International security

What Happens When China Becomes the Most Powerful Country in the World?

Today, America’s preeminence is challenged by China. To be sure, the two nations go to some lengths not to let their competition go quite out of hand and are economically interdependent. The essence of what is happening, however, is that China has become the second power in the world, and it wants to become the first. The United States, meanwhile, is not disposed to see itself replaced in its position of leadership.

There is nothing unusual about this situation. Struggle for preeminence has been going on, with only brief pauses, since the Early Modern age. During the later Renaissance and religious wars periods it was Spain versus France. From the late seventeenth century to the end of the Napoleonic Wars it was France against England and then Britain. For much of the nineteenth century it was Britain against Russia. In the early twentieth century—Britain against Germany. In World War Two—the United States against Germany and Japan. During the Cold War, it was the United States against the Soviet Union. Today it is the United States versus China.

This struggle is not necessarily destined to result in a direct war (although it might). After all, the Cold War didn’t. But whatever the forms the Sino-American competition is going to take, the stakes are incredibly high, and not just for the two contesting powers.