Moving in a Different Direction

By Joshua Kurlantzick

Joshua Kurlantzick is senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. Kurlantzick was previously a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he studied Southeast Asian politics and economics and China's relations with Southeast Asia, including Chinese investment, aid, and diplomacy. Previously, he was a fellow at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy and a fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy. Kurlantzick has also served as a columnist for Time, a correspondent for the Economistbased in Bangkok, a special correspondent for the New Republic, a senior correspondent for the American Prospect, and a contributing writer for Mother Jones. He also serves on the editorial board of Current History. He is the winner of the Luce Scholarship for journalism in Asia and was selected as a finalist for the Osborn Elliot prize for journalism in Asia. His first book, "Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World," was nominated for CFR's 2008 Arthur Ross Book Award. He is the author of "Democracy in Retreat: The Revolt of the Middle Class and the Worldwide Decline in Representative Government," and the author of the forthcoming "A Great Place to Have a War: The Secret War in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA." Kurlantzick received his BA in political science from Haverford College.

In the span of six months, the U.S.-Philippines relationship has gone from a 25-year highpoint to a period of worrisome uncertainty. At the center of this shift is President Rodrigo Duterte, whose frequent anti-U.S. rhetoric and desire to shift his country’s foreign policy course signal that the U.S.-Philippines relationship will be hard pressed to maintain, let alone advance, the recent gains in strategic cooperation. The Cipher Brief spoke with Josh Kurlantzick, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, to learn more.

The Cipher Brief: What is Duterte’s vision for the Philippines’ regional role?  Where does he want to take the country?

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national security-focused expert insight by becoming a Cipher Brief Subscriber+ Member.

Subscriber+

Categorized as:InternationalTagged with:

Related Articles

How Safe Would We Be Without Section 702?

SUBSCRIBER+EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW — A provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that has generated controversy around fears of the potential for abuse has proven to be crucial […] More

Search

Close