Why does ideological competition among states tend to intensify despite the possibility of coexistence? I argue that the ideological security dilemma can explain this process. Much like a security dilemma in military competition, a state has a defensive motive to protect the legitimacy of its own ideology from external ideological challenges. However, measures taken for defensive purposes can be perceived by rival states as offensive—that is, they appear to be designed to undermine the ideological legitimacy of rival states. This perception prompts those rivals to take countermeasures to defend their own ideologies, which in turn may appear offensive to others. In this way, states often interpret one another’s defensive ideological policies as offensive actions, causing ideological competition to escalate more than it otherwise would.
Ideological competition represents an important dimension of international politics that warrants systematic explanation. Some scholars argue that ideology plays a fundamental role in shaping political leaders’ worldviews and guiding their foreign policy goals. For example, both communism and liberalism are universalistic ideologies whose adherents are eager to promote them globally. As they seek to transform the world, communist and liberal states are bound to clash. Other scholars disagree. They view ideology as a secondary factor, contending that states primarily compete through material capabilities in pursuit of national interests rather than ideological visions. From this perspective, ideological competition merely reflects material competition. While ideological rivalry may amplify great-power competition, the struggle for power remains the primary driver.
This study contributes to the scholarly debate by introducing the theory of the ideological security dilemma. The theory rests on the assumption that every state upholds a particular ideology through which it seeks to preserve or enhance its regime legitimacy. In emphasizing the legitimacy of their own ideology, political leaders and interlocutors often highlight its strengths by contrasting it with the weaknesses of others. As a result, ideological competition naturally emerges among states. Within this competition, states may act with either defensive or offensive intent, depending on whether they are focused on protecting their own legitimacy or undermining that of a rival ideology. According to this theory, states tend to interpret the intentions of others as offensive because it is difficult to distinguish (1) aspirations from policy goals, (2) acts of ideological balancing from efforts to build ideological alliances, and (3) intended objectives from unintended effects. Although several scholars have discussed the idea of an ideological security dilemma (Haas Reference Haas2007; Reference Haas2021; Jie Reference Jie2020; Levine Reference Levine2023), this study is the first to focus on it as a distinct subject, theorizing its causal process and systematically testing its validity.
I test the theory of the ideological security dilemma through the case of United States–China relations from 1991 to 2024. This period covers US administrations from George H. W. Bush to Joe Biden and Chinese leadership from Jiang Zemin to Xi Jinping.Footnote 1 For the theory to hold, the evidence should show that the ideological policies of both the US and China have been primarily driven by defensive motives, even as each side perceives the other’s actions as offensive attempts to undermine its preferred domestic regime or desired international order. Conversely, if the evidence demonstrates that the US has actively sought to democratize China by replacing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule with a democratic system, or that China has genuinely attempted to promote its authoritarian ideology and challenge liberal democracy as the global standard of governance, then my theory would be falsified.
My empirical investigation shows that the US has harbored the hope or aspiration that China would eventually democratize through its own internal dynamics. However, democratizing China has not been a policy goal prioritized by US administrations in their engagement with Beijing. The findings also indicate that Chinese leaders hope the “China model” will earn international respect as part of the “China Dream,” yet they have not sought to promote China’s authoritarian system ideologically in the same way the US promotes democracy abroad. Nevertheless, China believes that the US consistently seeks to divide and overthrow the CCP regime through ideological means. In response, Beijing highlights the strengths of the China model beyond its borders to enhance its ideological legitimacy. Observing this, American politicians interpret China’s efforts as an attempt to spread authoritarianism globally, prompting calls for a united response from the US and its democratic allies. This pattern of escalating ideological competition between the two powers demonstrates the dynamics of the ideological security dilemma.
This study makes three key contributions to the literature on ideology and international relations. First, it identifies a mechanism through which ideological competition can intensify independently of material power rivalry. The theoretical model proposed here can also be applied to other cases of ideological conflict, such as the competition between South Korea’s democracy and North Korea’s Juche ideology, between China’s authoritarianism and Taiwan’s liberalism, and between Middle Eastern Islam and Western Christianity. Second, this study bridges constructivist and realist approaches in international relations. Constructivists emphasize ideational factors in explaining state behavior, whereas realists rely on concepts such as the security dilemma to explain military competition. By introducing the concept of an ideological security dilemma, this study integrates insights from both perspectives, offering a more nuanced understanding of state behavior in ideological conflicts. Third, this study sheds new light on the dynamics of US–China competition. Whereas previous studies often treat mutual hostility as a given arising from ideological differences, the concept of the ideological security dilemma reveals how such competition can escalate beyond what might otherwise occur. Recognizing this dynamic may help policy makers in Washington and Beijing to mitigate the intensity of their ideological rivalry and reduce tensions between the world’s two most powerful states.
The remainder of this paper proceeds as follows. First, I raise the question of why ideological competition among states tends to intensify and explain why the existing literature has not sufficiently addressed this issue. Next, I introduce the theory of the ideological security dilemma and discuss why contemporary US–China relations provide an appropriate case for testing it. The empirical section presents evidence from the case study that confirms the causal process proposed by the theory. I then consider alternative explanations and briefly discuss why my theory offers a more compelling account. The paper concludes with a discussion of its theoretical and policy implications.
Puzzle and Literature Review: Why Does Ideological Competition Intensify?
Haas (Reference Haas2021, 108) defines ideology as “the principles of governance to which political leaders are dedicated,” reflecting “elites’ preferences for ordering the domestic-political world.” Following this, I also propose that ideology features an international dimension: just as it shapes the domestic order, it also informs political leaders’ worldviews and their vision for the global order. In this context, it should be noted that communism and liberalism differ not only in their institutional, economic, and social goals for their nations but also in their visions of an ideal global order.
Different ideologies tend to be at odds with each other. Western countries argue that the values of freedom and human rights are universal, while countries like China and Russia criticize such views as hypocrisy or arrogance on the part of Western countries (Ekman Reference Ekman and Steen2025). In this context, it is natural for a plural set of ideologies, such as liberalism, communism, fascism, Islamism, Confucianism, or Russia’s or China’s local ideology to compete with each other, each claiming to be more legitimate than others (Miller Reference Miller2010, 579). Ideological competition among countries is a normal state of affairs in international politics, not an exceptional event.
It is important to note that a natural tendency toward competition does not necessarily determine its outcome. The degree of regime vulnerability—defined as a domestic susceptibility to significant ideological change—constitutes an antecedent condition for ideological rivalry. For example, the US does not perceive an ideological challenge from North Korea, as few American leaders fear that North Korea’s Juche ideology holds any traction within the US. By contrast, during the Cold War, South Korean governments were deeply concerned about the domestic influence of North Korea’s idiosyncratic ideology.Footnote 2 Similarly, the US may not regard China as posing a direct ideological threat to its domestic politics. However, as will be discussed, many developing countries remain vulnerable to the Chinese model of governance (Mattingly et al. Reference Mattingly, Incerti, Ju, Moreshead, Tanaka and Yamagishi2022). From the American perspective, the diffusion of nondemocratic ideas represents an ideological challenge to the liberal international order. This observation reinforces the broader point that ideological rivalry is as pervasive in world politics as the struggle for power itself.Footnote 3
As such, there is no shortage in the literature on ideological competition. John Owen and Mark Haas are leading scholars on this subject. Owen (Reference Owen2010) found that, since 1510, states have used force on over two hundred occasions to change or preserve the ideological principles of other countries. In his study of great-power conflicts between 1789 and 1989, Haas (Reference Haas2007) also found that ideological differences are a central cause of conflict. Both conclude that power and ideology work together to shape the perception of threats and interests in international politics.
However, as discussed above, scholars debate whether power or ideology serves as the primary driver in great-power competition (Avey Reference Avey2012; Gould-Davies Reference Gould-Davies1999; Jervis Reference Jervis2001). For example, regarding the Cold War, realists like Waltz ([1979] Reference Waltz2010) argue that the distribution of power determined the policies of the US and the Soviet Union toward each other. Similarly, Wohlforth (Reference Wohlforth2000) contends that ideology was secondary, as changes in ideas closely followed shifts in material incentives. In contrast, scholars such as Gaddis (Reference Gaddis1992) and Mueller (Reference Mueller2004) maintain that ideology played a critical role, with Marxist-Leninist thought shaping Soviet foreign policy and the Cold War ending only as communist ideology declined. The core issue in this debate is whether changes in ideological competition, as an independent variable, causally affect changes in material competition, the dependent variable.
In this debate, scholars often fail to distinguish between ideological competition and ideological conflict. I propose treating these two phases separately. “Ideological competition” refers to a situation in which different ideologies compete to assert their legitimacy without necessarily seeking to undermine one another. “Ideological clash,” by contrast, can be defined as an intensified form of ideological competition, where different ideologies openly deny each other’s legitimacy and, if possible, pursue (or even force) regime change against the other side. The Cold War between the US and the USSR was a case of ideological clash. Whether the current US–China relationship is in the phase of ideological competition or ideological clash remains debatable. This relationship is the focus of this study. In distinguishing between these two stages, it is essential to explain the causal process through which ideological competition escalates into ideological clash. The extant literature on ideological competition has largely overlooked this issue, either by conflating the two concepts or by assuming that the former inevitably escalates to the latter.
How can we explain the intensification of ideological competition, and under what conditions does it occur? As noted above, scholars have debated whether ideological competition naturally intensifies as a result of materialistic competition. However, it is also possible that ideological competition can escalate independently of any changes in the distribution of power and material capabilities. Mark Haas (Reference Haas2021) has pioneered the exploration of why ideological rivals can form alliances, highlighting the significant role that ideological factors play in shaping these relationships. He identifies regime vulnerability and ideological distance as explanations of how these two variables influence the level of security cooperation between states that have differing ideologies. If it is possible to explain how ideological competition can be moderated through interactions between states in the ideational sphere, it should also be possible to explain the opposing trend—an intensification of rivalry between ideologies—by focusing solely on ideological variables.
It is challenging to accurately measure the intensity of ideological competition, but cases of different intensities can be still compared. To begin with, we can generally agree that the Cold War between the US and the USSR exemplifies an “ideological clash.” Jervis (Reference Jervis2001, 58) argues that the Soviet Communist Party’s ideology, which was centered on the control of all spheres of life, was fundamentally incompatible with supporting a benign international environment. Its worldview, grounded in class struggle, implied that the motto “socialism in one country” could never be sufficient. In this perspective, Marxist-Leninist ideology was a critical factor that escalated US–Soviet relations to a state of ideological clash, where both sides sought to delegitimize and dismantle each other’s ideological foundations. By contrast, ideological competition between the US and China has been less pronounced. For one, as Mearsheimer (Reference Mearsheimer2019, 15) notes, China lacks the missionary zeal for a global communist revolution. As a result of this difference, the level of ideological competition between the US and China has not yet reached the intensity seen between the US and the USSR.Footnote 4
It is clear that any intensification of ideological competition between the US and China is not merely a reflection of material rivalry, as evidenced by two key observations. First, Chinese leaders in Beijing perceived the US as an ideological threat long before China became the world’s second-largest economy in 2010. From Deng Xiaoping to Xi Jinping, Chinese leaders have consistently expressed concern that, to paraphrase Hu Jintao, the US seeks to “Westernize and divide China,” with “ideological fields being the focal areas of their long-term infiltration” (Wong Reference Wong2012). Regardless of the US’s confrontational posture toward China—as reflected in trade disputes and security competition in East Asia beginning in the mid-2010s—Chinese leaders have long been apprehensive about ideological competition. Second, on the US side, the Biden administration has emphasized ideological competition as distinct from material rivalry. President Biden (Reference Biden2021b) stated, “It is clear, absolutely clear, that this is a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies.” This framing elevates US–China competition to an ideological level, presenting it as a contest between democracy and autocracy rather than reducing it to economic or military dimensions. Taken together, these observations suggest that ideological competition can intensify even before material competition becomes prominent and may escalate further once material competition begins.
To summarize, the question of why and under what conditions ideological competition intensifies to the level of ideological clash, involving a forced regime change, remains largely unexplored. While these conditions are not irrelevant to material competition, they also do not necessarily move in sync with it. These observations indicate that it is possible to explain the causal process for the intensification of ideological competition through an examination of how states interact in the ideological sphere. This study rejects the assumption that ideological competition automatically escalates into a full-blown ideological clash or that such is merely a reflection of materialistic competition. Instead, it identifies the causes of and pathways leading to the intensification of ideological competition, which would not occur in the absence of those causes.
Theory: The Ideological Security Dilemma
When states engage in ideological competition, they seek to outperform their rivals in the ideological sphere. Regardless of the specific ideology a state upholds—whether democracy, communism, or a unique system such as North Korea’s Juche ideology—the state must assert its ideology’s superiority over competitors and defend its legitimacy against criticism from other ideological perspectives. In this context, states can be assumed to have both offensive and defensive intentions in their ideological competition. Offensive intent refers to a state’s efforts to undermine another state’s ideology and weaken its legitimacy, while defensive intent involves efforts to protect its own ideology from external criticism and reinforce its legitimacy.
If states can have offensive or defensive intentions in ideological competition, a pattern resembling the security dilemma can emerge in the ideological sphere. According to Jervis (Reference Jervis1978, 169), in the security dilemma, “many of the means by which a state tries to increase its security decrease the security of others.” Political scientist Shiping Tang (Reference Tang2009, 594) elaborates: because even primarily defensive capabilities inherently contain offensive potential, many defensive measures a state adopts can be perceived as threatening by others. This perception prompts the other state to take defensive countermeasures, which are then in turn considered threatening. This action-reaction dynamic reinforces mutual fear and uncertainty about each other’s intentions, trapping the states in a self-defeating feedback loop.
The most critical element in a security dilemma is that both states in the competitive relationship must have defensive intentions. It is only under these conditions that their actions can be misperceived as offensive. If one or both states genuinely have the offensive intention of delegitimizing the other’s ideology to seriously undermine the rival regime’s legitimacy or to overthrow it entirely, this situation cannot be considered an ideological security dilemma. Instead, it constitutes an “ideological clash.”
As shown in figure 1, there are three pathways through which a state’s defensive intention can be mistakenly perceived as offensive by an ideological rival. First, one state may misinterpret another’s defensive intention as offensive due to the unclear boundary between consciously developed intentions and unconsciously held aspirations. In her assessment of the concept of intention in international politics, Mastro (Reference Mastro2022) distinguishes it from related concepts such as aspiration, motive, preference, objective, and goal. Intention involves “purposefully designing or manipulating means to achieve an end,” whereas aspiration has “no plan of action to ensure its feasibility” (Mastro Reference Mastro2022, 588). In other words, intention entails a deliberate plan, while aspiration merely reflects a desire for something hoped for to occur at an undefined point in the future, without a concrete plan. In the context of ideological competition, a state’s wishful thinking for outcomes like regime change in other states or the revising of the international order may be misperceived as a consciously crafted plan or intention, even though this thinking is no more than an aspiration that lacks any such planning.
Three Pathways of the Ideological Security Dilemma
Second, states may take ideological balancing measures for defensive purposes, which other states can perceive as offensive. Defensive realists argue that states do not always seek to maximize their power. Their security can be maintained at the optimal level by balancing the power of their adversaries (Walt Reference Walt1998). The balancing strategy can be further divided into internal balancing and external balancing. Faced with the potential threats of other states’ military capabilities, a state can focus on developing its own military capabilities or forming an alliance with other countries to combine their capabilities. Likewise, in ideological competition, states first focus on strengthening the persuasiveness of their locally developed ideologies for their domestic audience and, in this way, reduce local receptivity to the diffusion of foreign ideas (Vanderhill Reference Vanderhill2017, 43). Next, states can bolster their connections with other countries that share norms and values with them in external balancing (Ambrosio Reference Ambrosio2009; Tansey Reference Tansey2016, 150). I call the former measure ideological internal balancing and the latter ideological external balancing.
The problem is that, in ideological internal balancing, states not only emphasize the legitimacy of their own ideology but often criticize the legitimacy of other ideologies to highlight their superiority. This makes it difficult for a rival state to discern whether another state has offensive intentions aimed at undermining its ideology or is acting defensively to strengthen its own ideological legitimacy. The issue is further exacerbated when a state seeks to build a coalition with other states that share similar ideologies, jointly criticizing rival ideologies. Regardless of its initially defensive intent, such coalition building is often perceived by other states as an act of ideological offense, aimed at expanding the state’s ideology globally at the expense of other ideologies’ spheres of influence.
The third pathway to the ideological security dilemma arises from the generation of unintended effects. In other words, a set of ideological policies adopted by a state for defensive purposes may inadvertently undermine the norms and values of other states, whether intentionally or not. The causal process outlined in the second pathway extends to this third pathway: the unintended effect is not only a perceptual challenge but also a practical one. A state’s defensive measures of internal balancing can decrease the legitimacy of other states’ ideologies in practice. Likewise, defensive measures of ideological external balancing can significantly damage a rival ideology’s legitimacy. In the global competition to gain relative legitimacy, the number of states that support a particular ideology is a crucial factor: the more foreign countries support a country’s ideology, the stronger its legitimacy becomes, and vice versa.
As shown in figure 2, an ideological competition can intensify without necessarily following the three pathways of the ideological security dilemma. They can intensify as a result of a pure clash between different ideologies. The ideological security dilemma arises when two states within an ideologically competitive relationship adopt defensive intentions. However, if one or both sides have offensive intentions, it no longer qualifies as an ideological security dilemma. It becomes a real, rather than imagined, clash of competing ideologies. This situation is better explained by an analogy to an arms race rather than a security dilemma (Schweller Reference Schweller2010, 292).
Continuum of the Ideological Security Dilemma and Ideological Clash
More importantly, figure 2 illustrates that an ideological clash can also emerge from an ideological security dilemma. When a state perceives its ideological rival as a threat, it may feel compelled to undermine or even overthrow the rival to eliminate the danger and safeguard its own system. Similar to offensive realism, states may seek to maximize their ideological influence at the expense of others. In such cases, a state’s initially defensive intent transforms into an offensive one, and the ideological security dilemma escalates into an ideological clash. The reverse is also possible: once states openly engage in an ideological clash aimed at delegitimizing each other, they may recognize the need to prioritize defending their own systems, shifting the interaction back into a security dilemma. In other words, because a state’s intent can shift from defensive to offensive and vice versa, an interaction between competing ideologies can move back and forth between outright clash and periods characterized by an ideological security dilemma. This observation aligns with Shiping Tang’s (Reference Tang2009, 618) argument that “a security dilemma and a spiral [model] can be better understood as a reversible and graduated continuum.” Accordingly, I treat the ideological security dilemma as a dynamic concept that can both give rise to and result from outright ideological clash.
Research Design and Methodology
Testing the theory of the ideological security dilemma requires qualitative research through a detailed case study. To identify and distinguish the defensive and offensive intentions of states in ideological competition, it is necessary to carefully investigate and interpret national leaders’ statements and policy documents. Next, it is essential to trace the process of how a state’s defensive intention is misperceived by another state as offensive, and how a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism emerges from a repeating cycle of mutual misperception. A detailed case study functions effectively for the purpose of discourse analysis and process tracing. The next question is which case to choose.
Modern history contains several cases in which states have engaged in ideological competition at various levels, such as the psychological warfare conducted during World War II, the contest between the rival systems of North and South Korea, China’s Maoism and its exportation to the Third World, and, most significantly, the ideological warfare between the US and the USSR. Among these, the ideological competition between the US and China in the post–Cold War era merits a focused analysis for two reasons.
First, this case highlights the effects of ideology beyond those of economic interdependence. Unlike US–China relations during the Cold War, let alone US–Soviet relations, post–Cold War US–China relations have been characterized by a high level of economic interdependence, creating strong incentives for both sides to maintain a stable relationship. Indeed, for roughly two decades after the Cold War, such stability largely prevailed. Yet over time, ideological competition between the two powers has intensified. This is particularly striking given that post–Cold War US–China relations have also coincided with globalization, digital communication, and expanded people-to-people exchanges—conditions that might have been expected to ease ideological rivalry. The fact that ideological competition has nonetheless grown suggests that its impact has outweighed these mitigating factors. In this sense, the US–China case offers an especially revealing opportunity to observe the powerful role of ideological competition more clearly than in earlier historical examples.
Second, as the pattern of ideological competition between the US and China has changed over the last three decades, their ideological relationship likely shows variation over time. While the US and the USSR identified each other as ideological foes at the outset of the Cold War, this did not take place for the US and China (Brands and Gaddis Reference Brands and Gaddis2022). As noted above, the relationship changed from a mutually reconcilable one at the end of the Cold War to a visibly competitive one. In this change, it is useful to trace the casual process of the offensive-defensive dynamic in ideological competition more clearly than in other, similar cases.
For the theory testing, it is critical to show that defensive intentions prevail within both the US and China. Only then can the second proposition that both countries interpret each other’s defensive intention as offensive be established. The mutual misunderstanding travels through the three pathways of causal change that are described in the preceding section.
Table 1 summarizes the four hypotheses that are drawn from the casual mechanism proposed in the previous section and its observable implications. These sets of hypotheses guide the empirical investigation of US–China ideological competition in the following section. If the evidence is found to be consistent with the observable implications, we can conclude that my theory of the ideological security dilemma passes the empirical test. To trace the process of the offensive-defensive dynamic in ideological competition, I collect relevant statements from national leaders and government documents on ideological strategies and operations. I use secondary sources to contextualize my findings.
Hypotheses and Observable Implications
Table 1 Long description
The table consists of three columns: Hypothesis, Observable implications, and Negative case (ideological clash). It is organized into four rows:
* Row 1, Hypothesis H 1: A state can have either defensive or offensive intentions in ideological competition. Observable implications include leaders claiming their countries should defend preferred social systems and ideologies. Negative cases involve leaders denying the legitimacy of foreign ideologies and stating a wish to overthrow them.
* Row 2, Hypothesis H 2: A state's intention and aspiration can be distinguished. Observable implications include policy documents presenting specific strategies for diplomatic goals versus long-term visions without strategies. The negative case shows states almost always have specific strategies for maximum goals.
* Row 3, Hypothesis H 3: Defensive internal and external balancing measures can be perceived as offensive by others. Observable implications include developing narratives to strengthen ideological legitimacy and criticizing other ideologies’ inefficiencies, which other states perceive as attempts to erode their own legitimacy. Negative cases involve promoting narratives with the explicit goal of regime change and transplanting ideologies.
* Row 4, Hypothesis H 4: Policies taken with defensive intent generate unintended effects of offending other states’ ideologies. The observable implication is that defensive policies actually erode the legitimacy of other regimes or disrupt their preferred order. The negative case is noted as being the same as the observable implication.
Table 1 also presents the observable implications of an ideological clash, which serves as a negative case of the ideological security dilemma. As defined by Skocpol, a negative case does not falsify a theory but instead strengthens its validity through contrastive comparison.Footnote 5 In this context, if either—or both—the US and China were to pursue genuinely offensive objectives aimed at undermining the other’s ideology—seeking regime change or reshaping the international order favored by the other, for example—the situation would no longer constitute a security dilemma. Rather, it would represent an ideological clash, akin to the Cold War between the US and the USSR. However, as noted above, states can shift back and forth between ideological clash, which is driven by offensive intentions, and an ideological security dilemma, which is rooted in defensive motivations. Along this continuum, clear definitions of ideological clash and its observable implications as a negative case are useful for distinguishing and confirming the emergence of an ideological security dilemma.Footnote 6
The theory would be falsified if evidence shows that both the US and China acted with solely offensive intentions from the outset and throughout their interactions. In other words, if neither side exhibited any defensive motivation, an ideological security dilemma would not arise. This implies that the presence of defensive intent is a necessary condition for the ideological security dilemma. Because it is rare for rival states to act purely on offensive motives at all times, falsifying the theory may be difficult in practice. Yet this very feature underscores why the theory needs to be tested and empirically verified: despite the likelihood of mixed motives in real-world rivalries, policy and media narratives often depict US–China relations as an outright ideological clash driven entirely by offensive intent—overlooking the dynamics of the ideological security dilemma.
The greatest challenge in this research lies in measuring a state’s intention, which is the key variable in the causal mechanism. As noted above, this study examines ideologically offensive rhetoric and analyzes its connection to defensive intent. Yet one may reasonably ask: How can we determine whether offensive rhetoric actually stems from defensive motivations, rather than reflecting genuinely offensive goals such as regime change or revision of the international order? Any research dealing with ideology faces this difficulty, since interpretations of strategic motives, intentions, and aspirations embedded in statements or policies are inherently contested. Deciphering state intentions is doubly challenging because they are rarely clear cut: policy makers may abruptly shift objectives without explanation, or they may themselves hold contradictory and ambiguous intentions (Kramer Reference Kramer1999, 540).
To address these challenges, I trace how leaders’ rhetoric evolves over time, compare across different leaders, and highlight discrepancies between words and deeds. I also provide alternative interpretations to avoid cherry picking evidence and to preserve as much objectivity as possible.
Case Study: US–China Ideological Competition
This section divides the post–Cold War period into two parts, before and after 2013, the year Xi Jinping took office as the president of China. China’s domestic politics have become more authoritarian and its foreign policy more assertive since 2013. China’s ideological policy under Xi also appears to have become more aggressive than it was under previous regimes. Variation in the real and perceived changes in China’s ideological policy provides an opportunity to trace the process of ideological competition.
The first period, between 1991 and 2012, covers the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao administrations in China and the George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and first Obama administrations in the US. This era is often portrayed as one in which the US actively promoted democracy while China assumed a defensive posture. The second period, between 2013 and 2024 and spanning Xi’s leadership, the second Obama administration, the first Trump administration, and the Biden administration, is seen as a time when China’s ideological policies became more offensive while the US increasingly perceived them as a threat. The evidence presented below, however, shows that these prevailing images exaggerate the actual state of ideological competition between the two powers.
The United States’ Ideological Policy and China’s Defense, 1991–2012
The American sense of triumph in the ideological competition against communism following the end of the Cold War reenergized US engagement with China throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Initially, the US government was assertive on human rights issues in China. In 1993, the Clinton administration issued an executive order stipulating that, to receive most-favored-nation trade status, China should make progress on human rights. The following year, however, the administration both delinked these issues and endorsed China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. The George W. Bush administration continued to support China’s permanent normal trade relations status, effectively granting China unimpeded access to US and global markets. In the political sphere, the US government also supported the efforts of numerous American nongovernmental organizations—such as the American Bar Association, the Carter Center, the Asia Society, the Ford Foundation, the International Republican Institute, and the National Democratic Institute—to operate democracy-assistance programs in China (Cho Reference Cho2021).
Chinese leaders perceived a sinister intent behind the US engagement policy, which they believed was driven by a desire to weaken the CCP regime’s legitimacy and, ultimately, pursue regime change in China. From the onset of the Cold War, Chinese leaders have long suspected that Washington has been seeking to undermine China’s socialist system through peaceful means, which the Chinese refer to as a “strategy of peaceful evolution” (Ong Reference Ong2007). For example, Deng Xiaoping (Reference Xiaoping1993) characterized the US intention to overthrow the CCP as a “smokeless World War III.”Footnote 7 Jiang Zemin (Reference Zemin1990) warned that Washington’s real goal was to “divide our country” and “change our country’s socialist system.” Similarly, Hu Jintao stated that hostile forces from the West were still attempting to split China during his leadership (Doshi Reference Doshi2021, 56). From their viewpoint, the so-called engagement policy of the US had been designed to delegitimize China’s political system. The CCP describes the West’s discussion of “universal values” as “discursive traps” (话语陷阱) for ideological infiltration (C.Zhang Reference Zhang2022). The ultimate goal of the “peaceful transformation” (和平演变) strategy of the US is to “Westernize” (西化) and “split” (分化) Chinese society to prevent the rise of China as a peer competitor (A. Tang Reference Tang2019).
However, the evidence shows that US administrations did not pursue the democratization of China as a form of regime change in the first place. American leaders undoubtedly expressed their hope that China would be democratized someday. President Clinton (Reference Clinton2000) said that US support of China’s entry into the World Trade Organization “would move China faster and further in the right direction,” implying the democratization of China. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama also made similar remarks. However, it is important to note that they were realistic in their expectations (Johnston Reference Johnston2019b, 104). American leaders understood that economic development would not automatically turn China into a democracy. Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright (Reference Albright1997), explicitly said that China’s democratic future “is by no means inevitable.” George W. Bush (Reference Bush1999) also stated that “there is no guarantee” about US hopes for the democratization of China. They understood that real change needed to come from within China, and it would be up to Chinese people and its leaders whether China would be democratized (Johnston Reference Johnston2019b, 106). American leaders expected economic engagement to increase the likelihood of political change in China, but it is an exaggeration to claim that US administrations deliberately sought China’s democratization—effectively, regime change—as the central goal of engagement.
What, then, were the objectives of the US? As these were stated directly by American leaders and politicians, the US was primarily pursuing economic interests, followed by diplomatic interests that relied on China’s cooperation in engagement. Following the realist logic of maximizing the relative material power of the US, American leaders sought to increase commercial transactions with China (D. Kim Reference Kim2024, 284). For example, in March 2000, Clinton (Reference Clinton2000) argued that a failure to grant permanent normal trade relations status to China would cost American jobs, as “our competitors in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere capture Chinese markets that we otherwise would have served.” By extension, American leaders sought to motivate China’s cooperative behavior in diplomacy: economic ties would create incentives for China to maintain stable relations with the outside world for its own benefit. As such, Clinton (Reference Clinton1994) noted that the expansion of economic ties “gives us the chance to see China evolve as a responsible power.” In a similar vein, Barack Obama (Reference Obama2015) said, “the United States welcomes the rise of a China that is peaceful, stable, prosperous, and a responsible player in global affairs.” Thus, American leaders’ immediate concern was to promote a cooperative relationship with China, not regime change, using engagement and trade. They may have hoped to see a democratic China emerge as a result of economic cooperation one day, but the democratization of China was not a policy goal for the George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, or Obama administrations.
Nonetheless, the example of US democracy and the US’s global efforts to promote democracy continued to inspire political activists within China. When student protesters in 1989 created a sculpture resembling the Statue of Liberty and brought it to Tiananmen Square to face Mao Zedong’s portrait, Chinese leaders suspected American intervention in Chinese politics. As the Chinese economy has grown, so too has Chinese social fragmentation. The number of interest groups has increased, and the incidence of social protests also grew dramatically throughout the 2000s in China (The Economist 2018). The World Values Survey and the Asian Barometer, among other surveys, have consistently shown an increasing social demand for openness, government accountability, and civil liberties in China (Cho Reference Cho2023). While Chinese nationalism and unwavering support for the CCP—especially among the middle class—have forestalled any possibility of democratic revolution, the CCP has still needed to prevent potential internal challenges to its regime legitimacy. In other words, although the rise of social protests and liberal criticism among elites could be a natural outcome of China’s economic growth, as modernization theory predicts, Chinese leaders have suspected that the US has sought to accelerate these trends through its engagement policies.
The CCP has responded to its perception of an American conspiracy to democratize China by implementing measures of ideological internal balancing. First, it preemptively launched a governance reform program beginning in the early 1990s, which allowed for a limited degree of liberalization without democratization (Zhao Reference Zhao2003). In particular, it emphasized “governing through the law” and asserted the importance of protecting the legal rights of Chinese citizens (Cai and Yang Reference Cai and Yang2005). The government expanded village elections to form village committees in self-governing units at the local level (Fewsmith Reference Fewsmith2013, 33). Additionally, the CCP introduced public hearings and town-hall meetings for consultations. These measures aimed to improve the CCP’s image of transparency and accountability (B. He Reference He, Yongnian and Fewsmith2008). Second, the CCP sought to theorize its governing ideology. In 2005, the State Council published its first white paper on the concept of “Chinese-style democracy” (State Council Information Office 2005). This theory focuses on the outcomes of the execution of government policy, in contrast to the Western focus on electoral procedures for the formation of governments. Chinese scholars argue that Chinese-style democracy aims to serve the interests of the vast majority of the Chinese people, while Western democracy often ends up serving only the narrow interests of powerful groups, such as capitalists and politicians (Tian Reference Tian2013; Zuo Reference Zuo2022).
In short, the US has engaged with China in pursuing its own economic and diplomatic interests. American leaders have the hopeful belief that US support for China’s economic development could eventually lead to its democratization, but they have not formed the specific intention of achieving regime change. There is no evidence that the US government has considered covert operations targeting China like those it mounted against the USSR and its allies during the Cold War. However, Chinese leaders have interpreted America’s expressions of hope for a democratic China as the hidden intention behind its engagement. They believe that Washington has been deliberately creating social divisions within China, undermining the CCP’s legitimacy. In response to this perceived ideological offense, Chinese leaders have implemented measures of ideological internal balancing to bolster popular support for the CCP through governance reform programs.
China’s Ideological Policy and the US Defense, 2013–24
Since Xi Jinping took office in 2013, China’s ideological policies have become more proactive than those of previous Chinese leaders. Primarily targeting developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—often referred to as the Global South—the Xi regime has actively promoted Chinese norms and values (Rolland Reference Rolland2022). For example, Guangxi province established a leadership academy in 2017 that specifically invited officials from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries (H. He Reference He2018). In October 2019, Zhejiang province hosted an international event titled “The Significance of China’s Social Governance to the World,” with the participation of some two hundred officials and experts from over 20 countries (Xinhua 2019). In addition to hosting foreign visitors, Chinese programs promoting the “China model” have also expanded globally. As part of its Belt and Road Initiative, China promoted this model abroad (Repnikova Reference Repnikova2022). Participating countries have shown particular interest in China’s social control measures: for example, Central Asian nations have drawn on China’s social credit system to develop their own, while African countries have modeled their cybersecurity laws on China’s. Through these engagements, Beijing has sought to disseminate its concept of the “China model,” emphasizing political stability over individual freedom, state authority over social autonomy, and economic growth over civil rights (Mattingly et al. Reference Mattingly, Incerti, Ju, Moreshead, Tanaka and Yamagishi2022).
The global engagement of the Xi regime has been widely perceived as an ideological attack on democracy and the liberal international order (Diamond Reference Diamond2015, 151; Edel and Shullman Reference Edel and Shullman2021). Before joining the Biden administration, Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan (Reference Campbell and Sullivan2019) wrote that China’s growing influence would “ultimately present a stronger ideological challenge than the Soviet Union did.” Government officials such as Michèle Flournoy (Reference Flournoy2016), a former undersecretary of defense in the Obama administration, noted that China was “willing to unilaterally change the status quo and violate the rules-based international order.” These views are reflected in US government documents: the Trump administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy states that “rival actors use propaganda and other means to try to discredit democracy. They advance anti-Western views and spread false information to create divisions among ourselves, our allies, and our partners” (The White House 2017, 3) If the Chinese intent is perceived as an offensive move in ideological competition, then the US is naturally in a defensive position. President Biden (Reference Biden2021a) stated that there will be no doubt “about the resolve of the United States to defend our democratic values.”
If the Chinese intent is truly offensive, however, more concrete evidence should clarify that Beijing is (1) seeking to replace liberal democracy with the China model as a global standard of governance, (2) explicitly forcing or persuading developing countries to emulate the Chinese-style system, or (3) revising “the rule-based international order” into an alternative one. However, China’s rhetoric and actions fall short of claiming all of these. The rhetoric of the Xi regime emphasizes “the multipolar international order,” which suggests the Chinese approach to development and governance as “an alternative model” (Perlez and Bradsher Reference Perlez and Bradsher2017). It emphasizes, as previous Chinese leaders did, that China is not seeking to export the China model abroad. The Xi regime’s rhetoric is clearly directed against America, but this is not the same as arguing that China aims to replace the status of the US, including its model of liberal democracy (Beauchamp Reference Beauchamp2014; Sun Reference Sun2024; Weiss 2023). Furthermore, there is no evidence that Beijing has coerced other countries into transforming their political systems to match the Chinese style of governance or has laid such a condition on China’s economic inducements. Johnston (Reference Johnston2019a) persuasively argues that it is an exaggeration to say that China entirely rejects the rule-based international order: China supports the international order of trade, albeit inconsistently, and strongly supports the US-centric governance and multilateral approach to environmental issues.
After all, it is more likely that the Xi regime’s intent in promoting the China model and providing economic support to fellow authoritarian countries is defensive in nature (Cho Reference Cho2025; Kang, Wong, and Chan Reference Kang, Jackie and Chan2025). While China’s policies may appear offensive from an external standpoint, its internal propaganda reveals a sense of insecurity concerning the ideological influence of the West. For instance, in April 2013, the CCP’s internal document “Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere,” also widely known as “Document 9,” articulated Xi’s determination to protect China from the West’s ideological influence (ChinaFile 2013). As part of China’s efforts to counter the ideological threat of Western democracy, the Xi regime has sought to strengthen its ties with developing countries, many of which share grievances rooted in colonial histories and anti-Western perspectives. Forming an ideologically anti-US coalition is in alignment with the defensive logic of ideological external balancing. China’s support for authoritarian countries is better understood as being ultimately driven by China’s self-serving goal of bolstering its own regime’s legitimacy rather than by a grandiose vision of global autocratization.
Regardless of the intent, what matters to the American government is that the CCP’s ideological policies can ultimately harm US interests in promoting democracy globally. To be clear, the global trend of democratic regression began before Xi became China’s leader in 2013 (Diamond Reference Diamond2021, 25). American scholars such as Carothers and Press (Reference Carothers and Press2022) argue that the trend of democratic backsliding is fundamentally homegrown and is driven by antidemocratic factors such as grievance-fueled illiberalism, opportunistic authoritarianism, and the revanchism of entrenched interests. These scholars contend that China is merely an accelerant in the overall global trend and not one of its primary causes. Even so, “the China model” could inspire nondemocratic countries to adopt China’s approach to governance over US-promoted liberal democracy. Indeed, according to research by Mattingly and colleagues (Reference Mattingly, Incerti, Ju, Moreshead, Tanaka and Yamagishi2022), many nondemocratic countries consider China’s success in achieving economic growth and maintaining (apparent) political stability as evidence of the appropriateness and effectiveness of its political system. When authoritarian countries that exhibit anti-American sentiment consider emulating the Chinese model, it is not surprising that Washington perceives any Chinese effort to promote its values and norms as direct evidence of an offensive intent to help autocracy prevail over democracy.
Drawing on the perception that Beijing harbors revisionist intentions, the US government’s resolve to defend democracy both within and beyond its borders has hardened. To this end, the Biden administration sought to build a stronger coalition of democratic nations. It convened the first Summit for Democracy in December 2021, followed by a second in March 2023 and a third in March 2024. Representatives from 110 countries and other entities, including Taiwan, participated in these summits and discussed strategies for defending democracy against the rise of authoritarianism. The Biden administration has also strengthened economic cooperation among democracies to restrict China’s access to advanced technologies. Drawing on multilateral programs such as the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative, the Export Controls and Human Rights Initiative, and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, the US aims to collaborate more closely with democratic allies in promoting democratic norms and values in the economic and technological sectors. These policy initiatives are, in part, motivated by a defensive approach to ideological competition and reflect the logic of ideological external balancing: the US must strengthen its cooperation with its democratic allies and like-minded countries to address the ideological challenges China poses to democracy.
In short, the Xi regime has more actively promoted the China model and Chinese narratives regarding global governance than its predecessors. However, it remains unclear whether the regime seeks to advance authoritarianism with the goal of replacing liberal democracy as the global model of governance. While the regime asserts that China can confidently offer an alternative model to the world, it simultaneously emphasizes the need to safeguard Chinese norms and systems from external influence. Many officials and analysts in the US perceive Beijing as intending to challenge democracy and the liberal international order. From this perspective, the US must form a united front with other democracies to collectively respond to China’s ideological offensive.
Alternative Explanations: Absence of an Ideological Security Dilemma
Critics may propose two alternative explanations for the intensification of ideological competition between the US and China.
Genuinely Offensive Intentions of Xi Jinping and Donald Trump?
First, critics may argue that there is no security dilemma between the two countries because the Xi regime genuinely harbors revisionist intentions, while the Trump administration has actively sought to delegitimize the CCP. In other words, both countries have expressed offensive intentions toward each other in the realm of ideological competition. Chinese leaders appeared to gain confidence in the superiority of their system during the 2008 global financial crisis (Kissinger Reference Kissinger2012, 501; Ohlberg and Glaser Reference Ohlberg and Glaser2021). Despite uncertain long-term effects, Beijing’s decision to implement a fiscal stimulus of four trillion renminbi ($586 billion) succeeded in keeping the economy afloat even as Western economies faltered (García-Herrero Reference García-Herrero2018). Building on this experience, Xi declared that the Chinese people should embrace the “four confidences” and have faith in China’s chosen path, theory, system, and culture (L. Zhang Reference Zhang2022). At the conclusion of the Nineteenth Party Congress in 2017, Xinhua, China’s state news agency, asserted, “China is now strong enough, willing, and able to contribute more to mankind. The new world order cannot be solely dominated by capitalism and the West, and the time will come for a change” (Xinhua 2017).
On the US side, high-ranking officials in the Trump administration have made several remarks that were clearly intended to widen the gap between the Chinese people and the governing CCP. For instance, in a 2020 speech, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated that Xi “fears the Chinese people’s honest opinions more than any foe,” urging the US to “engage and empower the Chinese people” (quoted in O’Keeffe and Mauldin Reference O’Keeffe and Mauldin2020). Likewise, former Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger delivered a speech in fluent Chinese with the aim of directly engaging with the Chinese people. Drawing on Chinese history to criticize the CCP’s leadership style, Pottinger (Reference Pottinger2020) raised the rhetorical question of whether “China today would benefit from a little less nationalism and a little more populism. Democratic populism is … about reminding a few that they need the consent of many to govern.” Chinese authorities responded swiftly, accusing the Trump administration of seeking to drive a wedge between the Chinese people and the CCP (Xinhua 2021).
Observing the clear intent of the Chinese and the US leaders as seen in this uncompromising rhetoric, critics would argue that it is an exaggeration to say that the Xi regime and the US government have only a defensive intent to sustain their own regime legitimacy or their preferred world order. However, I argue that both the Xi regime and the Trump administration expressed wishful thinking: the Xi regime has taken no specific action to replace the model of American democracy with the China model as a global standard of governance. As noted, the Xi regime’s rhetoric has fallen short of making this claim, and there is no evidence that Xi’s “China Dream,” his nationalistic vision for China’s future, includes an ideological ambition comparable to Mao Zedong’s conviction of the 1960s that China could and should export revolution to the Third World (Mitter Reference Mitter2022, 13).
The Xi regime’s sense of confidence, as revealed in its discourse about the “China Dream,” is puzzling. It appears to contradict the observation that Xi’s ideological policies have been fundamentally driven by defensive intent: if the regime was truly confident in China’s rise and the West’s decline, why would it strive to defend Chinese norms and values so vigorously? Scholars studying ontological security explain the coexistence of these conflicting attitudes using the concept of anxiety. According to Steele (Reference Steele2005), anxiety, in the form of a constant feeling of insecurity—as distinct from fear, which is linked to a specific threat—arises from the influence of others on one’s ability to construct a coherent narrative on oneself. From this perspective, China’s self-proclaimed greatness intersects with the reality of its relative weakness, showing an exaggerated sense of confidence (Hagström Reference Hagström2021). That is, the Xi regime has chosen to believe in a bright future in which China would become the world’s most influential great power. However, in the present, it remains anxious concerning the legitimacy of its regime, showing a compulsion to maximize its defenses against potential ideological threats from the outside.
Likewise, the Trump administration did not appear serious in its pursuit of regime change in China through the engineering of a democratic revolution. According to O’Rourke (Reference O’Rourke2018), the US engaged in covert operations during the Cold War with such aims, conducting 64 regime-change operations between 1947 and 1989. These operations took various forms, including sponsoring coups, secretly aiding dissidents seeking to overthrow foreign governments, covertly assassinating foreign leaders, and inciting popular revolutions, among other tactics (O’Rourke Reference O’Rourke2020, 92). However, there is no evidence that the Trump administration undertook similar actions beyond advocating for the liberty and diversity that the Chinese people deserve.
On the contrary, the Trump administration’s official document on strategy toward China made it clear that “US policies are not premised on an attempt to change [China’s] domestic governance model” (The White House 2020). The Biden administration continued this position, officially stating that “we do not seek to transform China’s political system” (Blinken Reference Blinken2022). Therefore, it is more accurate to describe the Trump administration’s rhetoric—which appeared to encourage the Chinese people to challenge the CCP—as a mere expression of hopeful ideas or aspirations rather than a serious offensive intent to alter China’s domestic politics.
Materialistic Competition after All?
The second potential criticism is that there is no ideological security dilemma between the US and China, as the two countries are ultimately competing for power based on material capabilities. From a realist perspective, China’s economic rise and military capabilities are the primary drivers of the intensifying US–China rivalry: the US would have been concerned about China’s rise regardless of whether it was a democracy or not (Colby and Kaplan Reference Colby and Kaplan2021). This perspective has historical grounding. Since the beginning of the Cold War, realist scholars have argued that the US decision to confront the USSR stemmed from the distribution of power, reflected in material capabilities such as economic size and military weapon systems. Therefore, the US would have countered the rising power of the USSR regardless of whether the regime in Moscow had been communist or not (Avey Reference Avey2012; Kramer Reference Kramer1999, 574).
Likewise, stating that China poses a challenge to the US-led rule-based international order may not be accurate. Mearsheimer (Reference Mearsheimer2019, 14) argues that the liberal international order was largely a by-product of US unipolarity after the end of the Cold War: since no country could compete with US power, Washington could reshape the world in its own image. However, due to the shift in the distribution of power resulting from China’s rise in economic and military capabilities in the twenty-first century, it is natural that the US can no longer impose its preferred international order as freely as it once did. This means that the perception that China is ideologically challenging the US-led liberal order is more a reflection of the real competition for power, which is ultimately driven by material capabilities.
However, this realist argument has two problems. First, it does not account for the feedback loop that arises between power and ideology. Even if we agree that ideological competition reflects a contest for power, this would not imply that national leaders are solely focused on material interests while ignoring the effects of ideological competition. National leaders take ideological competition seriously precisely because it reflects contests for material power. The perception of ideological superiority matters if a country attempts to persuade others to align with it, forming an alliance or coalition. Second, ideology and power are not separate domains: they influence each other. Classic realists, such as Thucydides, Carl von Clausewitz, E. H. Carr, Hans Morgenthau, and George Kennan recognized that morality can be a tool of power (Larson Reference Larson2022, 121). A foreign ideology can produce social division in other countries by exploiting a group of sympathizers inside their borders. The diffusion of a foreign ideology can then negatively impact a country’s accumulated material power, as the domestic cost of dealing with opponents exceeds what it otherwise would have been.Footnote 8 Even offensive realists, who usually discount the effects of ideology, agree that Ukraine’s turn toward Western democracy was a critical factor in Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade it (Mearsheimer Reference Mearsheimer2014).
In summary, what may appear as offensive intent in ideological competition between rival states can often be an expression of hopeful ideas or aspirations—an effort to achieve a desired state for one’s country or for the global order at an unspecified point in the future. Fear and defensive intent remain important drivers of national leaders’ perceptions and policy decisions in ideological competition. Even if we accept the realist argument that ideological competition reflects power struggles based on material capabilities, ideological rivalry cannot be dismissed as trivial. Empirical studies of US–China ideological competition demonstrate that national leaders on both sides take it seriously, each believing their own intent to be benign and defensive while perceiving the other side’s intent as hostile and offensive.
Conclusion
International relations scholars have proposed various military, geopolitical, and developmental explanations for the intensification of great-power competition between the US and China. These accounts often take ideological rivalry for granted or treat it merely as a by-product of material competition. In this article, I focus instead on ideological variables to explain this process. Conventional wisdom holds that the Xi regime seeks to challenge the US-led liberal order by promoting authoritarianism abroad, while the US aims to undermine the legitimacy of the CCP as part of its broader effort to advance global democracy. I argue, however, that these ambitions are best understood as aspirations rather than as concrete policy goals with specific plans for implementation. This article shows how leaders in both countries tend to interpret the other country’s actions in the most threatening way possible, thereby intensifying ideological competition. Consequently, the ideological security dilemma emerges as a key driver of this escalation, regardless of which side initiates action or assigns blame.
This paper offers a new perspective by identifying the ideological security dilemma and distinguishing it from an ideological clash. As noted earlier, ideological clashes and ideological security dilemmas are not entirely separate but exist along a reversible continuum. This implies that states may begin engaging in ideological competition with offensive intent but later find themselves driven primarily by defensive motives, thereby creating an ideological security dilemma. Applying a similar logic to the Cold War, Shiping Tang (Reference Tang2009, 620) argues that we should not ask “whether the Cold War was a security dilemma, but rather when the Cold War was and was not a security dilemma.” Jervis (Reference Jervis2001, 55) likewise observes that the US and the USSR might have achieved security “if each side had understood the other’s fears and interests,” underscoring the role of mutual misperceptions in generating a security dilemma. This study extends this reasoning by suggesting that, during certain periods of the Cold War, an ideological security dilemma was indeed at play.
This study contributes to the political science literature by theorizing the concept of the ideological security dilemma as a unifying framework that bridges multiple subfields and theoretical traditions. First, it connects domestic concerns over regime legitimacy with foreign policy behavior, illustrating how interactions in ideological competition among states can intensify internal anxieties about legitimacy. In doing so, the concept links the fields of comparative politics and international relations. Second, it promotes dialogue between constructivist and realist approaches in international relations. Building on Barkin’s (Reference Barkin2003) theory of realist constructivism, this study analyzes the process of normative competition from a constructivist perspective while incorporating the realist notion of the security dilemma. Finally, the concept of the ideological security dilemma provides a basis for integrating research on democracy promotion and autocracy promotion. Scholars have long debated whether authoritarian states such as China and Russia actively export their regime models in the same way that Western democracies promote theirs (Lührmann and Lindberg Reference Lührmann and Lindberg2019; Tansey Reference Tansey2016; Yakouchyk Reference Yakouchyk2019). This study contributes to that debate by advancing the view that ideological competition is driven primarily by defensive motives rather than offensive ambitions. In doing so, it aligns with Shiping Tang’s (Reference Tang2009, 620; Reference Tang2015) broader argument that “our world has firmly evolved from an offensive realism world, in which almost every state is a wolf, to a defensive realism world, in which most states are defensive realist states.”
This paper also carries important policy implications. Understanding the nature of the relationship between the US and China—and whether it constitutes a security dilemma—is one of the most critical questions of the twenty-first century. If no security dilemma exists and their rivalry is rooted in an irreconcilable clash of interests, policy makers in both countries should focus on mobilizing all available resources to outmatch their opponent. However, if a security dilemma does exist, opportunities for negotiation and risk management remain and should be actively pursued. Many scholars have argued that the US and China are indeed caught in a security dilemma across the military, economic, and technological domains (Breuer and Johnston Reference Breuer and Johnston2019; Bulman Reference Bulman2021; Hiim Reference Hiim and Steen2025; Hiim, Fravel, and Trøan Reference Hiim, Fravel and Trøan2023; Johnston Reference Johnston2024; Pearson, Rithmire, and Tsai Reference Pearson, Rithmire and Tsai2022). This study extends this observation to the ideological domain, identifying patterns similar to a security dilemma in the realm of ideological competition.
For future research, an important task will be to assess the policy orientation of the second Trump administration in the context of ideological competition. President Trump has appeared more comfortable engaging with authoritarian leaders such as Xi, Kim Jong Un, and Putin than his predecessors were (Ben-Ghiat Reference Ben-Ghiat2024). While the first Trump administration included figures such as Pottinger and Pompeo, who framed China as an ideological threat, such voices are largely absent in the second (Bartley Reference Bartley2024). Trump himself has shown greater concern about China’s economic and military challenges than about its ideological orientation. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (Reference Hegseth2025) also remarked that “the United States does not seek conflict with China, nor is it pursuing regime change or the strangulation of [China].” Nevertheless, Chinese analysts continue to view the Trump administration as engaging in ideological and discursive warfare, insisting that China must remain vigilant against US ideological offensives (Wang, Cai, and Lu Reference Wang, Cai and Lu2025; Xinhua 2025). In this sense, the ideological security dilemma is here to stay for quite a while, making it all the more important for scholars and policy makers to understand its causes and implications.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful for the constructive feedback provided by the three anonymous reviewers. I also thank the professors at Peking University’s School of International Studies, from whom I learned much about Chinese perspectives. I am likewise grateful to my former colleagues at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, an institute of the US Department of War, where I gained valuable insights into American perspectives on China. Finally, I appreciate the opportunities provided by the Asia Society’s Center for China Analysis and the chance to engage with its global network of China scholars and practitioners.
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