The Future of U.S.-China Rivalry and Changes in the International Security Environment

Hal Brands is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. He is the author or editor of several books, including, most recently, The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us About Great-Power Rivalry, Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China, co-authored with Michael Beckley, and The New Makers of Modern Strategy: From the Ancient World to the Digital Age.

Hal has served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Strategic Planning and lead writer for the Commission on the National Defense Strategy for the United States. He is a member of the State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board and consults with a range of government offices and agencies in the intelligence and national security communities. His writings have appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and other outlets; he has lectured widely on foreign policy and global affairs to audiences in government, academia, and the private sector.

Zack Cooper is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies US strategy in Asia, including alliance dynamics and US-China competition. He is also a lecturer at Princeton University and a partner with Armitage International.

Before joining AEI, Dr. Cooper was the senior fellow for Asian security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He previously served on staff at the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. National Security Council. Dr. Cooper received a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.P.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Dr. Cooper has been published in academic journals, including International Security and Security Studies, and in the popular press, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, among other outlets. He has also authored a variety of studies on Asia, on topics including US military strategy and posture in Asia, Chinese coercion, and US defense cooperation with regional allies and partners. He is the coeditor of two books, Postwar Japan: Growth, Security, and Uncertainty Since 1945 (CSIS/Rowman & Littlefield, 2017) and Strategic Japan: New Approaches to Foreign Policy and the U.S.-Japan Alliance (CSIS/Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).

Satoru Mori is the professor of contemporary international politics at the Faculty of Law, and the deputy director of the Keio Center for Strategy at Keio University. Professor Mori is currently undertaking research on U.S. strategy in Asia, U.S. defense innovation and its implications for U.S. allies, and the history of U.S. defense strategy during the Cold War. He is a former Japanese Foreign Ministry official and holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Tokyo, LL.M. degrees from Columbia University Law School and Kyoto University, and a LL.B. degree from Kyoto University.

He was a professor at Hosei University’s Faculty of Law from 2010 to 2022. During his sabbatical leave, he was a visiting researcher at Princeton University (2014-2015) and George Washington University (2013-2015). His book on U.S. diplomatic history The Vietnam War and Alliance Diplomacy published from the University of Tokyo Press in 2009 (in Japanese) was awarded the 15th Hiroshi Shimizu Prize for Distinguished Academic Work from the Japanese Association of American Studies.

English publications include “The Case for Japan Acquiring Counterstrike Capabilities: Limited Offensive Operations for a Defensive Strategy,” (co-authored with Shinichi Kitaoka) in Scott Harold et al., Japan’s Possible Acquisition of Long-Range Land Attack Missiles and the Implications for the U.S.-Japan Alliance, (RAND Corporation, 2022) 7-25, “U.S. Technological Competition with China,” Asia Pacific Review 26:1 (2019) 77-120, and "The Promotion of Rules-based Order and the Japan-U.S. Alliance" in Michael J. Green ed., Ironclad: Forging a New Future for America's Alliances (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) 97-112. Japanese publications include U.S.-China Relations and the World Order After COVID-19 (co-editor, University of Tokyo Press, 2020), War in Ukraine and Its Global Consequences (co-author, University of Tokyo Press, 2022), and The Dynamics of International Orders: Historical, Theoretical and Legal Perspectives (co-author, Chikura Shobo, 2023).

Professor Mori currently chairs the Japan-US alliance project at the Nakasone Peace Institute, and the security policy project at the Japan Institute for International Affairs among other projects. He is a senior fellow at the Nakasone Peace Institute since 2018. He was a senior fellow of the National Security Secretariat of the Cabinet Secretariat of the Japanese government (2016-2019). He is a member of the Ministry of Defense’s New Defense Policy Roundtable. He was among the experts called upon by the National Security Secretariat during the hearings in 2022 on the revision of Japan’s strategic documents.