Speeches

Thinking about War with China
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Washington, D.C.

Let’s not kid ourselves.  The armed forces of the United States and China are now very far along in planning and practicing how to go to war with each other.  Neither has any idea when or why it might have to engage the other on the battlefield but both agree on the list of contingencies that cou

Reimagining the Middle East
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island

This is the third of three lectures.  The first spoke to shifting patterns of great power relations and their global implications.  The second addressed evolving balances of power in Asia in light of China’s and India’s return to wealth and power.

Reimagining China and Asia
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island

This is the second of three lectures on the changing international political, economic, and military environment after the Pax Americana.  The first considered changes in the pattern of relations between great and middle-ranking powers.  The third will address the changes underway in the

Reimagining Great Power Relations
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island
This is the first of three lectures on the changing international political, economic, and military environment after the Pax Americana. The second will consider the impact of China’s rise on relationships in Asia.

Reimagining Great Power Relations
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island
This is the first of three lectures on the changing international political, economic, and military environment after the Pax Americana. The second will consider the impact of China’s rise on relationships in Asia.

Taiwan: Into the Endgame?
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Recent events have conspired to compel Beijing to consider whether the moment to resolve the Taiwan question once and for all may soon be at hand. The question at issue is not whether Taiwan is part of China.

Entropy in Geopolitics
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Mexico City, Mexico

A hundred and fifty years ago, a German physicist derived the concept of “entropy” from the second law of thermodynamics.  Since then, entropy has stood for the idea that everything in the universe eventually moves from order to disorder, from structure to formlessness, and from predictabili

No More Presidential Wars
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Washington, DC

I’m Chas Freeman. In 2003, I helped found what became the Committee for the Republic, which I continue to chair. The founders of this group were of disparate political persuasions.

The Transitions in America, the World, and the Middle East
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Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.) | Senior Fellow, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University
Washington, DC

On January 20, Donald Trump will become the 45th president of the United States. He will confront a changed world. We are only two-fifths of the way through the interval between the election and the inauguration, but the ebb in deference to American global leadership is already unmistakable.