War on the Rocks · Oct 12, 2026

How China and America Can Move from Competition to Stability

In a closed-door Sino-American crisis simulation I helped organize in the 2010s — which the U.S. military funded as part of a long-term project — the Americans repositioned an aircraft carrier away from a maritime dispute between China and the Philippines, expecting the move to reassure Beijing. The episode revealed how suspicion could turn an intended reassurance into an apparent