"The paradox of our current moment is thus that a world system with the
United States at its core encourages U.S. political elites to act in
ways that repeatedly destabilize it. Washington’s national security Keynesianism appears to be a willful attempt to close out the
international economic order as it existed before 2020 while still “leading” the global economy, giving up the obligations of world
policeman while continuing to exploit the advantages of world order so
the United States can outcompete China.

Today, as during the Cold War, rivalry is a wager that sacrifices both political and economic democracy at the altar of great-power
competition. We can imagine two possible counterarguments to the
evidence we have presented.

One might go like this: ... It is saying that the China threat is
sufficiently grave to be worth whatever domestic price geopolitical
competition incurs.

This logic subordinates economic equality to great-power rivalry with
little attention to who benefits and who pays for U.S. foreign policy.
It sacrifices democratic society to secure geopolitical advantage, and
it violates the dictates of good strategy. U.S. national security worthy
of the name must reflect the needs and interests of all Americans.

A second counterargument might be this: “Rivalry isn’t the only cause of economic insecurity and political inequality.” This rejoinder rests on a counterfactual belief that if the domestic problems predated the
inception point of rivalry—or if there is more than one cause of these problems—then there is no point in condemning geopolitical competition.
In other words, do not blame the state for the problems inherent to U.S. political economy.

But this is not just fallacious reasoning; there is also no evidence to
support it. Since the onset of rivalry with China around 2016, the
severity of these problems has been rising—a trend that must be arrested
if democracy is to retain its soul. To dismiss that because
de-escalating or finding alternatives to geopolitical competition would
not solve everything is both to ignore what is right in front of us and
to make the perfect the enemy of the good.

Above all, we must be unambiguous about one thing: Great-power rivalry
cannot generate economic equality. Rivalry’s zero-sum outlook forecloses
on economic democracy. It provides economic security for some by taking security away from others. Given this, we should not be surprised that undemocratic means have yielded undemocratic results—ones that shape the material lives of Americans in harmful ways. The double tragedy is that
the very same conditions that inhibit economic democracy also threaten
global peace."

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/31/us-china-rivalry-great-power-competition-economy-democracy/

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