Dr. Ratner has published widely on U.S. policy towards China and national security strategy in the Indo-Pacific. His view on the current U.S.-China relationship aligns to the general tone of the key foreign policy figures in the Biden administration that the two countries are in a competitive situation but are not in a Cold War scenario. Back in 2017, in an article he co-authored with National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific Kurt Camppbell, he called China Washington’s “most dynamic and formidable competitor in modern history.” In July 2020, Dr. Ratner published an opinion piece with Richard Fontaine, the Chief Executive of the Center for a New American Security, on the Washington Post. In the opinion piece, they argued that a new kind of competition is emerging between China and the United States. The opinion piece suggest that the China debate should not focus on the questions of “how to wage or avoid a Cold War, but rather a bottom-up effort to renew America competitiveness, with more serious debates about specific issues and less nostalgia or neuralgia over past rivalries.” This view is similar to Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s view on engaging China from a position of strength “whether it’s the adversarial aspects of the relationship, the competitive ones, or the cooperative ones.”

From around February to July 2021, Dr. Ratner led the U.S. Department of Defense China task force that reviewed where the Pentagon stood regarding its perception and handling of China. The final product, which was published internally, resulted in Secretary Austin “several major Department-wide efforts to better address the security challenges posed by China as the United States’ number one pacing challenge.”

After moving into his new post as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, Dr. Ratner continues to laser focus on security matters closely related to China, especially Taiwan. During the Senate Hearing on the future of U.S. policy on Taiwan, Ratner told the Senate members that the PRC threat to Taiwan is not limited to invasion or blocakde but a broader coercive campaign in the air and maritime domains around Taiwan, and called these operations “destabilizing, intentionally provocative, and increase the likelihood of miscalculation.” Ratner also said that the Department of Defense had worked to renew military-to-military relations with the PLA over 2021, wich a focus on “crisis communications and crisis management.”