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Jackson contends that the Obama White House strained to hold together détente with China even as conventional wisdom in the nation’s capital pulled in the opposite direction, at one point attempting “to stop the Pentagon from even using the phrase ‘great power competition.’” But such language became common in Washington, and China interpreted such rhetoric as a sign that competition was indeed unstoppable. Obama left office with détente—and peace in Asia—hanging by a thread.

While Jackson argues initially that President Trump displayed a “shocking amount of continuity … in U.S. foreign policy, especially toward East Asia and the Pacific,” he later concludes that his administration displayed a “transgressive rejection of any semblance of détente with China in favor of unabashed rivalry,” which was a real change. His administration’s decision to loudly and insultingly embrace rivalry with China will likely have long-term effects for American foreign policy. After decades of teetering on the edge of open rivalry—and barely maintaining peace in Asia, occasion- ally despite their best efforts—both of those realities may be over in the near future. After decades of responding slowly to changes in China, largely ignoring their human rights abuses and increasingly assertive foreign policy, and allowing their mercantilism to have a terrible effect on our national economic well-being, it is understandable that policymakers in the U.S. would come to believe change is warranted. But Jackson offers words of caution for a slugging match with China—for American domestic politics, but also for the future of Asia’s vulnerable peace, including the ethnonationalism and

“clash of civilizations” rhetoric that is driving extreme politics around the world. Beyond that, “you risk not only arms races, proxy conflicts, and real wars, but also negative externalities like hate crimes, McCarthyism, circumscribed civil liberties, and militarism generally,” writes Jackson.

None of this is to suggest that competition with China is wholly unmerited. Beijing and Xi Jinping bear their own share of responsibility for the deterioration in relations between the two powers. But Washington embraced great-power competition as a defining lens of national security exceptionally quickly, in part because it appeals to so many people from varying parts of the political spectrum. One only has to look at Vladimir Putin’s Russia to see the risk of a dictatorship that feels it has no reason to maintain its connections to the West. China and America will likely be the two global powers for the rest of this century; it would be wise to learn to live with each other. n