Podcast / American Prestige / Jul 29, 2025

The Perils of Competition With China

On American Prestige: Michael Brenes on how the US-China rivalry threatens democracy and peace.

The Nation Podcasts
The Nation Podcasts

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.

The Perils of Competition With China | American Prestige
byThe Nation Magazine

Great Power Week continues here at American Prestige as historian Michael Brenes joins the show to talk about how prolonged competition with China threatens democracy, peace, and prosperity. They compare Biden and Trump’s respective approaches to China, whether the national security establishment is trying to manufacture an existential threat out of The People’s Republic, whether there is any national interest in a new Cold War, the degradation in American leaders, why rivalry is bad economically, erodes American society’s social fabric, and leads to violence, and alternatives to the great power framework.     

Read his book on the matter (co-authored with AP regular Van Jackson), The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy.

Don’t miss the companion episode with Stacie Goddard from Sunday, “The Era of Great Power Competition.” 

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Trump and Xi in 2017.

Trump and Xi in 2017.

(Qilai Shen / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Great Power Week continues here at American Prestige as historian Michael Brenes joins the show to talk about how prolonged competition with China threatens democracy, peace, and prosperity. They compare Biden and Trump’s respective approaches to China, whether the national security establishment is trying to manufacture an existential threat out of the People’s Republic, whether there is any national interest in a new Cold War, the degradation in American leaders, why rivalry is bad economically, erodes American society’s social fabric, and leads to violence, and alternatives to the great power framework.

Read his book on the matter (co-authored with AP regular Van Jackson), The Rivalry Peril: How Great-Power Competition Threatens Peace and Weakens Democracy.

Don’t miss the companion episode with Stacie Goddard from Sunday, “The Era of Great Power Competition.”

Subscribe to The Nation to support all of our podcasts: thenation.com/podcastsubscribe.

The Nation Podcasts
The Nation Podcasts

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.

Extraction Behind the Green Transition w/ Thea Riofrancos / American Prestige
byThe Nation Magazine

Danny and Derek welcome back to the show political scientist Thea Riofrancos to talk about the politics of extraction in the global energy transition. They explore the contradictions of green capitalism, the debate over degrowth and abundance, China’s role in lithium battery production, the history of lithium batteries, green industrial policy, U.S. oil and gas power, popular resistance to data centers and mining, where the Global South falls in renewable supply chains, and the environmental costs of green development.

Be sure to grab a copy of Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism.

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