AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
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Principles and Policies for
Competition
May 2023
“After being dismissed as a phenomenon of an earlier
century,” the Trump administration’s 2017 National
Security Strategy argued, “great power competi-
tion returned.”
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The Biden administration, in its own
National Security Strategy, further developed this idea:
“The post–Cold War era is definitively over and a com-
petition is underway between the major powers to shape
what comes next.”
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Both administrations expressed
concern about Russia, but both highlighted the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) as the United States’ primary
competitor in the international arena. As the latest
National Defense Strategy describes it, Russia poses an
“acute threat,” but “the most comprehensive and seri-
ous challenge to U.S. national security is the PRC’s coer-
cive and increasingly aggressive endeavor to refashion
the Indo-Pacific region and the international system to
suit its interests and authoritarian preferences.” Hence,
“the PRC remains our most consequential strategic
competitor for the coming decades.”
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But over what, exactly, are the United States and
China competing? Why are the two countries now
locked in a broadly adversarial relationship? And how
can the United States effectively wage strategic compe-
tition with China—both so that the United States comes
out ahead and, as President Dwight D. Eisenhower elo-
quently put it in his farewell address, “so that security
and liberty may prosper together”?
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This report’s first two sections aim to succinctly
answer those questions. In the first section, it enu-
merates the United States’ foremost national secu-
rity goals and the ways the United States has long
employed to achieve them. It highlights how Amer-
ica’s and the PRC’s worldviews, visions for global
order, and strategic frameworks are incompatible and
identifies the primary ways the PRC threatens Amer-
ican national security. Finally, it explains the nature
of the strategic competition. The second section
provides guidelines for policymakers and legislators
tasked with developing and implementing policies to
wage it. It also suggests some rules to live by as the
United States engages in competition—guardrails
intended to ensure that the United States does not
lose sight of its grand purposes as it focuses intently
on the challenges China poses.
Michael Mazza
Key Points
• The United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are now locked in a broadly adver-
sarial relationship and engaged in a strategic competition. This is due to the fundamental incom-
patibility of US and PRC worldviews, visions for global order, and strategic frameworks—and the
PRC’s rise to global power status.
• The United States and the PRC, along with their like-minded allies and partners, are vying for a
preponderance of power in the international system.
• To secure a preponderance of power for the US-led coalition, the United States should abide by
nine guidelines and impose on itself three guardrails as it wages competition with China.
