The United States, China, and Planetary Solidarity

We are living in a world of multiple crises and an age of megathreats. The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the global economy and left a long trail of death, social destruction, and discontent worldwide. The threat of nuclear Armageddon has reared its head in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. With regards to climate change, UN Secretary General António Guterres warned sternly at the COP 27 Summit in Egypt that humanity is “on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.” In this world ridden with multiple crises, the two global powers, the United States and China, are engaged in unconstrained geopolitical and technological rivalries. Washington has identified the increasingly authoritarian, assertive, and powerful China as an adversary, a hostile power, and a threat to a wide range of American strategic and security interests. At the same time, Beijing sees American policy “to contain China in every possible way” as the product of mounting fear and envy. The intensifying US-China strategic rivalry does more to impair than to invigorate the existing international order in our world of multiple crises. If the pursuit of human progress, freedom, peace, and prosperity on a liveable planet is the ultimate objective of American foreign policy, does the United States need to “beat” its main geopolitical rival China? Can common humanity and planetary solidarity take precedence over U.S.-China strategic rivalry?