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.



James Crabtree weaves history, diplomacy, military strategy, and on-the-ground reporting into a compelling and highly readable narrative. Eschewing abstract geopolitics, he tells his story through people, places, and pivotal moments. The Perimeter is both an engaging history and an essential guide to our strategic challenges in the western Pacific.



The Perimeter is an unflinching look at the most consequential region on the planet. Part fascinating tour d'horizon, part convincing call to arms, Crabtree's marvelous book carries us briskly from Guam to Taipei to Tokyo to Singapore and makes the stakes of the Indo-Pacific impossible to ignore. His account belongs on the nightstand of every policymaker.



The most dangerous - and alas most likely - major war of the 21st Century is between the United States and China in Asia. To understand the past, present and possible future of this relationship you must read James Crabtree's deeply researched, intelligent and well written book. Leaders in Washington and Beijing should do the same.



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.



This book is an urgent wake-up call. Understanding the 21st century means understanding the battle for dominance in Asia. The Perimeter is a timely, well-informed and gripping guide. We are in for a rocky decade and this book explains why.



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



If you read one book on America's future in the Pacific, make it this one. Brilliantly done, The Perimeter is at once immersive, illuminating and blunt.



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.



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.