Saltzman Institute members Robert Jervis and Gregory Mitrovich have been selected to receive a $1.5 million grant issued by the Department of Defense’s Minerva Initiative for their project, “Culture in Power Transitions: Sino-American Conflict in the 21^st Century.” Partnering with the University of Notre Dame and the Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, their three-year project will examine how the United States and China will use “culture” as a means to advance their security interests and wage their hegemonic competition in the 21st century. The project will employ long-range historical analysis to generate qualitative case studies and a statistical dataset derived through the use of computer-aided text analysis of attempts by both states to use culture to achieve their high-level national security ambitions.They will compare the importance of culture in America’s rise to power in the 19^th and 20^th centuries with China’s rise today, paying special attention to the responses of the international community.  The project will seek to develop a theoretical framework with which to assess the strategic implications of cultural expansion and cultural conflict in the 21^st century.