Summary: 
Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China by Hal Brands and Michael Beckley captures the causes and impacts of the looming US-China geopolitical clash and how to prevent an all-out conflict. Brands and Beckley identified two factors: ambition and desperation, that drove China’s current assertiveness. Before the outbreak of COVID-19, China was well-positioned to challenge US’s supremacy (Chapter 1). However, the hostile external environment, declining demography, shrinking resources, increasing domestic authoritarianism, and economic predicament gradually closed China’s opportunity for global superiority and peaceful reunification of Taiwan (Chapters 2 and 3). The authors compared China’s current situation with historical cases. They concluded that when peaking powers experience geopolitical encirclement and economic stagnation, they act aggressively to secure their ambitions and national interest (Chapter 4). In fact, China (or the Chinese Communist Party) currently faces existential threats and struggles to stay in control, especially on the Taiwan issue, dragging China, the US, and the world into a danger zone (Chapter 5). To emerge victorious in the danger zone, the authors analyzed the key factors that brought down the Soviet Union: prioritizing ruthlessly, being flexible, taking risks in controlled conflicts, and preparing for the long run (Chapter 6). Applying the lessons from the Cold War, the US should deny China’s technological leadership and stop its digital authoritarianism, safeguard democracies, protect Taiwan, prepare for a protracted conflict against China, bolster its alliance with Europe, and have a flexible playbook against China (Chapter 7). Finally, the authors provided a glimpse of how the new Cold War will unravel and ten recommendations for the US to navigate in the danger zone for an extended period (Chapter 8).