Highlights
& Quotes
When Friedberg, a China scholar at Princeton University, was appointed in May 2003 to his current policy post working under I. Lewis Libby and Vice President Dick Cheney, many observers saw it as a sign that the Bush administration was going to take a harder stance toward China. It was also seen as a victory for neoconservative ideologues both in and outside the administration, who tend to see China primarily as a threat to U.S. interests.
Commenting on the appointment, John Gershman, an Asia specialist at New York University, said: “There really haven't been top people under Bush who knew much about China. He's the first one. ... [Friedberg] fits clearly into the group that has been dominant in the administration since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. ... He's a China-threat person without being hysterical about it. But his appointment is a clear sign that the cooperation that has emerged between the U.S. and China on the war on terrorism and North Korea is entirely tactical, and that Cheney is still inclined to see China as a strategic competitor." (4)
In a 2000 article titled "The Struggle for Mastery in Asia," published in the neocon flagship Commentary, Friedberg wrote, "over the course of the next several decades there is a good chance that the United States will find itself engaged in an open and intense geopolitical rivalry with the People's Republic of China. . . . The combination of growing Chinese power, China's effort to expand its influence, and the unwillingness of the United States to entirely give way before it are the necessary preconditions of a 'struggle for mastery.'" A military confrontation, he added, could gradually develop or result from a "single catalytic event, such as a showdown over Taiwan." (4)
Friedberg is the author of The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895-1905 (Princeton University Press, 1988); and In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America's Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy (Princeton University Press, 2000). (1), (2) He also contributed a chapter on the China threat for Present Dangers, a 2000 book edited by Project for the New American Century co-founders William Kristol and Robert Kagan that also included chapters by former Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle and former Central Intelligence Agency chief James Woolsey. (4)
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Institutional Affiliations
University of Princeton: Professor of Politics and International Affairs (1), (2)
Project for the New American Century: Signed PNAC’s founding statement of principles in 1997 and PNAC’s Sept. 20, 2001 letter to George W. Bush urging the president to target Iraq as part of the war on terrorism (4)
National Bureau of Asian Research, Strategic Asia Project: Research Director (6)
University of Princeton, Research Program in International Security: Director (1), (5)
George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies: Consultant (6)
Smithsonian Institution’s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars: Fellow, 1989-1990 (1), (5), (7), (9)
University of Princeton, Center of International Studies: Director (1), (6)
Norwegian Nobel Institute: Senior Fellow, 1998 (1), (5), (7)
Harvard University, Center for International Affairs: Fellow, 1986-1987 (1)
Government Service
Library of Congress, Henry Alfred Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations: First Holder, 2001-2002 (1), (2), (7)
Council on Foreign Relations: International Affairs Fellow, 1990-1991
National Security Council: Consultant (1), (6)
Department of Defense, Office of Net Assessment: Consultant (1), (6)
Central Intelligence Agency: Consultant (6)
Los Alamos National Laboratory: Consultant (6)
Education
Harvard University: Ph. D. (1), (5), (6)
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