Whether we call it great-power competition or a new Cold War, there’s no denying the United States and China are engaged in an intense long-term rivalry. But many observers, especially foreign-policy generalists and realists, seem to believe that the U.S.-China conflict is driven by geopolitics, not ideology.
They argue that China has embraced capitalism, doesn’t export its ideology, and doesn’t pose an existential threat to liberal democracy and the Western way of life in the way the Soviet Union once did. In this interpretation, sometimes bringing up Thucydides, the problem is simply the rise of China’s power, which inevitably clashes with the established superpower, the United States, regardless of their political systems. But in reality, ideology has always played a massive role in driving the conflict—and many tensions would have been avoided if the West dealt with a democratic China.
