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  • The Avoidable War

  • The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China
  • Written by: Kevin Rudd
  • Narrated by: Kevin Rudd, Rafe Beckley
  • Length: 16 hrs and 9 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (13 ratings)

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The Avoidable War

Written by: Kevin Rudd
Narrated by: Kevin Rudd, Rafe Beckley
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Publisher's Summary

A war between China and the US would be catastrophic, deadly, and destructive. Unfortunately, it is no longer unthinkable.

The relationship between the US and China, the world’s two superpowers, is peculiarly volatile. It rests on a seismic fault - of cultural misunderstanding, historical grievance, and ideological incompatibility. No other nations are so quick to offend and be offended. Their militaries play a dangerous game of chicken, corporations steal intellectual property, intelligence satellites peer, and AI technicians plot. The capacity for either country to cross a fatal line grows daily.

Kevin Rudd, a former Australian prime minister who has studied, lived in, and worked with China for more than forty years, is one of the very few people who can offer real insight into the mindsets of the leadership whose judgment will determine if a war will be fought. The Avoidable War demystifies the actions of both sides, explaining and translating them for the benefit of the other. Geopolitical disaster is still avoidable, but only if these two giants can find a way to coexist without betraying their core interests through what Rudd calls “managed strategic competition.” Should they fail, down that path lies the possibility of a war that could rewrite the future of both countries, and the world.

©2022 Kevin Rudd (P)2022 PublicAffairs

What the critics say

“A lifelong student of China, Kevin Rudd has become one of today’s most thoughtful analysts of China’s development. The Avoidable War focuses on the signal challenge posed by China’s evolution to America and to world order. Can the US and China avoid sleepwalking into a conflict? Rudd offers constructive steps for the two powers to stabilize their relations.” (Henry A. Kissinger)

“Wise counsel from a seasoned statesman who recognizes the real risk of catastrophic war and illuminates a promising path the US and China could take to avoid it.” (Graham Allison, Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at the Harvard Kennedy School, and author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?)

“An extraordinary tour de force that analyzes the most important geopolitical relationship of the 21st-century. Organized, like Dante’s Inferno, into concentric circles that describe in brilliant detail the challenges ahead and a timely prescription to avoid a catastrophe. Let us truly hope that we can indeed avoid a war that looms upon us like a dark tower, threatening all the progress we have made.” (Admiral James Stavridis, 16th supreme Allied commander of NATO, former dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University)

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A contribution to world peace

Kevin Rudd, through this book, makes a real contrinution to world peace. We need leadership today with his kind of wisdom.

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