We asked Carnegie’s directors to select one piece each that they felt stood out or best represented the program’s work for the year. Their selections are below.
Africa
“How Is China’s Economic Transition Affecting Its Relations With Africa?” by Zainab Usman and Tang Xiaoyang
This article considers how China’s slowing growth will increasingly impact its economic relations with Africa across five key areas: trade, investment, fiscal stabilization, renminbi internationalization, and people-to-people ties.
In particular, the article showcases the growth or contraction in China’s imports of crude petroleum from its top twenty-two suppliers between 2019 and 2023. Oil imports from African countries to China are declining, with China buying and consuming less crude oil from Africa. Seven of eight major African oil producers saw significant declines in exports to China, including South Sudan (77 percent), Sudan (67 percent), and Nigeria (61 percent). Instead, China is increasingly sourcing its crude oil from Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Russia, and other countries in Asia that are deemed to have more predictable production infrastructures.
The article concludes on the point that policy directions within African countries and third parties such as the United States will greatly shape how these changes in the China-Africa relationship continue to unfold. Since its publication, the article has been cited by the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and The Economist.
—Zainab Usman, Africa Program director
American Statecraft
“Strategic Change in U.S. Foreign Policy” by Christopher S. Chivvis, Jennifer Kavanagh, Sahil Lauji, Adele Malle, Samuel Orloff, Stephen Wertheim, and Reid Wilcox
As the world evolves, the United States must adapt or suffer the consequences. The process of adaptation, however, is usually plodding, if it happens at all.
This Carnegie report explains what it will take for the incoming administration—and future ones—to achieve big changes they promise for U.S. foreign policy, including in relations with Congress, the national security bureaucracies, and the public. It also identifies the risks involved.
—Christopher S. Chivvis, American Statecraft Program director
Asia
“Alliance Future: Rewiring Australia and the United States” by Evan A. Feigenbaum
Too many people in Washington and Canberra presume that the strategic challenge from China alone will make defense coordination within the alliance easy. The reality is that it could sharpen contradictions around the kind of operational planning that will be needed to enhance deterrence. Australian and American defense strategies, while closely aligned, are not identical. To build the alliance will require aligning resources, building complementary regional relationships, and investing in resilience.
This pathbreaking volume offers a comprehensive reassessment of the alliance—with five papers that aim not just to admire the defense and deterrence challenge but to deliver innovative prescriptions in four key areas: regional defense strategy, force posture and structure, defense industrial integration, and roles and missions.
—Evan Feigenbaum, vice president for studies, Asia
California
“Developing AI Risk Management With the Same Ambition and Urgency as AI Products” by Holden Karnofsky
Ideally, risk management for AI would be based on a rigorous, mature science of AI risk. But with AI advancing as rapidly as it is, this may not be practical. Instead, AI developers can approach their risk management in a similar spirit to how they approach their products: release initial products quickly and iterate from there. AI products are developing at unprecedented speed; there’s some hope that AI risk management can too, if it’s approached with the same kind of ambition, urgency, and tolerance for imperfection along the way.
—Ian Klaus, Carnegie California founding director
Democracy, Conflict, and Governance
“Closing Civic Space in the United States: Connecting the Dots, Changing the Trajectory” by Rachel Kleinfeld
In many democracies, ruling parties have made it more difficult for opposing views from nonprofits, businesses, and the media to get heard. These tactics have arrived in the United States.
Kleinfeld details how illiberal forces use tools such as governmental regulation and oversight bodies, private lawfare, threats, violence, and other means to reduce the space for opposing viewpoints, and how this “closing of civic space” harms democracy. She underscores the unique characteristics of this phenomenon in the United States compared to other countries. She concludes by outlining how this problem is likely to develop, while offering concrete strategies to protect U.S. democracy.
—Thomas Carothers, Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program director
Europe
“Securing Europe’s Subsea Data Cables” by Sophia Besch and Erik Brown
This new paper elucidates the dynamics of a security challenge that has only emerged in recent years within foreign and defense ministries and has vaulted onto the front pages of newspapers. Undersea cables are vital to global connectivity and a vulnerable piece of infrastructure for nefarious actors. The implications of severed cables can ripple through modern industrial production and financial trading. Besch and Brown dig into the key players in the private sector and the government actors that are working to address security challenges to this twenty-first-century critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, with lessons for European policymakers and others around the world.
—Dan Baer, senior vice president for studies and Europe Program director
Global Order and Institutions
“BRICS Expansion, the G20, and the Future of World Order” by Stewart Patrick
The recent expansion of BRICS from five to nine countries has understandably deepened concerns that that the world is fragmenting into competing economic blocs. BRICS countries have long complained about the inequities of the Western-dominated international order, and they appear to have the growing economic heft to do something about it. After all, the bloc already encompasses half the world’s population, 40 percent of its trade, and 40 percent of its crude oil exports. Some two-dozen more aspirants are waiting in the wings.
A closer look suggests BRICS expansion is not quite the tectonic shift in global order that some fear and others welcome. From its inception, BRICS has been far more clear about what it stands against than what it stands for. As the coalition adds new members, its current heterogeneity will only increase, making it even harder to pursue coherent positions and bringing internal strategic rivalries and clashing interests to the fore. At the same time, Western nations cannot afford to ignore BRICS, whose expansion underscores the dangers of discounting legitimate demands of emerging powers for greater agency and influence. What is needed is a genuine Western effort to build a more inclusive and legitimate global order.
—Stewart Patrick, Global Order and Institutions Program director
Middle East
“Navigating Influence: Great Powers in the Middle East and North Africa” by Amr Hamzawy and Rain Ji
The Middle East has been in a state of war since October 2023. Influential Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Türkiye have failed to make peace and stabilize this geopolitically important and highly volatile region. Therefore, analyzing the policies of China, Russia, and the United States in the Middle East and their impacts on regional stability has become a key feature in policy discussions about the region. “Navigating Influence” offers an in-depth quantitative and qualitative take on the military, trade, and diplomatic ties the three great powers have used to shape war and peace questions in the region.
—Amr Hamzawy, Middle East Program director
Nuclear Policy
“Political Drivers of China’s Changing Nuclear Policy: Implications for U.S.-China Nuclear Relations and International Security” by Tong Zhao
China’s rapid nuclear buildup has caused intense concern in the United States and a fierce debate over its motivations. Is Beijing acting defensively in response to a perceived threat from the United States? Or does it seek to undermine the security of U.S. allies in Asia?
Zhao, the leading independent authority on China’s nuclear program, posits a different answer: that China’s buildup primarily results from internal political changes. His theory has potentially profound implications. If President Xi Jinping believes that the size of his nuclear arsenal shapes the United States’ overall approach to China, then managing the U.S.-China political relationship may be a prerequisite to preventing a new arms race.
—James Acton, Nuclear Policy Program co-director
Russia and Eurasia
“Russia’s Enduring Presence in the Middle East” by Eugene Rumer and Andrew Weiss
The war in Ukraine has been the major focus of the program’s scholars in 2024. Their analytical output ranges from firsthand reports from Ukraine’s frontlines to op-eds to foundational research. In addition, the scholars have explored the war’s wider implications, including the relationship between Russia and China—which, contrary to the popular label, is by no means “without limits.” Another implication is the ripple effects from the war in the Middle East. The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime was the equivalent of a geopolitical earthquake in the region, and Russia’s failure to back its oldest surviving client regime has been interpreted as a sign of its retreat from the Middle East under the strain caused by the war in Ukraine.
But that is a short-sighted take on what Rumer and Weiss write in their recent article on Russia’s enduring presence in the region. Russia has been a major actor in the Middle East for many decades, even centuries. Its involvement there is driven by a combination of critical (some would say vital) interests that include the security of the homeland, access to key trade routes, and competition with other major European powers. By unleashing the war in Ukraine, Putin has risked all of these interests and made the Middle East even more important for Russia. The fall of the Assad regime was a blow to Russia, but it has by no means put an end to Russia’s involvement in the Middle East.
—Eugene Rumer, Russia and Eurasia Program director
South Asia
“The Resilience of India’s Fourth Party System” by Milan Vaishnav and Caroline Mallory
India’s 2024 general elections delivered results that shocked even veteran political observers: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was brought back to power—as was widely expected—but only with the help of coalition allies. The surprise verdict fueled narratives that Modi had peaked, the dominant BJP was on the downswing, and the moribund opposition had been rejuvenated.
This paper cautions that, while the election may have been a setback for the ruling party, Modi’s BJP remains in pole position. Drawing on wide-ranging data from India’s state and national elections, the authors show that although there are cracks in India’s so-called fourth party system, its foundations remain largely intact. Subsequent state elections held in the interim, in which the BJP has outperformed, have bolstered this thesis.
—Milan Vaishnav, South Asia Program director
Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics
“Catching Up or Leaping Ahead? How Energy Innovation Can Secure U.S. Industrial Stature in a Net-Zero World” by Milo McBride
In an age of dwindling carbon budgets and increasing geopolitical tensions, McBride offers a pragmatic vision of how green industrial policy can bring about low-carbon competitiveness without spiraling into mercantilism.
McBride argues that, instead of trying to onshore the technologies dominated by China, the United States should play to its strengths. It should focus on next-generation advancements capable of supplanting supply chain risks and advancing new, low-carbon sectors. The paper provides a comprehensive analysis of all emerging clean energy and industrial products in the United States and measures their potential to “leapfrog” incumbent technologies. McBride argues for technological collaboration with allies so that foreign policy can drive the development of new energy systems. While focused on the U.S. market, the paper also provides an applicable strategy to other countries looking to incubate green industries.
—Noah Gordon, Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics Program fellow and former acting co-director
Technology and International Affairs
“The AI Export Dilemma: Three Competing Visions for U.S. Strategy” by Sam Winter-Levy
Control over the sharing of AI technologies may soon become a defining question for American foreign policy, yet until now it has received surprisingly little public attention. Exporting key AI tech can help shore up U.S. competitiveness and create geopolitical leverage, but it also risks intellectual property theft, leakage to adversaries, and misuse by authoritarians.
Drawing on interviews with key players in the private and public sectors of multiple countries, Winter-Levy outlines three possible approaches for U.S. policy on AI exports: control, diffusion, and leverage. He also examines the approach the current administration has taken thus far, and what moves the incoming administration might take to regulate technology sharing in this new era of AI diplomacy.
—Arthur Nelson, Technology and International Affairs Program acting co-director
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