Then-Vice President Xi Jinping emerges as head of the newly reshuffled seven-member Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Nov. 15, 2012. Xi became president of China in 2013. MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images
A central distinction in realist international relations thought is that between vital and secondary national interests. Vital interests are threats to a state’s survival, and can take the form either of conquest and subjugation from outside, or the promotion of internal subversion aimed at destroying the existing political and ideological order—the strategy followed by the Soviet Union across much of the world during the Cold War, and by the United States against the Soviet Union and allied regimes.
