Great Power Competition Brings Out the Worst in Us

If there is a risk of global chaos, it comes from hardliners agitating for confrontation with China.

It comes as no surprise that Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher want the U.S. to pursue an extreme hardline policy towards China and somehow “win” the competition with Beijing:

What would winning look like? China’s communist rulers would give up trying to prevail in a hot or cold conflict with the United States and its friends. And the Chinese people—from ruling elites to everyday citizens—would find inspiration to explore new models of development and governance that don’t rely on repression at home and compulsive hostility abroad.

In addition to having greater clarity about its end goal, the United States needs to accept that achieving it will require greater friction in U.S.-Chinese relations. Washington will need to adopt rhetoric and policies that may feel uncomfortably confrontational but in fact are necessary to reestablish boundaries that Beijing and its acolytes are violating. That means imposing costs on Chinese leader Xi Jinping for his policy of fostering global chaos.

It would be a disaster for the U.S. to chase after such unrealistic goals, and it would bring us much closer to direct conflict between two nuclear-armed major powers. If there is a risk of global chaos, it comes from hardliners agitating for confrontation with China. Pottinger and Gallagher are showing us how defining a major bilateral relationship primarily in terms of competition can lead to the most toxic and destructive behaviors. Christopher Fettweis pointed this out in The Pathologies of Power: competition frequently brings out the worst, most aggressive instincts in people.