By Grant Golub
Since President Joe Biden entered the White House a year ago, he and his top advisers have insisted they are not looking for a return to the superpower competition between the United States and the Soviet Union that dominated world affairs for nearly five decades. Yet one year into his presidency, Biden’s actions have indicated otherwise.
Notably, Biden has framed international politics as a struggle between democracies and autocracies. In February 2021, he told the Munich Security Conference the world was at an “inflection point” in this contest and that democracies “must prevail.” To accomplish this feat, the United States and its allies would need to prepare for a “long-term strategic competition” with China.
The president’s rhetoric, which he has repeated many times, has had the unwelcome effect of helping divide the world into two competing ideological blocs: democratic nations in one camp and the rest in another. This mindset revives an unhelpful Cold War-era framework that split nations into rival groups on Manichean terms, usually preventing cooperation across a range of vital issues.
This piece was originally published in The National Interest on February 12, 2022. Read more HERE.