Competition is inevitable – it is foolish to assume peaceful rise.

Implicit in these lessons is a final point: the need to see competition as a way of life. The United States did not, thankfully, destroy its institutions during the Cold War. Yet the patterns of American policy, government, and society did change remarkably. This is not surprising. The Cold War forced Americans to understand that the hardships of competition were the alternative to the greater misery of a world in which hostile ideologies and hostile powers were once again ascendant.

Over two generations, the United States geared its statecraft to an unceasing struggle for influence and position; it took on burdens and sacrifices that would have seemed appalling in any prior “peacetime” era. America reoriented the federal government and reconsidered domestic challenges in the light of the Cold War. Above all, the country accepted, albeit fitfully and warily, that competition in the space between war and peace was the natural state of global affairs, and that security, let alone triumph, would come only through extraordinary effort over an extraordinary time span. Americans might complain that “we have been carrying this burden for 17 years; can we lay it down?” as John Kennedy remarked in late 1962. But “we can’t lay it down, and I don’t see how we are going to lay it down in this century.”30

Present-day competitions could conceivably require far less time and effort than the Cold War. Authoritarian systems in China and Russia could soon mellow or become benign. Yet if American leaders should hope for that outcome, they’d be fools to plan on it.

They should plan, rather, on rivalries that will expose America and its allies to high costs and real dangers and that will be won only through the persistent accumulation of advantage. They should understand that defending U.S. interests will require an encompassing approach to increasingly encompassing competitions. They should thus revive Kennan’s ethos of “holding our own world together” and “increasing the disruptive strains” on the opponent’s world for as long as it takes to succeed. To be sure, an indefinite struggle to protect the gains America and its allies achieved through their victory in the Cold War may sound depressing. But it is the best way to contain the new authoritarian challenges and prevent the emergence of a darker future. Today’s competitions are bound to differ, sometimes dramatically, from the Cold War. Yet America won’t prosper unless it refamiliarizes itself with the history of that contest—and once again accepts competition as a way of life.