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100 Ideas for the first 100 days

Feb 4, 2021

#16: Launch a Manhattan Project for Energy Storage

By: Robert Manning What is the kernel of the issue? The biggest single obstacle to scaling up intermittent renewable energy sources—wind and solar—as primary clean sources of electricity is cost and efficiency of energy storage. Why is the issue important? Breakthroughs in efficiency and cost of energy storage is critical to accelerating the transition to […]

New Atlanticist

Feb 2, 2021

Three possible futures for the Biden presidency

By Mathew Burrows, Robert A. Manning

Biden’s successes or failures will be determined by how the paradoxes of his presidency play out. The president is pursuing an extraordinarily ambitious social, economic, and foreign-policy agenda amid an exceptionally dire pandemic and recession—and with a razor-thin congressional majority, no less. He hopes to restore comity and bipartisan compromise to Congress, but his legislative skills will be tested by an obstinate Republican Party and worsening political tribalism.

Crisis Management
Elections

In the News

Jan 27, 2021

Manning in Foreign Policy: Beijing’s welcome gift to Biden: more threats and tensions

By Atlantic Council

On January 27, Robert Manning co-authorded an article Patrick Cronin entitled “Beijing’s Welcome Gift to Biden: More Threats and Tensions” in Foreign Policy. The article makes the point that recent actions by China pose a challenge to any attempt to reset relations and argues that the new coast guard law necessitates a clear response from […]

Americas
China

Robert A. Manning is a former senior fellow with the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. Previously, he served as a senior strategist at the National Counterproliferation Center in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) from 2010 to 2012, and as the director of long-range energy and regional/global affairs at the US National Intelligence Council’s Strategic Futures Group from 2008 to 2010. From 2005 to 2008, Manning served as a member of the US Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, and from 2001 to 2005, he was senior counsellor for energy, technology, and science policy at the US Department of State, where he advised the Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs and other senior officials on a range of issues including energy and climate change policy and new energy technologies.

From 1997 to 2001, he was director of Asian studies and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He led several CFR task forces, including the Korea Task Force and the Southeast Asia Task Force among others. Manning was previously an adviser for policy and public diplomacy to the assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs at the State Department and served as an adviser to the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 1988 to 1989.

His publications include The Asian Energy Factor (Palgrave/St. Martins 2000) and China, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control. He has published essays on nuclear weapons; numerous journal articles on international energy and Asian security issues; and roughly half a dozen book chapters in edited volumes on China, Korea, Japan, regional security architecture, energy, and energy security.

He has published widely in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the National Interest, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Chosun Ilbo, and other publications.