POLITICAL WARFARE is back, and the United States is losing. As great-power competition has intensified in recent years, China and Russia have undertaken multi-pronged offensives to undermine American influence and erode the U.S.-led international order. These offensives have included defense buildups, geoeconomic initiatives, paramilitary coercion and even (in Russia’s case) outright military aggression. They have also featured determined political warfare campaigns.

Political warfare is the use of non-military means to manipulate and undermine the political system of a competitor. Political warfare with Russian and Chinese characteristics involves the use of myriad tactics—cyberattacks, disinformation, electoral meddling and others—to disrupt and destabilize the political systems of America and its allies, thereby rendering these countries less geopolitically effective. Authoritarian powers are “using information tools in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of democracies,” warns the 2017 National Security Strategy, to “shake our shared commitment to our values, undermine our system of government, [and] divide our Nation.” As the turmoil sowed by Vladimir Putin’s intervention in the U.S. presidential election of 2016 shows, these campaigns are having an impact.

It is unsurprising, then, that the U.S. national security community has so far focused mostly on diagnosing the problem of authoritarian political warfare and considering how to defend the country from these attacks. Yet if defensive measures are indispensable, they are also insufficient. For the United States to hold its own in today’s great power competitions, it must think and act offensively in the realm of political warfare: it must do to its rivals what they are seeking to do to it. Taking the offensive is vital to exploiting the principal vulnerability of those rivals—their corrupt, illegitimate, authoritarian political systems—and ensuring that America is not unilaterally disarming in a critical area of competition. And although Washington has lately fallen out of the habit of waging political warfare, that practice is hardly alien to its diplomatic tradition. America has decades of experience employing political warfare against an authoritarian challenger, experience that can inform a renewed offensive today.

IF WAR is politics by other means, then authoritarian political warfare is war by other means. Neither China nor Russia have so far been willing to take on the United States and its allies militarily. For years, however, they have been pursuing revisionist geopolitical ends in part by seeking to weaken and distort rival political systems. These campaigns seek to stifle criticism, soften up competitors and impair the performance and prestige of democratic systems. The overarching goal is to render the global environment more conducive to the maintenance of authoritarian rule at home and the expansion of Russian and Chinese power abroad.

As with so much of what Russia and China do today, this behavior is rooted in burning ambition and intense insecurity. On the one hand, Russian and Chinese leaders desire to expand their countries’ influence, reclaim lost prominence and power on the global stage, and weaken the rivals that stand athwart these designs. On the other hand, both the Russian and Chinese regimes see themselves in a perpetual struggle against the West for strategic independence and survival. Chinese and Russian leaders view Western liberalism as an ideological contaminant that threatens their power and the cohesion of their societies; they believe that America and its democratic allies are determined not simply to frustrate their geopolitical ambitions but, ultimately, to overthrow their regimes.

Given the perceived stakes, Russia and China have adopted comprehensive approaches to competition with the West, with political warfare at the center. After all, political subversion and conflict were essential to the rise and survival of communist regimes in both countries during the twentieth century; these experiences are etched deeply into contemporary Russian and Chinese institutional memories and loom large for contemporary leaders who emerged from those traditions. Moreover, both Russia and China are governed by opaque, highly centralized and increasingly personalized governments that are well suited to the darker arts of statecraft. Political warfare, for such regimes, is second nature.

The resulting campaigns have been expansive and multi-faceted. They have included measures designed to interfere in elections, corrupt legislative and policymaking processes, breed economic and financial dependencies, cultivate ties of “friendship” with political and business elites, co-opt diaspora communities and other influential groups, spread disinformation among the public, extend state-sponsored influence through ostensibly private entities and civic organizations, influence the agendas of universities and think tanks, and expand the reach of state-directed media within foreign countries. Russia’s election meddling and sowing of “fake news,” China’s sponsorship of Confucius Institutes at universities across the United States, and Beijing’s efforts to restrict anti-China criticism in America, Europe and elsewhere are recent examples of political warfare in action. Such measures have been deployed not just against the United States, but also against democratic allies—from the United Kingdom and Germany to South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

So far, these campaigns are delivering significant returns on modest investments. While Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign may have partially backfired by hardening anti-Russia sentiment in Washington, it also inflamed America’s domestic tensions and political polarization. The effects of Chinese political warfare have been subtler, but no less damaging. Recent revelations show how Beijing’s sophisticated operations have led Western universities, think tanks, media outlets, private companies and even politicians to openly support Chinese policies, acquiesce quietly to Beijing’s positions and engage in self-censorship on topics that China deems sensitive. Indeed, it is a measure of the effectiveness of Chinese political warfare that America and its allies have been relatively slow to face up to the massive geopolitical challenge Beijing presents.

THE THREAT that authoritarian political warfare poses is therefore real and persistent, and strengthening U.S. defenses is imperative. Hardening electoral systems and cyber defenses, shining greater light on Russian and Chinese influence activities, cracking down on the dissemination of disinformation, devoting additional intelligence resources to detecting malign activities, and strengthening cooperation with allies and partners facing similar challenges are critical to limiting the damage authoritarian political warfare causes. For several reasons, however, a purely defensive posture is neither sufficient nor desirable.

First, political warfare is an arena in which the defense faces inherent disadvantages. It is generally less difficult and costly to conduct cyberattacks than to properly attribute and defend against them; it can also be cheaper and easier for a sophisticated adversary to spread disinformation than it is to detect and correct it. Political warfare is similar, in this way, to the missile to anti-missile competition—the cost-exchange ratio favors the offense. As does the innovation curve: any strategy that relies solely on defense will put America in the position of responding, probably belatedly, to evolving Chinese and Russian techniques.

Second, a static defense is particularly problematic for a liberal democracy. Because the American system is so open, it offers countless entry points and avenues of influence for nefarious actors. And because government power is limited, divided and decentralized, it is particularly difficult to cover the resulting vulnerabilities. As Barack Obama acknowledged in 2016, “open societies” face “special challenges” in fending off political manipulation.

Yet the asymmetries between liberal and illiberal systems are far from wholly disadvantageous to the United States. A third reason for going on the offensive is that America’s competitors are themselves incredibly vulnerable to political warfare. The Russian and Chinese regimes look strong, especially as leaders of both countries consolidate power, tighten political controls and construct elaborate cults of personality. Yet the strength of these regimes conceals a deeper, more fundamental weakness.

Both the Russian and Chinese regimes are flagrantly corrupt, deeply repressive and characterized by extreme concentrations of wealth and power. Their legitimacy is perpetually precarious because it stems from economic performance or the deliberate stoking of nationalism, rather than the inherent attractiveness of the political model. Both countries, additionally, have seen rising popular dissatisfaction in recent years, whether pro-democracy protests in Russia, the large and presumably growing number of “mass social incidents” in China or the seething unrest and brutal repression in Tibet and Xinjiang. Indeed, the reason both countries have well-developed and well-funded internal security apparatuses—the reason both countries are moving deeper into authoritarianism—is that their leaders live in perpetual fear of the population turning against them. Both systems are highly susceptible to political warfare campaigns that would impose greater costs on authoritarian regimes and heighten the difficulties under which they operate.

Finally, a comprehensive approach to political warfare is integral to a comprehensive strategy for competition. The United States need not match China and Russia on every geographical front or in every functional area. But it should address a glaring disparity: the fact that America’s rivals have taken a far more holistic and expansive approach to competition. Russian and Chinese strategies for reshaping the international system employ all aspects of national power to weaken adversaries and influence countries across the Asia-Pacific, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and beyond. Washington, meanwhile, has been slow to recognize such challenges, let alone devise responses that reach across the elements of statecraft. By acting more energetically in the realm of political warfare, America can fill this gap and ensure that it is not simply abstaining from a crucial area of competition. It can also exploit the fact that the United States actually knows this area of competition well.

POLITICAL WARFARE is a concept that appears new only because it is quite old. The term was coined by George Kennan in 1948, at the dawn of another long struggle against an authoritarian rival. The appeal of political warfare resided in the American recognition that the Cold War would be a struggle that occurred largely in the gray areas between war and peace, one in which success required using measures short of war to project U.S. influence and weaken the Soviet adversary. American policy also reflected a view that the Kremlin was both a ruthless enemy—one that would not hesitate to wage political warfare against the West—and one whose economic backwardness, repressive governance and domineering relationship with its allies made it vulnerable. Virtually from the start, then, political warfare figured prominently in American strategy.

One category of political warfare programs aimed actively to foment instability within the Soviet bloc. Beginning in the late 1940s, Washington supported anti-Soviet forces in the Baltic states and Ukraine and Eastern European resistance groups from Poland to Albania. The CIA sponsored anti-Soviet and anti-communist radio broadcasts into the bloc and arranged for the dissemination of destabilizing material such as Nikita Khrushchev’s “secret speech” denouncing Stalin. The idea, John Foster Dulles once explained, was not necessarily to overthrow Kremlin rule but to promote “indigestion” by making it harder to maintain Soviet dominance at home and abroad.

A second and closely related category entailed measures to erode the legitimacy—and deny the moral equality—of the Soviet regime and its satellites. By supporting congressional “Captive Nations” resolutions that highlighted the lack of self-determination in Eastern Europe, by highlighting the repressive nature of bloc regimes and by underscoring the ideological differences between East and West, American officials sought to deny the Soviets prestige and increase their political and diplomatic difficulties.

The third category featured efforts to contest Kremlin power outside the Soviet bloc by influencing nations that were the object of superpower competition. In 1948, the CIA intervened in Italian elections to prevent the Communist Party from winning power; in subsequent decades, U.S. presidents would utilize covert interventions, economic and diplomatic pressures, propaganda campaigns and other steps to strengthen pro-American forces and weaken Soviet proxies throughout the third world. The number of such operations skyrocketed as the Cold War went global; the restraints on political warfare tended to be weaker here than within the Soviet bloc, because there was less danger of provoking a violent Kremlin response.

This emphasis on political warfare spurred development of a supporting bureaucratic apparatus. The growth of covert action mechanisms; the creation of Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, Voice of America (VOA) and the U.S. Information Agency were part of this burgeoning capability. That capability, in turn, required coordinating mechanisms, such as the Office of Policy Coordination in the late 1940s and then the Psychological Strategy Board and Operations Coordinating Board during the 1950s.

The coherence and effectiveness of these activities varied widely. Most operations in the Soviet bloc failed to seriously threaten the stability of Soviet-backed regimes; early CIA initiatives in Albania, Poland and elsewhere collapsed in tragicomic fashion. Moreover, even fervent Cold War warriors struggled to reconcile the desire to foster Soviet “indigestion” with the realization that doing so could simply trigger violent Kremlin reprisals against civilian populations. In the third world, some American initiatives failed or provoked nationalist backlash; others raised troubling questions about whether resisting Soviet expansionism justified extreme practices such as assassination plots and destabilization campaigns. Proper oversight and coordination of these initiatives was always difficult in light of the fact that political warfare was inherently inter-departmental in nature, and it only became more difficult as the number of operations grew. Yet if the overall goal of U.S. political warfare was to increase Soviet costs while strengthening America’s ability to compete, then these programs had their share of success.

Even failed covert activities in Eastern Europe during the late 1940s had salutary effects, by inflaming Soviet paranoia and triggering counter-productive purges that eliminated some of Stalin’s own loyalists. Anti-Soviet radio broadcasts consistently helped delegitimize Soviet-backed regimes and contributed to instability in East Germany in 1953 and Poland and Hungary in 1956. In Hungary in particular, the resulting crackdown was tragic for many Hungarians. Yet it was also deeply damaging to the Soviets, by revealing just how brutal their dominance was in Eastern Europe. Outside the Soviet bloc, early CIA operations helped neutralize communist influence in Italy and France; in the Third World, U.S. political warfare initiatives kept pressure on Soviet clients and raised the price of alignment with Moscow. Political warfare was never a magic bullet, but it was a useful competitive tool—and one that would prove invaluable in the Cold War’s endgame.

The 1980s saw the most comprehensive U.S. political warfare campaign of the entire Cold War. This offensive actually began under the Carter administration, which returned, through its focus on human rights, to highlighting the moral differences between East and West in a way Moscow found quite alarming. As détente collapsed, the Carter administration also contested Soviet momentum by supporting the Solidarity movement in Poland and intensifying covert pressure on Soviet clients in Afghanistan, Nicaragua and elsewhere. The Reagan administration expanded this agenda, on grounds that a sclerotic Soviet political system represented Moscow’s greatest vulnerability, and that waging political warfare was vital to a broader Cold War offensive. “A little less détente with the politburo and more encouragement to the dissenters might be worth a lot of armored divisions,” Ronald Reagan believed.

As president, Reagan hammered home the immorality and failures of the Soviet system in major speeches; the administration provided symbolic and material support to Solidarity and dissidents within the Soviet Union. The United States increased radio broadcasting into the Soviet empire; U.S. diplomats used the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe to expose Moscow’s human rights abuses. The CIA increased covert support to anti-Soviet movements in the third world; the administration created the National Endowment for Democracy (ned) as part of a push to spread liberal political values and undercut the appeal of communism within Eastern European states and far beyond. This was a top-to-bottom political warfare campaign, led by the president, supported by the bureaucracy and intended to exploit an adversary’s weakness for competitive gain. By seeming to call the legitimacy of the Soviet regime into question, this offensive contributed to some of the sharpest Cold War tensions in decades. Yet they also threw the Kremlin off balance, reversed its ideological momentum, compounded its troubles in ruling its own restive empire and thereby contributed to a dramatic turnaround in the superpower competition.

America’s Cold War experience demonstrates the merit of vigorous, sustained political warfare in discomfiting and disadvantaging an authoritarian adversary. Washington might profitably reclaim that tradition in dealing with its rivals today.

THE PAST is never a perfect analogue for the present, and the United States cannot simply re-run its political warfare playbook from the era of superpower rivalry. U.S.-Russia power dynamics are much different than they were during the Cold War; America and China have far greater economic interdependence than the United States and the Soviet Union ever did. Yet there are fundamental similarities between past and present in that Washington faces ongoing geopolitical competitions with authoritarian rivals that make ample use of political warfare, so the need for an American counteroffensive is every bit as pronounced as it was during the Cold War.

What would an offensive strategy look like? The specifics of such a program will inevitably evolve over time and must be tailored to the particular characteristics of particular relationships and regimes. Some key aspects of a political warfare program must also be shielded from public scrutiny. In general, however, any offensive approach to political warfare should be guided by several considerations.

Such an offensive should be multifaceted, hitting an adversary on multiple fronts at once. It should be multilateral, exploiting cooperation with close allies and partners if possible. It should also be multi-level, featuring strong leadership from the president and coordinated implementation throughout the bureaucracy. Additionally, it should be more asymmetric than symmetric, more proactive than purely reactive. The United States cannot and should not replicate authoritarian tactics such as use of disinformation and fake news, nor should it limit itself to in-kind responses to Russian and Chinese methods. Rather, it should pursue political warfare in ways that are consistent with U.S. laws, norms and democratic traditions, and it should retain the prerogative to steer the competition into the most advantageous areas. Finally, a political warfare offensive must be calibrated: it must be strong enough to have meaningful strategic impact, but not so aggressive as to have dangerous or counterproductive consequences.

This last point is particularly important. An intemperate offensive strategy that puts nuclear-armed rivals on “death ground”—the desperate terrain on which regime survival is at stake—would risk catastrophic escalation and be alarming to American allies and partners. It might close off possibilities of cooperation on issues where a non-zero-sum approach is still possible: climate change in the U.S.-China relationship or arms control in the U.S.-Russia relationship. Conversely, a timid counteroffensive that Russia and China can merely shrug off would be strategically pointless.

The goal, accordingly, should not be to seek the overthrow of the Russian and Chinese regimes or otherwise signal that Washington is launching a fight to the finish. But the United States will need to pursue initiatives that make life harder for the Russian and Chinese regimes by forcing them to deal with political and diplomatic challenges of America’s making, denying them a resistance-free environment within which they can pursue their geopolitical designs and otherwise driving up their costs of competition. This will be a tricky balance to strike, and it will require carefully assessing the costs and benefits of particular policies.

WITHIN THIS framework, the United States should pursue four lines of effort. First, Washington should raise the price of authoritarian governance in China and Russia. By levying targeted sanctions against high-ranking officials and businesses associated with domestic repression—senior party leaders and technology companies complicit in China’s massive detention and surveillance of Uighurs in Xinjiang, or Russian officials who spearhead the repression of opposition political groups and civil society—America can make human rights abuses costlier for their perpetrators. A bipartisan group of senators and representatives recently called on the Trump administration to pursue this approach vis-à-vis Chinese repression in Xinjiang; the Magnitsky and Global Magnitsky Acts passed by Congress in 2012 and 2016 provide a template for imposing these costs.

Another way of imposing costs is simply by exposing the corruption and repression practiced by the Russian and Chinese regimes. Such information is not only a source of embarrassment for Moscow and Beijing; it also fans fear among the ruling elites that widespread public knowledge of their misdeeds could eventually prove politically delegitimizing. It is therefore unsurprising that both regimes have been especially sensitive to reporting on their elites’ participation in corrupt and repressive acts. The Chinese government, for example, has gone to great lengths to silence the exiled billionaire, Guo Wengui, who purports to possess incriminating evidence on the Party leadership. The trust deficit in both Chinese and Russian societies is leverage that should be exploited. In a similar vein, Washington should dredge up old history that China and Russia prefer to forget. By bringing up past wrongdoing that the Chinese and Russian regimes have sought to airbrush out of their societies’ collective memories—as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo did on the twenty-ninth anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre—U.S. officials can needle Moscow and Beijing in sensitive areas.

Raising the costs of authoritarian practices also means avoiding initiatives and rhetoric that confer full moral equality on the Russian and Chinese regimes. The Obama administration was right to shun (after some initial equivocation) Xi Jinping’s call for a “new type of great power relations,” which would have required Washington to accept the Chinese Communist Party’s absolute command of politics and the regime’s policies on Xinjiang, Tibet and Taiwan. U.S. officials should be equally wary about Xi’s “Chinese Dream,” a mid-century ambition that would vault China to the front ranks of great powers while maintaining the Party’s political monopoly at home. Similarly, although Russia was expelled from the G8 in 2014 for its international aggression rather than its domestic practices, it should not be readmitted to this exclusive group of democracies so long as it is a fundamentally illiberal regime that seeks to destabilize democratic governments abroad. And, of course, it is a grave mistake for the U.S. president to argue that there is no moral difference between American democracy and Russian autocracy, or to show greater respect for Vladimir Putin than for Washington’s democratic allies.

A second line of effort involves strengthening dissident or liberalizing currents within Chinese and Russian society. Such a tactic is admittedly risky: if taken too far, it could trigger harsher repression of persecuted groups or feed into Chinese and Russian narratives about foreign meddling. Yet the fact is that Moscow and Beijing already allege, and seem genuinely to believe, that America and other Western powers are fomenting anti-regime sentiment. And even limited, carefully calibrated efforts in this area may yield meaningful results.

By showing moral support to embattled religious groups, ethnic minorities and human rights activists, Washington helps keep hopes of long-term liberalization alive while also exerting ideological pressure on Moscow and Beijing. Likewise, the United States should speak out strongly in favor of free and fair elections in Russia and refrain from bestowing legitimacy on transparently flawed electoral processes; it should provide assistance to Russian ngos and civil society groups that are resisting the progressive erosion of political liberties and the rule of law.

Doing all this requires walking a careful line. The United States should avoid supporting groups that seek the overthrow of the Russian or Chinese governments or the break-up of those states; it should not “pick winners” in Russia’s electoral processes by explicitly supporting opposition candidates. It should focus, rather, on offering general encouragement to those seeking more just and humane systems, and on supporting fair political and legal processes that contribute to those outcomes.

As part of this approach, U.S. officials should also work to deprive the Russian and Chinese regimes of the information monopolies that are critical to muzzling dissent and fortifying authoritarian rule. Here understanding the information ecology behind China’s “Great Firewall” stands out as one particularly important task. While the regime has masterfully coopted the private sector and internet users—by meeting their economic needs while limiting political discourse—it has not been able to stifle dissent or stop the exchange of sensitive information. Chinese citizens recently used blockchain technology to bypass censors and share news about a vaccine scandal. While Washington should trust that Chinese citizens will find imaginative ways to circumvent censorship, there may arise opportunities to empower alienated or disgruntled social constituencies.

A third line of effort entails mounting a vigorous counteroffensive against Russian and Chinese efforts to make the world—and particularly their “near abroads”—unsafe for democracy. Frontline states in Asia and Europe have experienced intensive authoritarian influence campaigns. The United States should work with its closest allies and partners to identify Chinese and Russian political warfare as a common danger to their values and develop mechanisms to actively push back against these campaigns.

The democratic states around the Russian and Chinese peripheries deserve special emphasis here because support for these states is offensive political warfare against Moscow and Beijing. Taiwan’s political and economic vitality gives the lie to Beijing’s claims that Chinese traditions are fundamentally incompatible with democratic values. The success of democratic institutions in countries such as Georgia, Ukraine and the Baltic states helps refute Kremlin arguments about the virtues of “managed democracy” within Russia. This is precisely why Moscow and Beijing have taken such extraordinary measures—economic, diplomatic, military and otherwise—to isolate and weaken these countries. To the extent that the United States can help these countries preserve their sovereignty, security and democratic institutions, it can complicate the agendas of authoritarians at home and abroad. And to the extent that the United States and its allies can pursue vigorous—if largely non-military—campaigns to strengthen democratic governance and norms in the broader international arena, it can foster a global climate that will be increasingly uncomfortable for illiberal regimes.

Fourth, the United States must enable all these activities by rebuilding its governmental capacity to wage political warfare. The campaigns described here will require well-developed tools of influence and coordinating diverse initiatives that reach across multiple departments and agencies. This will mean increasing funding for entities such as VOA, the NED and the U.S. Agency for International Development; it will mean revitalizing the tools of public diplomacy that the U.S. government wielded during the Cold War. Equally important will be the creation of new interagency mechanisms that can routinize discussion and coordination of political warfare across the bureaucracy. All of these efforts, in turn, will require commitment and participation from the highest levels of the U.S. government: political warfare will not succeed if the president does not lend his voice and influence to that campaign.

THE UNITED States need not remain on the defensive amid intensifying Russian and Chinese political assaults; the potential for a strategically productive counteroffensive is there. But as was the case during the Cold War, political warfare will not be a cure-all, and making the most of the opportunity will require some key intellectual adjustments.

First, policymakers must become more comfortable with competition as a way of life. Waging political warfare does not mean shutting down diplomacy with Russia and China, but it does require embracing intensified competition on a sustained basis and considering approaches that have hitherto been off-limits. At the same time, U.S. policy will need to carefully distinguish between the regimes with which America is competing and the people governed by those regimes: America’s struggle is primarily with the former, not the latter, and Washington should make that point as clearly as possible.

Second, and related, policymakers must accept higher levels of risk than they have become accustomed to since the end of the Cold War. An offensive strategy, no matter how carefully calibrated, is sure to anger China and Russia. It will trigger retaliation, which is why enhanced defensive measures are also so crucial. If an offensive strategy did not bother Russian and Chinese leaders enough to trigger that retaliation, it would not be worth pursuing in the first place. Only by introducing an element of greater instability in relations can Washington compete effectively and demonstrate that it will pay a price to defend its interests.

Third, even as policymakers court greater risk, they must manage expectations. At best, a political warfare offensive accumulates costs on the adversary, akin to compounding interest; it complements other measures in the military, diplomatic, economic and other realms. Democratic political warfare will neither end authoritarian political warfare nor change the nature of the Russian and Chinese regimes, at least any time in the foreseeable future. It might, however, knock back America’s rivals, make the terms of the competitions more favorable to Washington and preserve the possibility of longer-term political evolution—so long as the United States is willing to gird itself for an enduring struggle for initiative and advantage.

Finally, girding for that contest will require embracing the role of ideology and the clash of values. For too long after the Cold War, there was an assumption in U.S. policy circles that ideology no longer mattered and that authoritarian regimes in Russia and China could therefore be treated as useful transactional partners or even as actors that would come to see the blessings of full membership in the U.S.-led international order. This policy had its logic and its advantages. But by losing sight of the importance of ideology, Washington also lost sight of a fundamental driver of conflict with authoritarian states—the inherent clash between liberalism and illiberalism. No less, it deprecated its own ability, as a stable and vibrant democracy, to wage political warfare against repressive regimes. And to make matters worse, a values-based foreign policy fell into disrepute after the Iraq War: ideology came to be seen as something dangerous and quixotic, not as a fount of American strength.

This has it backward. During the Cold War, the administrations that most effectively waged political warfare never forgot the importance of highlighting the ideological differences between the United States and its adversaries. Restoring America’s competitive edge today, in a new era of competition with authoritarian rivals, will once again require putting the clash of ideas and values center-stage.

Hal Brands is the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. His newest book, with Charles Edel, is The Lessons of Tragedy: Statecraft and World Order.

Toshi Yoshihara is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He previously held the John A. van Beuren Chair of Asia-Pacific Studies at the U.S. Naval War College where he taught for over a decade. His latest book, with James R. Holmes, is the second edition of Red Star Over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy.

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