The domestic resonance of geopolitical competition in American foreign policy: the rise of China and post-war US–Soviet relations compared

For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the USA faces a geopolitical challenger in the shape of China. According to the National Security Strategy 2017 (NSS 2017), China—alongside Russia—poses a threat to America primacy, a view that reflects a new consensus among national security experts about the need to get tough in relations with Beijing. As of now, however, American public opinion remains ambivalent on the China challenge—opinion polls showing only a modest downturn in views of China recently, despite pronounced anti-China rhetoric in the context of the Trump administration’s trade war. The present paper asks why there is such a disparity between elite and popular opinions, and whether the disparity will last. It does so through a historical comparison between the present and the immediate post-WWII period, before a threat from the Soviet Union resonated widely among the American public. Acceptance of a Soviet threat was a product of a rhetoric of anti-communism used in partisan political debate. In turn, anti-communism drew on a conflation of “communism” meaning US-based labor groups and communism meaning the Soviet Union. By showing the immense effort needed to manufacture the resonance of geopolitical competition in the post-war years, the paper highlights the necessary domestic conditions of geopolitical competition, conditions currently absent.