Rush Doshi

Best known for shaping some of Washington’s most consequential China policy debates, Rush Doshi is one of the leading interpreters of the geopolitical contest between the US and China.

From 2021 to 2024, Doshi served as Deputy Senior Director for China and Taiwan on the White House National Security Council. There, he helped establish the NSC’s first dedicated China directorate as Beijing emerged as the central challenge in American foreign policy. He coordinated US policy on China and Taiwan, drafted the Biden administration’s China strategy, and supported high-level meetings with Chinese leaders, including the Bali and Woodside summits. Doshi was also the lead action officer for the negotiations that launched AUKUS, the landmark security pact between the US, UK and Australia.

Unlike many Washington strategists, Rush Doshi focuses on structural power rather than political theatre. His work argues that the defining question of the century is whether the United States can build sufficient “allied scale” to compete with China by pooling economic, technological and military strength with its partners. Consequently, his analysis often links modern US-China competition to the rise and decline of past great powers, emphasising industrial capacity, supply chains and scientific leadership.

Those ideas are central to his acclaimed book, The Long Game, which examines China’s long-term strategy to displace American influence. The book won the Edgar S. Furniss Book Award, was shortlisted for the Arthur Ross Book Award and Lionel Gelber Prize, and was named a Financial Times best book of the year.

Today, Rush Doshi is the C.V. Starr Senior Fellow for Asia Studies and Director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations. In parallel, he teaches in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service. Earlier in his career, he held fellowships at the Brookings Institution and Yale Law School Paul Tsai China Center, advised presidential campaigns on Asia policy, and worked across government and private-sector strategy roles. He also serves as an officer in the US Navy Reserve.