Evan A. Feigenbaum is vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he oversees its work in Washington, Beijing, New Delhi, and Singapore on a dynamic region encompassing both East Asia and South Asia. He served twice as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and advised two Secretaries of State and a former Treasury Secretary on Asia. He was also the 2019-20 James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, where he is now a practitioner senior fellow. Initially an academic with a PhD in Chinese politics from Stanford University, Feigenbaum’s career has spanned government service, think tanks, the private sector, and three major regions of Asia.
From 2001 to 2009, he served at the U.S. State Department as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia (2007–2009), deputy assistant secretary of state for Central Asia (2006–2007), member of the policy planning staff with principal responsibility for East Asia and the Pacific (2001–2006), and an adviser on China to Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick, with whom he worked closely in the development of the U.S.-China senior dialogue.
During the intensive final phase of the U.S.-India civil nuclear initiative from July to October 2008, he co-chaired the coordinating team charged with moving the initiative through the International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors and the Nuclear Suppliers Group and then to Congress, where it became the U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation Approval and Nonproliferation Enhancement Act. He negotiated agreements with the governments of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan and also has extensive policy experience with North and South Korea, Japan, and Australia. He received three individual and two group superior honor awards from the State Department.
Following government service, Feigenbaum worked in the private and nonprofit sectors: He was vice chairman of the Paulson Institute at the University of Chicago, and the co-founder of MacroPolo, its digital venture on the Chinese economy; head of the Asia practice at the markets consultancy Eurasia Group, a global political risk consulting firm; and senior fellow for East, Central, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. Before government service, he worked at Harvard University (1997–2001) as lecturer on government in the faculty of arts and sciences and as executive director of the Asia-Pacific Security Initiative and program chair of the Chinese Security Studies Program in the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He taught at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (1994–1995) as lecturer of national security affairs and was a consultant on China to the RAND Corporation (1993–1994).
He is the author of three books and monographs, including The United States in the New Asia (CFR, 2009, co-author) and China’s Techno-Warriors: National Security and Strategic Competition from the Nuclear to the Information Age (Stanford University Press, 2003), which was selected by Foreign Affairs as a best book of 2003 on the Asia-Pacific, as well as numerous articles and essays.
Most debates about Chinese coercion of Taiwan focus on invasion, and how an international coalition including the United States and Europe might respond. But China’s coercive toolkit is vast and includes both kinetic and non-kinetic measures that fall well short of these dire scenarios.
With Russia using North Korean ballistic missiles in Ukraine, Kim Jong Un denouncing his father’s and grandfather’s stance on Korean unification, and borders beginning to reopen to the world after over three years of strict closure, North Korea appears poised for big changes in 2024.
When tech journalists, CEOs, and politicians think of tech policy, they usually look to Washington, Brussels, or Beijing (and, more recently, New Delhi). But Seoul is attempting to craft its own innovative answers to thorny questions of digital policy.
This volume digs into South Korea’s experiences with digital standards and standardization and draws attention to Korea’s distinctive digital policy. It then compares Korea’s experiences to those of the United States and other Asian players, notably Malaysia and Japan—grading all four countries in key areas.
Evan Feigenbaum, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Temur Umarov, Nicole Grajewski, and Asel Doolotkeldieva focus on strategic dynamics in continental Asia and how regional players—not the United States or the transatlantic West—are driving both diplomacy and regional integration.
The third annual Summit of Indian and Pacific Ocean island nations, with a focus on the issues that affect them most.
The U.S. military’s role in Southeast Asia is ‘not in jeopardy’ because many countries are afraid of China.
Evan Feigenbaum from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says if the Chinese president skips the APEC meeting later in the year, then it means something is preventing him from attending multilateral meetings.
In this episode, Evan Feigenbaum talks about how China and the U.S. act as 'security narcissists', creating a danger for the whole region, and how other Asian countries are nervously trying to navigate this predicament.
Carnegie’s Evan A. Feigenbaum will host CSIS's Daniel F. Runde for a wide-ranging conversation on why and how the United States can best use soft power to address today’s geopolitical challenges and to preview his new book The American Imperative: Reclaiming Global Leadership Through Soft Power.
