Kevin Rudd: The Avoidable War

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Join us Thursday, November 24 as we welcome former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd discussing his book The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping’s China (Hachette 2022) with CIS executive director Tom Switzer.

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.

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who has lived and worked in China for more than 40 years. 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.

Copies of Mr Rudd’s book will be available to purchase on the night.

Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister of Australia from 2007-2010 and Foreign Minister from 2010-2012. He is the global president and CEO of Asia Society and has been president of the Asia Society Policy Institute since January 2015.

Tom Switzer is executive director of the Centre for Independent Studies and a presenter at the ABC’s Radio National.