Foreign Affairs: Great Power Rivalry Bad For U.S. Democracy

Both Democrats and Republicans view a long-term struggle with China as a challenge that will bring out the best in the United States.

Photo Insert: No matter who wins, everybody loses.

Michael Brenes and Van Jackson wrote for Foreign Affairs magazine that for years the United States has marketed China as the military's sole worthy enemy and the type of challenge that could galvanize the national will and heal the sick US democracy.

According to Brenes of Yale University and Jackson of Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, Russia's disastrous invasion of Ukraine has simply entrenched this conventional view. Even though the battle has nothing to do with China, it has prompted the United States to view these two countries as comparable.

The ongoing conflict with Russia is viewed as a "good war" that can restore the Cold War-era faith in waging winnable battles against autocrats, much as competition with China is believed to be the road to US rebirth. Ukraine reminds the world of the inherent benefits of democracy and the possibilities of the bipartisanship that supposedly controlled international relations following the end of the Cold War.

According to a March essay by the historian Francis Fukuyama, “the spirit of 1989 went to sleep, and now it’s being reawakened.”

However, redesigning Western foreign policy for great-power confrontation will not assist in the restoration of democracy in the United States or anywhere else.

There is less evidence that great-power competition enhances civic bonding, equal rights, or economic security, and substantial evidence that it could further polarize democracy. In reality, if the United States desires a well-functioning government and a peaceful civil society, the last thing it should pursue is great power rivalry.

Many of the most significant concerns to democracy, including climate change, white nationalism and xenophobia, pandemics, and economic injustice, cannot be resolved within a competitive framework.

Brenes and Jackson concluded that instead of betting that confrontation with China and Russia will revitalize the West, the United States and its allies should create institutions of regional and global governance to limit the damage to democracy that great-power competition will invariably do.

WEEKLY FEATURE : MVP Group Keeps Lights On During Pandemic