This chapter responds to the theme of “geographies of rivalry” and international relations by exploring the implications of recent debates over uneven and combined development (U&CD) for the US and China within global capitalism. On one hand, the two powers remain deeply economically interlinked. On the other, recent discussions of, for instance, a “new Cold War” have brought to light tensions between the two world powers. Thus, this chapter asks two major questions. First, what can a U&CD perspective help us understand about global politics and world power? Second, how can this help us make sense of the complex intertangles between the US and China?

In recent years, a wide variety of studies have begun to explore the implications of the critical idea of U&CD for explaining the dynamics of global power. Justin Rosenberg, in particular, has been developing it as a framework for making sense of international relations from a perspective engaging with Marxism (Rosenberg 1996, 2009, 2013, 2019). At the same time, this perspective has been criticized for, perhaps, trying to do more than it can. In this regard, the first section of this chapter examines this debate, suggesting that while the concept of U&CD can play a key role in framing questions of global power, its uses are limited, as it is a helpful concept, not a comprehensive approach or theory.

Second, this chapter uses this concept to explore questions of the US, China, and their geographics of conflict. Beginning with an overview of the political economy of the US, the chapter suggests that U&CD is useful for developing a narrative of the rise of American world dominance and its possible contemporary decline, and the uneven dynamics of this question. This framework makes it possible to link together the ways capitalist class power and neoliberalism intersect with the dynamics of U&CD globally as class relations are shaped both by forces within states, and by movements on uneven and multilayered international scales. That being said, the argument presented here also notes the limits of a U&CD approach, as it is a useful tool within a broader framework but limited as an overall approach to making sense of global power relations.