As the United States and the ROK prepare to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of their security and defense alliance in 2025, forging a durable technology alliance is going to become an increasingly critical element of their cooperation.

Korean Power (K-Power)—a new comprehensive approach to tackling South Korea’s challenges through economic, technological, military, and cultural power—has been on the rise over the past 20 years, dominated by advanced manufacturing, high-tech exports, and increasingly sophisticated military power.

China wants to supplant the United States as the world’s dominant power, and although partnering with Iran, North Korea, and Russia helps Beijing in that effort, the trio can also undermine its aims.

Türkiye is an important transatlantic actor in Sino-Western competition. It can add value to Western efforts aimed at synchronizing policies toward a rising China. And yet, at present, Ankara’s policies on China are not harmonized with those of its partners in the West.

It has become difficult to imagine how Washington and Beijing might turn their relationship, which is so crucial to the future of world order, toward calmer waters. If there is to be any hope of doing so, however, policy experts need some realistic vision of what those calmer waters might look like.

China and Russia face different trajectories in the Gulf. These trajectories will be shaped by prevailing strategic interests and influence, which are evolving and can shift abruptly.