The Derisking Race

China, America and the Fragmentation of the Global Economy
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-041-44951-5
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 460 g

Reihe: Adelphi series

The United States and China are engaged in what can best be described as a derisking race. Having encouraged their economies to become deeply intertwined, each nation is now attempting to achieve significant separation from the other. Neither side currently seeks to decouple completely. Instead, each is trying to alter the terms of their economic relationship, reducing its own vulnerability to leverage, coercion or attacks that could damage its prosperity and security, while working to maintain or acquire advantages over its counterparty.

In this Adelphi book, Aaron Friedberg argues that the derisking race is thus a struggle for power, waged in the realms of trade, investment and technology development; it is the economic dimension of the all-encompassing political, military and ideological ‘systemic rivalry’ now under way. How the race plays out will be crucial to determining the outcome of the larger geopolitical contest of which it is part. As it intensifies, it will also reshape the world economy, halting the trend towards ever-tighter integration and fracturing the global system, most likely into a cluster of partially closed blocs. While its pace and outcome have yet to be determined, this process of fragmentation has already begun.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate, Professional Reference, and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Friedberg, Aaron L.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter One: Introduction

· The derisking race defined

· Origins

· The failure of engagement

· The dynamics of the derisking race

Chapter Two: From ‘hiding and biding’ to the ‘period of strategic opportunity’

· Introduction

· ‘Hiding and biding’

· The ‘period of strategic opportunity’

· ‘Going out’ in pursuit of resources

· Securing fresh sources of demand

· Beginning to hedge against the dominant dollar

· Pushing for ‘indigenous innovation’

Chapter Three: From engagement to derisking

· Inertia and anxiety

· Trump’s trade war upends engagement

· Joining the derisking race

Chapter Four: The dangers of dependence

· Introduction

· Initial moves

· Consolidation and expansion

· Assessment

Chapter Five: The perils of penetration

· Introduction

· Components

· Hardware

· Assessment

Chapter Six: Constricting access to US technology

· Introduction

· Export controls

· Inbound investment

· Outbound investment

· Assessment

Chapter Seven: The primacy of power

· The end of the ‘period of strategic opportunity’

· Demand: sustaining growth in a more dangerous world

· Money: circumventing the dollar’s dominance

· Technology: breaking ‘blockades’, grasping the ‘assassin’s mace’ and seizing the ‘commanding heights’

· Resources: reducing vulnerability and enhancing leverage

· Assessment

Chapter Eight: Escalation or truce?

· Trump 2.0

· Handling ‘changes in the external situation’ and ‘managing our own affairs well’

Chapter Nine: The derisking race: past, present and future

· A preliminary net assessment

· Derisking and fragmentation

Notes

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Aaron L. Friedberg is Professor Emeritus of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University, where he taught from 1987 to 2026, and Co-director of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs’ Center for International Security Studies. He is also a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a Senior Advisor to the National Bureau of Asian Research.

Friedberg is the author of The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895–1905 (1988), In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America’s Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy (2000), A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (2011), The Authoritarian Challenge: China, Russia and the Threat to the Liberal International Order (2017), Partial Disengagement: A New US Strategy for Economic Competition with China (2019) and Getting China Wrong (2022). His previous Adelphi book, Beyond Air–Sea Battle: The Debate Over US Military Strategy in Asia, was published in 2014. He is also the co-editor (with Richard Ellings) of three volumes in the National Bureau of Asian Research’s annual ‘Strategic Asia’ series.

In 2001–02 Friedberg was the first occupant of the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress. He has been a research fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the Norwegian Nobel Institute, the Smithsonian Institution’s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs. Dr Friedberg served from June 2003 to June 2005 as Deputy Assistant for National Security Affairs in the Office of the Vice President. After leaving government he was appointed to the Defense Policy Board and the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion. Between 2022 and 2026 he served two terms as a congressionally appointed member of the US–China Economic and Security Review Commission. He is a member of the editorial boards of Joint Forces Quarterly and the Journal of Strategic Studies and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).