JON B. ALTERMAN
CSIS - March 14, 2017
As China looks westward for energy security, it finds the United States
in a dominant position in the Middle East. China faces fundamental
choices as to how it will manage its own rise without either clashing
with the United States or creating undue burdens for itself as the
largest Asian power. As the United States seeks to commit more attention
to the Pacific, it must decide how it will seek to shape the Chinese
role in the Middle East and how much of a role it wants to reserve to
itself. The challenges for both countries manifest themselves especially
in the space between East Asia and the Middle East, a space that, from a
U.S. perspective, is truly the other side of the world.
In this Brzezinski Institute report, Jon Alterman considers the ways in
which the U.S. and Chinese governments have approached the Middle East
and the Asian space leading to it and the implications that potential
shifts would have not only for their bilateral ties but also for the
future of geopolitics more broadly.
This report is available for download in English, Arabic, and Mandarin.
