No images? Click here
Voters across the U.S. are counting the days, hours, and minutes until November 3. But regardless of the presidential election's outcome, the challenges faced by the nation remain the same: a once-in-a-century pandemic and its subsequent economic fallout; social unrest across America’s cities; China and Russia’s increasingly provocative attacks on the sovereignty of other nations. With the breakneck speed of current affairs, what are the key trends, movements, ideologies, and alliances that will shape 2021 and beyond?
Hudson created the Look Ahead Series to address these questions. Updated weekly, the Look Ahead Series is a collection of policy memos examining the challenges that political, military, and business leaders must contend with today to ensure a secure, free, and prosperous world tomorrow. See below for a look at the first policy memos in the series, and visit the Look Ahead page every week for new memos deconstructing the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Be sure to also join us next week for insightful discussions with U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien, USAID Acting Administrator John Barsa, and historian Robert Kagan.
Our first essays in the Look Ahead Series examine two major dynamics governing the future of U.S.-China relations: the U.S. military's capacity to project strength abroad and reassure allies; and how the U.S. can secure future advantages in high-tech sectors that are critical to the global economy.
The U.S.-China Economic Competition:
Economic Distancing, But on Whose Terms?
John Lee, Senior Fellow
John Lee challenges the widespread belief that the strategy of US-China economic decoupling began with the U.S. In fact, Beijing is well ahead of Washington and endeavors to build a vast Sinocentric world filled with submissive “strategic support states” to underpin a hierarchical Chinese order. The U.S. must reframe its approach to China and engage in a broader multilateral contest, and not only a bilateral one.
The U.S. Navy's Accumulating Challenges
Seth Cropsey, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for American Seapower
Seth Cropsey examines the U.S. Navy’s current challenges and the perils to U.S. national security posed by poor funding and unclear strategy. Drawing on the recent destructive fire on the Bonhomme Richard warship, Dr. Cropsey highlights the internal and external stresses facing the U.S. Navy, and how an engaged, forward deployed maritime presence is key to preserving global freedom of navigation and trade.
Go Deeper: After Nov. 3
Supply chains across the world are beginning to resemble a tug-of-war, with the U.S. holding one end of the rope and China on the other. Thomas Duesterberg joined Politico's Global Translations podcast to discuss the global shift away from super lean, super efficient supply chains and why businesses are beginning to embrace resilience over efficiency.
Making the Middle Class Wealthier: A Conversation with Joel Kotkin
For most of American history, housing has been the key to middle class prosperity. “America’s uber-geographer,” Joel Kotkin, joined Hudson's Walter Russell Mead to discuss the obstacles limiting the next generation’s ability to purchase homes and accumulate wealth. This conversation is part of the "Future of the Middle Class” series on promoting the prosperity of America’s middle class.
Saving America's Digital Future
Embedded in each of our computers and phones is a device that is fast becoming one of the most important political issues of our time, writes Arthur Herman in the National Review. Semiconductors, (also known as microchips) are present across a wide range of devices. They are essential to national security and the modern economy, but unless the U.S. and allies take action, China will dominate global production of semiconductors in the near future.
