In January 1950, US Secretary of State Dean Acheson drew a line stretching from Alaska to Japan to the Philippines. This new defensive perimeter announced a radical shift in how the United States understood its own security. Seven decades later, that line and the arc of islands running along the western Pacific that strategists call the first island chain has become the most dangerous frontier on Earth.





In The Perimeter, James Crabtree travels its entire length - from the vast bases of Hawaii and Guam to sleepy Kinmen Island caught between China and Taiwan - interviewing generals, diplomats and strategists on both sides of the contest. As China's military modernizes at breathtaking speed and Beijing moves to challenge American dominance in Asia, Crabtree answers a question with consequences that will be felt far beyond the Pacific: is America ready?





Urgent and authoritative, The Perimeter is the essential guide to the defining geopolitical contest of our time.



James Crabtree is an award-winning author whose first book The Billionaire Raj (2018) was an Amazon Book of the Year and an FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year finalist. He's a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and columnist for Foreign Policy. Until 2023, he was Executive Director of IISS-Asia, organizing the Shangri-La Dialogue security summit where he met personally with defence ministers from the US, China, and virtually every Indo-Pacific power. Former Mumbai Bureau Chief for the Financial Times, Associate Professor at Lee Kuan Yew School, and senior advisor in UK PM's Strategy Unit, he's currently a Senior Fellow at the Asia Society in New York.



No part of the earth is as geopolitically and economically relevant as the Western Pacific. The Perimeter is a shrewd, comprehensive, and incisive account of the military contest between the United States and China in these waters.



Can anything stop China's growing military power? From the naval strategists in Washington to the marines dug in on jungle islands, The Perimeter traces America's last ditch effort to fortify its position across the islands that rim China's coast. Timely, deeply researched, dramatically narrated, The Perimeter is essential reading for understanding the world's most dangerous flashpoint.



Meticulously reported and brilliantly analyzed, The Perimeter will be the definitive guide to the most important geopolitical flashpoint in the world.



A sobering account of the steady erosion of American power in the Pacific - and a warning that time is running out to rebuild it. Essential reading.