force capable of fending off the Taliban. As a diplomat, he was stationed at the Kabul embassy during President Barack Obama’s surge that would eventually push American troop strength in Afghanistan to more than 100,000 service members in an attempt to improve security.

“Americans and the world have rightly been disappointed with the results of our costly military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 21st century. Hugely expensive, protracted … and damaging to our country’s prestige abroad,” Eikenberry said Thursday to a Town Hall audience in Seattle.

Read the full article in The Seattle Times.

This post was originally published by PacNet Commentary, a publication of Pacific Forum.

NBC Bay Area spoke with Shorenstein APARC director Gi-Wook Shin following a press conference held by DPRK foreign minister Ri Yong-Ho on September 25, in which Ri asserted that recent comments by President Donald Trump amounted to a "declaration of war."

The verbal barrage between North Korea and the United States has sharply escalated, with increased U.S. bomber flights near and around North Korea being met by North Korean threats to shoot down such flights, even those outside its borders.

While Shin still holds that the war of words will not turn into war, he is concerned that the escalation of rhetoric is dangerous.

"The South Korean people are really worried about the possibility of a military conflict," noted Shin. He further advised the president to deescalate personal attacks on Kim Jong-un, pointing out that Kim's "god-like" status in North Korea was effectively forcing the DPRK leader to respond to White House threats.

In his Tuesday address at the United Nations General Assembly, President Donald Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea” if the U.S. is forced to defend itself or its allies. Over the past month, North Korea conducted its largest nuclear test and fired its longest-traveling missile. The tension between the United States and the East Asian country continues to intensify.

Stanford News Service interviewed two Stanford experts about the escalating situation between the two countries and what options leaders have on the table when it comes to North Korea.

Michael R. Auslin is the inaugural Williams-Griffis Research Fellow in Contemporary Asia at the Hoover Institution. He specializes in global risk analysis, U.S. security and foreign policy strategy, and security and political relations in Asia.

Gi-Wook Shin is a professor of sociology, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Since North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006, the United Nations and individual countries, including the U.S., have imposed several sanctions on the country. Despite those efforts to pressure North Korea to denuclearize, the country’s nuclear capabilities have steadily increased. Why do you think these previous efforts did not work?

Auslin: North Korea has been intent on getting a nuclear weapon for decades, so the basic premise that Pyongyang would bargain away its program was likely faulty. Serious, comprehensive sanctions were never tried, in part because of Chinese and Russian opposition. By effectively taking the threat of the use of force off the table, previous administrations gave Pyongyang no incentive to take negotiations seriously. Previous North Korean undermining of agreements resulted in no serious cost and instead spurred Washington and its allies to offer further negotiations.

Shin: I think that the main obstacles to the previous efforts to pressure North Korea were China and Russia’s partial support for, and not-so-full implementation of, the sanctions. For instance, despite Beijing’s announcement that it would uphold the sanctions, border trade and economic activities between China and North Korea continued, and Beijing knowingly allowed this to happen. Additionally, North Korea is so used to living under difficult economic circumstances that it has found ways to be less affected by sanctions, learning how to get around sanctions – e.g., through smuggling – instead.

What does North Korea hope to gain by amassing a nuclear arsenal?

Auslin: North Korea has wanted to prevent the possibility of any foreign attack and a nuclear capability is the best means of achieving that goal. It also seeks to use any means to intimidate its neighbors and prevent them from undertaking any anti-North Korean action. It also may hope to end its international isolation by fielding a nuclear arsenal so that it can no longer be “ignored” by the international community.

Shin: By amassing a nuclear arsenal, North Korea hopes to secure the Kim regime internally and externally. Nuclear development is a main pillar of Kim’s byeongjin policy, a policy of simultaneous development of nuclear weapons and the economy. Once North Korea obtains nuclear state status, it will try to negotiate with the U.S. and South Korea for what it really wants. This could be economic support, international recognition, a peace treaty with the U.S., etc.

Are there still diplomatic means of addressing this situation that have not been explored? What are they and what is the likelihood they would be effective?

Shin: I am a believer in diplomatic power and continue to think that we shouldn’t give up on diplomacy, but it’s true that all previous diplomatic efforts with North Korea have failed, and it is questionable whether any diplomatic approach will be effective at this point. But one possible – perhaps final – approach that has not yet been explored is a Trump-Kim summit at which the two leaders might make a “big deal” – that is, to get North Korea to denuclearize in exchange for a normalization of their relationship, i.e., a peace treaty, between North Korea and the U.S. But this would be an extremely difficult thing to pull off, both politically and diplomatically.

Auslin: No package of incentives has been effective for the past quarter-century, and both bilateral and multilateral negotiations have failed. There is little reason to believe that there are untried diplomatic means that can make a breakthrough where so many have failed.

Can a diplomatic solution be reached without the cooperation of China?

Shin: China has always advocated diplomacy with North Korea, and I believe that China’s cooperation is essential, but I would also caution against relying or counting on China too heavily. From China’s perspective, the main reason for North Korea’s nuclearization has to do with the American threat – perceived or real – to its national security.

Auslin: China has shown little appetite for constructively solving the North Korean crisis through diplomatic means. Moreover, it is unclear that China retains significant political influence in Kim Jong-un’s era, even given the importance of Chinese trade with North Korea. However, if Washington and Beijing decided that a more coercive approach was necessary, then China would have a major role to play.

What are the military options on the table for the U.S.?

Auslin: Very few, short of all-out war. The North Korean nuclear program is too advanced and dispersed to be taken out by pinpoint bombing, and its missiles are on road-mobile launchers when not hidden, making them difficult to track and destroy. Seoul remains at risk from thousands of conventional artillery launchers that would certainly be used in the event of an American strike inside North Korea.

Shin: There are a number of possibilities, including a surgical strike, but given that North Korea would most likely retaliate by attacking South Korea – an action that would lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of South Korean citizens, plus a good number of U.S. soldiers and citizens in the country – it’s not a tempting option. The U.S. government and its military are well aware that any military action would be very dangerous.

What potential actions could lead to even more destabilization and should be avoided?

Shin: Any major military action should be avoided, as it would put both South Korea and possibly the U.S. at great risk. Given that North Korea will continue its efforts to become a nuclear state, and given that military options are not viable, we may have to find a way to live with a nuclear North Korea. It is a reality that we have worked hard to avoid, but time is not on our side. I hear more and more South Koreans calling for South Korea to go nuclear now and a similar movement could begin in Japan. This would mean that the region is entering into a very unfortunate and dangerous situation.

As the war of words escalates between Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un amid a series of North Korean missile launches and a September 3 nuclear test, Gi-Wook Shin, director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, expressed concern that what is happening "might be more than an escalation of rhetoric. . . there may be escalation of expectations." Read the news item in the Independent here. In an interview with Deutsche Welle, Shin said "one could argue that the [Trump administration's] contradictory messages fit well with its somewhat paradoxical North Korea policy, 'maximum pressure, maximum engagement.'"

In an appearance on PBS Newshour, Kathleen Stephens, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and William J. Perry Fellow at Shorenstein APARC's Korea Program, expressed concern that the presidential brinkmanship was undermining diplomatic efforts to deescalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Stephens suggested the U.S. President "restrain from twittering" the war of words in a recent interview with Yonhap News.

Yong Suk Lee, deputy director of the Korea Program at the Shorenstein APARC, said "the harsh rhetorics going back and forth between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump may indeed fuel the probability of military action. And it indeed seems like the hardliners are getting  a stronger voice domestically, not just in the U.S., but also in North Korea. However, the increased tension may actually serve as an opportunity. When the stakes are this high — with the possibility of a nuclear war, and for North Korea, an economy that is just starting to develop — the incentive to strike a deal may be higher." Listen to his interview with KCRW: To the Point here.