As Crisis Group’s Senior Research and Advocacy Advisor, U.S.-China, Ali reports on and analyses the development of U.S. policy toward China in the U.S. Congress and the executive branch. He helps to formulate Crisis Group’s recommendations for easing tensions, managing crises, and preventing conflicts between Washington and Beijing, and works to introduce them into debates among U.S. policymakers and thought leaders.

Ali joined Crisis Group in January 2024. He previously worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2008-09), the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs (2009-12), the State Department (2013), the RAND Corporation (2017-20), and Eurasia Group (2020-23). He has also been a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a nonresident fellow at the Modern War Institute.

A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Harvard Kennedy School, Ali is a security fellow with the Truman National Security Project, a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former David Rockefeller fellow with the Trilateral Commission. He is the author of “America’s Great-Power Opportunity: Revitalizing U.S. Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition” (Polity, 2022) and a co-author of “Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World” (MIT Press, 2013).

• “Debating Whether China Is Getting Stronger or Weaker Won’t Make U.S. Policy More Sound”, ChinaFile (December 20, 2023)
• “The Dangers of Detachment: Why Economic Independence Could Make the World More Dangerous”, Foreign Affairs (July 31, 2023)
• “Rising or Falling, China Is a Serious but Manageable Competitor”, World Politics Review (November 28, 2022)
• “Formidable but Not Invincible: Why the United States Should Not Overreact to China and Russia”, Foreign Affairs (November 23, 2022)
• “Great-Power Competition Isn’t a Foreign Policy,” Washington Quarterly, 45:2 (Summer 2022): pp. 7-21
• “The Evolving Geopolitics of Economic Interdependence Between the United States and China: Reflecting on a Deteriorating Great-Power Relationship,” Asia Policy, 17:3 (July 2022): pp. 81-105
• “China’s Diplomacy Is Limiting Its Own Ambitions,” Foreign Policy (June 9, 2021) [with Ryan Hass]
• “Competition with China Shouldn’t Dictate U.S. Foreign Policy,” World Politics Review (February 25, 2021)
• “Four Principles to Guide U.S. Policy Toward China,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (October 30, 2020)
• “The U.S. Shouldn’t Try to Out-China China,” New York Times (September 3, 2020) [with Jessica Chen Weiss]
• “The Growing Risk of Inadvertent Escalation Between Washington and Beijing,” Lawfare (August 16, 2020) [with Kurt M. Campbell]
• “How to Think about Potentially Decoupling from China,” Washington Quarterly, 43:1 (Spring 2020): pp. 1-24
• “A New U.S. ‘Consensus’ on China May Not Be as Solid as It Appears,” ChinaFile (May 21, 2020)
• “Beyond Hawks and Doves: A Better Way to Debate U.S.-China Policy,” ChinaFile (September 18, 2019)
• “How the U.S. should frame its approach to China,” Financial Times (July 24, 2019)