Thursday, July 24, 2025 | 2:00 PM EDT
As tensions continue to mount in the U.S.-China relationship, the traditional understanding of international security, with many countries choosing between U.S.-led security and China-led economic growth, is increasingly outdated. Instead, a new dynamic has emerged, where many countries now seek security cooperation with both the United States and China at the same time.
In an interview conducted on July 24, 2025, Sheena Greitens and Isaac Kardon joined Phillip C. Saunders to discuss the rising phenomenon of third countries’ “security hybridization” and the implications for the U.S.-China relationship.
Speakers
Sheena Chestnut Greitens
Sheena Chestnut Greitens is associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where she directs the Asia Policy Program and serves as editor-in-chief of the Texas National Security Review. She is also a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and visiting faculty at the China Landpower Studies Center of the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.
Dr. Chestnut Greitens’ research focuses on international security, authoritarian politics, and East Asia, especially China and Korea. She is the author of two books, Dictators and their Secret Police (Cambridge, 2016) and Politics of the North Korean Diaspora (Cambridge, 2023). She is working on a book about how internal security shapes China’s grand strategy. Her work has appeared in academic journals and edited volumes in English, Chinese, and Korean, and in major media outlets, and she has testified before Congress on security and democracy in the Indo-Pacific.
Dr. Chestnut Greitens received her B.A. from Stanford, MPhil from Oxford, and Ph.D. from Harvard. She was previously an NCUSCR Public Intellectuals Program fellow.
Isaac Kardon
Isaac B. Kardon is a senior fellow for China studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Prior to joining the Carnegie Asia program in 2023, Dr. Kardon was an assistant professor at the U.S. Naval War College, where he was a core member of the College’s China Maritime Studies Institute. He studies Chinese foreign and security policy, specializing in maritime disputes, port development, overseas military basing, and China-Pakistan relations. His writing has appeared in International Security, Security Studies, Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and the Naval War College Review. He also recently wrote the book China’s Law of the Sea: The New Rules of Maritime Order.
Dr. Kardon earned his Ph.D. in government from Cornell University, an MPhil in modern Chinese studies from Oxford University, and a B.A. in history from Dartmouth College. He is a fellow in the National Committee’s Public Intellectuals Program and a participant in the Committee’s Track II Dialogue on Maritime Affairs and International Law.
Moderator
Phillip Saunders
Dr. Phillip C. Saunders is the director of the INSS Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs and a distinguished research fellow at National Defense University. He is also an adjunct instructor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He previously worked at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey from 1999-2003, where he directed the East Asia Nonproliferation Program in the Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, and served as an officer in the United States Air Force from 1989-1993. He has co-authored multiple books and published articles in leading journals including International Security, Journal of Strategic Studies, and China Quarterly. Currently, his research focuses on China-Russia military exercises, China’s nuclear modernization, U.S.-China strategic competition, and China’s strategic relationships. He is also a member of the National Committee’s Public Intellectuals Program.
Dr. Saunders received an A.B. in history from Harvard University and an MPA, M.A., and Ph.D. from the Princeton School of International and Public Affairs.