Lyle Goldstein told Business Insider that China’s risky confrontations in the South China Sea have increased over the past decade as Beijing flaunts its growing maritime and aerial power.
Read Article
Lyle Goldstein
Director, China Initiative, Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs
Biography
Lyle J. Goldstein is a Senior Fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. At Brown, he is investigating the costs of great power competition with both China and Russia in association with the Costs of War Project at Watson. He is also assisting in the further development of Watson’s China Initiative.
Goldstein serves concurrently as Director of Asia Engagement at the Washington think-tank Defense Priorities, which advocates for realism and restraint in U.S. defense policy. In this role, he is overseeing a range of studies that evaluate U.S. foreign policy and defense strategy in the Asia-Pacific region, including with respect to such key flashpoints as the Korean Peninsula, the South China Sea, the Sino-Indian border, and also the status of Taiwan. He maintains expertise in both Chinese and Russian military strategic development, and also has expertise on particular issues in the China-Russia relationship, including especially the Arctic and also Central Asia.
In Oct 2021, Goldstein retired after 20 years of service on the faculty at the U.S. Naval War College (NWC) after being promoted by his peers to the rank of Full Professor. During his career at NWC, he founded the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) and has been awarded the Superior Civilian Service Medal for this achievement. He has written or edited seven books on Chinese strategy and continues to work on a book length project that examines the nature of China-Russia relations in the 21st century.
Goldstein has his PhD from Princeton, an MA from Johns Hopkins SAIS, and his BA from Harvard. He is fluent in both Chinese and Russian languages, and is now studying Korean. He tweets regularly on both Chinese and Russian strategic matters at @lylegoldstein.
Recent News
Lyle Goldstein and Ella Corbett write in RealClearWorld that Washington should not view Russia’s and China’s growing ties with Afghanistan as a significant threat and should instead focus on humanitarian engagement.
Read Article
Watson experts Lyle Goldstein and Stephen Kinzer reflect on the legacy of nuclear weapons 80 years after Hiroshima, weighing in on whether deterrence is the true outcome of the atomic age.
Read Article
In Vox, Lyle Goldstein says Chinese scholars are now openly discussing limited nuclear war, framing it as a response to similar conversations in the United States.
Read Article
U.S. Naval Institute
Lurching Toward Détente? (written by Lyle Goldstein)
In an article for the U.S. Naval Institute, Lyle Goldstein argues the United States should renew naval cooperation with Russia to promote maritime stability, strategic balance and humanitarian readiness despite ongoing tensions over Ukraine.
Read Article
In UnHerd, Lyle Goldstein argues that the U.S. is beginning a significant and necessary shift in its Taiwan policy—publicly reining in Taipei to reduce the risk of war with China and prioritize broader strategic interests under an “America First” framework.
Read Article