2022 World Affairs Council of the Year
Network of Independent World Affairs Councils of America
Wednesday, September 11th | 12:00pm – 1:00pm
Over the past 20 years, China’s international status as a “great power” has become undeniable. China’s “peaceful rise” has included substantial investments in military modernization and an increasingly assertive regional posture. While China has not waged war, it has frequently resorted to what the US State Department has referred to as “gangster tactics” – threats, intimidation, and armed confrontation – to advance its strategic aims. China’s regional ambitions are evident from how it has asserted itself militarily, especially within the maritime “nine-dash line” and concerning several ongoing territorial disputes with its neighbors. China’s efforts to project power are intended to intimidate its smaller neighbors and to push back against US military presence and freedom of action in the region.
James A. Siebens is a Fellow with Stimson Center’s Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy program, where he leads the Defense Strategy and Planning project. He is the editor of China’s Use of Armed Coercion: To Win Without Fighting (Routledge 2023), a study on China’s use of military and paramilitary forces for purposes of coercion. He is also co-editor of Military Coercion and U.S. Foreign Policy: The Use of Force Short of War (Routledge 2020), a book on U.S. strategy and military operations since the end of the Cold War. Siebens is also affiliated with Stimson’s Cyber program and Russia program. His research focuses on grand strategy, military coercion, and gray zone conflict.
Siebens previously served as a Research Associate and Special Assistant to the President and CEO at the Stimson Center. Prior to joining Stimson, he was a Data Analyst at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, where he contributed to a DoD-sponsored study on gray zone conflict. Siebens is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and holds an M.A. in International Affairs with a concentration in Global Security from American University’s School of International Service.
Jeremy Goldkorn is an editor and writer whose work has focused on China. He co-founded the Sinica Podcast in 2010 and was editor-in-chief of The China Project from 2016 to 2023. Goldkorn moved from his hometown of Johannesburg, South Africa, to China in 1995 and became managing editor of Beijing’s first independent English-language entertainment magazine. He later edited and founded several other publications, including the website Danwei, which tracked Chinese media, markets, politics, and business, acquired in 2013 by the Financial Times.
While in China, he lived in a worker’s dormitory, produced a documentary film about African soccer players in Beijing, and rode a bicycle from Peshawar to Kathmandu via Kashgar and Lhasa. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in 2015. He is a graduate of the University of Cape Town.
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